Tailoring to the T-pose and Refitting

Before I get into the main topics, a little sneak peek at an in-progress project.

It's hard to see the style lines because I don't have a "real" texture on it yet, just a tile flood-filled, but it's a cheongsam-inspired evening gown with mandarin collar, cap sleeves, and flared skirt.

Right now, I'm thinking the cap sleeves are a little too cappy, and I'll probably make them longer. Which gets into my first topic. Most Poser figures are modeled in a T-pose, which is just like it sounds like: they stand straight with their arms straight out, like a T.

(Same dress, in the modeling program.)

Now, conforming clothing has to be modeled to the base shape, period. (Well, ellipses. Rumor has it that there are a few masters out there who can rig clothes modeled in a pose so they conform to the T-shaped original, but I am most assuredly not one of them.) And it has to look good in that shape. This is important to note, because I don't use a traditional modeling program. I use Marvelous Designer, which is a clothing simulator. I draft out pattern pieces in virtual "cloth", stitch them together, and correct the fit.

Right now where you're sitting at your computer, if you're wearing something with sleeves, they problem fit pretty smoothly over your shoulder with your arms down at your side, since that's where your arms spend most of their time. Now, if you stretch your arm straight out to the side, what happens? A bunch of wrinkles appear on top of your shoulder, and the armhole probably lifts up a bit. That all disappears when you drop it again.

With conforming clothing, those wrinkles wouldn't disappear. They're modeled in; they're stuck there. So, the model has to be made smooth in that area. Imagine trying to fit a closely tailored dress to someone whose arms are permanently sticking straight out from their sides. It gets a bit tricky, and I've found usually involves reducing the shoulder slope to almost nothing, and shortening both shoulder seam and sleeve cap. Then, later when the figure is use and Poser distorts the joint during movement, it all looks OK.

OK, that's conforming clothes; what about dynamic? Well, strictly speaking, dynamic clothes don't have to be modeled to the T-pose. Poser doesn't care what position the figure starts a cloth sim in, as long as it doesn't intersect the clothing model. But users care. Enough people are scared to try dynamic clothing as it is, and I can't say I fancy the idea of having to track down the "starting" pose for every figure for every outfit I want to use. So, unless there's some reason a non-zero pose is really needed (like putting Pranx's tail underneath the skirt of the Waloli dress), generally it's still good form to model to the T-pose. Most of the time, because of the way Poser figures the simulation, this doesn't hurt anything. The arm still looks fine on the computer when lowered, even though in real life that outfit tailored to the outstretched arm would strain over the shoulder and bag in the armpit. The cap sleeves here, though, are one exception. They don't have enough cloth or virtual weight to fall over the arm, so they just sort of jut out. That's not necessarily a bad look -- sometimes sleeves are intentionally made that way -- but it's not what I was going for. So I'll probably extend them longer.

I also promise babbling about refits. One of the nice things about Marvelous Designer is that it is very forgiving of fit. Often (but not always) an outfit made for one figure can be re-draped onto another figure without changes -- if you're willing to accept some concessions. Here's this same dress, re-draped on Antonia, who is available for free from her own website :

Ih. Not bad. It doesn't fit her bust quite as nicely and there's a little bagginess through the waist as she moves. But not too bad, considering that there were absolutely no changes to the pattern; it's just re-draped. The biggest issue is that there's some significant pattern stretching right across the abdomen. That's not surprising given how much larger her waist is relative to hip and bust when compared to Aiko's stylized hourglass figure. Imagine taking a piece of spandex with a design on it and stretching the heck out of it; the design distorts, right? That's exactly what's happening here.

I could change the dress pattern so it's tailored to Antonia's figure. But as soon as I change the pattern, I also change the UV map. It would no longer be able to share textures with the A3 versions. Both of these figures are relatively niche to start with. With such a small audience, it is a very good thing if they're able to share resources. So, if I do put out Antonia's version of this dress, I will probably accept the texture distortion as an acceptable trade-off for the commonality.

Now, this next pic doesn't really have anything to do with anything, but I rendered it so I might as well show it: same dress, draped on V4:

Better. It clings to the figure much more nicely, and although there is some texture distortion through the abdomen, it's not as much. The neckline looks really good. Probably better than it does on Aiko.

