Flowers! Two of 'em!

Today is Girl Scout Day and Plant a Flower Day, so here are some patterns for you:

-First, the Crochet Pattern Central Flowers section. There's a ton of flowers in there!

-Next, a fork flower tutorial from Crochet Garden. It says she learned how to make these in Girl Scouts, so it's doubly fitting!

Yeah, that's it. I know, lame.

Anyways, I did some work on the tree skirt last night (gasp!) and I got two and a half rows done. That's right, the row chart now looks like this:

1-274

2-285

3-296

4-307

5-318

6-329

7-340

8-351

9-362

10-373

11-384

12-395

13-406

14-417

15-428

16-439

17-450

18-461

19-472

20-483

21-494

22-505

23-516

24-527

I am now only (right, only) seven rows behind schedule. Oh boy!

And my tree skirt looks like this:

(OK, I could seriously get away with using the same picture over and over again.)

Nothing much happening with the baby blanket (shocker) but I might pull it out sometime this week. Maybe. No promises!  Have a nice day, and plant some flowers!

Popcorn!! POP!

Today, we celebrate Popcorn Lover's Day. I love popcorn! And, unlike the kind you get at the movies, everything featured here is zero-calories, and you can enjoy it with braces!

CROCHET
-First, a picture tutorial for popcorn stitch on About Crochet.
-MomsLoveofCrochet brings us a lovely popcorn garland, with which you could get ahead on your holiday crafting!
-On Bean Sprout Creations, there is a cute little pattern for popcorn and pretzels. This would make a perfect gift-tuck a movie ticket in the popcorn and give it to your favorite movie lover!

KNIT
-A Ravelry pattern for popcorn, similar to the crochet one above.
-Another picture tutorial for popcorn stitch, this time on About Knit.
-A popcorn stitch shawl form Red Heart. Check out that fringe!

OK, so I really didn't get much done last night, but I did put the baby blanket and the tree skirt in time-out temporarily, so I wouldn't feel guilty, looking at them all the time. (They were practically calling my name!) I did start a Secret Project, but I shouldn't get much done on that today either. Hopefully, tomorrow's post will be a little more interesting!

Crown Roast of Pork Day? How about some music?

I don't get it either.... Go read about it here. Or don't. I don't really care. How about instead, let's have some music?

First, let's have some musical instruments.

-Here's a tuba or baritone dishcloth from Designs by Emily. It costs $1.79, but it's so cute it's worth it!
-She also has a bunch of other music dishcloths. They are super cute, go check them out!

Now, some wearables:

-These adorable music wristwarmers from something I can't spell or say. Check them out, I am definitely making these!
-There's also these wristwarmers, where it looks like the design was made with beads.
-A piano keys scarf, one to knit, and one to crochet. (I don't think the designers were collaborating, I just wanted to post both. There are a lot of other versions out there, too!)
-To go with the scarves, here is a piano keys hat from Ravelry. (You have to join to see it, I think, so I don't know what the pattern looks like.)
-And finally, an illusion scarf pattern. I'm not sure I would want to commit to that, because there's no picture and illusion knitting sounds like a pain, but maybe someone out there will!

Now, for the actual post (please excuse any random words scattered in here, I'm singing while I write this. Not the best idea!) This post will only have sewing pictures. Sorry, but I haven't been able to sit down and knit (because of the pain of seeing my diminishing yarn ball) or crochet (because it's so darn big) but hopefully I'll do some later tonight.

This is a little bag I made from a kind of cowl thingy that came with a top. I was originally going to make a dress with it (It came folded and stitched into a little tube, but it came apart kind of huge!) but that obviously did not. I was just about to eat it out of frustration, but then I realized my stomach would like it better if I just moved on. So it's been in time-out for about a month, and I took yesterday to fix it. It turned out pretty well, now I just have to see if the straps hold up with a real load.

