My dog is fashionable and my homework is... well, not so done

Finished Hiroki's sweater in time for his Friday dog park date. Now he can be nice and toasty after his bath.


He's such a funny model. Like a deer in headlights. He is often mistaken for a deer, though.


Same pattern I used for his first coat, with a different decorative stitch going down the back this time. I used some wool that I recycled from an ugly gray sweater from the thrift store and dyed with Kool-Aid.

I've gotten back on the dyeing and recycling yarn train this past week. The above wool I already had measured and skeined out, but I've been wanting new yarn lately to make something nice and found a misshapen and sad cardigan at the thrift store that desperately wanted loving. It was a really thin yarn after being unwound, but there's enough of it to double up and make a Tappan Zee Cardigan by Amy King.

It was a strange mustard baby poop yellow, I wasn't sure it would dye because it was 70% acrylic, 30% wool. But it did work well with the Kool Aid, so now it's a more orange and orangey-red color and drying on my porch. I'm very tempted to start knitting with it damp, I'm so excited because I think I'll actually be able to wear this creation. But alas... I have homework that needs desperate attention after being ignored these past two weeks for work and crafty things.

And then...


This has been my on-going project for the past three or four weeks. For my Cultural Approaches to Tourist Arts final, we had to do a project -- anything we wanted to do -- that related to the course objectives. We talked a lot about authenticity and how cultures change their cultural items to be more tourist-friendly, so I made a pseudo-Amish quilt and am going to present on what makes an Amish quilt Amish.



It's not a full size quilt, it's only 3'x3'. But my first proper quilt where I did the three layers, hand-quilted the layers, and bound it. Yes, I hand-quilted those. First time I've done that, and I think I really like it. I did not so much enjoy the hand-binding. In fact, this would have been done over a week ago if it wasn't for procrastinating on the binding. I'm presenting it in class this Tuesday.


And since Sakura has been missing from the blog lately... here's a really early picture I found of her on my camera. Probably taken in the first two months after we brought her home.

Stay tuned for some sewing things... a friend and I have recently made Tuesday nights our sewing night and JoAnn's had Simplicity patterns 5 for $5 last week.