I’ve been keeping myself busy with little projects here and there. Most recently I tried my hand at knitting baby hats. I wanted to learn how to knit a flat hat and how to decrease, I figured a baby hat would be a great first start. I searched for a basic hat pattern on Ravelry.com and found a good one: garter stitch brim and stockinette for the rest. Then to add to my learning experience I decided to try out some different ways to cast on since until now I had only used the long tail cast on. I used the fantastic site KnittingHelp.com where Amy explains and demonstrates basic knitting things for English and Continental style knitting with videos. Another reason I wanted to try this was that I got myself some new bamboo straight needles.
My first try was the white hat using Red Heart Super Saver. What an awful experience! Red Heart did not want to move on the bamboo and each stitch was a chore. For this hat I used the cable cast on. This ended up rather loose. I tried the same cast on for next hat, the blue one to the right of the white hat. Still not happy with it. I switched to Caron Simply soft for the blue hats, which slides much nicer on the bamboo needles. The hat has a different shape as I was trying to make it smaller for a preemie size for the Caps For Good cause. The pattern calls for 52 stitches and I reduced it to 45 stitches for the white one. The second blue one was 42 stitches and then the other 3 (2 complete, one on the needles) were 40 stitches cast on. On my third hat (2nd row on the left) I realized I was doing something wrong; either knitting or purling incorrectly which was making things difficult. I went back to KnittingHelp.com and checked out the videos on Continental knitting and then Continental purling. I thought I might be knitting incorrectly as that was difficult but then I realized that I was knitting into a row that was purled so the purling was incorrect. I was twisting my stitches. I finished the rest of the hat knitting and purling correctly. It took only a couple rows of purling correctly for my hands to develop the muscle memory. For the third, fourth and fifth hats I used the knitting on cast on method.
The fourth hat I messed around with adding some rows of garter stitch into the stockinette stitch. This was okay until I went for a second round of it while starting to decrease. Some of my decreases ended up backwards; purled or knit when it should have been the other. More learning! The hat that is on the needles I did a garter stitch brim and then a 2×2 rib. As you can see in the photo I was low on yarn so I also learned how to change colors which turned out to be ridiculously easy! I’ll get a picture of the other 2 hats I made at a later time. So the baby hat project taught me how to cast on 2 different ways, how to decrease (k2tog, ssk), how to purl correctly and how to seam the hat together(didn’t talk about this). Not bad.
A photo from me and a thought from my neighbor; “Under this lies summer.”
It has been too long since my last post. I just browsed through my photos to get an idea of what to write and where to start. I suppose most logically speaking I’ll start at Christmas since the gift giving involved my crochet work.
My nephew loved the Liugi/Goomba pillow. He sleeps with it every night. Apparently he tried to use it 
as a regular pillow but since it’s so big he ends up just sitting up when he tries to lay down. I’m not sure how it’s all been figured out now, I’m just happy to know that he is enjoying it as much as I’d like. He also liked the 1Up Mushroom very much. I have a great video of his stunned face as he squeezed it the first time. I’ll have to see about posting it after asking my SIL (sister-in-law) if that’s ok. I have video of myself talking about the mushroom so at the very least that should make its way on here. I visited sometime before Christmas and got some pictures of the Mario blanket, last year’s present, to show how it is faring. It is well loved as they say. My nephew sleeps with it every night as well. If I were to make the Mario blanket again I would do it differently for sure. For my niece I whipped up a crochet scarf using yarn she dyed before it made its way to me. I crocheted alternating rows of single and double holding two strands at a time. I initially wanted to just do double crochet all the way so it would go faster but I wanted to put a wee bit more effort and thought into it. The yarn was a mess when I received it, ends everywhere! I spent 2 days untangling it into many small balls of yarn. I used a bunch of the balls of yarn for the scarf and love how the variegated colors moved about. Photos!
Other creative endeavors recently include a set of 8 wine glass charms for my MIL (mother-in-law). For the last 5 years we’ve always had to clarify which margarita glass was whose. I finally sat down and figured out how to make some wine glass charms using small bracelet size memory wire. They were fun and quick to make which made it 
nice to make a set of 8. Originally I was considering a set of 4 or 6 maybe but that changed quickly. It’s a fun way to highlight a pretty bead as a 
pendant for the ring and then embellish using seed beads. I used a crimp bead to try and keep the beads from flying off the wire. Some crimp beads stayed put while others still managed to slide around. They shouldn’t go anywhere though, and if they do I’m more than glad to make or repair something. We used them Christmas Day for dinner. Another item made for my MIL is a necklace and earring set using Swarovski crystals and glass beads. It was for my BIL’s wedding on January first. This was nice to 
do as I hadn’t made any jewelry in a while. Photos! I’m including a photo of the ‘wrapping paper’ for my nephew’s pillow. I took a black garbage bag and used a silver Sharpie to draw snowflakes all over it. That was a blast in itself!
Back to yarn. I’ve crocheted 2 Snuggles using a diagonal box stitch. This stitch is my new favorite. It looks great and works up quite quickly! For January one of the Snuggle themes suggested in the Ravelry Snuggles Project group is scraps. I had a great time using 19 different scrap balls of yarn for a diagonal box stitch Snuggle. Another project was a crochet cloche (hat) to go with my new red winter coat. I wanted to make a felted hat and found a great pattern on good old Ravelry called Beacon Street Cloche. I used Patons Classic Wool from my stash. After photographing me wearing the large hat I washed it twice in the washing machine with some jeans so it would felt up. The hat turned out quite nicely and has gotten me quite a few compliments. It is also fabulously warm, which is great right now in Connecticut. Yarn photos!