I thought I had posted a picture of this ages ago, but looking back, I haven't yet! I made this right after New Years, when I took my new Kindle (Christmas present!) to a friend's house, and kept having to pick it up to save it. (OK, that made literally no sense.) The point is, I wanted a case! So I made one! This is another quilted reversible fabric, with a really cool pattern. The inside is this pale yellow with little blue flowers. The flap is velcroed, and it has survived a lot of openings. I love it!

And finally, a fortune cookie fail. If you can't read that, it says, "Actions speak louder than talks." No joke. My whole family was laughing about that last week!

Have a nice evening (or whatever it is while you read this) and I'll see you tomorrow with post #50 (gasp!) and some popcorn!

Teeth!

Today is National Dentist Day. In honor of it, I have lots of toothy patterns!

• First, we have the Tiny Tooth crochet pattern from Knitting Pony.
• Next, the Mervin the Molar tooth fairy pillow from The Kat's Scratch Pad.
• Here's the Wisdom Tooth softie to sew from Crafty Llama

Enjoy the teeth, and give some love to your dentist if you see them today!


Moving right along, I have some news for my tree skirt. Despite my demoralizing math yesterday, I am down to 9,053 stitches. That's right, here's where I now stand:

1-274

2-285

3-296

4-307

5-318

6-329

7-340

8-351

9-362

10-373

11-384

12-395

13-406

14-417

15-428

16-439

17-450

18-461

19-472

20-483

21-494

22-505

23-516

24-527

It makes me happy to see those two little lines that represent almost 600 stitches. (I was also pleased to discover the line tool. I had seen it on other blogs, and now I get to use it myself? Goody!)

My plan is to have this done by the last week of March, Easter Monday at the very latest. Now, 26 days may not seem like much time to do 9,053 stitches, but I have a plan! I am trying to do a row a day. (I wrote yesterday's post on Sunday, and this post on Monday, so by the time you read this, I might have two more rows done!)

 I realize that that will be almost impossible after about Row 13, but I may keep working on it after the day's minimum has been reached. See, it will be a minimum crocheted, not a maximum. That way, I could end up with three weeks to do the long rows instead of two! (And no, that probably won't happen, but I can dream, right?) I'm also loving how quickly this is eats the yarn... quite the opposite 

About the blanket..... I've done three of the rows on the fifth stripe. I'm definitely not going to make it. There! I said it! Now I just have to accept it and go buy more yarn.....

And, because there aren't any pictures, I give you:

Yummy whole cranberry sauce from a few years ago!

Math! Oh no!

For the holiday segment, today we will be celebrating March as National Peanut Month.

First, a picture of some peanuts:

Links!

Here is a link from Yarn Pixie for a free crochet pattern

A $4.00 pattern on Ravelry that includes an elephant

And finally, an Etsy pattern for a pea and peanut baby.

And more excitingly, the second week of March is Crochet week!! March is great!

So with that in mind, I bring you.... tree skirt math! I did some measuring on my tree skirt. It looks like it takes about three rows to gain an inch. I need about 8 more inches, which would be 24 more rows. Right now, one row with no increases would be about 263 stitches. However, I will be increasing every 23 stitches. Out comes the calculator, and I see I will be increasing 11 times, for a total of 274 stitches on my next row. Then I will increase another 11 times, for 285 stitches, and if I keep going with that I will find out that my final row (hopefully) will be a whopping 527 stitches!! It's going to take me forever, because those 24 rows add up to 9,612 stitches. That is ridiculous! All I could think the whole time I was punching in numbers was that I was so glad I hadn't done in this is single crochet!

1-274

2-285

3-296

4-307

5-318

6-329

7-340

8-351

9-362

10-373

11-384

12-395

13-406

14-417

15-428

16-439

17-450

18-461

19-472

20-483

21-494

22-505

23-516

24-527

For my baby blanket, I'm not going to make it. I'm on the fourth stripe, and I just don't see it getting done with the amount of yarn I have left. This bothers me! A lot! I do have another skein of yarn that looks perfect from a distance, but looking on the website I can tell that there is a big difference. The one I have been using is called "Light Blue," and the other one (which, of course, is a full skein and plenty of yarn) is "Spa Blue." Grrr!

