Inspiration

I’ve been trying my best to create more balance between my fiber habit and my other responsibilities. I have been trying to finish projects before more get started, tend to my yarn stash and craft area to keep it manageable and at least be aware of how much time I spend doing what.

Having said that, Ravelry is really not helping. 🙂 I’m sure many of you know about it already, but for the non-fiber-frenetic among you, it is an online community of fiber folks that is really revolutionizing the way people connect on-line. It has something for every knitter and crocheter. It starts with a place for each user to collect finished projects and include details like yarn choice, needle or hook size and overall happiness with the project. From there your project is in a huge database that you can browse to see any other users finished product, work in progress, or any comments they have in general. You can browse the database of patterns according to the type of item you’d like to make, the yarn you have, or search by pattern name. If you don’t have the yarn you want for the project, Ravelry will tell you where the local yarn shops that carry the yarn are and also list some on-line sources.

And if all that weren’t enough to spend a lot of time on the computer, they also have groups. Any user can form or join any group and there are TONS of them. I find myself looking at 2 or 3 pages of new groups every week just to see if there is one I might be interested in joining. And even then I miss some good ones.

Some dedicated users have formed a group called “This week in Ravelry” which puts out a newsletter/forum just to make people aware of what other people are doing with Ravelry. This is where I found a description of a group called “Picto Create“. This group has a great concept. Every Monday, a photograph is posted. The members of the group then use that photo as inspiration for creating something fiber related. I just thought I would browse, but when I saw the photo, I just had to make something.

Here is this week’s photo.

and here is my inspired work:

Claude the Barrel Cactus

Edit: I’ve written the crochet pattern up in table form. For now it can be found here as a spreadsheet.

ETA: Use this pattern for personal enjoyment only, please do not sell your work or claim the pattern as your own.

Made with leftover Lion Brand Fun Fur and Yarn Bee Icelandic Jewels, this guy took 3 hours to make. Perfect for someone like me, who can’t keep a cactus alive, Claude will join the other crazy toys until he finds a better home.

As you can see, a 3 hour diversion brought on by an exploration of Ravelry is a fairly regular occurrence. If you haven’t found it already, you’ve been warned.

Now to start picking up the house…