I'm not normally gun-ho about making stuff for V4. She has so much support that it's easy to get lost in the shuffle. The weight-mapped Victora 4 that Phantom3D's working on, though, that I am interested in supporting. And in the modeling stage, it's all the same.

I love this!

Although playing with a shuttlecock while wearing a long ao dai seems like a good way to break your neck, especially if you're playing against an anthropomorphic rabbit.

I just love how this model moves. Don't be afraid of dynamic cloth; it is your friend. :) It didn't take terribly long to run all four simulations, either; I did it between posts while reading forums this morning.

Anyway, I need to get this bad boy packaged up and posted.

I also need to find a good background and make this into a real image. Maybe a nice park or something.

Hmmm...

I've technically got the conforming versions of this outfit rigged. However, the default rigging is so poor on the tunic model that I don't think I can release it this way in good conscience, not even as a freebie.

Now, part of me is saying "what you really need to do is split the skirt into two brand new body parts, give each four body handles, and make the hip a ghost body part. If you did that, this thing would move almost as well as the dynamic version. That would be a bitchin' outfit." And that part of me is absolutely correct. If I made those changes, it would move beautifully and be totally bitchin'.

However, another part of me, and I think this part may be a bit louder, is saying "Dude, you don't get paid enough for that shit." And that part of me is also absolutely correct. Especially when I look at my freebie download history so far and calculate that I can maybe expect a total of 500 downloads, if it's popular. Maybe. If.

Dude, I don't get paid enough for that shit.

Right now the dynamic tunic doesn't work with the conforming pants due to a late mesh change. I'm going to see if I can fix that without driving myself wonky, and if so I'll probably release both versions of the pants, but only the dynamic tunic.

I'm excited about this one.

It's an ao dai, the traditional women's clothing of Vietnam. This was just a test run to make sure I was on the right track. The polygon count is still kind of low, hence a little case of the crunchies, but that'll be upped before I finish.

I'm particularly chuffed because tailoring to that toonish figure is hard, especially on something as well-fitting as an ao dai tunic. Marvelous Designer's high forgiveness factor is helping me here.

I think I'm happy with the fit, so unless I notice something between then and now, I plan to do some finishing up of details tomorrow and hopefully get the models exported and ready to Poserize. Right now I'm trying to decide which seamlines I want to bake into the model. By default they're flat and thus invisible (which is nice because it hides my cheats), but they can be indented slightly for more realism. I'm thinking the raglan seams almost definitely, since most ao dai use them and they help define the style line. Probably the side seams as well. I'm not sure about the darts, though. The dart varies from one designer to another. Some use waist darts, some use side darts, I've seen a few that look like a princess seam bodice with the flaps sewn on separately. Maybe I'll export it both ways and see which I like better.

Contemplating the Codfish

Got an image done; clicky to embiggen.

I did a personal challenge to make an image with items that I had purchased but not yet utilized. This was supposed to be just a "quick" image. However, "quick" is relative; for me it was 3 weeks, with half that time spent rebuilding materials. (I'll save you the rant except to say that when you load up the bed, the wooden legs actually glow in the dark. Shame on both the artist and the store QA that released this for sale.)

Today's Project

I spent a good chunk of the day developing new materials for Arki's EYEdeas 3+:

The materials that come with the set are on the left of the screen, and the mine are on the screen's right. (Or, to confuse matters, Arki's are on the model's right and mine are on the model's left.)

The eye models themselves are quite good. They're very detailed with all the geometry you need to make extremely realistic eyes, even to the point where you could conceivably create a photo red-eye effect or realistic cataracts. And the textures are OK. Nothing that really knocked my socks off, but a good solid collection of staples in the Naturals collection I bought.

The materials, though, I was not very impressed with. I like my materials to be based on real-world physics. Oh, I suppose there's something to be said for the "what looks right however you get there" method, but the problem with that is what looks right under one set of conditions often looks like crap under others. What's based on realistic physics will continue to look realistic however the lighting conditions and other scene elements change.