So, on the gift-giving front, I haven't started anything off my spreadsheet (this stuff excluded). I have a lot of dishcloths I want to make, but I haven't had a chance to get some good, dishcloth cotton. I'm considering using yarn I have, and turning them into decorative pillows, but I'll have to see if I can get to Michael's soon, especially because I'm probably going to need more yarn for the baby blanket. This has been a pretty long post, so I'm going to stop rambling now. Have a nice day!

Our month!!!!

Wow! We have our own month! March is...... (drum roll please) National Craft Month!!!! 

It is also Irish American Month, Music in Our Schools Month, National Frozen Food Month, National Irish American Heritage Month, National Nutrition Month, National Peanut Month, National Women's History Month, Red Cross Month, and Social Workers Month. So that means, if you are a female social worker* of Irish descent that volunteers with the Red Cross, eats frozen food, peanuts, and healthy stuff, and enjoys music..... Feel special!


*"female" and "social worker" are supposed to be two separate bold things


So the point of all that was, I'm thinking about adding a new feature to my blog. The first time I post each month, I'll have a list of things that month is. (I probably won't do the If you are...... because that gave me a headache!) Then, during the month, I will try to tie my post in to one of those things. This could be with pictures, words, links, or just about anything. I may also use the specific day. (For example, yesterday was Peach Blossom Day, among other things.) It will be weird, it will be wacky, and it probably won't work, but that's just how I am!


We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog post.




I was bad. I was very, very bad. I started the last square of my blanket! Or maybe that's good. But I barely did anything on the tree skirt before abandoning it! Here it is, two rows into stripe 3 of 15:

I worked on it for less than an hour last night, so it may be done by this time next week. I say that hesitantly, because this week will be a little hectic.

This is all the yarn I have left. I really hope it's enough, because this whole thing was supposed to be a stashbusting project, and buying more yarn for it might make me cry. Or be grouchy for a while, depending on how close I was. Hopefully, it won't come to that.

This is my entry for the art contest, and it is nowhere near done. I'm not sure when the entry is due, i.e. it being on the floor and easy to pick up and start anytime.

I've been rambling for a while, so here is a reward for making it all the way to the end of this post:

Mutant tomato!!!!!

Hello? Anyone there?

Despite my plan to post daily, I missed this week. In my defense, I was out of the house a lot this week, and I actually didn't have that much to post anyway. Just so this post has a picture:

Yep, it's the same picture as last time, mostly because I've done all of two rows. Not exactly inspiring progress. 

However, I did start something new, that I'm planning on entering in an art contest. (operative word being planning, because if I don't like it, it doesn't get entered.) Basically, I'm chaining a long chain and wrapping it around a plastic ball, occasionally putting some tape in there so it doesn't fall off. It should end up as a ball of yarn with some needles, but I have no idea how to make said needles. I might post some pictures of it later, but I took them with the memory card not in (oops!) and I don't remember how to get it off the camera without it. 

Have a nice day!

Ooh.. Look! I finished a piece!

OK, I was supposed to post yesterday, but I wasn't in the house yesterday long enough to do most of my normal things, let alone post! So here's Monday and Tuesday combined:

Hmmmm, empty needles? Could this mean....

Yes!!! The first blue square is done and attached to the other finished squares!! I am now 3/4 done with this project!

This is a close-up of my version of mattress stitch: it is only loosely related, but it works, and you can't really see it. Now I just have to make the last piece, but I'm so sick of this blanket I haven't even cast on yet!

Instead, I've been working on this, and since I finished the blanket I've done about two rows of HDC, which for some reason seems to take more than twice as long as single crochet. The radius of it (that's from the center to any point around the edge) is almost ten inches, so I'm probably just over halfway done. It would make it so much more interesting if there were color changes, or some kind of picture, but that won't happen for two reasons. First, my mom wants it all done in plain white, with no patterns, and second, I don't know how to crochet a picture! (I tried looking at filet crochet, but it gave me a headache!)

