3 Project Updates (ah ah ah)

Tonight was Oscar’s night, which for me means equal parts admiring the pretty people, applauding or staring dumbfounded at the Academy’s choices, and crafting my way through the most awkward acceptance speeches.  I’ve been splitting my time between several projects for the past few days, working alternately on the enormous Dr. Who scarf I started last month (and oh, God, that thing is only a quarter done), on my Ganondorf cross stitch, and on my newest project–a baby blanket for a friend’s nursery. I generally keep several projects going at once because, while I’m good at zoning in for hours at a time, I generally don’t like to work on the same thing every night.

This post is more of a project update than anything else.  First up: Dr. Who.

Dr. Who and I haven’t been spending much time together this week, mostly because I’m sick of the scarf at the moment. I don’t knit (I’ve tried…bad things happen and I end up torturing yarn), so I decided to try making the scarf using tunisian knit stitch crochet. So far, the results have been pleasing, though I think I’m going to need to put a border on the sides to clean them up. I may have also made a mistake in eyeballing gauge instead of verifying properly. This thing is going to be WAY longer than 12 feet.

Second stop: Ganondorf

Ganondorf and I broke up for a few days due to mid-back pain. It’s been years since I did any regular cross stitching, and I’ve rediscovered that holding the frame is both awkward and painful after an hour. So Ganondorf and I were splitsies until I acquired a fancy new lap frame a couple days ago. The frame isn’t the most comfortable thing on earth, but it is a dramatic improvement over my old hoop.

I’m a little concerned about Ganondorf’s coloring. He’s not looking at all how I thought he would. As this is my first time making something using a pattern I created from a JPEG, I’m a bit concerned that the program’s color matching is off.  You be the judge. (I see some serious frogging in my future…the teeth are blue (?!) and the skin is way too nude. Shouldn’t it be grey??)

Last, a project that’s actually going well: Puff Flower Baby Afghan

The friend for whom I’m making this is getting ready to have her second child. Her first, a boy, received the blanket that currently serves as the header of this blog (also pictured below in case I ever change that header). I like color and I’ve read that kiddos like primary colors, so I opted for this rainbow blanket:

My friend ended up using it in their official baby photos and it is now, apparently, his favorite blanket.

Now, I wanted to create something equally wonderful for her soon-to-be daughter (no pressure!), and she informed me that the nursery colors are pink and grey. Pink and grey aren’t my favorite colors to work with…I usually try to avoid pink (or, at least, exclusively pink) items for baby blankets because I lived in a pepto bismol pink room for ten years of my life and kind of hate the color.  HOWEVER. This woman, who was a part of my dissertation reading/support group and is also a recent doctor and is ALSO one of the kindest, smartest, most aware people you will ever meet, has chosen these colors very deliberately and I want to give her what she wants. I’ve opted to stay within her color palate (because it’s not for me, so she should get what she wants), but expand it a bit (because I’m spending two months making it and like a large palate to work wtih). (Pattern HERE)

I’m hoping that I didn’t go too far afield in the color choices…I just felt the need to break up the sea of pink a bit. I’ve been wanting to play with this pattern for awhile, so I’m glad that my friend’s desire for a feminine nursery allowed me to bust out the floral motif. The blanket is about a quarter done, so this one will likely take me until the end of April. (Each of those flowers takes about five minutes and I estimate that I’ll need about 200 of them in all).  I’m also going to need to experiment with making half-flowers to fill in the edges so I can put a ruffled border on the finished afghan.

So that’s it for this week’s update! More next week when, I’m sure, I’ll be sick of all three projects and doing something completely unrelated to all.