Kim's Crochet Blog

I feel like I’ve been bitten by the creative bug but can’t decide what to do to satisfy it.  I tried some jewelry making but that wasn’t it.  I fiddled around some more and found a quick yet satisfying craft: magnets.  This is something I used to do in my early college years.  I did a lot of pen palling and trading stickers so I had a lot of pretty stickers without much of a purpose.  I stuck them onto outdated business card magnets or restaurant magnets and then cut them out.  This time I just stuck with square stickers to keep cutting easy.  They are so fun and quick to make.   One of the sets is made up of tiny magnets that really won’t hold anything up on the fridge, they are just cute to look at.  I always think they would go well with a set of Magnetic Poetry.  Of course several of the magnets turned out cat themed but that’s to be expected.  This project was perfect for satisfaction and production.  Another thing that was aided by the apparent creative bug was the creation of a style(or as I tend to think about it: rules for this particular drawing) in which I drew a card for my grandmother’s 90th birthday celebration.

It started while substituting for art at an elementary school I was doodling and came up with a new rules for a drawing.  The students were making spring drawings with flower stencils and I used the idea of the simplified shapes and combined it with my swirling doodles.  I made the lines vary in weight.  I came home and immediately grabbed my markers and went to work drawing a more thought out spring picture.  I’ve always enjoyed lines and making them with an opaque marker so this was very appealing.  I used crayon to fill in the white space between the lines.  I further worked on it by tracing the colored lines with black outlines. I applied these rules for my grandmother’s card.  I drew the number 90 in a teal marker and filled in the digits with the swirling lines, then outlined the lines.  I used crayon and colored in the digits with a color that complimented the marker lines.  I used crayons again to create a warm orange yellow background.  I totally forgot to photograph the card before sending it off.

Another way I’ve been trying to satisfy my creative bug bite is to figure out filet crochet but I’m not having much luck.  I followed a tutorial on YouTube and had acceptable results but I still cannot apply my knowledge to my own chart.  I’ve drawn out a chart of my own design and tried to do it 3 times but it seems my calculations are wrong.  I guess I’ll have to keep searching for a source that will adequately explain it to me.  I’m considering a project book for name plates but have yet to scope it out at a craft store.  Looking for a beginner’s pattern online has been more difficult than I first thought.  I desperately want to use the crochet thread and steel hooks my mom sent me in the box of goodies mentioned in the last post.

All of February and most of March has flown by.  I spent about 10 days of February on the couch with what turned out to be a sinus infection.  Those 10 days were then followed by another 5 or so where I still didn’t feel right.  I’m happy to say that it’s all behind me now and practically forgotten.  Time does great things like that.  Something time does that I don’t like as much, is whiz by in a blink.  The last 4 or more weekends my blog has been on my To Do list, but as we can all see it didn’t get done and crossed off.  I’ve been busy crocheting and knitting though!

The Monday before my sinus infection I went to the weekly knitting group with knitting in hand.  I didn’t realize that this was the first time I’ve actually knit at the group until several members pointed it out.  Guess I’ve always crocheted.  My friends Luigi and the Goomba took up many Monday nights.  The project I started that night was a cowl for my sister called the Braidy Cowl.  I found the pattern at Ravelry as usual.  I used cobalt blue Lion Brand Microspun yarn which was so snuggly soft!  The pattern included 16 stitch cables which were a lot of work.  Slipping 8 stitches back onto the needles after knitting the other 8 was always a fight.  Then knitting the first few of the 8 was even more of a fight.  The cowl came out fabulously though, so all worth the fight.  If you’re a knitter who hasn’t tried cabling I suggest trying it out on my favorite project: Warm Up America.  There are instructions for a block with cables about 3/4 of the way down the page.  KnittingHelp.com has wonderful videos to help get a visual example of how to do many things, including cabling.  Here’s a link to the page with videos on cables.  My sister has yet to receive her snuggly cowl.  Hopefully she’ll send me a picture of her wearing it and I can post it here.

I finished a scarf for myself in January or February.  It was another pattern found on Ravelry called the Drop Stitch Scarf.  I used yarn that I bought at Stitches East in November 2010.  It was a nice variegated yarn running  red to deep purple to a nearly black purple.  What drew me to the yarn initially was the squishiness and it kept that quality when it was knit which made me very happy.  I have a nice close up of the pattern with some slight reflecting from the floor.  Enjoy!