As I just mentioned I am in Connecticut so now I’ll share some photos of our snow. We had about 8 inches on January 7th (1st photo), then 18 more on January 12th (2nd photo, table was cleared before new snow came) and right now it’s rain on top of 2 more inches of snow. Yesterday we knocked some 3 foot ice sickles off the front of our house and then I ended up playing with them in the front yard arranging them in the snow. I took photos with my new Canon PowerShot, tripod and night time exposures using a flashlight. Enjoy!
All the photos are thumbnails in this post so click them for the full effect!
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.
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.
I’ve been a bit quiet but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been crocheting. I am feeling a serious addiction to crochet at the moment and I can’t sit in front of the TV without wanting to crochet something. That desire has lead to a couple things that didn’t develop into anything usable. I tried to make up my own pattern for 2 hats without success and attempted to make a crocheted gift box which looks quite sad. Some things that went well are the granny square slippers from The Purl Bee. I decided to make them in red for my niece and nephew. Those kids are getting a lot of crocheted things this Christmas, LOL. I even added a bell to the tips which makes them officially “Elf Slippers.” Now I just hope they fit! They are darned cute though.
I also made a hat and scarf set for my sister. I used the Divine pattern for the hat and Simply Soft yarn. It was a little more light weight yarn than I realized but it certainly is soft. Then I grabbed some fleece yarn I’ve had for years and made a scarf to match the hat. I bought the fleece yarn years ago with the intention of making a scarf for my sister and I’m happy that’s what it was used for eventually. I had a skein of white and one of variegated white/blue. The yarn was hard to work with because it’s fuzzy and the base of the yarn is a tiny string with the fuzz coming off it. The scarf is about 6ft long and I tried not to make it too wide since the current fashion is skinny scarves. The scarf is snuggly and I hope she likes it. I don’t have a photo yet and my camera battery died so it’s getting revived at this moment. I’ll add a photo later.
After my exploration into the world of hats last weekend I found myself totally addicted. I cranked out 5 other hats this week. I tried making hats back in 2005 when I first started teaching myself crochet but I didn’t get very far. I first tried going around in just a circle but ended up with a strange triangular funnel shape which I turned into a toy mouse. I believe that the mouse has since ‘died’ after a couple years of playtime. Last summer a friend gave me a crochet book from which I learned how to crochet a coaster which was successful! I then tried a hat from the same book but it was a strange hat-like disc too large and too shallow to actually function as a hat, or anything else for that matter. I was again defeated by hats. Between then and now I made a baby hat successfully so I was grasping something. I’m glad my crochet knowledge and understanding has grown enough to make sense of patterns without disastrous results.
The Week of Hats
- Monday: Maroon Divine Hat for myself with yarn received from a fellow Freecycler (so I have no idea what it was exactly aside from soft).
- Tuesday: Easy Double Crochet hat with left over fuzzy orange yarn. Pulled out a fore mentioned pink hat-like disc and made my own variation of Easy Double Crochet hat with fpdc & bpdc.
- Wednesday: Attempted 2 hats in red, neither a success. Started an Easy Double Crochet Hat in red.
- Thursday: Finished Easy Double Crochet hat in red with variation of fpdc. Started Crochet Head Hugger.
- Friday: Finished Crochet Head Hugger with variation of one puff stitch instead of one double crochet to add more fullness to the hat.
(Sorry the image is so small, I’m having issues with the image display squishing the picture completely)
I’m not sure yet what’s next in my crochet adventures. I was speaking with my husband and he said it sounds like I need to work on another blanket. LOL. I will donate most of these hats to the Mitten Trees at school. I looked up crochet mitten patterns but have decided against that. I don’t know yet if I’ll make any scarves, maybe. I think I want to make a nice hat for my sister in Portland, OR. She moved there from Atlanta, Georgia so she might need a couple cute hats.
I received a lot of compliments at work on my maroon Divine hat. It matches wonderfully with my red scarf, which at least 2 people noticed and complimented. You could nearly hear another person’s jaw hit the floor when I told them that I made the hat. This is what I was looking for when I searched for crochet hat patterns. I wanted something that when done right didn’t look like a home made hat (kind of like the pink and red hats I made this week). For the maroon hat I used a smaller hook to get a tighter feel and less holes; it worked out well.
Christmas will be arriving shortly in our home so I don’t know how much crochet will be done this weekend.
I mentioned in my last post that I was going to make some hats, gloves or scarves for the school I’m working at now that I’ve finished the Mario blanket. I searched from some crochet hat patterns and found that the easy level ones were rather boring. I found one that I really liked with a cool spiral effect but I’d have to learn a whole new stitch. I looked for some video instructions for the the stitch front post double crochet, also known as fpdc, and saw that it wasn’t particularly difficult. I dove right into the pattern starting with my new friend the Magic Ring and had a great time working on the hat. I was very determined to finish it tonight and worked on it for several hours. It wasn’t difficult just a lot of work. I finished the hat around 8pm after starting it around 4pm. I had already decided early on today that it would be an easy-going, do-nothing, lazy day since the other days of the holiday were busy! Between working on the hat I did get 2 loads of laundry in though, so not a complete waste.
The hat is titled Divine and I found it at Rheatheylia.com. It took a bit more yarn than I had anticipated but luckily I had just enough left over Pound of Love blue.
Another project I’d like to do is granny square slippers from The Purl Bee. Too much to create and not enough time!
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