I forgot to post this earlier. I also made this ornament for my mother for Christmas.
I actually did most of the work about nine years ago, when I was pregnant with Niels. Back then the main craft I did was beadwork. I made off loom woven bead pieces like this. (Pardon the quality of these photos, they’re actually scans of pieces that I made many years ago.)
My most ambitious beaded piece was a bag I intended to carry for my wedding (in 1998).
I still have this bag somewhere in exactly that state. No lining, no handle. It took many hours of precision work and it weighed a ton from all those beads. It’s beautiful though.
Before Niels was born I had moved on a bit to doing wire and bead pieces and eventually, making chains out of wire.
I still have those. I should wear them sometime. Anyway, the point of all of this is that when I was pregnant I decided that those activities were not exactly baby friendly. Lots of sharp tools and bits of wire or tiny beads flying around. The craft I thought I was going to take up instead was cross stitch. I made a little framed piece for my niece, a pillow for my sister-in-law and then that star for the ornament. I never finished it and it ended up in a box. This Christmas I went searching for embroidery floss in the appropriate colors for the little felt ornaments and I opened the box that I thought just had floss and discovered that star, just waiting to be assembled. I think I originally intended it for my mother so I finished it up and gave it to her. She hung it as the star on her tree, which felt like an honor to me.
As you can tell, cross stitch didn’t really stick with me and I became a knitter instead. Of course, I have no knitting to show you in this post (though both of my Aidez sleeves are done to the armpit and I’ve started the body). What I do have to show is the results of a Rigid Heddle Weaving class I started yesterday at A Verb for Keeping Warm.
Ready to tie on to the front apron bar. (So much new terminology to learn!)
Tied on and starting to weave. The pieces is a bit bigger than that now. We are supposed to finish all the weaving before next Sunday (ack). Somehow when I signed up for the class it didn’t occur to me that I’d have homework between the two weeks. I think I can get it all done but I might not get much knitting done this week. The ivory yarn is Panda Cotton and the pink is Maizy. It’s the yarn I had in the right weight with the right amount of stretch for this project. I’m remembering now one of the ideas I had when I first got the loom was to weave napkins out of kitchen cotton so after the class is over I might pull the 8-dent heddle back out and try it. I happen to have a bit of kitchen cotton on hand. Teenuh is taking the class with me, and I know she happens to have a bit of that as well. Maybe we could have a napkin-a-long.
the sheep free knitter 