Fugly

One of the things I hate about "learn to knit" or "learn to crochet" books is that the patterns are often butt-ugly. And while it makes sense that in the beginning, one can only knit or crochet rectangles, I think garments beyond a scarf should be avoided until one has mastered increases and decreases so as to shape a garment. Beginners patterns have gotten better in recent years, but it bewilders me that anyone would put this kind of crap out there as a free pattern to promote their yarns:

What the fuck? Is it a vest? A tunic? And what's with the preschooly color blocks and gigantic pockets? Could this thing be any boxier? She only remotely has a figure because of the way she is thrusting out her hip. Look at the size of those armholes! Either they were expecting a much larger model, or this pattern is just fucked up. I vote for the latter. If she took the stupid vest off, she would probably have a decent outfit.

Shibori Felting gone bad

I finally finished knitting a giant swath of stockinette I planned to shibori felt and then sew into a pillow cover for the living room with a zipper and all. Well, it felted, but the shibori part was a bit of a disaster. Most of the bottlecaps fell off in the wash and the finished product looks like a giant piece of felt with a leprosy problem:


With flash. As if that helps:

Patons Merino Wool
More skiens than I care to count

Certainly not my favorite project. I guess I can still make it into a pillow cover, but I'm not really sure I want to. I mean, it's ugly. It didn't cost much money for the yarn, but I was knitting on that thing forever! This being my first foray into felting (if you don't count accidentally felting sweaters in the wash), I am not exactly smitten with the craft.

At least Ginger knows how to make me feel better. Here she is snoozing on her kitty rag quilt, reminding me that all of my projects are not disasters, they are mostly successes:

I can't get the picture to rotate, but she is cute just the same. :)