Lara’s World

Ok, so when I started this cowl scarf, I just wanted to play with these yarns, and crochet it for a while.

Forgive me, but I can’t seem to remember how to thumbnail. ??

*If someone could tell me how to move pics to the left or right, just for visual interest, I’d appreciate it. I’ve fiddled with the HTML, to no avail (not surprising, since I don’t know HTML).

Anyway, so I picked up some Lion Moonlight Mohair and some Red Heart Kiss. And I crocheted, for like a while, in an armchair in front of a raging fire on an almost deserted island (really. more on the island another day.) It was so fun and funky and goddessy to work with.

Outcome: The colors and shimmer of the mohair flirt from behind the kiss, and I can not TELL you how warm and soft this scarf is. It floated around my house for a few weeks, during which time I decided it would be a charitable donation for the holidays. When it was finished there was no more mohair (I mean, I had to fudge to finish the last stitch) but there was at least a yard of Kiss. When it was time to turn it in, I took the extra Kiss and stitched the two ends together. This thing feels GREAT on, and some teenager in the Boston area is hopefully enjoying it a whole wicked lot right this very second.

Click for pattern!

Whew! I have survived the holidays. If you are reading this, I have good news for you because it means you survived them too. Bravo/a! Admittedly, New Year’s is still lurking out there.

Are you still among the crowd that gets loose for New Year’s Eve? Will you be dancing the night away? For the past few year’s I’ve attended a peace/meditation/intention setting circle. It’s been very powerful and centering. But this year I’m tempted to mix it up a bit. I could use some dancing around a fire circle, which I’ve never done, but really want to. Or maybe I’ll wrap myself in blankets and sit under a particular tree in my neighborhood that I love. If you want to check this tree out, you’ll have to find the tree, and my neighborhood, on your own, ’cause I a’int telling.

The tree is definitely here for all who can recognize who and what it is. It’s a powerful, spiritual being. I am calmed and grounded everytime I stand under it, wrapped in a sacred space that feels like an ancient temple. And I feel it go to work healing old wounds, especially in my heart. It’s exceedingly tall and its low-sweeping branches hide me from passers by (which are few to begin with). I usually stop in while walking my dog, who has grown accustomed to tolerantly waiting while I stand underneath it for a minute or five. Kinda’ tolerantly anyway…she doesn’t tug too much on the leash to hurry me up.

And I can reach out with my awareness when going to sleep, and find this tree, and feel it wrap its love around me. It has a big presence. You can’t miss it, I think, if you are open at all. For the New Year, I wish for everyone an easily accessible, safe and sacred space, where you can go to be reminded of your own divinity. And I pray for all of us to know how to find this space within our own hearts, whenever we need it, at a moment’s notice.

Ok. I realize that during my first felting attempt, I was thrown temporarily off-course by an unexpected superwash incident. So for this, my sophomore run, I made a bag in Patons Dark Walnut and Rosewood with a pretty cream band accented on the ends by two burgundy bobbles. Well, everything felted beautifully…’cept for the cream.

I have two felted bobbles in the middle of unfelted cream.

The cream wool was a chunky 100% wool, Joanne’s brand, that made no mention of being superwash anywhere on the label. I’m hopping mad. Ok, not really, but I am aggravated! This is my sister-in-law’s Christmas present! And yes, today is the 19th. Of December. (See date of post.)

I’m on my way now to post an emergency help request on Crochetville .

If you were gonna fix it, what would you do??
I’ll update as developments…develop.

Here’s a bag I made with a pattern in the little booklet I got free with the purchase of my BIG HUGE Tunisian crochet hooks. You can just see their version of the purse on the cover of the booklet.

I was intrigued with Tunisian crochet from the get go. It’s closely related to knitting, maybe where the two join. It’s hypnotizing. And unique. I just think TC is really cool, what can I say? So I grabbed the hooks and was delighted I had the yarns necessary to make it. (I may have actually jumped for joy. *blush*

The bag uses Lion Jiffy Thick and Quick in Berkshires, and the trim is Bernat Disco in Jungle Jive. You’re seeing it posed alluringly on the microphone stand in my home recording studio. And, as you’ve come to expect, I have a close-up too:

Hope you enjoy!