So, I went and built a physics-based shader for it. I especially like that if you look closely in the (model's) left eye, you can see a reflection of the environment. It's a bit exaggerated because it's an image map on a self-illuminating environment sphere. In other words, normally you'd see a reflection of light sources/bright objects only in an eye, but in this case I've turned an entire city into a light source, so more is reflected than usual. (If you're wondering about the dual "hot spots", I'm using a light set with two lights. Actually it's four lights, but only two are in front of the model.)

The good news out of all this work is that now I have shaders set up for both the set with original mapping, and the set that takes Gen 4 maps, so going forward it's just a couple of mouse clicks. (I can't say enough good things about Semidieu's Shader Builder. Setting up the original shader takes a while, but it saves me so much time and sanity in the long run. I don't know what I'll do while waiting for an update if it breaks in Poser 9.)

Now, the question you may have is, does the difference in materials really matter when you're not close enough to see the model's eye boogers? Depends. Like I said, "looks right however you got there" looks great in some environemts, and not so great in others. And the original materials are probably good enough for government work. But then again, if you're just going for "good enough", you're probably not bothering with a replacement eye model to start with. If you're going to go to that trouble for extra realism, it seems worth it to go all the way. Especially since eyes are such an important part of a portrait.

Finished It!

Got the Pranx Aristocrat outfit finished and uploaded!

Funny part is, this was supposed to be my project for this weekend. Given that it's about 8 AM Saturday... Yeah. (Trust me, finding something else to do will not be a problem.)

Took care of the crunchies!

After wandering away for two months, I picked up the Pranx Aristocrat outfit again. I figured out what was making the pants crunch at the crouch, and I'm afraid people who are counting on quads alone to fix that are going to be sorely disappointed. They needed a clean internal line to bend along. I do think quads would help with the blending along that line, however. Right now the poly count on the pants is stupidly high to ensure good bending. Smoother mesh lines would help with that at a lower polygon count.

Also picked up an awesome utility for making conforming clothes: Poser File Editor. It reduces two hours worth of work to two clicks. Instead of having to hand-edit the CR2 file, I just load up the base figure and use PFE to change the geometry. PFE automatically removes any body parts that aren't needed. Then tell it to convert to conformer and it removes all the old morphs, IK chains, and fixes the material list. I think the time it saved me on this outfit already paid for itself.

So, now all I have to do is make a texture set or two for this set and package it up. And of course make the dreaded promo image. ;)

Harder than it looks

I made my very first hand-cut jigsaw puzzle.

It's made from a greeting card from a set that someone got me on the false assumption that because I own cats, I adore all things cat related. Before I talk about the actual cutting, I have to point out that this card is HORRIBLE. Oh, you just glance at it and think "Oh, cute, climbing kitten playing with something. No, take a look. There are two mice baiting this naive little 6-week-old WITH A MOUSETRAP! When that thing snaps, there's gonna be broken bones at the very least, with a possible need for an amputation or the kitten may even have to be put to sleep. That's AWFUL! There's nothing cute about this.

That's why I used it for the first puzzle, because I knew I'd have mistakes in it. It started when I coated it with a triple-thick glaze. The glaze went all... weird. Kinda textured, like air bubbles on something. But only on half the card, so I couldn't pretend I meant to do that. I'm not sure if it was too humid or I did something wrong applying it. I'll try something different next time.

Cutting this was a lot harder than the experts make it look. I didn't do too bad for a first try, though. I started in the upper lefthand corner, and it shows. I started trying to do the color line technique Carter Johnson teaches, and promptly got my ass kicked. I just couldn't control the blade with that level of precision. A line along the top of the paper scroll doesn't actually interlock for a couple of inches as I was figuring that out. I also lost control of the blade while making a knob and ended up cutting a circle out instead; oops. That's one of two unintentional drop-outs; the other I missed where I wanted to join another piece and accidentally ended up trimming a couple of millimeters off instead.

Eventually I figured out that style wasn't doing it for me and instead switched to a squiggly knobby style instead. Now THAT was fun! I made a point to cut around rather than through some of the picture elements, but didn't stick slavishly to the color lines. This sort of squiggly style (executed with more skill) was popular back when most scroll saws were hand cut, but it fell out of favor as die-cut cardboard became the norm. I imagine the thin sections are hard on the dies. I have noticed more freeform commercial puzzles rather than just the traditional grid cut recently, though.

