Extra Large Cable

I used my roving yarn and size 35 needles to make a scarf with an extra large cable. I wanted it to be a lot wider, but with only 4 balls of roving, I didn't have enough to make it as cool as these.

A Winter of Knitting

Since my boyfriend works every night until 11 pm, I have a lot of time by myself, so I've been doing tons of knitting lately. Here are some of my recently completed projects.

A scarf made from beautiful orange and gold yarn that was handspun in Nepal by local women.

Finally, one year later, a star hat for my friend in Chile. I started this while in Istanbul, but then became sidetracked by other things.

This hat was a special request- she wants a bird sewn onto the side, but I'm stuck figuring out how to make that look good. So this is the finished version for now.

I'm working on a roving cabled scarf and soon will begin my first Moebius scarf. A busy winter of knitting is ahead!

Crazy About Decoupage!

I recently became obsessed with decoupage. I had done exactly one decoupage project back in 2008- a cardboard money bank covered in Berber pictures for Aissa to save money for a trip back to Algeria, but beyond that, I didn't do much with decoupage, even though I had lots of ideas.

Well, one day at work I became crazy about the idea of starting again. After work I stopped at Utrect, an art store, looking for Mod Podge. They didn't have that, so I got Yes! Paste, a similar kind of glue that the salesman recommended. Aissa has brought home a few cigar boxes from work for me, and I decided that they would be the perfect things to start decorating. I had some MIR travel brochures with tons of pictures of Central Asia, so I cut out the best ones and glued them on. My final goal is to put a handle and a clasp on it to make a purse, but I haven't gotten past the gluing stage (Yes! Paste dries very slowly, so I can only do one top coat every 24 hours). Here are pictures of it so far.

 I then decided to keep going. I inherited an IKEA side table from Aissa's old roommate, and I bought a vintage National Geographic map of Asia a few months ago, and I thought that they belong together. So I started a map table. I still have to do a top coat and I want to cover the insides of the legs with maps, but here is a table that is now a million times cooler than it was this morning before I started.

There seems to be an endless stream of ideas in my head of things I can decoupage - picture frames, necklace pendants, more cigar boxes, dresser drawers, switch plates, lamp shades, wooden bowls... good thing it's winter and I have evenings free to turn all these ideas into reality! Pretty soon my house will completely covered in maps.