Kim's Crochet Blog » Blankets

Warming America and the World

Kim @ Knot Krisp — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 02:31:42 +0000

A charity I’ve been involved with since 2003 or so is Warm Up America. One can knit or crochet blocks 7 inches by 9 inches to either donate to a group locally who is going to join them or send them into the WUA headquarters. I got involved with this while working at Michaels Arts & Crafts, first as an instructor and later as the event coordinator. In ’03 a roommate was the event coordinator who tossed some blocks my way to help with joining an afghan while sitting on our living room floor. I knew little about crochet and even less about knitting at the time, but I could figure out how to join them using single crochet. A couple months later I was hired as an instructor and along with teaching kids crafts I was getting a sampling of yarn crafts through Michaels events. I can remember deciding to by I Taught Myself to Crochet one day after work. I didn’t really do much with it until a couple years later, but that’s a story for another day. I supported my friend and coworker by attending all the Michaels events which included WUA Joining Parties. They were never very popular and that remained true when I was event coordinator at a different Michaels in another state. I’ve got a couple picture collages from the 2006 and 2007 WUA Joining Parties I hosted as event coordinator below.

If you complete an afghan you can donate it to a group in your community, while if you send your finished blocks into the headquarters they will join it and send it to where it is needed. As coordinator I found a group in my community to donate it to and when I dropped the afghans off I was introduced to the families that would be taking them home. This was such a great experience, I enjoyed knowing who was going to benefit from the hours of work by many strangers.

Today my involvement with WUA continues but without the spurring on of working at Michaels. The knitting group I’m in ordered the Land’s End yarn and together we are working on making 51 blocks. I’ve made 2 and half so far using the Land’s End yarn. Since this project came about at the same time I was just learning how to knit, I had to knit the first one. The yarn is a bit splitty but I came to have a nice love-hate relationship with it. I crocheted the second and am doing the same with my third. When we started this I realized that one of the ways I learned new stitches in crochet was to do all the WUA crochet block patterns. I decided I would do the same for knitting. I’ve made 5 using a Caron One Pound and it has been great practice. I find that the WUA patterns are an easy way to get familiar with reading patterns, following the patterns and getting a hand on crocheting or knitting. When I finish with my blocks I can donate them to Michaels, WUA headquarters or just keep plugging to make 49 and join them into an afghan. Anyone else making WUA blocks?

Another organization related to WUA is Caps for Good. I’ve only recently learned about this specific group while attending Stitches East. Caps for Good collects knitted or crochet baby hats to bring to countries in need around the world. The woman who was running the booth at Stitches East said she’s gone to the communities overseas and participated in the deliveries of the hats. She said that the mothers really like and appreciate the hats. While at Stitches East I crocheted 2 hats. I enjoyed this very much and will probably revisit this charity every now and then; the hats are a very quick project! There are so many great charity opportunities but I think I’ll keep it to WUA, Caps for Good and the Snuggles Project.

Watch out! Here comes a Goomba!

Kim @ Knot Krisp — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 21:32:50 +0000

Oh my, I have neglected the blog again! I took on a long-term substitute position which always leaves me exhausted; enough not to blog but not enough to skip crocheting. We’ve had a gorgeous fall in Connecticut. We made several leaf peeping trips on the weekends. I’ve also been attending the weekly knitting group in town and working on many projects during my month away. Knitting has quickly become something else I enjoy and a fun new challenge. The list of things I’ve completed in October is as follows:

Luigi! (C)
Homespun Snuggle (K)
2 pairs of fingerless gloves (C)
2 Mobius cowls (knitted after an Escher exhibit) (K)
Cat “washcloth” made into a Snuggle (K)
7 Warm Up America blocks (K)
2 Caps for Good baby hats (C)

Yowza, what a list! The C indicates a crochet project and the K indicates a knitted project. My time seems to be equally split between the 2 craft skills. After I finished Luigi I dedicated a lot of time to knitting as it had captured my interest. I will have to do some catch up blog posts which should happen in reasonable time as I am approaching the end of my long-term sub position. My first order of business will be our good friend from the world of Nintendo, Luigi.

Luigi enticed knitters, crocheters and non-yarnies to ooh and ah while working on it at Starbucks. I was told by one college-age student that I’m the coolest aunt to make this for my nephew. I certainly hope that my nephew will appreciate this, if not now maybe in the future. Either way, I’ve had a blast! Luigi is going to be a large pillow, something great to snuggle on with a book in hand. I’ve decided on the pillow back; it is going to be a Goomba!

I started the Goomba about a week ago and managed to do a round each day for a total of 8 rounds so far. As each round gets bigger they take longer so that will slow down very soon. I’ve taken a few things I’ve learned from making Luigi. Instead of cutting the yarn as I finished a segment of color I’ve just been carrying it along the back. It’s a bit of a mess but I won’t have as many ends to weave in. A knitting group member suggested that I add sound effects to the pillow, which is an idea I really love. I think I may even do 4 different sounds and put one sound in each corner of the pillow. I’ll rope my husband into helping me with this aspect of the project. Any suggestions on sounds to include? 1Up, invincibility star, the theme song, jumping… So many options. The Goomba isn’t having as much of a pinwheel effect as Luigi did. I’m still not sure what is causing that. I’ll have to find a Tunisian crochet entrelac enthusiast to mull it over with.

The Caron Simply Soft yarn is working out great. It’s so soft and slides nicely which is wonderful for crochet. It wants to split a bit now and then which forces me to work loosely in good way. Tunisian crochet entrelac wants to be a dense fabric when completed so unless I want to give a pillow made of 2 boards I have to work loosely. The fingerless gloves are also made of Simply Soft and I find with everyday use the yarn gets a bit fuzzy. I wonder what Luigi/Goomba will look like after a year of use.

