Fair Projects for 2015

It’s getting to be the time of year when you’ve got to start thinking about what projects you’re going to be making for your county and state fairs. Ideally you’d start too as working right up to the deadline is never fun, though it seems to happen more often than I’d like!

So far, most of my projects are rather bland looking, but I promise there are colorful projects coming too!

Here we have a lace baby sweater which will ultimately be part of a three-piece set, a knit lace doily, and a crochet lace bag all in progress.

I’ve also been working on filling the first of three bobbin lace pillows I’m making for myself. I really enjoy the bobbin lace beginners kit I got for Christmas, but the failings of a beginner ‘pillow’ are more than apparent. I done some research on the best and longest lasting bobbin lace pillows and how they’re made. Then, I presented this information to my physical therapist and we worked out a stand set up to prevent any undue stress on my body. Now I’m building that stand and pillow set up! This is the first pillow in progress.

Kaia seemed rather displeased with my pillow stuffing as a few bits of straw landed on her in her bed!

The pillows are filled with natural straw cut into 4″ or shorter pieces. Cutting the straw is a painful and dull process, and stuffing the pillows is painful and slow going as a result, but when they’re done, I’m going to have fantastic traditional bobbin lace pillows, a standard 24″ cookie pillow and a more rectangular pillow with a roller in the back for making yardage. The pillow above is the roller that will go into the rectangular pillow. The exterior is a natural canvas material sewn into a tube with drawstrings on either end. Inside, there is a dowel running the length and I have two discs cut from 1/4″ plywood. One disc is already in place at the bottom of the pillow and the other will go in just before cinching up the other drawstring. The dowel sticks out a few inches on either side which is how it will connect to the support pillow.

The last big WIP keeping me busy lately is a paper craft project. Some friends asked me to make a 4′ tall LEGO minifig as a decoration for a Boy Scout party in March. After that party, the gigantic LEGO man will be a county and state fair entry for me before finally being sold to the highest bidder to fund some new LEGO sets for me! The main framework of the minifig is cardboard sheeting from Costco. Some of guy pal’s friends from work taught me how to use anti-fatigue mat foam to create the complex curves and gave me some foam to use for the project. Atop the cardboard and foam frame is paper maché. This will create a surface I can sand to a perfect finish. With the glossy paint a LEGO minifig has, any imperfections in the body will show. That’s why I’m doing the paper maché coating. There will likely be some spackle to help fill any gaps prior to sanding as well. Here’s the first two pieces being coated in paper maché, the head (which is upside down in this photo) and one of the arms. They’re the most curvy pieces and thus require the most paper maché to get perfectly smooth.

Toy Society Holiday Drop

On Christmas Eve, I dropped a handmade toy for the Toy Society. I made this little tow truck and car set:

I used a free pattern from Steve Good. You can download the pattern here if you want to make your own car and truck set. The only addition I made was to glue a small strip of wood across the back of the truck bed to keep the car from rolling off too easily. I left off the smoke stacks and the little button lights. The smokestacks have not held up well when my friend’s kids play with the truck I keep at my house and I didn’t want to have bitty lights that a small child could chew off.

I cut the body of the two cars from a scrap of 2×4 leftover from another project. The truck bed is cut from a fence picket scrap. I ran it through my planer to clean it up and get it to size. I actually like the look of the redwood fence picket truck bed more than the pine truck bed I’ve done on previous tow trucks. The wheel well strips on either side of the cab are cut from pine as the redwood was a bit too brittle to hold up well to tight curves on an item meant for child’s play. The wheels are all pre-made oak wheels from a local specialty wood shop. I cut the body of the car and truck with a HUGE blade in the scroll saw. It’s a reverse tooth blade from Woodcraft that’s so big it doesn’t even have a number. I used size 7 blades to cut the wheel well covers, the truck bed, and the dowels for the axles.

The drop was made on Christmas Eve around lunchtime in Old Colorado City on a bench in front of an Italian restaurant, some souvenir shops and art galleries. There was a gaggle of kids visiting Santa just a block and a half away, so hopefully a lucky boy or girl found this set just in time for Christmas!

In general, if you’re into scrolling, check out Steve Good’s site. He’s got TONS of free patterns, and several of them toys for doing Toy Society drops! This was my first drop, and it was fun. There will certainly be more! I cut several tow truck and car sets for my Christmas Eve drop, but I ran out of wheels, none of the wood shops were open, AND I couldn’t find my hole cutter set to make my own wheels. Talk about failure!

Home Sweet Home

For the Iron Craft’s week 8 challenge the theme was your hometown. I spent an immense amount of time thinking about what my hometown craft should be. Eventually, I’d all but given up. None of the places I’ve lived, including my current city feel like home. Everywhere I’ve lived just feels so temporary. I really hope I can get a real place soon, one that feels like home.

In my mopery trying to decide if anywhere feels like it’s my hometown, I Googled the addresses of my childhood homes and popped the maps into street view. I really don’t recommend that. Some homeowners do silly things like repaint the house’s different colors and rip out all the wonderful trees!

One good thing did come of surfing through the western US in Google Maps. Watching some Dr. Who on Netflix helped too. I finally decided on my craft for the hometown challenge! The one place that I most certainly feel like calling my home is planet Earth! I’d seen a pattern for a knit planet Earth on Ravelry before when searching for science and math related knits. I grabbed some cheap acrylic yarn from my craft closet, a set of wonderful Balene II double pointed needles, and got to work. I printed out the chart from the Ravelry pattern. I didn’t worry about the actual pattern. It’s in Finnish and I can’t read that. The chart however makes the pattern very obvious. I added row counts to my printed chart and was able to figure out the increasing and decreasing very easily. The chart was missing a few vital things though. I ended up adding Antarctica, some ice for the North Pole, Tasmania, the UK, Hawaii, and Madagascar. Then, I reshaped Central America, the southern half of Africa, the southern half of South America, the Great Lakes area, and Eastern Australia. Here’s my altered chart for anyone who would like to knit a globe.

The finished ball came out very tight. I used aran/heavy worsted weight yarn on size 3 needles to get a very firm fabric. I also stranded the entire project since it is a ball and long floats with some puckering only serves to help maintain the spherical shape. I would never do such long floats on a flat map. It’s also a bit overstuffed to make for a very firm play ball. It’s just the right weight and size to run down one arm, across your shoulders, and down the other arm when I manage it. I’m still very stiff from the car accidents and as a result tend to drop it about 99% of the time. Conveniently, Sketcher my dog is all too happy to go fetch the dropped ball.

Here’s a few shots of the finished knit Earth. For the hometown challenge photos I stuck a pin in the globe roughly where Colorado is. The idea is that no matter where I live, I always have a hometown craft!

Be sure to let me know if any of you make an Earth with this chart. I’d love to feature your planet!