Mural

I finished my craft room! Here's the finished mural! I took me about 6 hours to do the whole thing. I love it! Note the heron on one of the rocks.

Here is the background on the wall
I mainly will use this room for homework, so I like that the table is big enough to spread all my papers out and still have a sewing machine on it.

Craft closet!!! It's truely amazing how much stuff I fit in there! There are containers for yarn, painting, beading, sewing/quilting, scrapbooking, rug hooking, embroidery.......

Best. Bookshelf. EVER.


I am so happy with how this turned out! I was pretty nervous painting on the wall, so I am glad it didn't like, drip black all over or something. At least I think it's fairly recognizable as some place with trees or something... Woooohoooo!!!!!

Craft room! eeeeeeee!

Isn't that a beautiful sight??? Ok, so the whiteness and plasticness of it all isn't super inspiring, but holy crap I love having a craft room! I am secretly plotting a mural to paint on the wall, which should be a really nice touch, if it turns out. That probably won't be for another couple months...

In the picture, I am working on the curtains for the living room. Here is a handy hint: If you ever think that you should make curtains because it would be stupid to buy them since after all it's only a piece of fabric with some hems- don't do it. I have only finished one and a half (out of about 7) in the past week. That one looks fantastic hanging up, though! Then again, there is a piece of fabric that I've attached to the curtain rod with safety pins that looks just as good! I'll post pix when I finish more of them. Notice the Sex and the City DVD playing on my computer.

As I was organizing the craft room, I came across this, one of first things I really ever knit. Ok, I can't actually remember what the official first thing I ever knit was, but this I started in sometime in high school, so it's up there. I think it's intended to be a baby blanket. I have absolutely no intention to ever finish it. The yarn is from my grandma. She gave me a whole box of colorful yarn when I told her I'd taken up knitting!

I am pretty proud of the fact that I figured out how to do the pattern with the purl stitches. Switching between knitting and purling was practically the first thing I decided to learn, once I'd figured out about needles and things. I remember being blown away by the fact that by making a "backward" knit stitch you could add so much dimension to a piece. It helps that I (apparently) figured out how to knit continental, not english, which makes for easier knit/purl switching I think. I learned to knit by looking at badly hand drawn pictures of bodyless hands making stitches, so I really had no idea what the *right* way to hold anything was. I think I turned out ok as a knitter though!

The only problem? I didn't know which part of a stitch to stick the needle into to make a knit stitch. I knit every single row in this thing through the back loop! So every other row has twisted stitches! Thankfully, I've since figured out better ways to do it! Check out this beautiful detail:


In other news, our house is (very) slowly turning into a home. Despite some (aaaaaaaugh!!!!!!) flooding in our basement, I still think this space is so cozy, and I love hanging out down there. It could just be that the craft room is in the basement... The carpet is all torn up, because we were trying to get it to dry out and checking for mold and no one's been back to fix it (grrrrr). I did my best to cover up the carpet, and move all the furniture back to take these pictures, though. My favorite thing is the pictures of Oregon on the wall. We were going for a kind of "winter at a mountain lodge" kind of thing, and somehow I think our old inherited furniture pulls it off!

T-Shirt Quilt

As I went though undergrad, I seemed to collect T-shirts. Lots of them. Mostly for free. Now that I am all grown up (ha!), I decided that it's time to cut the shirts to bits and turn them into some sort of throw. Which, since I have so darn many, is quickly turning into at least a twin-size blanket. I keep having to go back to the store to buy more interfacing, as I am lining the knit T-shirt fabric to keep it from being stretchy. I can't decide if I want to make it 4 squares by 5 squares or by 6 squares. I think I will do some fabric math today to see if 6 yards of material will be enough for backing and for the sashing. I also need to decide how I want to layout the squares. That's always the challenge in quilting, eh? My first thought was to do it randomly, but I am also leaning toward making diagonal stripes of each color of shirt. Either way, it is sort of a lot of work for a silly T-shirt collection. I am really much more of a knitter!



Speaking of knitting, here is a piece of a preemie hat I started about 4 times while helping the high schoolers at Upward Bound to learn to knit. I have some purple polar fleece sitting in my closet that I will probably (at some point...) sew some flannel to so I can donate it. We'll see when that gets accomplished though... (and man, oh man is my couch ugly. I tried not to get a picture of the giant rips that my toes get caught in all the time, but even the pattern is awful...)



Also, this turtle pattern is the freaking cutest thing I've ever seen! http://crochetville.org/forum/showthread.php?t=40998



I think my turtle's head turned out too big, so I sort of got frustrated and stopped for awhile. I'll probably finish it (and a few more!) this weekend. I dunno if I should start the head over, and try to use fewer stitches, or just have a giant head turtle. If I could get them as cute as on the website, I think they would make cute little gifts to give people who are nice!

Some stuff I've finished lately

Since this is supposed to be a crafty blog, I figure I better get some pictures of crafts up here or no one will like me, so here is a post with some pictures. For the next week or so, you can see more at http://web.mac.com/emilykthomas/

This is a picture of my new lab coat, on which I embroidered some flowers on the back and a little skull on the front. This close-up of the flowers is pretty, I think.


This is the Little Mermaid Strapless Top from Sexy Little Knits. Yes, I know about my boobs, let it go, it's a cute shirt.


This is a shitty arm warmer. Actually, it's a great arm warmer, and so is the other one. The shitty part is that one was cast on with 8 repeats and the other was cast on with 10 repeats. They are now hiding behind the television, where they've been since I made them about 2 or 3 months ago.


I just finished another project tonight, for some friends who are getting married this weekend. It's the Comfort Cable Throw from Lion Brand. It was quite fun to make. No pictures till later though.