Whoops!

The last few weeks have positively flown by, I don't even know how. First two people moved out of the house, and I cleaned a lot. Then one person moved in and I cleaned some more. But cleaning is not all I've accomplished, a fact proven by how not clean my room already is. Oh well! On with the show.

Remember this?

Well, it soon turned into this:

It's a mask. A very specific mask, for my día de los muertos -inspired wrestling persona. I constructed it using my face and a well-fitting, cheap carnival mask to model it on. 

First I crocheted two identical circles for the eyes, leaving them thinner next to the nose and the holes slightly bigger than desired.

Second I made a heart motif and kept crocheting around it for a bit. When the heart motif met the eyes (I roughly fitted it both on my face and the other mask every now and then) I sewed all three together.

Third I filled in the nose area a bit, sewed the eyes together and then filled the gap above the nose.

Fourth I filled in both sides of the forehead to form a continuous shape with the eyes and the heart motif.

Fifth I crocheted one full round of sc around the entire mask and one round of shells, leaving a gap around the nose.

Finally I filled the eye holes with shells as well to give it that día de los muertos -look.

It has to stay on during some pretty spectacular moves, so I decided to try my hands on starching.

I first looked into starching with sugar, but decided that I didn't really want to risk it while sweating profusely. Instead I used your every-day craft glue mixed with water in equal parts, the carnival mask and some cling film.

First I lined the inside of the carnival mask with cling film.

Then I submerged the crocheted mask in the glue/water mix and squeezed all the extra starch out.

 Next I spread the wet mask onto the carnival mask, careful to align the eyes and straighten all the edge shells.

Then I let it dry, stretching and adjusting it later when it was less damp and easier to manipulate. You could probably use more glue to achieve a crispier result, but I chose to repeat the starching process to make the mask harder. The more repeats, the harder the results I would imagine.

When the mask had completely dried I zigzagged an elastic band on it, and another one on the first band itself to go over the top of my head. I used these instructions to make two black and two red ribbon roses, which I then sewed on the second elastic band. The length of the ribbon is not very important, it just affects the size of the flower.

Aaand then I took some promo pics. Complete with make-up. They actually came out surprisingly well despite my very limited experience with both make-up and posing for a camera.

Oooh yeah, myspace-a-licious! How I wish my camera had a self timer.

The dress I'm wearing in the picture above is that black lace number from Stockholm.

It has had something extra done recently, too. I took red sequins, an embroidery frame and some black tulle, sketched an anatomical heart on a piece of paper and proceeded to sew the sequins on the tulle in the shape of a heart.

Bling!

Then I pinned and zigzagged it on the front of the dress, trimming the tulle around the stitches. It's very thin so it hardly shows.

And that's only the beginning. Stay tuned!

I also started (and frogged and started and frogged and started) and finished something summery just in time for all the cold and rain. For some reason I had so much trouble with this little waistcoat. Could have been my insistence to knit mostly in the middle of the night, who would have thought! Now it's done, however, and I'm very pleased with it. Worn in the picture over my flowery summer dress with a very generous amount of cleavage, which was actually the inspiration to make it in the first place.

I've also got something in the works out of that mystery!cotton yarn that's been flying around the world. It's already driving me nuts, but will be fucking gorgeous when I finish it. Behold the echo flower shawl:

Impressive, isn't it?

Last night I also whipped together a little owl pillow/pouch. It just needs its drawstring legs and face and it's done.

You see? I have not been slacking even though posting about it has been on hiatus. And this does not include all the work stuff, mainly hats. They will have to be in another post because wrestling practice and figuring out what to knit over the weekend at a friend's cabin awaits.

Giveaway results

Well, it seems that I'm a little late with this, but somehow just didn't get around to writing this yesterday. Blogger has been a bit of a bitch lately and either did not post or just plain removed a couple of comments. After pondering it for a bit I decided to count the missing comments anyway because I still had all the notifications in my mailbox. If someone changed their minds and removed their comment themselves, they won't contact me and I'll pick someone else. Seems fair, doesn't it?

As it happens, Big Cat turned six yesterday so I wanted to involve him in the raffling process. Unfortunately he wasn't really that interested in pawing pieces of paper from a hat.

"FINE, I'll sniff them! The things you make me do..."

Next I lined the tickets on my desk knowing that they wouldn't stay there for long. Little Cat indeed meddled them within the minute, but only when I turned my back so I didn't get a picture. And she only dropped three tickets. Both refused to show any interest in my stupid tickets any more, so I gave up, put the pieces in a hat and picked one myself.

"I think there's something interesting happening outside."

(That's the finished but unblocked Roxanne mystery shawl, by the way.)

Now I had four winners, but how to distribute the prizes between them? Damn, I needed more paper. And hats. Both cats had found something more interesting to do, but after a very scientific process I finally have the four winners paired with four batches of yarn named by the number on the scale.

Our winners are:

Kasia - 74 g

Julie - 155 g

Lori - 62 g

 Ambrosius - 76 g

Congratulations! Send me your address to stranded.things@gmail.com and I'll get your packages on their way. I think I'm going to give the skeins a bit of a wash before sending them because honestly? Cat hair everywhere, plus a general thrift store rule even though they came in a sealed plastic bag. I need to block that Roxanne anyway, so I'll save you the trouble.

I'm actually already working with the yarn and leaning more and more towards cotton in my analysis. It will make a lovely light warm-weather shawl indeed. It's not a shawl I'm working on, though. Ten points to anyone who can guess what these are going to be! Cheating with my Rav projects page does not count.

I knew I had that 1,25mm hook for a reason. Okay, it's not even the smallest...

Thank you for everyone who commented with their ideas and pleas of cake! A line formed pretty quickly here and I actually ended up wishing I'd eaten more myself. Oh well, there will always be more cake. Maybe I will share the recipe at some point, I tried to do that last time but got bored.

So three months of public blogging have gone by. When I started I didn't really define what I was going to do and why.

After years and years of intent I finally went and sold some of my crafts at Ofelia market last year. It was exciting and I got asked about having a website/blog/online store a lot, so I decided to put at least one up. My friend Malike, who was there with me, came up with the name as we both share a love of the sea and its treasures, and gave me permission to use it. A website is in the works and it will feature both my crafts and my work as a translator, animator and graphic designer. All are things I do for a living - some more, some less. Right now this blog exists for me to document and share the stuff I make, and maybe in the future to promote places I'm going to be at or possible shop updates. Who knows. The main purpose is to raise my self-esteem as a crafter and remind myself that yeah, sometimes I actually do get shit done and some of it is actually quite nice and really? I have a pretty cool life.

This year is going to be different from the last few and let me just tell you that's a very promising thought. This blog is part of that. Three months is not much, but it marks a spot. Makes you keep digging for the treasure.