Odds and Ends

I found a great tutorial on making a light tent for photography, and thought it might be worth a try to improve my product photos on Etsy.  Took me a while to find the right box, but once I had all the materials gathered, it was only an afternoon's work to get it all put together, and I'm quite pleased with the results - especially as I had a few things to show off.

First off, I've been eying up these vintage buttons for some time now, and I finally took the opportunity to treat myself: I love the deep blue, and the little flower shape.  They're not very big, maybe 3/4 inch wide (about 17mm), but I'm picturing them on a nice fine-gauge cardigan, something kind of mori girl-looking.

I also finally managed to get everything together to make a pair of earrings I'd had planned out ever since I first saw the beadcaps.

They were very simple and fast to make - I took eight matching bead caps, spaced them out on head pins with two small beads that matched the metal in between each one, and put them on ear wires.  I'd originally thought about getting all fancy and chaining them together on wire for a bit more movement, but I think if I'd done that, they might have been too jingly. (which is fun if you're just wearing them for a little while, but eight hours at work might have been a bit much.)

I've also had a lot of things lately that have just turned up while cleaning, such as these gloves. They fit me just nicely, and look very film-noir.  I kind of want a nice 1940s-silhouette dress and one of those hats with the black netting veil to wear with them.  No idea *where* I'd wear them, but if I could get the whole outfit together, I think I might have to organize something myself.
No idea where they came from, or how old they might be.  I vaguely remember my mom tucking them in one of the many boxes of my stuff that have been trickling over from her storage areas, but beyond that, their history is as mysterious as the backstory I'm already writing for the character whose costume they're going to be part of.

Minor setbacks ahoy!

Though I've been trying to get ahead on some of my projects, it seems like there's a few that have actually gone backwards the last few days.

The sample gloves I'm knitting hit a bit of a snag when I went to do my decreases after the three inches of ribbing on size 3 (3.25 mm, for the metric) needles, and discovered that I already had the right number of stitches on the needles. Or rather, the very, very wrong number.  I'd somehow skipped ahead in the pattern and cast on the number of stitches I was supposed to have *after* my decreases.  So, that all got ripped out and will be started over if I have time tomorrow. I'm just glad I didn't do the same thing on the other glove.

The other setback has been the sock pattern I'm working on.  Everything was going great, and the sample sock fit me just nicely. Then I did the math, took a few measurements to double-check my estimates for sizing, and realized that there's a reason I can wear those awesome pointy stiletto boots...and, possibly, why I seem to fall over a lot. My feet were at least an inch and a half smaller around than anyone else's, but I'd been using my foot measurement as the large end of the womens' sizing.  Math has been adjusted, knitting has been frogged, yarn has been rewound, and the sock-knitting shall begin anew.