Ron Socks

Okay, maybe I should just admit this upfront: I am a big Harry Potter fan. I love everything from the books to the movies to the merchandise. You could take a piece of crap, slap a Harry Potter logo on it, and I would want to buy it. Harry Potter coffee mug? Sure! Harry Potter clock? Okay! Harry Potter sock yarn? Yes please!


Luckily, my lack of endless financial resources is balanced out by the fact that I'm slightly disappointed in the sock yarn's offered colorways. The only one that even resembles its character is 'Ron', and don't even get me started on the fact that there is no 'Hermoine' colorway. So I was able to execute a little self control before I broke down and finally bought the Ron colorway.


Despite the fact that these colors scream "RON!" to me, I'm still not mad about this yarn. The finished socks needed a little extra something to make them special or else they would just be mildly ugly. So, taking a page out of Mrs. Weasley's knitting book, I decided to embroider little R's on the cuffs.


The resulting socks are not mildly ugly, they're just pretty dorky. And I'm okay with that. It is one more pair of wool socks to get me through the Wisconsin Winter, and one more reminder that I have to wait an extra 8 months for the next Harry Potter movie. I hate you Warner Brothers...

Craftacular

I started thinking about the c-word this week. I'm usually a strict no-c*******s-before-thanksgiving kind of person, but, as I usually make some of my gifts, I need to plan ahead. Considering I was knitting socks for my parents in September last year, I think that I am doing pretty well this time around.

Anyway, it was craft week over at casa Briney Deep. I won't be knitting a lot of gifts this year, so I was testing out a couple other crafty ideas I found around the net.


The first idea that I am madly in love with is homemade notepads. I swear that everyone I know is going to get one of these in their stocking this year. It was a small investment to buy the padding compound, but I'll get a least a hundred of these super cute pads out of it. I've got a bunch of great ideas for these little guys.


And for the lucky few who are getting knitted gifts, these fabric labels will let them know they were hand knit by me. A simple combination of twill tape and printable, iron-on transfers, these labels were much less expensive than other custom labels I have seen. And I'm really happy with the look that my pinking sheers gave the edges.

Next week, it's back to knitting!

Back to Beading

Beading was my thing as a kid. I remember taking summer school art classes in beading and eventually making at least a hundred different necklaces before my enthusiasm for this craft dwindled. So I was pleasantly surprise when my DH got me some beads for my birthday. (I actually ruined his original idea by buying a set of martini glasses two weeks before my special day. Oops!)


The beads were dark green, shaped like little tildes, and there were just enough of them to make a necklace. So after a little trip to JoAnn's and a dig through my craft closet, I came up with all of the supplies necessary to make this:


Making this necklace reminded me of how much I loved this hobby and how many beads I still have, squirreled away in the closet. Perhaps one day, after I am out of grad school, I will get back to beading.

Mithril Shawl, Finished

If I missed some of the subtlety of my Mithril shawl in the first post about it, this picture should show it a little better.


I just love how this shawl turned out. It worked up surprisingly quickly and the pattern shows very well after a quick overnight blocking.


The only issue I had with this shawl was that it turned out much too long after blocking. I had originally used about 1.5 skeins of KnitPicks Shimmer, but frogging the extra half a skein resulted in a much better length. Now I have a whole extra skein to make a second shawl!