Katéri's Crafts

A long while ago, Raphael purchased some beads (at a REALLY good price) from Ebay. As you can see in the picture, we got four strands of semi precious stones. They are celestite, charoite, sodalite, and the light blue teardrop ones I have no clue....For an extremely long time I have wanted to get some charoite (the purple stones). It is very expensive because it is rare: it is only found in one particular area of Siberia. I managed to find this 16" strand for a great price, $34 US. I have been wanting it for it's metaphysical properties. Allow me to quote from a crystal encyclopaedia of mine: "Charoite is a stone for this age. It provides for a synthesis between the heart and the crown chakras and combines the higher spiritual dimensions with unconditional love from the physical plane. (...) This mineral provides for transmutation of negativity and for grounding of the spiritual self. " Well, it does a Hell of a lot more but the main purpose is transmutation of fear. Exactly what I need right now. Hopefully I will notice an improvement in my life with the help of my new friend, that I finally got around to putting in necklace form:







The camera really doesn't do it any justice...my camera died before I could take better shots. In case you can't tell, I also made matching earrings :) I also made a necklace for Raph, as he was harrassing me for a long time to make him one. Here you can see his new celestite necklace. He wanted a blue crystal necklace forever, also for it's properties.

Posted by Katrina at 6:54 PM | Permalink | Comments

I started this project way back in February 2006...It's inspired from two other works by artists I don't know (I got them from cards I ppl gave me...lol). Anyhoo, the finished product will hopefully depict an open winged Pegasus in the outskirts of a forest, and the background will have a waterfall. (Again, if all goes well...) It's in acryllic, as it is easy to deal with. Unfortunately, as it dries so fast, it doesn't allow for proper colour mixing. I'm gonna have to buy a drying retardant (sorry I'm translating directly from French...) So far I have a very stylized part of the forest and the unwinged Pegasus....I don't have any model for the wings...Can you imagine I found none on the internet? I'm usually so lucky with those kinds of things. I'm making the painting for Raph. When he was a kid, he had an aparently amazing dream involving a Pegasus, and it has always intrigued him. It's stored for now....but it's calling me :S

Posted by Katrina at 6:49 PM | Permalink | Comments

So I finally finished the pot holder. All that is left now is the felting process....don't know when I'll get around to doing that. I basically knitted the entire ball Heather gave me. I wonder how much it will shrink. I took these pics with my new camera, I'm still working out the kinks. :S



I also got started a little while ago on a new project. Yes, a scarf. lol. I could not wait to start something new so I went to Michaels and found the yarn section. I bought my first pair of needles, grey aluminum needles, size 10 USA. They are the same type as the ones Heather lent me; I'm still sticking to familiar territory. I bought some acrylic yarn on sale. $2.5 a ball. So I bought three :) Turns out the yarn is hell to work with but I got used to it. Unfortunately, the scarf is very deformed. I had received some complements on the evenness and conformity of my stiching/tension so I got cursed. :D The scarf started out really tight but I got frustrated with the tightness and started knitting very loosely not thinking of the result. *face palm* So I will continue knitting tighter and tighter. The stupid thing is also way TOO BIG! Ideally, it would have been 2/3 the width, which translates into the scarf will take much longer to finish. The original plan was to give it to my mom for her b-day in November. But now I'm embarassed to offer her something so mediocre. I may as well offer her a necklace made of painted pasta. *sigh* So I just might keep it for myself. The material is so comfortable and warm. Well this is the progress so far:

Posted by Katrina at 2:45 PM | Permalink | Comments

Here is an image of what I have completed. I will touch it no further as I don't know how much yarn I need to finish up the "trim". On the right, you can see that there is excess yarn. That's because the yarn is wool, and it turns out that wool is easy to rip ;) Oups. Heather fixed it for me, bless her heart. Then she will show me how to "sow" back in the stiches. I really liked working with the aluminum needles (size 10 US). This thing is made by basic knitting, no "pearling" on the other side. (Fuck, I really need to work my vocabulary. It's particularly intimidating to read other knitters' blogs. I hardly have basic knowledge.) So yeah, all that is left is finishing the trim, fixing the extra yarn and the felting process. I wonder how much it will shrink. I was surprised to see that one ball of yarn only yields a rather small knit square. Wool was pretty tricky to work with. I had no trouble for the first half, and was knitting very tightly. But towards the end, the yarn became rather precarious and threatned to rip/sever all the time. This resulted in me knitting rather loosely. In the end, I don't see a difference ;) Oh! and my hands don't cramp as much :)

Posted by Katrina at 5:05 PM | Permalink | Comments

I'm still working on my pot holder, and I would say that I'm about one third done. My knitting has definately improved. I sort of understand when I do a mistake and can somewhat fix them. Unfortunately my joints in my hands hurt a lot. I'm so paranoid about having arthritis. If I'm gonna get serious about knitting, I should kiss my pretty hands goodbye ;) I started reading the StichnBitch book, and I liked her perspective on feminism and women's crafts. Women are so busy trying to be like men that they drop traditional female crafts/skills like they were not worthy or something. I'm actually anti-feminist (I'm opposed to any "isms"), but I am proud to be a woman and I enjoy doing these kinds of things.

Posted by Katrina at 5:48 PM | Permalink | Comments

Well, it's been 24 hours since I've cast on my first stich. I'm so incredibly excited to have finally learnt this traditional craft! As a child, every winter, I would ask my mother to teach me crochet/knitting. But what would always start of as a scarf, quickly ended as a Barbie blanket. Just didn't have the patience. However, the curiosity was there, and it never left. Finally, Heather sat me down, alongside Lis, and I learnt the basics!

I didn't realize there was so much to knitting! The types of yarn, the needles, the stiches, the knots...Heather got me started on a simple square thing to go under a teapot. It's made with blue wool yarn and some aluminum needles. I find that yarn hard to work with as it tends to split. So far I'm doing a very crappy job. I obviously don't understand the anatomy of a stich. Also, when I screw up I don't know how to fix it so I just keep going ^_^ Yeah, that'll look nice *rolls eyes* Oh well! I'll put up a picture when I have something of substance to show.

Posted by Katrina at 4:42 PM | Permalink | Comments