This puzzle took all three samples blades that Mike's Workshop sent me to try out. The first one dulled about halfway through. To be fair, it's cutting a long linear distance through a lot of blade-eating materials: paper, glue in both the plywood itself and gluing down the paper, acrylic finish. The second one I broke on my next-to-last piece. My first broken scroll saw blade ever, it's a milestone. ;) The last one did survive the last two pieces, I'm glad to say. I've ordered half a gross more; we'll see how long those last. I've decided to do the next ones with pictures from some Dover archives I have (public domain resources, yay!), so I've got three pics printed up on two different kinds of paper waiting for the ink to get good and really dry, then I'll glue them up, try coating them, and give it another go. :) When I'm better at it, I plan to also do some puzzles with some of my photographs and original art -- although because most of my digital art was sized for a screen instead of print, I'm not sure I currently have anything with a large enough resolution.

No, I don't have any idea what I'm going to do with them all once they're cut.

I LIKE it!

I need to start with some backstory, because I've meant to do about 3 other blog posts before this one and haven't found the time.

I own a scroll saw. I've done a little bit of scrolling, but it's been about two years (the danger of hobby-hopping like I do), and I didn't do enough of it to develop the muscle memory that usually enables my wanton hobby hopping. I've wanted to get back into it, realizing I would basically be starting from zero, so I started working my way through the first lessons in The Scroll Saw Workbook. So far I've made a bunch of sawdust and scrap wood, and these two little guys:

There's no real point to them except to learn how to work a scroll saw.

Well, the thing is, you can't just put a 4 foot board under the scroll saw and work effectively. And cutting a straight line through 6-8 inch wide wood on the scroll saw itself, just not gonna happen. I need a good way to cut blanks down to size.

Now I do have a circular saw, a relatively new edition to my repertoire. But a circular saw is extremely brute force and some of what I plan to cut is on 1/8" stock. I don't see that working. Even on the thicker stock, the circular saw works lovely up until the last foot of board, but then I can't clamp the wood effectively because the motor sticks out too far to the side and is too close to the foot plate to go over the clamps. A foot is still way too big to be working with when your design is only about 3 inches.

So, I found myself still needing an effective way to cut blanks down to size. After examining various options, I decided to try out a basic, inexpensive jigsaw for this task.

Ooh, where has this thing been all my life? I should have gotten one of these things 10 years ago. In fact, I think I've got a new go-to housewarming gift for creative people. Made a nice clean cut across the 3/4" pine/ash/aspen/something available from Lowes that I've been using. I was running the foot plate against a square clamped to the wood and no problems cutting a straight line that way. Don't know that I'd try it across several feet, but cross-cutting a six-inch board, that was fine.

The circular saw will still get plenty of use for bigger projects and 2X4s, but I think the jigsaw is going to be my go-to for cutting scrolling blanks and other small cuts. :)

Ah, that explains the whining

Not that whining in the Poserverse really needs explanation. It's just one of those inevitable unpleasantnesses like earthquakes or political parties.

First, though, a project pic:

I have seen much wailing and gnashing of teeth that Marvelous Designer puts out triangulated meshes. Now, triangulated meshes are simply lovely for dynamic clothes, but they're not ideal for conforming clothing. I've actually seen a few people state that it is "impossible" to make conforming clothing out of a triangulated mesh -- which is complete bullshit. In fact, in many cases it's not even noticeable unless you're looking at the wireframe.

Unfortunately, the pants here are not one of those cases. I'm getting some unfortunate crunching where the thigh meets the hip, and that's after changing the model itself to raise the crouch seam as much as I could and adjusting joint parameters to the best of my ability. I should probably increase the number of facets and try again, but I just don't have it in me to do that tonight and besides, it'll help but only so much. MD was expecting to have quad mesh output by the end of the month, but they've experience some delays in acquiring acceptable code and may even just code it themselves, which is going to push it out. (Although I don't mind too much; I rather have good than fast.) I may include a dynamic version of the pants whenever I release in order to get around this, at least for Poser users.

