The One Skein Project For Me

I'm a little late in posting, but I did receive a very nice One Skein project from my secret pal, who is no longer secret. Her name is Alisa, and she made me this cute purse with great yarn and a great lining! She lives in Portland, OR, and owns this cool local artists' shop called Zeldaloo Studios. She was a great Secret Pal!

Before and After

Since I've been editing and playing around with photos so much lately, my mom asked me to fix her 36-year old wedding dress photo. It was a photo that had been touched up with paint. That was the "in" thing back then apparently. I'm not sure what it looked like originally, but after 30-plus years, my mom's lips and cheeks were white and her hair was gray. The photo also had some scratches on it. She wanted me to use some photo pens to touch up the original photo and then scan it in so it could be enlarged.
Well, I didn't want to risk damaging the original photo so I scanned it in and went to work with it in Photoshop Elements. After many iterations of using the clone tool, then the paintbrush and magic extractor, I had a digital copy of my mom's wedding dress photo that actually looked like her and had normal colors. You can see the results below.

Final One Skein Project

Well, I've finally finished my pal Mary's project! Since she makes miniature items for fashion dolls, I decided to make a sweater and shawl for one of her fashion dolls. I used to collect Barbie, Gene, and other fashion dolls, and still have a collection of them, so I had models to work with. I decided to knit for a Gene doll using a pattern in a fashion doll makeovers book I have. Well the pattern was quite poorly written. It gave no gauge, no schematic, and no measurements. To make matters worse, the Elann Peruvian Baby Silk yarn I used had so many plies in it that I regularly missed catching them all while knitting. The needles I used were so slick that they frequently slid out of the loops. Despite all these hardships I managed to make the sweater anyway, although it varies quite a bit from the original design. I then crocheted a shawl out of the same yarn using a Bernat pattern that I miniaturized. That was a piece of cake. I couldn't believe how quickly that crocheted up! After getting the hang of the lace pattern, I decided to add little sleeves to the sweater to tie it to the shawl. The sleeves were no problem, either. The Baby Silk is definitely a yarn more suited for a crochet hook than a knitting needle in my opinion!
Mary also has been knitting hats for babies and donating them, so I wanted to make her a hat to include with her next donation. I used Lily Sugar 'n' Cream cotton and this MagKnits pattern by Erssie Major as a guide. I like how the hat turned out, but would do a few things differently the next time around. The seaming isn't the greatest, but hopefully it will keep some baby's head warm just the same!
I also included a slew of pattern books in this final package. Mary loves them! I got some free pattern books when I went to the Yarn Factory Outlet in Listowel, Ontario last month, and got extra for her. I also included some yarn for Mary to make more hats with and another skein of Matrix, since she loved the first ball I sent her so much! I got it as a mill end, but it's the same quality as the balls in the stores.
I'll be shipping this package out tomorrow when I cross the border. I can't wait for Mary to get it!