Knittin' in Nigeria

Between the different concept of time and the Lagos traffic, I got a fair bit of knitting done in Nigeria. I did manage to forget to pack any patterns so I had to make them up as I was going along.

Here are some snaps of my projects, starting with a pair of hairnets for my first host's daughters Hafeeza (shown) and Halima.

Here Ben (a member of the incoming Rotary GSE committee) models the hat I made for his 6-month old son. (I also made some booties, but didn't get a snap.)

Ben actually managed to keep the hat balanced on his head for quite a while, despite walking around, texting, and talking at the same time.

Fortunately Chimizie (another member of the committee) didn't try to model the dress I made for his one-year-old daughter.

There's not really any scale here - that's Tim's natively attired elbow to the left.

I also made a couple of things for myself as well including a new camera case:

and a pair of slippers:

World's least interesting knitting

The college knitting club is collecting squares to put together to make a blanket. I contributed some plain ol' garter stitch squares.

Pretty dang exciting.

Phantom baby bags

Imagine there's a picture of a pair of baby bags here - blue & green striped. Made 'em for a fellow faculty member's imminent twins & forgot to take a picture.

Wine scarves galore

I actually made a total of 48 wine scarves - 24 for my mother, 12 for a friend of hers, and 12 for a colleague of mine. The fact that I didn't have much trouble finding 24 different colors of yarn is indicative of my stash problem.

Cheater!

Maybe this is cheating in a stash-reduction way, but I'm still pretty psyched about it. I'm the faculty advisor for the new student knitting group (Fiber Arts for the Needy - FAN club. Those clever kids). We're making blankets and hats to give away.

And of course I'm donating a bunch of random yarn to the cause.

Wine scarves

This project has the advantages of being fast and using up all the scraps of yarn I've accumulated from various projects. It's a wine scarf - a little scarf you tie around your wineglass at a party to signify that it is yours. My mom saw them somewhere and wants a couple dozen.

The interesting thing about this picture is the other scrapy-type projects in the background. Going from right to left, we have the camera cozy in fabulous red acrylic, then three quilt-square trivets from Mr. PotatoHead's mom, and then two used-wine-cork trivets from my parents. On the far left there's my grandmother's knitting bag (which she may or may not have made out of scrap fabric, but I suspect she did.) And the quilt-square trivets win extra scrapiness points because the fabric was originally a gift to me from a friend who lived in Angola, which I used to wrap a Christmas present to my inlaws.

And yes, that's the Johnny's catalog there. I'm planning a garden I don't yet have.

First knit project

First knit project done - hat & booties for the son of Mr. PotatoHead's former co-worker.

First steps

Despite the yarn focus of yesterday's post, I also have too much cloth and embroidery floss and thread and cross-stitch fabric. And projects that I started but never finished. And little bits of other random craft crap, mostly left over from Sunday school projects.

In honor of the season, my first project was to finish up some cross-stitched ornaments that I made years ago but never actually finished. Here they are on the Corey-Olson tree:

The third picture involves very little cross-stitch...unless you look closely at the cuff of the mitten. But I had the little blanks left over from a church project and some random acrylic paint. I also had some leftover attempts at Hardanger embrodiery - the pink thing glued to the middle of the big snowflake and the thing that looks a little like a cross but was supposed to be a snowflake. And the cuff on the mitten was from a test piece I did for a larger thing I did for my mother. So good all around.

25 pounds

I have 25 pounds of yarn. That seems like both a lot and not a lot.

It is, clearly, more than really needs to be sitting around gathering dust.

Since I don't think anyone reads this anymore, I'm going to indulge in some electronic talking to myself.

A recent spate of stuff-organizing with Mr. PotatoHead has led me to realize just how much craft stuff I have. Yarn, thread, half-finished projects galore. In fact, I have half-finished projects inherited from three separate relatives. It's too much...not hoarders-level too much, but just too much.

Therefore: my resolution for 2010 is to reduce the amount of craft stuff 'till it fits in a single box* and I'm using this blog to post my progress.

Let's see how long this lasts.

*That I can lift.