it's House Cup time again!!!

yay! i'm FINALLY done with my finals for school, and not a moment too soon because the Harry Potter Knitting and Crochet House Cup competition is on again ^.^

i didn't compete last term because i just had too many things going on in my life at the time, but now that school is done and i have nothing more to do this summer than look for a decent job i've finally got some time to participate again. the first month of competition actually fell on the month of all my finals, but somehow or another i actually managed to complete projects for it, so i thought i'd post a little picture montage for you all to see.

{Defense Against the Dark Arts homework}

for those of you who don't know what the HPKCHC is, it's a competition group on Ravelry where you're sorted into one of the 4 houses, just like in the Harry Potter books/movies. we have volunteer "Professors" who post fibre arts assignments in different magical disciplines and all the houses knit and crochet items to compete for points and the title of "House Cup Champions." I am a Ravenclaw, and there were some great assignments this first month. the one pictured above and below is my project for Defense Against the Dark Arts.

{AKA Clover Leaf Scarf}

i swear that the forces of darkness were actually working against me when i tried knitting this scarf, because i only managed to get halfway through the pattern before it disappeared from the Elann.com website! luckily, all my design experience really saved my butt, because i was able to reverse engineer the last half of it and it came out looking pretty good actually, considering this was my first time knitting on the bias.

{Dragon Scale Headband - made for Charms}

this next project is actually my very first project using my own handspun yarn! i was super excited about this one, some of you might recognize the yarn i used from my last post about spinning. it's one of the two yarns on my spindles that i posted a picture of. i modified a pattern for a dragonscale cuff because i wanted to use up all of the yarn i had spun and i think it came out looking pretty good. the silk in the yarn gives it a bit of a reptilian, scaley sheen in spots so it was the perfect yarn for this pattern.

{petite vache delaine - made for History of Magic}

and ofc, being the cow lover that i am, i couldn't resist the urge to make another tiny cow for one of my classes. this time i used a wool fingering weight yarn, in lieu of gold metallic embroidery thread i used for my original petite vache dorée. it also gave me a chance to test knit the pattern for this little cow (only took me about a year lol) so that i'll be able to post it in my pattern store on Ravelry soon. and this time around i even gave my little cow a tiny collar complete with bell!

{fire coming out of a monkey's head - Ancient Runes homework}

this project is probably my most abstract interpretation of an assignment so far. in Ancient Runes we were asked to create something inspired by a Norse Mythological Creature, or something inspired by Futhark Runes. i chose to do both, this little camera sock is inspired by the Norse Fire Giants, particularly Surtur, and by a Gorillaz song from which it takes it's name. the lyrics of the song describe a mountain called "Monkey" that spews forth fire to cleanse the world of the evils of greed and glutony, much like the Norse Fire Giants cleanse the world with fire after all the gods have died in the battle at Ragnarok.

the faire isle design is comprised almost entirely of the Futhark Rune "Kenaz" which looks very similar to one of these "<" this was also my first faire isle design (or maybe technically "faux" isle, since i used a variegated yarn to acheive the colorwork.) and it was very much needed because my poor camera has been sitting around my room naked and collecting dust since christmas.

{black + white =/= grey - a cowl for charms in June}

this last project is my first project for June classes, all the others i turned in in May. this is also my 2nd project using my own handspun yarn. i was lucky enough to get doubles of this sample in my April PhatFiber boxes, so i had enough yarn to make this cute lil cowl/cuff thingy. i used the pattern "Cashmere Cuff" by Jessica Vaughan, with a few modifications, and was able to use up exactly the 41.8 yards i had spun. i'm so glad that i've been able to use up the entire skein of my handspun yarns in the projects i've used them for. so much of my heart and soul goes into spinning them it would kill me to have just a few yards left over and nothing to do with them.

and speaking of handspun...

{colorchanging handspun - turquoise to black}

here is my latest spinning FO, a colorchanging merino wool yarn, single ply, and about fingering to sport/DK weight. this is the largest amount of yarn i've ever spun in a single skein and i'm quite proud of it. i even got the colors to distribute pretty evenly so there it's almost equal parts turquoise, black, and a mix of the two. i'll be using this loveliness to knit a Vertex shawl for the KAL in the PhatFiber group.

i think i might actually be starting to like spinning almost more than knitting! i say almost because knitting WITH yarn i've spun is definItely more fulfilling than just spinning or knitting with store bought yarn. i can't wait to see how this latest colorchanging yarn is going to knit up!

and on that note, i'm outta here for the night. i hope everyone is having a great beginning to their summer, and getting plenty of crafting time in. after all, if we didn't craft, we'd probably all go crazy right?

ttfn

~Carla