Some weeks back, I had mentioned wanting to read "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell." Jennifer emailed me offering me her copy - and I offered a book in swap. She sent me her address, I got busy, and promptly forgot the whole thing :(

Well, today I came home from helping at the Campus Environmental Club garage sale (theme: don't dump it, donate it [referring to unwanted clothes, etc.]) And there was a box on my doorstep! With the book in it! And a bar of chocolate (which miraculously did NOT melt in transit). And a pen with a little octopus on it that lights up when you write which is just too cute. And some sticky notes.

So, Jennifer, your package with the book is going out MONDAY. Sorry 'bout that.

The garage sale was okay. I worked the cash table for a while because apparently I and the other faculty sponsor who were there were the only people who knew how to "count back" change.

I guess the club brought in some money; I think we took in about $50 in the two hours I worked.

I did get something out of it - I donated pizzas and pop at lunchtime (they wanted to pay me but I refused; it's hard enough to make any money off of a yard sale). But I remarked to the other faculty sponsor (who knows I "make stuff") that if there were any unsold 100% wool sweaters, I'd take them and felt them because I have a felted-bag pattern made from an old sweater. And she found me two - a dark green Old Navy sweater and a really cute American Eagle sweater that had a wide stripe across the midsection and sleeves. They were already slightly felted - she said she doubted they'd sell because of that - apparently the person who donated them washed them in the machine. I took them home and ran them through another cycle - mainly because the Old Navy sweater had some telltale holes and I thought it best to "disinfect" them with hot water and soap. They're drying now; they felted more.

I'm going to do a bag with the stripey one; it will make a cute small (large purse-sized) bag that will go well with jeans. But the other one will become something else.

About 10 years ago, I was in Providence, RI for the ESA meetings (I think it was the '96 meetings). My mom was with me so we took a day and walked all over the place, went shopping around RISD in some of the fun little arty stores. One of them was selling stuffed "critters" (like friendly monsters) that the artist had made from reclaimed felted sweaters.

And I thought that was a cool idea. When I was a kid, I made a lot of my stuffed toys and many of them had that kind of almost-casual, ad-hoc style ethos where you more or less design on the fly. And they didn't have to resemble any particular animal.

And I filed that idea away for the future. But never did it, because the old wool sweaters that no one wore any more in my family were still in good shape, and it seemed almost sinful to turn them into stuffed toys when we could donate them to the Salvation Army or somewhere where someone without a warm sweater could get a good-looking, new-like, warm sweater for cheap or free.

But these sweaters today were too trashed for someone to want to wear them, so I don't feel guilty cutting them up for a critter.

And I've already sketched out a design.


(note the funny little attributes I've added. I remember seeing a pattern for a toy somewhere where the designer gave it big ears so it would "be a good listener.")

There are certain elements of crittertude (when you're not trying to match a particular breed or species) that appeal to me - big donkey/mule deer ears, and long sort of floppy necks, and those big heavy lidded eyes like giraffes have. And long tails.

Originally I planned the critter to be closest to genus Giraffe, but since the sweaters I have are green - well, she will be a giraffe-like friendly dragon. (I liked friendly dragons when I was a kid; I read "The Reluctant Dragon" many times and had a couple of toy dragons I made).

I've not decided on whether to give her wings or not. The idea kind of appeals to me but any wings she had would probably be largely vestigial and not, if she were a real critter, able to actually lift her body. I also want to maybe get some giant rick-rack (I wonder, does wal mart sell it? I don't want to drive an hour's round trip for some crazy rick rack) to make the "ridge" or "spines" down her back. (If I were very ambitious I'd crochet or knit an edging and sew it on there, but meh. Now that I've thought of rick rack, I want rick rack.)

I really don't know where this burst of creativity is coming from - first the Barley Sugar cable socks*, then the pi hat, then this - if it's because it's fall, or if it's because I'm freeing myself again to Work Like There's No One in the Room (to misquote a supposedly "old Irish proverb" that I doubt is either very old or very Irish). Or maybe it's just a cyclic thing - the old neurotransmitters get lined up right again, and I'm good to go on things - but whatever it is, it makes me happy.

Perhaps it may be a bit of my discovery that my sketches and drawings are photographable, and thus able to be shared here - which means I can talk about my creative process.

I also have another geeky-knitting idea - I talked about this ages ago but am thinking of finally putting it into practice - a Quark scarf. You know how they talk about quarks having "color" (I think it's red, green, and blue, but I'll have to look that up). Well, it's not LITERAL color, it's a convenient fiction to tell them apart. But I've envisioned a scarf, knit of black wool, with random bobbles - or a stranded pattern - or something - of red, green, and blue to represent the quarks. And I can totally see it done out of the different colors of 1824 Wool - the sort of greyed-down colors they have. So my next yarn purchase may be the 1824 Wool for that - except I have to figure out how I want to do the "quarks" - whether to do them as little intarsia boxes, or do them as bobbles (that was my original idea) or stripes or what.

(*which, yes, I'm going to try to finish the first one this weekend. I have to dig them out though from the place where I stashed them when I cleaned house earlier this week prior to the furnace guys coming in).