finishing touches

I was able to make my last tissue paper pom-pom for my living room, so I have pictures of the finished arrangement of orbs. One project down!

I finally got around to taking pictures of all the knitting projects that I have to finish. The oldest unfinished knit work is a purse that I started making about two years ago. It's knit in a pretty blue/purple dyed yarn, that I can't recall the brand of for the life of me. All that I have to do to finish it is add a handle (which is easier said than done, since i'm braiding it myself out of strips of leather), and sew in a lining. There are also some construction details to work out, like do I reinforce the loops that will be securing the handle to the body of the bag?

Piece-to-be-finished #2 is the cute and very popular mini sweater that I got a pattern for off of glampyre knits. It's an adorable little shrug in denim blue, and would be perfect for the burgeoning spring weather. All I have left to do is finish knitting and seaming the sleeves, as well as attach a ribbon to close the front. My knit is a slight adaptation of the pattern as far as the sleeves and front are concerned. I like the poofiness of the sleeves, but want them to stop abruptly, without as large a cuff as in the original design. That, however, involves some creative decreasing to achieve the perfect fit and will take some work. I'm also going to forgo the original's crochet trim; I want to keep it simple.

Knit project number three is the best friend cardigan from Wenlan Chia's "Twinkle's Big City Knits." I fell in love with this sweater when I bought the book, and couldn't wait to knit it. I love that it's knit in super chunky yarn but has such a shrunken fit. Now I just need to make myself finish it so that I can wear it for a little while before it gets too warm. I've finished the right front and back of the sweater, and only have about 1/4 of the left front left. What's really deterring me from completing the chunky cardy is the thought of finishing the sleeves. The pattern calls for the sleeves to be knit back and forth and then seamed together all the way up the arm. I really don't want to sew two large seams. I just keep imagining tumor-like growths attacking my arms when I go to put the sweater on. What I would like to do is pick up stitches around the arm hole and knit the sleeves in the round. The difficult thing about that idea is that I would need to use size 17 double pointed needles, which are impossible to find in the store. I'm sure I could get them online, but that just seems like a lot of work, so, here I am. I guess I'll be hunting online for double pointed needles tonight. Oh, and I need to find clown-size blue buttons, too...another online special!

The color is a bright sky blue, but it looks more blue-grey here.

The last knitting project is one that I started a couple weeks ago. I was inspired by the scarflettes and neck warmers that I saw in one of the Etsy featured seller's store, Knittles. I thought, cold, northern Indiana winter needs warm chunky little scarflette. I was also thinking that it would be a really fun, quick knit. This is the first object I've made where I've come up with a pattern all on my own! Exciting!! (However, you can see how I was influenced by the cables and bobbles from the best friend sweater.) It's a sea of flowing cables with a couple of bobbles acting as buoys in the cream-colored fluff. I'm going to add a variety of buttons to allow for wrapping and bundling a couple different ways. I'm at the first button hole stage, and then it's knit a little more, find/add some cool buttons, and finito! I'll have a cute little neck muff that I probably won't be able to use until next winter. In my defense, it was still freezing when I started knitting this.

So that's the summary of my knitting tasks. I also have a bundle of pillows that I need to reupholster in my living room. The pillows are a part of my "make my living room feel/look like someone lives there" movement. Two of the pillows were supposed to be green, but after compiling some more decorative objects, I think I want to remove the green and replace it with a robin's egg blue. Banishing the green also means discarding the cool, but not-quite-chic lamp that I found at Goodwill two years ago. It's a green and blue swirled concoction. Luckily, there's a more elegant aqua-colored lamp that I've had my eye on at TJMaxx (another one of my "love" stores). I might have to go check it out again.

My current couch and pillow situation

On an unrelated note, the other night I was in lab pretty late, and in my tired and distracted state ended up dousing myself with a bunch of fairly strong-smelling, but not terribly harmful chemicals. Afraid of the effects they would have on the community washing machines in my apartment complex, I decided to throw out the t-shirt and jeans that I was wearing (I typically have a spare set of exercise clothes around, so I didn't have to spend the rest of the night unclothed.). The t-shirt was a cute, graphic, bright purple number that I got from Forever 21 a couple years ago. I don't own very many girlish, fitted t-shirts, and after sacrificing one for the sake of science, I've decided that one of my future projects will be to buy an inexpensive one (probable from Forever, again) and decorate it myself. It will fit me, be way better than anything I can buy, and have lots of personality. Unfortunately that's one more project to add to my list. Oh well, as long as I finish some of the old ones, I guess I can work on the new ones, too.