I make stuff

I found this jelly roll on sale when I was out of town and it’s so pretty.

Imma chop it up and make something with it!

Lost my mind a little and added (if my math is correct) 5,615 beads to Nim Teasdale's Odenwald pattern. Anything worth doing is worth overdoing!

The goal was “soothingly weighted but not uncomfortable to wear, even as someone with chronic pain.” It could have been a little heavier, so maybe I’ll make a shawl with larger beads another time, but I’m very pleased with this one. I used size 6/0 seed beads, applied as I go with a .6mm crochet hook.

Yarn-wise, used 2 cakes of YarnArt Flowers. I knitted the fully purple sections from both, then knitted all the way through the yellow-oranges with a single ball. When I hit the beginning of red-oranges, I used yarn from both cakes, alternating between them. (Not the entirety of both, I played it by ear to make sure I made it through the full rainbow.)

I do have edited charts with bead placements. I will only share them with Nim's permission.

consistent practice opens up whole worlds of skill that you couldn't imagine

making mistakes in the process of learning is not only natural, it is also essential

activities that you enjoy can give you more energy back than you spent on them

I want, but I have no idea how to do cut work

Most of my more popular posts this last month have been mushroom related! You guys will probably like this video tutorial for Twisted Yarn's Magic Mushroom Stitch.

I present to you, the second bird in our Bird Bags lineup, The Pigeon!

there is the little crochet earth hacky sack (for which someone has created a free pattern) and The Quilt (which someone here managed to hunt down!)

it makes sense that the quilt was sent along with the mission in general and not any specific person due to the breadth of luck symbols and the general global/save the earth vibe of the thing

but! the hacky sack earth and the sweater are also both handmade. both are the result of yarn-based fibre arts. the hacky sack must be handmade by virtue of crochet not currently being reproducible (at least not easily) by machine. as for the sweater, even if we hadn't been told that someone hand knit (rather than machine knit) it, there is also some visible rowing out (this is not meant to be an insult! rowing out happens, especially when, for example, you're hand-knitting a sweater for a production with a tight deadline. i've done theatre costuming, i know that done doesn't mean perfect and at the end of the day the sweater is gorgeous anyway)

all this is to say that this film and its production clearly values fibre crafts and handmade things. and i personally think it's likely that grace knits and/or crochets. it's possible that the sweater and the hacky sack were gifts, but the film establishes that grace has no friends nor family.

the sweater fits him as an adult so it can't be very old (i.e. from childhood) despite being a vintage-style sweater (unless it was inherited—my dad had a sweater very similar to this, but we're canadian and grace is not so i don't know if that's probable—or thrifted), the pattern has been altered/customized while still being based on a specific hand knitting pattern (which indicates that significant thought and effort was put into it—more so than there already is for hand knits), and stem folks certainly like knitting (especially designing their own patterns relevant to their fields—a knit klein bottle has been in the top 20 of ravelry's hot right now for the past few days, for example).

the hacky sack could also have been purchased at some point (i'm not sure if, for example, it's feasible that a student could have gifted it since i'm not sure how schools and teacher/student interactions work in the states), but in my experience store-bought hacky sacks usually have basic patterns (stripes, and usually due to variegated yarns) since they're cranked out by hand in sweat shops (again, the lack of machine-based production rears its head). intarsia crochet colourwork is kind of a pain in the ass, especially (to me, at least) in the context of a ball where you're also managing increases and decreases and realistic-enough-looking continents. meaning an even decently recognizable-as-earth sphere would be at least mildly effortful; for that reason it seems unlikely to be anything but handmade on a personal rather than commercial scale.

furthermore, the significance of gifting the hacky sack to rocky "so you can remember me" makes more sense (to me) if grace made it himself. the hacky sack being store-bought does not subtract from the meaningful nature of the gesture; conversely, the hacky sack (particularly because it looks like earth) being made by grace himself (the only human rocky has ever met) imbues further sentimentality. the earthling who is saving earth (which sent him to die) gifting a likeness of his home planet to the eridian who saved him (and who is saving him again) is purely symbolic. that likeness being a personally handmade hacky sack adds something. if you show someone a painting you like, you're showing them part of yourself; if you show someone a painting you made, you're showing them part of yourself and then some.

OH MY GOOOOOOOOOD

The quilt!!! The Good Luck quilt !!!! just there on instagram with 60 likes on it!!!!!!!!! oh man i was looking SO HARD. i've started to do a guide to all the good luck symbols that were on it but my quest is basically over!! The edges of it aren't clear, but this is basically everything we DON'T see in the film! oh man, I feel lightheaded.

Matcha themed kitten catch mittens are finally done!! Not gonna lie, I’m pretty proud of these 🤍💚

I even knitted a gauge swatch on 2mm needles to adapt the pattern to a baby version. It was torture. Be proud of me.

Pattern: Kitten Catch Mittens by Florence Miller Yarn: Knitting for Olive Merino in Pea Shoots and Wheat

dividers