The other thing I've been doing this weekend is working on this little cutie:

When I saw Littlefox's new "Peaches" character, I had to have her. Then I had to justify her. I've been stalled out on a character portrait for a while, so I decided to make the character in furry form. :) This particular character is a dhampyr, so I made her a very pale bat. (Yeah, I know, bats don't have six limbs. These are the body parts I have available.)

I'm seriously thinking about concentrating more on the toon figures for a while. (I include Pranx with the toons.) This summer both Poser and DAZ Studio will be coming out with new versions that support weight mapping, plus Victoria 5 is coming out. I have no idea what that's going to do to the realistic figure market; I'm expecting quite a shake-up. But the toons will stay the toons. Even if Cookie and Chip get upgrading rigging, the body shapes will probably stay the same, so work I do now won't be wasted.

The Yarn Stash, My Nemesis

My yarn stash mocks me.

While I was at work, I got it in my head that I wanted to knit a hat. Like, today, right now. And I even knew what yarn I was going to use: a rogue skein of something purple-y that I got "just to try out". This right here is the point of a yarn stash, so when you want to cast on a project Right Now, you've got yarn Right There.

In theory, anyway. I got home, checked the pattern... Not enough yarn.

Not enough yarn in ANYTHING anywhere close to acceptable unless it's already pegged for another project. (Wait, the Icewine mittens, do they really use worsted? ::checks:: Dammit, they do. Whoa, at 7 1/2 stitches an inch! Those things are gonna be downright bulletproof!)

My stash, it mocks me.

I won't tell the fiber artists reading not to have a yarn stash, because if you have to be told, you won't listen. But I will tell you that single skeins are basically worthless. (I know you'll listen to me telling you to buy more yarn. ^_~) Most of them don't even have enough to make a hat. Don't bother coming home with less than 200 yards of anything, even if you want to "just try it out".

In the meantime, no hat for me. :(

Your Math, It Haz Fail

Son of a...

So, I decide to make these mittens. Pretty, aren't they? And they call for sportweight yarn. Most of my glove/mitten patterns call for fingering, which I do not have on hand except in black and white, but these call for sportweight. I have no less than 3 different colors of lovely free trade sportweight alpaca.

Now, the pattern does say finished size is 7.5" around the palm, and my hands are 6.75ish. But I can squeeze the gauge down to 30 stitches/4 inches, and then I'll get a nice dense winter-worthy mitten instead of "when it's chilly but still not cold enough".

Problem is, the pattern lies. Lies, I say!

Gauge is 27 stitches/4 inches. Stitch count is 64 stitches. 64 / 27 * 4 = 9.5 inches, NOT 7.5. Yes cables shrink up a bit, but surely not 25% on a pattern that open.

In order to make them fit my hands, I'd have to knit at 9.5 stitches per. I do socks with fingering at 7-8! I can't cram sportweight that tight!

Dammit. Guess that pattern gets bumped out of my queue. I have no idea what I'm going to take to knit night tomorrow now.

First Impressions - Finished and Live!

The First Impressions dresses are finished and uploaded!

The dresses work in both Poser and DAZ Studio, although Poser has additional features. (As you may or may not recall, DAZ Studio roundly kicked my ass.) The Victoria versions both support a painful (for me) number of full body morphs. Victoria 4's includes Aiko, Stephanie, Girl, and She-Freak, as well as some of their variations.

If this is your thing, you can download them from ShareCG at these links:

First Impressions Outfit for Cookie

First Impressions Outfit for Victoria 3

First Impressions Outfit for Victoria 4

Happy Rendering!

You know what this is?

This is a promo image. Yes, the now-infamous First Impressions Dress, which was all finished back in December except for packaging and promo images, might actually go live within our lifetimes!

I'm tempted to put all three of them into one download package and make people just delete what they don't want, but that would do mean things to download times. I might put the two Victorias together, however. Whichever way I go, I better get things packaged fast before I drop it again.

Also, a note: I am always annoyingly slow at CG, but having the cold from hell doesn't help matters. :P

I'm Dubious

I did go ahead and get the Noro Silk Garden for my arm warmers, because there really wasn't an alternative. The next closest option was 30% wool. Interestingly my LYS does have a self-patterning non-wool yarn in worsted weight, but that would have been too busy for my project.

