Crafts, leisure and happiness

I know I haven't blogged in a long while, that's because I've been busy. Busy setting up my online store - shh.. (how is shh spelt, did you know there is no such word in the dictionary, hmm.. (now this word is in the dictionary)). About the store, well it's real fun setting it up all by myself putting many open source softwares together. I hope I enjoy running the store as much as I like setting it up. Maybe I should just make a business of setting up online stores. Apart from the store, I've been busy knitting. Here's what I've created in the last few months. And look to this right side panel -> for my current works in progress. A hat for the lil dude A market bag , I love this bag. It was fun to crochet it and I love how it's assembled. It's HUGE and very useful. This cardi . Not such a good picture, but a great cardi. The color is more beautiful than it appears here. This tank for my neighbor's lil girl. I made a total of...

The Maker Faire (for those who don't know) is exactly that. A fair where "Makers" showcase their work. There were makers of all kinds, crafters, artists, engineers, inventors. My favorite "Maked things" (as my son would probably have said) were the  amazing mechanical contraptions which seemed to have jumped out of movies. Unfortunately I could not capture them on my camera for one reason or another. Over all the Maker Faire was very overwhelming. I think it's a great way to get Makers together but the way the stalls were organized or the place or the crowd was just too overwhelming.  My other favorite was this Lego city, an entire city made of Lego blocks! I could have spent days just looking at all the details, I can't imagine how long it must've taken to build it.

I can't believe I stayed away from my blog for so long! Well here I am, back in the new year. With a published article  on Yahoo Associated Content to my name (waving and bowing to applause),  lots of FOs (Finished Objects you pervert) and refreshed after a nice time with family, especially with my little one. His day care was closed for around 10 days and I had the best time with him. I'm proud to say he was a golden boy in terms of his behavior and we had a rollicking time together. We did many little and big things together but that's a whole other post. Here are some of the FOs, I don't have pictures of all of them. A vest for a newborn on the way. It's " Pebble " on Ravelry. Sweaters for Bubba. The one below is a test knit. Will give more details once the designer publishes the pattern. Here's a really bad picture of the finished scarf being blocked. Will upload some pictures of the scarf being modeled. Remember  Tamy's WI...

Here are pictures of some more of my finished objects. The other offset wraplan I was making is finally done. It's the 3-6 month size, and with fewer buttons, better ribbing, better button / hole plackets, a better finish and definitely better yarn than the acrylic one that I used for the first wraplan (Stripy) . A dishcloth with a lace pattern made using lion brand cotton ease (worsted weight cotton). This is the Travelling Vines Dishcloth. Not sure I can use it as a dishcloth, maybe a pot holder or something. I had a hard time with this seemingly simple pattern. I must've ripped the first few pattern rows at least 3 times before I got it right. The pattern is beautiful for a scarf or shawl don't you think?

Here are pictures of my recently finished raglan sweater. I love the pattern . It's very easy and goes really fast and I started this on my trip to India with yarn from India. I think the number of buttons on this makes it look cute. But from my experience I realize now that the fewer the buttons on baby clothes the easier it is to dress them. I made it for my friend's little one. I hope he's not as wriggly as my son used to be when putting on his clothes. Ok pattern notes Yarn : Acrylic yarn from one of those little yarn stores off of Commercial St, Bangalore Needles : Size 4 circular, dpns for sleeves, straight needles for the button plackets. Size made: 3-6 months Difficulty: easy Modifications from original pattern: Changed the ribbing, button and button hole plackets to k1, p1 because with the black yarn the original pattern did not look good. I picked up the exact number of stitches the pattern called for, for the plackets and that ended up causing a small ruffle ...

I had earlier believed scrapbooks are made out of scrap - old, usually discarded fragments of waste in the house - ribbons, buttons, old calendars, posters, etc. In fact I'm sure that must be the origin of the term scrapbook. But have you seen the "scrap" available in craft stores. Whew! Anyhoo, I've decided that I'll have a scrapbook ready by the time my lil one turns one - I have barely 2 months to go.   I technically started the project a long long time ago in a world far far away when I still hadn't had my lil one. I bought a 12X12 scrapbooking album, and lots of supplies from wal-mart and michaels . Read up tonnes of resources on the internet and funnily after he was born I hardly had anytime for it. Now the lil fella is off at the day care (the poor thing) and I have a couple of days before I return to work, so all the supplies that were gathering dust in a dark corner of the store room are finally out and I'm beginning the first page of my scrapboo...