Crafting While Crashing

Life has been a little rough lately and it's been hard to keep my chin up, so I've been dual-wielding the double edged swords preferred by artists and sad fucks across human cultures: crafting big while crashing hard. Luckily for me I've recently acquired a modular knitting loom on clearance which launched me into yarn crafts, so I've had somewhere to channel my angst. And boy do I need to channel my angst, because it's September and the Halloween merch is overflowing the shelves in the stores here. There genuinely needs to be a panic button on banking apps that says "Help, I'm sad and walking into Home Goods", and your debit card will automatically freeze for one hour.

Loom knitting got me into crochet, and then I bought supplies to learn lace making as well. I've already warned several family members that I'm giving out crochet gifts for Christmas this year, so they better tell me what they want or they'll get whatever weird patterns I come across online, haha! Current saved patterns are an elf hat for cats, and a possum shaped grocery bag holder. One of the first things I crocheted is my brown and yellow retro scarf:

I'm not a huge fan of wearing crocheted clothing, but it does happen to dovetail extremely nicely with my 60s/70s wardrobe. I was originally looking up patterns to try to recreate my granny's crocheted blanket from back in the day that had the wavy/chevron pattern, but I wanted to start with a smaller project to learn on. Took a little tinkering to figure out how to shift between colors so I didn't need to tie off each time, but it's coming out great. Another retro crochet project I'm considering is this scalloped blanket:

The original pattern uses a dark golden yellow yarn, but I made a small sample section to see how I liked the green since that's what I had already bought. Still undecided. I did also use this yarn on my knitting loom to make a double-knit sample, and that bitch was LUX! It was SO dense, and thick, and SAWFT, and did I mention THICC? It actually seemed slightly too dense and sturdy for a scarf or blanket, so I don't know what I'll end up using it for. 

Here's the knitting loom that started it all:

I was trying to follow a pattern for a scarf I found online, only to realize after HOURS of failed attempts that the person who wrote the pattern did not indeed entirely know how to write a pattern (-.-) Before figuring the right spacing, the picture above was one of the attempts that I really loved the result of. However, after a couple hours of continuing to knit the shawl, I realized that I had accidentally slipped several stitches off the pegs while knitting. I had no idea how to fix it or if that's even possible on a knitted project to cleanly reintegrate skipped loose stitches back into the fabric, so I disconnected my emotional pain processing circuits and frogged the whole thing. Live and learn. And learn I did! I used what I learned from the first experiments to weave this nice light blue shawl:

The chenille is sooo soft and doesn't shed, and it has a nice balance of stretchiness and sturdiness. I knitted it out to about 5ft long and added tassles on the ends. This one is going to make a great Christmas present! And speaking of Christmas, I finally got to work on the upcycled Christmas ornament earrings I've been planning since January:

The camera didn't pick it up on a still picture, but there's iridescent glitter paint on the "snow".  I made them from some of my favorite strands of Christmas lights that stopped working last year. Hopefully with a little tinkering with the paint and sealant, and a nice photobox setup with my rotating display base, these will look nice on the store page. I'm hoping to have at the least a few holiday items in the shop this year, even if I still haven't gotten the overall store going again. I also finally figured out a way to hold the earrings upright while the texture layers and paint were drying:

I put some sand into my steel crafting pot, and was able to work on large batches. Before I was just doing five to ten at a time because I was struggling to find a way to keep them upright. Can't believe what a simple fix it was!

Lastly, I've been working on some jewelry. I don't think there's ever been a time in my adult life when I wasn't making jewelry. One of my bigger projects recently has been a colorful plastic fringe necklace. I got a promo coupon a few weeks back for a company that sells decorations, but I didn't really see much I wanted. They happened to have some very colorful rainbow flower beads, so I added those to my cart just so the free gift card wouldn't go to waste. This was planning out the fringe length and density:

I wasn't sure how much work I wanted to put into a large jewelry piece made out of plastic since it can be difficult to get your labor's worth when trying to sell, but the piece just kind of flowed naturally and I'm really happy with the results. Here's further along:

I might make some smaller/simpler pieces since there's still a lot of beads left over. Maybe some dangle earrings? Friendship bracelet inspired pieces, maybe? Here's the necklace fully finished:

The translucent beads really helped fill in the fringe without taking away from the colors and the rainbow effect. Since it's a bit more of a dramatic piece, I might make some dramatic bracelets to go with it. Not sure yet, I'll play around with some ideas later.

Since taking these pics I've already started several more projects, so pics of those will have to wait for our next installment of Crafting While Crashing. And since I'm still crashing AND I have a $10 reward coupon from Michael's there's gon' be SEVERAL more installments, hahaha!

Keep on crafting, check back soon to see what I've been up to!