BTW, my project:

Honestly, IMHO, this pattern is not all it could be. First, the reverse stockinette background is too wide. If I were designing it, I'd leave one purl stitch on each side only, not two. That's why I don't like ones done in solid colors. The Noro gradient helps add some interest; without it, there's just a huge expanse of ass-ugly reverse stockinette.

The designer also does not consistently twist her traveling stitches. I've changed that as I knit.

What makes me very dubious, though, is that this has the shortest thumb gusset in the world. Only 7 rows. Having made a mitten or two in my time, that seems waaaay too short. Normally I would work a plain row between each increase row to get more length. I'm sure I'm reading the pattern correctly, though, because I checked. Then I checked again. Then I checked a third time. Then I squinted at the sample photo and counted rows. Then I flipped to the other sample photo and counted rows again. Then I went to Ravelry and counted rows on some of those photos. Then just for good measure I double-checked the errata, and then clicked some more Ravelry photos. Because it really doesn't seem right.

I am really quite convinced that the pattern intentionally has the shortest thumb gusset in the world. I'm not convinced that's going to be comfortable, however. Actually, I'm wishing I'd put in a lifeline before starting the gusset, and I may frog back anyway and add the increase rounds. These are going to be so long on my fingers that I've got room to do it, although unfortunately it'll make the cuff even longer. Gosh, I hope this yarn'll frog. It's got an awful lot of mohair in it.

Mmm... Fresh baked bread

I haven't done a "creative stuff" post in a while, because the last couple of weeks I've been knitting dishcloths. Ooh, exciting. :P They're not even fancy dishcloths; they're just mitered squares with dishcloth cotton.

So instead I will talk about fresh baked bread. Mmmm... Whenever I make bread at home, I always wonder how they can call the stuff in the store "bread". It's just so different from real bread.

Now, although I like to cook, I'm also quite lazy, so I've been using this No Knead Bread recipe from Hillbilly Housewife. Don't worry about the "2 or 3 hours" in the title; your actual kitchen time will be maybe 15 minutes, and that's if you take your time mixing the flour in. Mostly it's just waiting for the yeast to do its thing, and you can go do other stuff while you wait. (In fact, I suggest it. Yeast isn't that interesting to watch.)

A couple of notes if you try the recipe:

1. It's not a very firm dough. Actually, it's kind of slimy. If you get something that with the consistency of silly putty, but sticky, that's fine. You haven't done anything wrong, and it'll still come out good. (If you get something more like normal bread dough, that's fine too. It's a forgiving recipe.)
2. Be sure to rinse the dough off everything before it hardens, or it's a bitch to get off. (BTW, the sink strainer counts as part of everything.)
3. Expect the towel you cover the rising bread with to get a little goopy. Sticky silly putty rising toward it.
4. If you put sesame seed on top, it's really good, but unlike store-bought bread, the sesame seeds actually impart a taste. Be prepared for that.

And of course as an extra perk, when your make bread, your whole house has that wonderful fresh bread smell. (Well, my little open-floorplan house does, anyway.)

What happens when you cross hamsters and jellybeans?

Hamsterbeans!

If I do another one, I'm going to get safety eyes or beads or some other way to give it shiny black eyes. Unless I make it as a cat toy, that is. (Horrors!) He's a quick knit, but very cute in person.

And I was on a roll today, so I finally got this little guy's eyes sewn on:

The sad part is that it took longer to put everything away than it did to sew on the eyes, but I'd put it off anyway. (Most googly eyes are glue-on, but I don't like using glue on fiber crafts. It's usually messy, the hold is often short-lived, and if I'm going to spend so much time on something, I prefer to use archival supplies. Even if it's a purple-and-pink octopus. :) )

Because I have so many hobbies and can go so long between putting one down and picking it up again, someone once asked me if I forget how to do them in the meantime. No, not usually, because most of them are muscle memory. For example, long before I was an avid knitter, I was an avid crocheter. I don't think I've picked up a hook (except maybe to rescue a dropped knit stitch) in 10 years before today, but lookit me go! Doin' tricks and everything.

