Damn, it’s dusty here.

It feels a little bit weird to break a two-year silence. I’ve been sewing and knitting in the wilds beyond the internet, and it felt great. But the urge to talk shop to strangers on the web dies hard. Today I posted my first project entry on Burdastyle and the Sew Weekly Sewing Circle, and it just felt wrong to let the occasion go unmarked on my own blog.

So here it is: A Project.

When I bought my ukulele last year, I had to bike home in the rain with it tucked under my arm in a gigantic cardboard guitar box. Gig bags for pineapple-body ukuleles are usually not stocked by music stores, and in general they are as ugly as a corrugated steel shipping container.

Just in time for Sew Weekly’s “Go Patternless!” challenge, here’s the gig bag I made for my ukulele. I made it exactly the way you’d expect: I traced the uke, drew a pattern, and then flew by the seat of my pants. Apparently the seat of my pants is covered in aqua running stitch embroidery and squirrel-and-tree print shower curtains. Who knew. Well, you knew. I mean, if you know where to find this blog, you’re used to this kind of egregiousness by now.

So I’m a lousy photographer, but in real life I’m way happy with how this came out. It’s no longer scary to bike around town with my ukulele. I think I’m going to reprise the general corduroy/squirrel print/aqua stitching theme on a messenger bag soon. My only misgiving is that this bag might be evidence that I have a green corduroy problem. See Figure 174: I am the Corduroy Cowboy.

I’m quite likely to be talking to myself, since I told a total of one human being that I was going to do this today. (Hi, Nina.) I’ve been wanting to rekindle my sordid affair with craftblogging for a while, but this has always been a knitting site. It’s got knitting in the name. Nowadays I do as much sewing as knitting, and quite frankly, what I’ve been sewing is far more interesting than what I’ve been knitting. Please look at Figure 174. The project on the left is called the High Octane Hootenanny dress. The projects on the right are called socks. I’ve always hated it when knitters dilute their blogs with posts about their other domestic pursuits– “F*** your stupid muffin recipe” is something I have shouted aloud in my own house at a prominent designer’s blog before– so I’m not sure that I’m ready to pull that sort of bait-and-switch over here. Maybe, though, this is the perfect time to change gears. Nobody will notice. Mwahahaha.