Headbands

Around the holidays this past year I made a shawl for a friend of mine with a beautiful leaf edging. In love with the edging, but less with the time involved with making the shawl- I make this headband out of the leftover yarn and the leaf pattern. I really love it because with my almost constant headache, commercially available headbands are too tight. I made this one loose enough that I can wear it most days. 

Also, I acquired a Styrofoam head.

I had some leftover fingering weight yarn and new sock needles, so I started working on another headband a few days ago. I love knitting in the round. Not the first few rows, mind you- there it is nothing but spiky chaos, but after that it picks up a nice rhythm and stockinette doesn't require any purling.

I ran out well before the headband was long enough, and switched over the the closest color I had which was much larger, and larger needles. I decreased a few times, and churned out the remainder of the headband in record time- considering how long the it took with the smaller needles. I love the final product, but it takes some time.

 Here's this headband on my Styrofoam head. The color change is totally hidden in the back.

Organized Crafting

I tell myself I want to do many things. I can't count the number of projects I have started and then stashed and forgotten about. The last few days however, I've been on a serious productivity roll. I think it has something to do with being so close to the end of this quarter- I just turned in two large final projects and all the sudden have mental and physical energy aplenty. 

Anyway, I used some upholstery fabric left over from a renaissance fair bodice to make cases for my knitting needles and crochet hooks. I've made attempts at this before (I don't recommend crochet- the small hooks slip right through), but neither worked out for various reasons. 

The new set is both functional and attractive- or I think so. Judge for yourself. 

This is all three pieces together. The small blob holds stitch markers, point protectors, a set of small scissors, etc. 

The construction is actually pretty simple. I measured the height of my tools and knew I wanted the width when closed to be about five inches- so the width when open is about four times that- 20 inches. Then I cut enough of the dark blue to make a small pocket, and enough of the red to make a slightly higher pocket. My iron was my best friend! It really helped when I closed off the edges- the bias tape I had wasn't wide enough, so I made my own out of more of the red fabric.

Here's the inside of the little guy. It was a lot of small area sewing. I'm really proud of both myself and my brother sewing machine. He worked like a champ. I pilfered the zipper from a bag of Basmati rice- and it didn't have guards on either end of the zipper. I lost the zipper pull a few times. The little guy is cute and is intended to fit in project bags. 

I'm hoping to be a more productive crafter and blogger- so here's to organized productivity!