The stripes are independently spiraled. The two colors never join horizontally anywhere; they only run on top of each other. (You can do this in circular knitting, too.) I also learned the magic ring start.

I have a metric buttload of pearl cotton that I got for crazy quilting, only to find I hate embroidering with it. It's just too thick; it's hard to pull through multiple layers of fabric. Now I want the box it's stored in for other stuff, so I was looking for a way to use it up and found a hacky sac footbag pattern I liked. I'm probably going to go up a hook size for the next one. This one came out kind of small and light. Mara (one of the cats) is playing with it right now, which probably wasn't such a good idea on my part. Mara's fine, but if Angel gets hold of it she'll chew it open and get plastic pellets everywhere, plus now they're going to be stealing it off my desk. Maybe I should take it to work as a stress ball.

Anyone else play Hacky Sac when you were a kid? I was never good at it per se, but I could do well enough that the guys would let me join in. I could usually successfully get it to someone else in the circle, even if I couldn't do tricks very well.

I don't think I ever showed this off

It's my wonderfully geeky Spiderman blanket! I finished it like a year ago, and even took the photo then, but just never got around to posting it. So w00t! There it is!

I shouldn't have done that.

I finished spinning the purple/pink silk I was working with. Yum, chock full of fibery goodness:

Of course, I'm planning to two-ply that, so I needed to get half of it onto another bobbin. Unfortunately, I don't have a bobbin winder, because I just haven't been able to bring myself to spend that much. I do have an eggbeater drill, but would you believe I do not have a single dowel rod that would correctly fit into either my cardboard storage or my old non-WooLee Winder wheel bobbins? All the dowels in this house, and yet not one is the right size.

So, I figured I have enough WW bobbins, I can use the WooLee Winder. I set up the wheel for Irish tension (brake band on the flyer), braked the flyer nice and hard so it wouldn't move (and thus wouldn't add or remove twist), put the drive band on the bobbin and started treadling.

This was a mistake, because no other method will ever be acceptable again. A bobbin winder with a travel screw! Why hasn't someone made this? It has to be what industry uses, or something similar. I want one! And if I can't have one, continuing to use the WooLee winder in this manner is extremely tempting. (However, since I only have 4 WW bobbins, I think I will at least go get a dowel that will fit into the cardboard bobbins, for storage purposes.)

Here's the divided singles, on the Kate and ready for plying:

I love the background in that pic because it's the most delightfully geeky thing.

Finally, I promised pictures of the Ishbel scarf. Here it is on the blocking wires:

I wasn't super fastidious when laying it because it's meant to be a functional winter scarf. It'll get crumpled almost immediately.

Made it with three feet to spare!

And as you can imagine, that had me pretty nervous as I was binding off the Ishbel scarf. Normally I'd do an Estonian bind-off on an item like this, but there was no way I would have had enough yarn for that. The bind-off the pattern called for came out a little tight, but I think it'll be OK once it's all blocked out. Alpaca grows.

I hope to get it washed and blocked tomorrow or Monday, so pictures then!

Whadaya wanna bet?

I've got three rows and the bind-off left on my Ishbel shawl, but I'm also swiftly approaching the end of my ball of yarn. What do you wanna bet I run out in the middle of the bind-off? :P

Need googly eyes

For this little guy:

I actually have googly eyes for him; I just haven't gotten around to sewing them on yet. Hopefully this wonderful glorious long weekend coming up.

This is one of Hansi Singh's designs. It's included in Amigurumi Knits, as well as available individually on Ravelry. Hansi's stand-alone patterns are really awesome; she goes into so much detail. You will never find professionally published patterns as good as Hansi's self-published ones. Professional publishers just won't dedicate that much space for that much detail on one pattern.

And I'm on the last section of my Ishbel scarf. (No pictures. Unblocked lace looks like ass.) It's going very quickly, so maybe I'll get it done before the cold weather is over, and can actually use it this year. It looks like I might end up with two full hanks of Cascade Alpaca Lace left over, too. It's only taken one (doubled) so far and I'm not done with that hank yet.

Quote of the Day:

"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live." ~Oscar Wilde

I might also add "demanding others provide you with the life you wish to live" to the "selfishness" definition, after some of my life experiences.