TOTALLY PIC HEAVY POST!!

Hey all you people!! I managed to make it back here today with yet another post. Sorry that there wasn't one yesterday, but this one's really long and pic heavy to make up for that. I don't know about you guys, but when I'm on a forum, or even a blog, I LOVE to see tons of pictures. There are a lot of people who apologize for that, but I just love to see all different angles and pictures. :P It could just be me though.

The first thing I wanted to share with you guys a bunch of envelopes I've been saving - rescuing from the mail in fact. I know that probably sounds kind of weird to you, and maybe even a bit hoarder type thing to do. But trust me, it's not. I have a specific project that I'm saving these for... I'll be able to share it with you soon hopefully. It's going to be a journal type album THING. Yeah. That's about the best description that I've got. But I'm gonna need a LOT more envelopes. These are used ones that I got in the mail. I was just lucky enough to get some colored ones. If any of you guys have any you'd like to donate to the cause... that'd be cool. :P

Another thing that I've been thinking about doing lately is a Dear Jane quilt. I started one a while back, but the different things didn't quite fit, and the size was waaaay off. So I'm just going to start over. :D I know it's sort of a bad idea, and kind of wasteful, but I think it's just worth starting over, in order to make it look nicer. Sometimes there's no other choice. Do you agree?

This is a little piece of folded, knit fabric that I managed to salvage from a tee shirt that was too small for me. You know, the ones that you don't want to throw away since the fabric is soooo cool, but you don't know what you'd want to do about it? I take them apart using a seam ripper, and most of the time manage to get really large chunks of knit fabric. You can actually also use cotton shirts for cheap quilting fabric.

Here are the scraps that I have leftover from taking apart the shirt. It was a care bears shirt, that was rimmed around the sleeves and neckline with the pink fabric shown above. Yeah. And I got all of that fabric from just one shirt. It makes you think though, doesn't it?

It's been a little while since I posted a picture of my cross stitch progress. So here's one for you. I've got quite a bit further, and I've got about three full cars done, one half done, and one not even started yet. :) I just love working on cross stitch though, since the more hours that you put into it, the more the shading develops and the better it starts to look. But this definitely isn't a one day project. Six months perhaps. But definitely not a day. Or a week. Or probably not even a month. I just like working on it cause it's so calming to play with the colored threads. But it's not too difficult.

Here's another calming endeavor that I love to do, even though I just dug this out of my many boxes this morning. It's a quilt that I'm making. I'm actually working on the quilting part currently, stitching the three layers (top, batting, and backing) together with tiny little stitches. BY HAND!! Of course, I guess I could use my machine, but I decided that I'd rather practice my stitching by hand, since I kind of stink at it. I'm getting better with practice though, I think.

Here's a closer up view so you can sort of see how the pattern goes. It's taking a LOT more work than I originally anticipated, but it's relaxing to try it every now and again...

And... I FINISHED MY GLOVES!! I don't know if you can see the cable pattern too well in these, but they really turned out well. On one of the gloves (the right one I think) the seam I did made the thumb hole a little too high, so I'm going to need to rip it out and do it over. It doesn't look bad, it's just a little bit uncomfortable to wear. So I think I'll do it over. But it doesn't look bad at all. At least I don't think so. But of course, I'm totally biased. XD

One last picture before I go; another quilt that I just laid out - the diamonds are blocks, but there are only twelve of them. I'm still trying to decide whether or not to make it bigger. Right about now it's pretty darn small, but I sort of like the size of it. I think I'll just have to wait and see.

Another thing that I'd like to share with you guys is that you probably won't be seeing me for somewhere around a week, starting Monday. My mom is cutting us off from screens for a week, and that includes blogs and stuff. But luckily, she's still going to let me find my patterns and stuff online. Thank heavens. Without that stuff, I'd probably be lost. :D

One last thing that I'd like to leave you mulling on - I'm starting another project sometime soon. I know, I know. I just started another project the other day. But I can't help it. I found an amazing tutorial HERE, and I about DIED looking at it. It's crazy. And it's totally me. Anyways, I'll probably see you guys tomorrow, but if not, then next week!!

MORE Knitting!!

I don't really have that much today - only knitting for you guys. Tomorrow, I'm hoping to have some more paper crafts, including today's daily card. Today I finished school late, so I didn't really have that much time to craft. I've been doing a lot of knitting lately, as you've been seeing on here. :P So yeah. The little sample above is a little knitting made from the yarn I showed in the last post. You know, the one that was made up of lots of different colors and textures?

I know that I promised you guys a sample swatch, and that's what I've been doing all day. Knitting for you guys. But I don't mind. It's kind of cool knowing that somebody's actually gonna look at it. It makes me feel good. I don't know why. Don't try and ask me. Cause I really don't know. :)

Now here's the beginning of a new project. We'll see if it goes well enough. See, I started a sock. That's right. A sock. I know that most socks are knit on either double pointed needles or circular needles. But I decided to try and find a free pattern for some made on straight needles, mostly because I can't afford to buy any circular ones. Though I'd like to have some to make a sweater eventually. I just think it might be fun. I made the sock cuff above from a blue to white variegated, but I don't know it I'll be able to even finish ONE sock in this yarn. It's just a bit annoying. I'm going to try and maybe go onto ebay to find a similar yarn.

And my one last thing that I've been working on - Fair Isle Knitting. Using two different yarns at the same time. You can sort of see how there are alternating colored loops on the actual needle, and two colors of yarn on the back of the needle. Try searching on google, and I'm sure you'll come up with a bunch of results.

I'll probably be working on this a little bit more on this pretty often, so I'll probably be showing this to your pretty often. This is a technique that I've been working with a lot lately.