Something new I tried in January/February is tapestry crochet.  This is crochet with several colors running at once working the current color around the carried colors.  My test pattern was a cat tote bag which I kept simple by using only 2 colors: black and white.  I found the pattern initially at Ravelry and then browsed the site of the pattern creator Carol Ventura at Tapestry Crochet.  She also has a blog to tickle your crochet senses even more and to see how Carol uses tapestry crochet as art.  The tote bag calls for cotton but I opted for Red Heart acrylic so that I could learn and understand what is involved a bit easier, plus it was in my stash.  The instructions for starting the bag were a bit confusing at first but I had Lindsey from Poetry In Yarn next to me at the knitting group that night and she helped clarify it for me.  From my slow start I quickly got the hang of switching colors and quickly felt like an old pro.  The hardest part on the cat pattern was keeping the tail looking like 1 solid color.  If I didn’t switch colors well and keep it tight the second color could be seen easily.  I really enjoyed the pattern and made it into a small project bag.  I’ve used it for my current project to take it to Monday night knitting ever since.  When I first ventured into the world of tapestry crochet I joined the Tapestry Crochet Group at Ravelry.  Carol runs the group and is very involved.  She responded quickly to any questions I posted which was great.

Somewhere in my tapestry crochet travels I found a sample of the special grid for planning your tapestry crochet image.  I created my own sitting cat pattern and then worked it using 2 colors of cotton.  I used cotton to get an idea of how tapestry crochet would look in that material.  It turned into a little bag with one cat on each side.  I can almost put my hand in it.  I’ll have to figure out how to add a zipper and use it as a little change bag or something like that.  It was a lot of fun to design and then execute.  My husband also seemed to enjoy the process.  Using the slanted grid was a bit more awkward than I thought it would be.  After creating your image on the slanted grid it’s best to transfer it to a standard grid so that you don’t get lost in the slanted squares.  At the moment I can’t seem to find the page of the sample grid, ugh.

A surprise package arrived at my door this past Wednesday.  In it was 3 skeins of blue cotton, 3 balls of blue crochet thread, 4 partial skeins of fuzzy acrylics, a cylinder containing 6 crochet hooks, and a drop spindle kit.  All these things belonged to my mom when she was into crochet in the 70s.  She dug up her box of crochet goodies and sent them along to me.  She was subscribed to a crochet club in the Netherlands and still has binders full of projects that she received in the mail.  I’ve been crocheting using the blue thread and the size 1 hook.  I’ve always wanted to try it so this package was a welcome surprise!  I have no idea how to use a drop spindle so I’ll show it off to the knitting group tomorrow where I know there are several spinners.  The kit even came with undyed wool to start off with!

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!

The Luigi & Goomba pillow had its last few stitches this evening.  After some size checking I bought a 27 inch pillow and couldn’t wait to get to stuffing it into the pillow case.  I briefly thought about blocking the panels but I don’t think it would have done much since it is acrylic yarn.  I started crocheting the panels together yesterday after trimming the tree.  I triple checked that I had them the same direction because I could totally see myself getting half way around and then realizing they were facing the wrong way.  I sewed them inside out so that the seam would be on the inside for the most part.  For the last side I also made sure to remind myself not to just crochet the whole thing closed without stuffing the pillow in, another big possibility.  I crocheted a quarter of the way from each corner and then my husband and I stuffed the pillow in.  It was a 2 person job for sure!  After that I squished it around a bit before sewing the rest of the seam with a tapestry needle and more black yarn.  The pillow is very inviting for sitting or leaning on.  I ended up skipping the sound device in the corners just because I was too excited about finishing and I didn’t have a good source for purchasing them yet either.  Maybe the 1Up mushroom will have one.

In the meantime I don’t have anything for my niece and there are only 12 days left before Christmas.  Eeep!

And the Goomba is done!  I hosted a little yarn party today and although only 1 guest came out of the 4 confirmed we had a blast anyway.  During the yarn party the Goomba got his last few blue squares and then I moved onto weaving in ends.  I did a quick comparison of Goomba to Luigi and saw that there was a bit of a size discrepancy.  I’d noticed this one time before but didn’t spend any time investigating.  Since I’m getting to the finishing of this project I decided to count out the squares along a side of each project.  Hmmm, Luigi is 18×18 and the Goomba is 20×20.  Guess I assumed incorrectly that Luigi was 20 squares on each side.  So to make up for this miscalculation and assumption I have started adding a border to Luigi in the same Tunisian entrelac style.  This will add 1 square width to each side equaling 20 squares on each side.  Yay!  I’m half way through the second side so it’s going at an easy pace.

