*tap tap* Is this thing on?

Am I really going to try blogging again? Really?

I'm hoping it may encourage me to explore things other than knitting/spinning/crochet, at least.

I've taken up cross-stitch lately, and I'm really hoping to get back into making art soon. I don't think sewing will make much of a reappearance, since it's probably the most spendy thing I could get myself into right now. I have a yarn stash to last me for years, art supplies to match, and I've found that a cross-stitch project usually clocks in at $10 or less for materials. Since I'm currently on a ramen-level budget, less expensive is definitely better.

The awesome, money-saving thing about crafting, by the way? You're spending all your free time making things and not on buying stuff. :P I know it's an oft-repeated trope about the ratio of entertainment to materials cost, but there really is something to it.

My last (which was also my first) cross-stitch project took me about 15-20 hours. I paid $5 for the pattern and used both floss and aida cloth I'd bought at garage sales over the past few years. Total investment, more or less? $10. Which comes out to about $0.50 an hour.

Honestly, one of the biggest problems I'm running into at this point is an excess of knitted goods just lying around. I have 8 or 9 scarves. I don't really need to knit more when I already have 1 for every day of the week and then some.

On that note, let's move onto the knitting content. I'm not going to try and catch up with my project backlog of the past year and change, so we'll go with what's being worked on now.


To start with, an FO.

Hopefully the nail polish helps disguise how jacked my hands are. I mean, jeez, one of them is made of plaster. 

Here's a better view of both gloves.

These are the Celtic Knot Fingerless Gloves, or, as I like to call them, my "Seriously, is it spring yet?" mitts.

Full details are on the Rav project page linked above. I'd give the FO about an 8/10 on the happy meter, and the pattern about a 6.5-7 out of 10 in terms of clarity. These are knit from the top down, which is not immediately obvious when you read the pattern. It's on there, so I'm not docking points for my inability to read all the way through. A little bolding of that info and a chart legend for the cabling would have been nice, though.


Okay, enough talking for my third inaugural blog post. :P I'll post WIP stuff later, as there's a lot of it. A lot a lot. Axolotl.