Angel-Thing

Way back in December my friend Nancy gifted me with this cute little doll. I loved her grumpy little face and her wild hair but her white body was really not exciting. So the other day I got out my new Golden fluid acrylic paints (quinicridone nickel/azo gold, q. burnt orange and q. green-gold) and my GAC900 fabric medium and mixed up some (say, equal parts of each paint and medium) and diluted with water. I put a shower-cap on Angel-Thing (plastic wrap) to keep her hair dry and out of the way and painted her all over. I tried to keep her face lighter and was hoping that Nancy hadn't used something water soluble for her features! Luckily they didn't run. When she dried I used some Pebeo glitter gold wash over both sides of her wings for some sparkle. I'm hoping it won't interfere with beading but we'll see when I start. I ironed her wings to set the paint and glitter and that made them a bit stiffer too which is good. (But now my ironing board has gold glitter. The stuff is insidious!) As you might guess I don't plan to cover her all up, but just give her a dusting of beads, particularly on her wings. She has picked out her beads in compatible colours and we’re all ready to get started. Eventually.

I also finished the Africa socks. I didn’t divide the 100g ball of yarn into very equal parts so I had to join in the leftovers from one sock to the foot of the second sock so I could finish. Luckily I was able to match the patterns. Here they are on the happy recipient:


He already wants me to make more pairs. He only has 4 at the moment and he’s starting to like them better than cotton or nylon socks. Uh-oh. I’ve created another sock monster! He seems not to care if they’re quite wild so at least I don’t have to make a lot of boring and hard-to-see plain black socks for him. I’m running out of room in my own sock drawer anyway, so it’s ok if I make a bunch more for somebody else for a change. I’m still working on the Pomatomus and the Sea Socks for me anyhow. I have to have a plain pair going at all times, no matter what else is on the needles!

While I was playing with Pattern Maker Pro, I’ve somewhat down-sized the Little Squares jacket pattern (from Sally Melville’s Colour book) and re-worked it for my handspun and commercial ribbon yarn combo. It’s an oversized garment but the sleeves especially would be just huge on my short little arms. I graphed the whole thing out so that I could see at a glance where the shaping goes. The fabric is so stretchy lengthwise that I have to work by counting the ribbon rows instead of using a ruler or measuring tape anyhow. I’ve spun up a full bobbin of the yarn so I can carry on knitting the second front band. It should last me until I get some more spun. I’ve got lots of fibre so I can just keep spinning until I’m done knitting. I have no idea how much it will take, but since it’s knit on larger needles than I would normally use with this fingering-sized yarn (Denise US size 9/5.2mm), it shouldn’t be all that much by weight. More pictures when there's more to see.