Alright then, you’ve probably lost sleep wondering about this bag and its creation. So to make a long story short, I felted it. None of this testing, check every 10 minutes crap for me, nosirree. Though I’d probably be heartbroken if it turned out badly. If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that patience is indeed a virtue…it’s simply not one of mine.

So I tossed that puppy in on HOT, and added a kettle of boiling water. Repeat entire thing once. And it felted beautifully for the most part. Alpaca is a felter’s dream. And the colors! As this was another scrap project, it cost me less than $4 to create, and that cost will go down as I use the rest of the stuff I got for that $4. Are you loving it? However, there was a slight hiccup.

This is a project that uses two strands held together. I used a different aqua wool with the Disco eyelash stuff.
1. The diff. aqua wool was apparently superwash. It did not felt. Not even slightly. And it didn’t even seem to care that all the other fibers were doing what they oughta.
2. The eyelash stuff apparently didn’t like the (boiling) hot water. It was still lashy, but had lost its insane turquoise luster.

Ergo, the body of the bag was beautiful. All firm and felty and cool. The top of it, however, would not stand up with the rest of the bag. It sagged. So sad! So lifeless. So, being a new felter I sat on it (not the bag) for a while. Basically until I couldn’t stand it anymore, and was willing to go at the thing wildly with scissors. I did reserve a moment during the cutting for posterity:

Well shucks, it’s lying down and you really can’t see how wishy-washy it looked. And what’s more, I don’t have a picture of how freaky it was looking with its commando haircut. But hey, posterity will have something, won’t it.

The haircut left bits of the old yarn and lashy stuffy which actually ended up being good. I then took only the lashy stuff (had some left) and single crocheted into the wholes the other stuff had been in. The end result is pretty cute actually, I think. While the bag was naked, I went hardcore and added some grommets, for which I had purchased not only grommets but a grommet tool. The tool consists of a stud and an anvil, and the process is somewhat like bits of metal getting freaky together. I did it with a hammer on my cold porch. I then trimmed the handles and stuffed them through the grommet holes. I decided to leave them long so that they could be tied longer or shorter depending on my mood. It’s also got a snap, if you’re interested:

Finis.

My dear friend lost her beloved puppy last week, a 14-year-old Bichon Frise’ named Snowball. And she lost her quite traumatically, as Snowball woke her and her husband by having a seizure and stroke in their bed around 3:00 a.m. Luckily, Mary was able to hold her buddy as she was given a shot at the wonderful Angell Memorial Hospital.

Needless to say, it has been and will be a tough holiday season for Mary, and I wondered what I could do to bring her some comfort. I’ll see her next when a few of us gather at her house on Friday evening, to commune and create some peace for ourselves in this hectic season. To recall the sacred amidst the rest of it. We’ll drink eggnog, eat Mary’s Norwegian cookies, and perhaps crochet and knit “into the mystery” a bit. Or maybe just sit around and gab. And drum and chant and sing.

So back to the matter at hand; how to bring some comfort?? A picture had been forming in my mind, and I looked around and played around a little bit as the fairies remind us to do, and pretty soon I had this:

Vision firmly in my grasp, so to speak, I plunged ahead, adding fur to the little snowball, and sewing on its pink heart wings, and finally a little pink shimmery bow ’cause to be honest, Snowball was a girly-dog. And eventually, we arrived here:

Creams and Pinks and angels are right up Mary’s alley. I will confess to being an angel fan too.
Want to see the wings from another angle? Ok already!

It’s so nice to play around in the creative space with no pressure to produce. I hope I’ll do it more often. I’ll let you know how it is received, when I can.