I’m off to squish a Goomba that is on my couch.

Whoa! Fast Forward!

Kim @ Knot Krisp — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 02:29:40 +0000

Where did May go?! Poor Pikachu has been waiting for eyes while I work on other projects so he’s going to have to sit and stay at 98% done. I’m a bit nervous about how to do the eyes, I just can’t bear the thought of possibly ruining his cuteness with poor eye execution. For now I’ll keep thinking about how to do them. *thinks: black felt circles…*

I haven’t been sitting idle staring at Pika. I’ve been hook and yarn in hand staring at his eyeless face crocheting fiercely though. I discovered I needed an amigurumi break and felt that Pikachu was a good final battle; that is, when he actually gets a face. After a lot of digging around in the crochet section of the interwebs, I ran into a charity called The Snuggles Project. The project was created in 1996 when its founder was saddened at the thought of all the shelter animals sitting in their barren shelter cages so she set out to create ‘security blankets’ for them called ‘Snuggles.’ This was a perfect interruption to the amigurumi battle that had been waged in my living room since January ’10. I managed to crank out 12 Snuggles; some experiments in patterns, some basics, some just plain old experimental everything. This was a lot of fun! I even tried out a pattern written by a Snuggles Project group member at Ravelry.com. Which brings me to my new addiction: Ravelry.com! So many patterns, beautiful things, and great yarny camaraderie! I’ve learned so much between the Snuggles Project and the great stuff at Ravelry. In the Snuggles pictured on the right you can see some of the fun I’ve had this May. I learned an ‘Abstract Cats‘ pattern by Teresa at The Art of Crochet, which I’ve had my eye on for a couple months now. The Snuggles are perfect for experimentation. I created my own little double crochet pattern that shows a cat face. You can see the black cat on the yellow background, that was my second time with the pattern but first time with changing colors like that. It turned out ok, not quite as I would have liked. The red one is the first attempt at the cat where the outline is made of skipped stitches. I’m more satisfied with that. I’ll probably try the same thing again but substitute a puff stitch for the skipped stitch which will create a little 3D cat face, and if you’ve watched any movies lately you know everything is better in 3D! I also added the seed stitch and the single, double pattern to my crochet repertoire.

After making the abstract cats pattern Snuggle I had to adapt it to make something for MY cats. I made a cat ‘tub’ with the abstract cats as the sides. Before I even finished Kes was trying to snuggle in it so I knew I had an instant success. Now that I’m done she is still interested in it which is good. We’ll see if the interest picks up a bit when the weather turns to fall and winter since it’s rather toasty now. I think I should have used a smaller hook for the sides so that it would be a bit stiffer. The base circle is 2 strands of Red Heart and an L hook. I kept the L hook for most of the cats around the sides before I realized that a smaller hook would be better. I changed and it tightened up just a bit. The cat likes it regardless, she’s just happy that it’s soft and snuggly.

My next project was a small pillow to use for sleeping and upcoming travels. I’ve had a little stuffed animal since I was 10 that I’ve been using as a support pillow. What’s so odd is that it took a long time to learn how to sleep with it as a child and now as an adult I’m just not comfortable without the support. I decided that since I’m starting 30 in the eye I should graduate to a pillow of some sorts. I’ve had no luck finding a pillow with similar dimensions since the stuffed animal (a cat of course) has a long rectangular shape to it. After completing the cat tub and seeing an item with purpose, unlike all those cutesy amis, I realized that crocheting a pillow in my preferred dimensions wouldn’t be very difficult. I had a nice soft yarn from Red Heart called “Soft Yarn” in black that just begged to be used for this. I looked up how to crochet a solid rectangle and once again found myself at Teresa’s site but this time via one of her Youtube instructions. I started off with the video but found I needed the written directions as well. For the back, or other side, of the pillow I decided on a single, double crochet for a nice texture without the boringness of single crochet rows. I noticed that the solid rectangle still has some gaps since it is in double crochet and as with anything that has corners in crochet; corner gaps. I bet there’s a way to avoid that, I hope I’ll run into it during my crochet travels. For the pillow stuffing I decided to take an old t-shirt and make an inner pillow which worked beautifully! I knew the jersey knit of the t-shirt would be perfect for something that needs to be soft and flexible. I could hardly contain myself as I sewed up the crochet pillow seams and got ready to put in the t-shirt pillow. It came out perfectly and I can’t wait to try it out tonight.

So although Pikachu never got the gift of sight this May at least 12 cats will have nice, homey Snuggles in their shelter cages, my cats have a new bed, and I have a new pillow.

Secret project

admin — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:46:29 +0000

After completing my ‘blanket with out a purpose’ I decided on its purpose; Christmas gift for 9 year old niece. This prompted plans for an equally crocheted gift for the 5 year old nephew. Ideas ran rampant but nothing that really tickled me. Frogs, Webkinz, Super Mario… I did some searches on Google for project inspiration (yay for image search) which led me to cross stitch patterns for Super Mario. After narrowing down which would be most recognizable I printed my pattern and it was then time to hunt down the yarn. That was slightly more difficult than expected; not a whole lot of brands make light flesh tone yarn. I found a Pound of Love in peach and went with it. I couldn’t wait to start.

The project is a secret from nephew, niece and their mother. I want it to be a jaw-dropping gift-unwrapping moment on Christmas morning. Trying to keep something as exciting as this blanket a secret has been a lot of work for me. I’m a frequent user of Facebook and I love to share my projects there but, alas, mother is also on FB. And so this blog was born. I figure I’ll be crocheting until my hands no longer work so I can share other projects and adventures here.