Yarn and Petticoat

Today I headed down to Wayland, MA to deliver the Crushed shawl to Kate of A Hundred Ravens (Etsy link). Kate was also having a yarn swap so I brought some yarn to swap. I ended up bringing home more than I went with. Isn’t that always the case?

I had a great time at the yarn swap. I even got to dye some yarn myself! I chose yellow (a very bright Hufflepuff yellow ) and I nice deep blue. The skein ended up a little more yellow than blue, but that’s totally fine, I’m still in love with it.

I got a bunch of other yarn too. Quite a bit actually. One woman, I didn’t swap with, but she just wanted to get rid of some sock yarn, so I took it (you can never half enough sock yarn – or enough hand knit socks!).

On the knitting front, I’ve been working on Dreambird, which I’ve renamed Phoenix Feathers because of the way the yarn is working up.

I’ve added another feather since last night.

Today was busy though. I did the yarn swap. Got home around 4PM, had to turn around and go right back out so I could get the proper elastic for the skirt and petticoat of my costume for Anime Boston.

I finished the petticoat with my moms help. It’s far from perfect, but it’ll work nicely under the skirt. And no one is going to see it anyways, so who cares if I messed up the seams, or if there’s thread snarls cause I couldn’t control the machine. This is a learning experience and no one’s going to see the petticoat anyways.

Tomorrow it’s going to be the skirt (much simpler than the petticoat) and the dress itself. Some adjustments have to be made to the dress, but I’m hoping everything works out alright in the end. I’m certainly getting there! I can’t wait to be able to wear the whole get-up (wig and all) at the convention.

Star Trek: Into Darkness

As many people know, Star Trek: Into Darkness is coming out this weekend here in the US. Well, I found an advance screening near me (there were quite a few tonight spread around the country) and got tickets for my boyfriend and I to go.

To put it simply, the movie was amazing. This is what I posted to Facebook as we drove home after the movie: Star Trek: Into Darkness: bloody fucking awesome. I laughed, I cried, I screamed, I cheered. That is all.

It was an amazing movie. It’s so hard to talk about without spoiling anything! I loved it. So what if most of the action stays close to home (read: Earth), it doesn’t matter. It’s still great.

This is really hard to talk about without spoilers! Don’t worry, I won’t say anything for those of you who wish to see the movie this weekend, but after tonight, there’s going to be a lot of spoilers out there. I will just say this, the plot twist at the end is very much a twist.

I know I don’t normally talk about this kind of stuff here, this is a knitting (and crafting) blog after all. But Star Trek has been a love of mine since day one. I watched The Next Generation growing up, and have grown to love the franchise as a whole. I loved in 2009 when they released the previous movie to this one. It was a great way to reinvigorate the franchise. I think this movie does just as good a job. It was fun, enjoyable, and even heart wrenching at times. It was everything a good movie should be. So what if it’s science fiction. That doesn’t take away from the very emotional impact of the move.

I’ll be back to the knitting/crafting on Friday. But for now, I’ll leave you with a picture (found online) of the poster I got tonight for going to the advance screening.

Sky Scarf: April

I managed to catch up (mostly) on my Sky Scarf this weekend. I got the rest of April knitted. I haven’t started May yet,  but now I’m only 2 weeks behind rather than 5.

Sky Scarf: April

I managed to catch up (mostly) on my Sky Scarf this weekend. I got the rest of April knitted. I haven’t started May yet,  but now I’m only 2 weeks behind rather than 5.

2nd Repeat

Well, I’ve got two repeats of the main chart of Crushed finished.

It doesn’t look like much right now, cause it’s all scrunched up on the needles, but the shawl is actually quite large once it’s blocked (lace has a tendency to grow a lot).

That’s the biggest crafting thing going on right now (other than my Luna dress, and I’m planning to get fabric for that soon). My last final is tomorrow, and as of right now I don’t have a job for the summer. I have some ideas about things and I’m going to apply to a few places, but it’s a little late in the game right now unfortunately.

And another thing, apparently they’re planning selected early showings of Star Trek: Into Darkness and I’m giddy with excitement! I may go to both premieres, the limited release, and the actual midnight premiere (which is what I had originally intended to go see with my boyfriend). We’ll see how next week works out though. I can’t wait! I’m a huge Trekkie.

Some Sewing

Instead of knitting all weekend, I spend most of Sunday afternoon doing some sewing. Well, it was more like my mom talking me through what I needed to do, but I did all the actual work! Though my mom did graft the patterns together.

I may or may  not have mentioned it before, but I’m going to Anime Boston on May 24-26 (first time every, yay!), and I’m planning to go in costume. I will be going as this character specifically on Saturday:

but I’m going to wear shoes!

and a more generic steampunk outfit on Friday. Sunday’s the easy day – normal attire (aka jeans and a tshirt, unless I feel like getting fancy).

But, for my main costume, I need a yellow dress with a square skirt. The author of the manga (Sailor Moon BTW for those of you who feel like looking it up – character is Luna), has posted some info about her dress. I’m not going for exact of course, but I still wanted the square skirt and black underlayer.

Last month (I think) my mom and I bought some fabric on sale and some patterns to make a mock-up of the dress before going into production of the actual thing.

This is what we came up with. It’s a dark fabric, and the pattern doesn’t exactly fit, we’re going to add front darts to get a closer fit, and you can’t really see how square the skirt is, but I swear it is square.

But my mom and I settled on what needed to be done and we’re going to get fabric and thread (hopefully) this week, and then we’ll see if I can actually sew! I’m finally getting to use that machine I got back in December.

On the knitting front, I got the yarn for a sample knit I’m doing. It’s the Crushed pattern, which I’ve knit before (in a very nice green). This piece has to be knit quickly and then sent back to the designer. I’m going to get a skein of yarn as a thank you for knitting it. I don’t mind, I love the pattern. I got a gorgeous burgundy yarn with a hint of pink in it. I’m normally not a huge fan of pink, but this is subtle and I like it.

Anywho, that’s it for now!

Blocks and Stuff

So after I posted about not crocheting anymore of those blocks, it turned out I lied. Not on purpose of course, but I ended up making quite a few more after my wrists felt better. I dropped the stack off at Twill yesterday

So today I finished the black shawl I’ve been working on for a coworker of my mom. We ended up getting an extra skein of yarn, and I put a gray edge on it. I probably shouldn’t have done the last increases I did, but after blocking I think it’ll give it a subtle ruffled edge, so it’s not really an issue.

It’s kinda all scrunched right now, so it’ll need a real good blocking (and the ends woven in of course).

Now I can go back to focusing on some projects that have been sitting around for a while (at least for a few days ).