So for now, I am working on the tree skirt, and once I get completely bored with that, I'll switch back to the blanket. I would like to get at least one of them done by Easter........

Cat, Candy Corn, Scrap Yarn

If you're one of those people that stays up until 3 in the morning everyday or a week before Christmas to get everything done, you are probably not going to be able to identify with this: I already made a list of presents for everyone on my list except my dad, my brother, and my uncle (see a pattern? I'm not great at picking out presents for guys) that goes from my best friend's birthday on March 25 to Christmas (I think you know when that is). Here are some of the things I made for my friend:

She loves cats, so I made her another (scroll down a lot) little kitty from this pattern.

She is also obsessed with candy corn, so I made her this little doodad from a Lion Brand pattern which I can't find right now.

 So I put the cat and the candy corn into one of the patchwork pouches, along with a yellow rose hairtie, and that's her present!

This is a picture of the yarn that is in my scrap bag. Hopefully some brilliant inspiration will come to me on how to use some of it!

Little Bee and Baby Blanket

Try saying that five times fast... heh heh heh.

This is a little bee I made for my friend. It took me almost exactly 1.5 hours, which is pretty good for something this cute! I used this pattern from Yellow Pink and Sparkly. I did exactly what it said, except for the wings, which I made a little smaller. They seemed like they were getting a little big for my taste, so I stopped after thirteen single crochets in round three.

side view

love the wings!

Wow! This baby blanket is working up really fast! This morning I had two, maybe three stripes, and now I have 8.5! I'm really happy, because I still have another square and the assembly to do. 

And now, some thoughts about acrylic yarn. More than one blog I've been to has described acrylic yarn as ugly or scratchy, or referred to it in a negative way (i.e. I had to resort to using acrylic yarn). I don't really understand why! Every yarn is different, and the yarn I made these socks out of was the exact some fiber content (100% acrylic) as the two projects above, but they are nothing alike! I don't think it's good to put labels on things and make generalizations, because even two different colors of the exact same yarn felt different to me. The yellow in the bee and the baby blankets are both Red Heart Super Saver. The yellow felt a little scratchy running through my fingers, but the blue was super soft, especially after being knit up. My point is (yes, I have one) don't be a yarn snob! Everyone has their own personal preference, and not all yarns are created equal. (Wait, I think I said that wrong..... Oh well!)

Rant over! Have a nice rest of your day!

Irish Cable Hat

This is the finished hat post! After a long, long, period of knitting, the Irish Cable Hat from Folk Hats by Vicki Square.

First, more strip progress:

3:30ish

4:30? Maybe?

5:30

And here we go......

**

Ta da!!!!!!! I love it, but there are two problems. First, the braid is too thick, so it sticks out funny near my forehead, and it's kind of tight. Second, I don't look good in hats! Maybe before my haircut it would have looked OK, but now the little bit of hair that sticks out from under it looks just plain odd. 

A top view

The little bits of yarn I had left. I think I'll make the Arrowhead Lace Headband from Persnickety Knitter with it.

I used most of a skein of Red Heart Super Saver in Aruba Sea. I can't wait to finish my baby blankets, then get started on a new project! 

**Special thanks to my yarn bucket for modeling it!

Happy Presidents' Day!

I hope everyone is enjoying their weekend, and that you have today off to relax!

I wanted to show you the progress on my seed stitch strip. Here it is at about 1:00 today:

 It's about 7 inches long.

There is a point about three inches in that doesn't look right and I think I may have done a little ribbing in there, but I am not ripping back for a third time for that! It will quite likely end up hidden in the braid anyway.

I'm hoping that before tonight, I'll be done with it and I can start assembly, but my wrists are starting to hurt, so I might have to switch to the baby blankets or the tree skirt. If I finish, I might have to post again tonight, but I wouldn't hold your breath!

Look! I'm eliminating some UFOs!

