Thursday, January 28, 2010

snakey's lost her slytherin mind

anguinea of Slytherin proposes to tackle Option 2 for a Magical Creatures OWL.

“Option 2: Hatch an Egg. Identify your egg (dragon, phoenix, etc.) and knit or crochet an object inspired by your creature. If you make a physical creature it must be a minimum of 12 inches in at least one dimension.”

I intend to create a fully-grown Phoenix seated upon a perch and, since a Phoenix does not come from an egg, a Phoenix chick emerging from ashes.

Sunday, January 24, 2010

evile project is too evile

my "dangerous" project is killing me slowly, but not in a good way. i do NOT like it so far, and i am running out of both green yarn and time. i think this one might just have to go in the "get it done" category. they can't all be winners, i guess.

i have to focus on the amigurumi. every time i stray, i fail.

Friday, January 22, 2010

OWL ideas sketches...

thinking i might try for a "magical creature" OWL, i did some sketches from the HP lexicon's bestiary.
these were ones my kid thought might be good to see in 3-D:

Streeler: Giant African snail that changes colour every hour, and deposits a trail of venom as it moves that kills and shrivels all vegetation over which it passes, and which can kill horklumps. It is often kept as a pet...

edited after deciding not to do the zoo idea...i think i WILL do this creature eventually!




Wednesday, January 20, 2010

the dangerous scarf w.i.p.

i have about 2 dozen leaves so far (most smaller than the last ones i showed you), a possible tendril and i started the bulk of the middle of the scarf today.

this month is whizzing by! i am not sure i will be able to get my owl proposal together in time, but my kid and i picked out 5 likely candidates for a magical creature "zoo". i have to do some sketches and get my yarns together for a post by the end of the month!

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

HPKCHC project begins

i found a nice irish crochet leaf online and am embarking on making manymanymany of them for my "something dangerous" class project for potions. (her photo is 1000X better than my scan.) i like the little ridges that come from crocheting into the back loop.


you've probably guessed what it will be already. think "philosopher's stone".

Monday, January 11, 2010

beading...first try


i bought a couple things to try beading this weekend.

i thought it went well, although, holy carp, my eyes were crossed by the time i just did this little bit. poor old eyes! i need brighter light and (sigh) magnification. i need to keep my eye out for a silkier thread. royale brand cotton is a bit less than jewelry-worthy, imho.

ETA: aha! this looks promising.

youtube link to adding beads to crochet to make a rope.

also, i finally came up with a halfway decent idea for my HPKCHC. now, to get MOVING!

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Christmas part 3 and my mystery project!

I figured, before i gushed about my New Year endeavor, I should probably show you all what happened with all the Christmas knitting. I ended up making a snake-and-mouse combo for my nephew (at his request) The snake is designed to swallow the mouse, which it did do successfully several times. However, the mouse, my nephew discovered, was really a Kung Fu mouse, and he had a ball whipping around by its tail (thank goodness the thing was so securely knit on it could never come apart!). I also had a little extra time and made him a bat as well, from a pattern I'd used successfully earlier this summer. It was an even faster knit since I'd made one before, and i finished the entire thing on Christmas Eve. of all the things i did, i think that impressed my dad the most!

Here's the menagerie:



A while ago, I stumbled across a lace-shawl designer named MMario and fell in love with many of his shawl designs. They are fantastic, but look so complicated that i have never dared to try one. He has a real penchant for theming his shawls on various fantasy series and has a number of shawls based on HP as well as Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series and Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, just to name a few.

Well..............when MMario announced last fall that he was going to be hosting a "mystery shawl knit-along" starting Jan 1, I just couldn't resist. What better time to learn how to do lace than with a knit-along, where I could get help from the other participants and where everybody would be more-or-less at the same pace, as the clues would be spaced out weekly???

MMario gave us preferred yarn colors and thickness, and told us that beads would be optional. I rather ignored the thing about beads - i figured, why complicate things?

Ha.

I ordered my yarn just as soon as i got my first paycheck from my new job; i'd spent weeks scoping out yarns all over the internet to find just what i wanted, and it was too expensive to get otherwise. Unfortunately, that meant that it didn't arrive in time for new years, when the first clue was released. I contented myself with "practicing" the first clue with yarn i already had, just to get the feel for how it worked. and i watched.

I watched all the other participants talking aobut their beads and how to do that, and what kinds of beads. I watched their examples start to be posted as they finished the first clue. and man. it looked SOOO COOL with beads. so.......while i was waiting for the yarn, i started looking at beads too. dumb, really, because without the yarn in hand, picking the right color of beads was like reaching blindfolded into a bag. I ended up ordering some inexpensive beads in 3 different colors. none of them, it turned out, worked with the yarn i got. instead, i found some even more inexpensive beads at JoAnn fabrics yesterday.

duh! moral of the story: CURB YOUR IMPULSES!

anyway, I finished knitting Clue one today. Clue 2 came out on Thursday, and I should have that done by the end of the weekend, i hope.......

Here's what it looks like so far: (Many other people stretched out the knitting with pins as it will be at the end when we block it, but I am not set up to do that, so it is a bit curled up on itself at this stage)(TIP: Click on the pic to see the closeup with the beads)



this is fun!