Learning Ravelry

I just finished the poncho mentioned in the previous post:



But I also learned something at the same time - apparently when you mark something as "Finished" in your queue, it no longer shows up in the RSS feed.

I have little gadget installed that utilizes a (temporarily) free setup - but I think I'll be looking at the RSS feature, and see what else I can do up to and creating my own feed consumer.

Stay tuned...

Looking for suggestions

I just picked up a mini-set of yarns (about 100g of yarn all totaled), so I'm looking for ideas of what to do with it:

It's fingering weight, so there are a lot of possibilities - including doilies. Thoughts (Since this is a Dr. Who themed miniset - Dr. Who themed patterns are definitely preferred!)?

Link to the product detail page can be found here

Really back this time...

I'm really back this time. 

When I last posted, I had just moved cross country, and was still getting my life in order. 

This past year, I've had a lot of tumult in my life as my father became very sick, and eventually passed away in September. Through the year, where I headed back to MO to be with him a few times, I picked my crochet hooks back up and have gotten into a nice little pattern. 

 Winter time is my crafting time - Summer is my be outdoors as much as possible time - so throughout the winter, you can find me working on at least 2-3 projects at a time, and have been working hard on keeping Ravelry up to date.

 Since November 2014, I've completed the following:

1. The blanket I started while pregnant with my youngest (who is now 12). I gave it to him when I was done because that just made sense. It's his favorite blanket when he's here :). 
2. An owl basket that I STILL need to send to the person I said I would make it for 
3. A Victorian lace blanket
4. Some owl wristwarmers 
5. Made a couple of hats 

 I've frogged a couple projects entirely, and gave up on them, cleaning up my ravelry account. 
 I've pulled together patterns for blankets for each of the girls, and started on one of them (that will be my next project to complete).

 I've started on a few projects: 

1. Halloween themed tree decorations 
2. Started to learn Tunisian crochet with a shawl pattern 
3. Started participating in my first Crochet A Long

 I've also cleaned up my craft room, and cleaned out old yarn donating it to friends. So...needless to say it's been a busy 14 months! 

 Now I'm working on bringing this blog back to life, and it looks like there have been enough positive changes here on blogger, that it might not be the chore that it once was. There will be some changes after looking at my old posts and cringing...While there's NO change in that I'm still very much an IT geek, there will be very little computer oriented chat going on here, unless I'm crafting something computer related. Everything will be all crafting all the time, and primarily crochet, though probably some quilting as well (as I've started to pick up a new skill in all these years!)

How to tell one is a crafting geek?

Another doily,
originally uploaded by craftingdragon.

That one has to remind oneself not to play on her online crafting project management account during the day.

I was a good Code Monkey. I did not succumb to the lures to Ravelry. Ah...but the temptation...I have to be honest and admit it was there.

I'm currently digging through old pictures and looking for pictures of old projects to put up on my crafting flickr account so that they may then be brought into my Ravelry account (gods I love that Flickr/Ravelry interface! Mah-velous, I tell you! It's so easy! Pick a project, edit photos, pick a set or a tag, search, drag and drop - all in your browser. I love modern web applications development, I tell you!)

Spring doily edge closeup

Spring doily edge closeup,
originally uploaded by craftingdragon.

For your viewing pleasure - here is a closeup of the doily I've been working on forever! If you're a Ravelry member, I'm mnfiddledragon over there - and details on the project will be added shortly.

Works in progress, here I come!

See, I had this thing, where I was going to be good and not start to learn to knit until I finished my WIPs. Yeah, well, that didn't last too long. I finally found a yarn that I think I can pick up knitting quickly with *woot* (down side is that at 6.00/skein...*sigh*...but that's ok. It's comfy to knit with.

That being said, I'm working on finishing up my Grandma's Lace Afghan, which shall find it's home with my stepmother, and then on to finishing my Spring Doily. The afghan has only been sitting around since I was pregnant with my now 4 year old - and the doily has been sitting around for the past 2 years. Yeah, I think it's time to finish these puppies.

I have other projects that either never got started, or barely got started, so I need to either repurpose the yarn or figure out if I'm going to actually do those projects, and if so do them, or if not repurpose the yarn.

I had a super sekrit project I was going to work on that was supposed to have been done by January - buuuuut...that never got started, and now I shall have to figure something else out.

Whee...but crafting hard core here I come!

Back to my old projects....

Yay! I'm back to working on my crochet project that I started years ago. I picked it up again just before starting on Nutcracker stuff, but of course had to put it down for this past month. It feels nice to crochet again.

I've been flying through it this evening, putting together another 4 or 5 blocks so far in the past 2 hours. Considering I've been not working 100% in those two hours, it's not bad...and especially not bad since this is the most crocheting I've done in a single sitting in the past 4.5 years.

It's like breathing fresh air again. :)

One of my crafty inspirations...

One person taught me how to bead. She let me help her on her wedding dress. She also taught me how to emboss, crochet, and a number of other crafty foundation like things for the things I do now.

So these past few weeks while I've been working on these costumes, I've been thinking a lot about her. She lives in Indiana, and I haven't seen her in years - not since she and her family came up to visit her family that lived up here not terribly far from us (closer than the 15 hour drive that we'd moved in any case). Gosh by now it's been 8 years? Then 2 days ago my housemate finds a bunch of pictures in a basket sitting around as she's clearing out and organizing things. As I went through the basket of pictures, I see a picture of my friend.

So last night as I'm cutting out material, I realized that instead of listening to music, there's a phone call that I should make instead. So I dial 411 and ask directory assistance for their phone number. Last I'd heard they were still in the same town, and I'm hoping that's still the case. It is. When I hear her husband's voice (another good friend), I simply say, "Hi, [friend's name], it's [me]!" and just wait for realization to dawn. *smiles* I nearly cried, it was so good just hearing his voice. We talked for a few minutes, and then he passed the phone on to my friend. My friend who was the support structure and inspiration behind so many things. One of my closest friends in Indiana. One that I hadn't kept in as good of contact with. And there she was on the phone again across years of not hearing her voice. Again, I nearly cried.

There are those friendships that span across years and somehow someway they still remain. It feels like you reach across the void and touch your friend and they're still there, with you. I have a childhood friend like that...and apparently an adult friend like that. For as much as I've been thinking about M, she apparently was thinking about me more than normal, for she said, "It's funny that you call today..."

We talked until my phone died. We shared phone numbers. We shared email addresses. We shared updates.

M, thank you.

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Update from earlier

I have the trim done on the bodice, finished the beading embellishment on the front existing trim, and tacked the front trim back down.

I still have bead work yet to do, and of course the overlay...

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