For all of you conspiracy theorists that just got really excited, no. I'm not talking about alien spacecrafts, I'm talking about UnFinished Objects! (At least I think that's what it stands for....) I have the rest of the jewelry pictures, some hat progress, and something you haven't seen for a long time!

The bracelets are all made with elastic thread, so they are pretty casual. I like the top two the best, because they are longer (not sure how that worked out between the two on the left, because they're identical) and the thread doesn't show. The necklace is double stranded, and I got a lot of compliments when I wore it! Only one person realized I had made it, so I'd say that's a score!

I have just one last piece before I can assemble my hat. It's absolutely killing me that you have to do all the knitting before you can start the finishing! I did the 2x2 ribbing strip all this weekend (I finished it at about 11 this morning) and I started the seed stitch a little while later. It looks like I haven't done much, but I didn't spend a ton of time on it, and I also had to get used to seed stitch. This is probably the most complicated project I've done so far, between knitting in the round, decreasing, and the two new textures, but I think it's going to be fine. There is one thing I don't like so far, and that's the hat. I think in my eagerness to finish it, I didn't do enough and now it's a little short for my taste, and it's loose around the bottom. I'm going to see how it feels when I sew the braid on, but if it doesn't work I may sew some elastic into the inside to give it some more structure.

Surprise! I broke out the baby blankets and I'm ready to finish! I'm trying to completely clean out my UFO, so once I finish the hat, I'm going to pick up my tree skirt. Then all I will have left is the sewing projects from a weekend or two ago. It's slow going, but I can't wait to start some more projects after those are done!

Hat progress, clothes, and some beads.

Hello again! I am working on designing a top, so here's what I have so far!

This is the pattern I drew for each section. They're 5.5" at the top, and it goes straight down to an eight inch base. (It was a very old newspaper, but I read the story anyway!)

This is the front part: orange, not that electric blue, and red.

The back is the rest of the red, purple, and green. In between the purple and the green is a slit at the top where I am going to put a zipper. I'm quite ambitious! :)

It was originally going to be a skirt made from these two fabrics, but I decided to try it out on fabric I liked less first. That was a good choice, because it was too tight as a skirt and I couldn't move my legs! I think I will make it curvy so it gets bigger faster, but I will have to research that.

I have about 4" done out of the 6" of ribbing before a decrease round and more ribbing. So I'm super excited!

Yesterday I made a bunch of jewelry, and I'm probably going to make more once I finish this. Anyway, these beads came from a gorgeous necklace from a friend that unfortunately broke after only two uses (by me, I think it was used) so I put them to new use. I made earrings, a bracelet, and a new necklace. The clasps are the same, because they were perfectly good. I just had to replace the string and restring them. Most likely, I will put a bit of hot glue on the earrings to make sure they don't fall apart when I wear them.

These are kind of Aztec-ish, and I didn't have enough of one color to do them exactly the same, so they're fraternal twins, of a sort. 

The different size beads didn't come together, I just thought they look nice next to each other. As you can maybe see, the necklace and bracelet are the reverse of each other. When I do this kind of thing, I don't like things to be exactly the same, just related.

I also made two more bracelets, but I haven't taken a picture of them. I did get a lot of compliments on those, so I'm going to make a few more to give to some of my friends that liked them. So, I'll take a picture of them all together. Most likely.

Some Things. And a Button!

Whatever happened to posting everyday?!? Well, I'm back, and I have some wild and wacky things.

This is my brother's Christmas present. The button is off-center, and it should have been skinnier and longer, but oh well!

I took a piece of tulle that was splattered with black and green paint and stitched a ribbon on to the short ends. At first I tried to pin the ribbon down, but it tore little holes so I didn't on the second side.

A while ago, I made these cell phone cases. I hated this one, so I ripped out the flap, redid it, and sewed on velcro instead of the button. It looks a little bit better, but the body and the flap are different gauges.

As you may have noticed, I added a button to my sidebar. I'm a Ravenclaw!!!!! (Go away little red line!) Nerds will rule the world! Harry Potter nerds will rule the universe!!!