Well, well, well. I got sucked in. I saw the pictures at Crochetville. I had the bags full of wool and alpaca scraps from some of my yarn hunting adventures (not to be confused with felting adventures). And I said…shoot. I can do that. And I did. And it started out sooooooooo smoothly. What can match the sense of imminent bliss of the crocheted bag, just prior to felting? The handles are done, the d-rings are set. Everything is in place, and looking OH, so good:

This is a felted bag pattern by Chelle at luv2crochet.com. It was actually a CAL at Crochetville, but I came in a bit after the fact. I discovered what “felting” meant, and had to do it. Now. (Shades of an earlier post.) Chelle’s pattern was very cute and easy, if you discount the fact that I was doing my own next-to-impossible version of the HDC and, therefore, switched indignantly to extended single crochet about a third of the way through. Rest assured, I did a little more research and can now perform a (correct) HDC with the best of them. Or at least near the best of them. And I learned that ESC works just fine for felting!

Closer, you say? You require more detail? Your wish is my command (blog author clearly had too much time on hands when photo-journaling this project, but who are you to judge?):

The tourquoise and bright-ass pink are alpaca. The brown is…dunno, shetland? With little flecks of red (which do not show up in finished bag). The eyelashy stuff at the top is Bernat Disco, in some turquoise color.

Like to see the finished version, would you? Or perhaps to know what happens next, and why I’m calling this an adventure? I bet you would! But I Lara, am sleepy now, and since this is my World, you’re gonna have to wait. (Please.)

And why am I so frustrated by facing a learning curve? I like the decide-to-do-it-and-immediately-know-how method of life. I struggle with patience (ya think?) and don’t seem to be great at asking for help. So sue me.

I just want some nice pictures in my blog, and pingbacks and trackbacks and what not, all the good stuff, with little or no effort on my part. Not that writing and pic-taking, which are the easy parts for me, should be discounted on the effort scale. But, see, I don’t really knit so far, mainly because I didn’t pick it up as fast as I picked up crochet. However, I have knit one gaggly double-bulky strand scarf (wider/looser at one end than the other), and I do have my crochet challenges, yesiree bobby. You’ll read more about those here at Lara’s World, if you stick around.

And singing, of course can be frustrating and challenging, but the rewards are amazing, and I guess it’s all in how you look at it in the end, whether or not you can get caught up blissfully in the sensuality and bliss of each moment of the journey…blithely eschewing the destination-slash-results. Which brings me to the fact that the end result is only one moment itself, and can’t really be a long-term status, if you follow me. If you’re only thinking about the bottom line moment, what do you do with the other 97% of your time? Allowing the journey to be sacred opens up your whole experience, and is, I think, in fact, (get your cheap commas here), the truth about what experience is in its natural state.

Still wish I could just post thumbnails linking to my photobucket pics. >

Please image angels, tell me how the #^#@#$ to hotlink to my photobucket pics, cause NOTHING in the FAQ tells me. *glower*.

Update! 12/13/2006, 12:17 p.m.

Ok, so the “tree” in the FAQ has disappeared. No biggie! I finally discovered it was an html thing and that my thumbnail link does not need to be added via the img button, but can just be pasted in. And I did it all by my self! My latent genius (cough) hopefully will now benefit you too if you’ve never posted a thumbnail image link before. You lucky devil!

Well, here I am. And instead of compulsively trying to catch you up on my life so far, I figure I’ll just start from here, today (right now). I’m a singer and I need a place to report my victories (grammies, etc.) And I’m a new crocheter (since October 2006) and it has become apparent that you are NOBODY in the crochet world without a blog…. Ok, AND I need a place to post pictures of my stuff. *blush* I was gonna’ actually upload pictures last night, but the adorable little USB cable that came with my camera is on the lam. And..and…what else….OH! Well, I keep working these fascinating temp jobs to support my music habit. Believe me, this stuff is worthy of reporting. But I’ll let the stories speak for themselves (which kind of implies that I’ll have to post them now…yeesh..no pressure). I kind of wish I had something to link to, or some pictures for this initial post…wait, hold please…nope, nada. Hold on, scratch that - here’s my dog. And that’s about it for now.