The Goomba has a small error and I’m not going to share where it is exactly.  I’m curious if anyone is going to search for it.  If you find it let me know!

The next step after finishing the border on Luigi will be to find a pillow form of the right size.  I should have probably planned the project according to a pillow size but I skipped that part.  It may require some shifty pillow stuffing.  I’d also like to find a squeeze activated voice recorder to add some Super Mario Brothers sounds to it.  I’m thinking one module in each corner depending entirely on how much they cost.  It might just end up being one.  I’ve started browsing for modules online but the lack of the right search terms is leaving me a bit at a loss.  I’ve heard that Build-a-Bear carries them and they are currently on my list of last resort(not sure why that is, but it is what it is).  Any suggestions for search terms to where to purchase such a goodie?

Remember that crazy hat with all the different spikes?  I have passed it on to my aunt and uncle to add to their hat collection for the traditional hat photo.  It was a great unveiling and welcomed into the collection.  We were all sitting around the table after our pumpkin pie while one cousin went to get the 2 bags full of hats.  I had hidden my hat near by so that I didn’t have to go far to get it.  Folks were rifling through the bags looking for an interesting hat to wear and while they were distracted a grabbed my hat and pulled it on.  I proclaimed, “Well, I’ve got my hat, how ’bout you?”  They all looked at me followed by fits of laughter.  After the laughter quieted down my aunt asked me if I made the hat and then said it was great.  I then told her it was for their collection and she said it was too great for that!  She asked if I wanted to keep it as my personal “Hat picture” hat.  To that I said that it was for them to enjoy.  Plus I can’t wait to see the next photo and glimpse who wears it next.  I’ve got a picture of me wearing it and my 89 year old grandma wearing a foam nurses hat.  That hat was a lot of fun to make.  For some reason I feel it needs a partner using a pink/purple variegated yarn…

Just popping in to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving.  I do have a Thanksgiving day crochet to share; a card I made for my parents.  I crocheted a little turkey and glued it to a card I made in Adobe Illustrator.  Can’t wait for them to receive it!

I’m going to throw some random pictures at you to pique your curiosity.  What could I be up to here?

I recently finished reclaiming yarn from an old American Eagle sweater.  I’ve had the sweater since 2002 or so but haven’t worn it since 2005 at least.  I stumbled upon a video on how to reclaim yarn from a knit sweater.  It told me what to look for in the seams and other tips.  I let this stew around in my head for a while and finally decided to do it.  I spent a couple hours picking at the seams to get the whole thing into pieces before starting to frog it.

I had a good time doing this though it is very labor intensive.  The first night I went to bed with sore finger tips from all the picking at the little thread seams.  I should have grabbed a small crochet hook to pull them loose initially but I was just to excited to stop. This sweater is from the later of my college years so it was washed a bit harshly leading to some felting of the yarn.  The sweater was probably not the best candidate for reclaiming yarn from but, hey, I had the desire and the goods so why not?

Since the sweater had felted a bit it would break while unraveling especially at the cables.  Once I got the rhythm of unraveling the sweater I got the hang of not breaking the yarn at its potentially weakest points.  I wound several large balls of it and then decided to look up how to hand-wind a cake.  That lead to some YouTube surfing with some additional learning about things that weren’t pertinent to the topic at hand, but ended up with me hand-winding a cake around a paper towel tube.  By the way, a cake of yarn is short cylinder with a flat top and bottom and can be pulled from the center, versus just a hand-wound ball that is pulled from the outside and tends to roll away, escaping under couches or into other hard to reach places.  After spending about half and hour hand-winding the cake my husband asks if there is another way to do this.   I tell him that there is such thing as a ball winder to which he responds, “Do they sell it on Amazon?”

Two days later I was the proud new owner of a ball winder.  The two of us had a fun time winding cakes from the yarn I had already wound into balls.  After a couple cakes of recycled American Eagle sweater yarn I grabbed a hank of yarn I bought at Stitches East for a scarf.  We wound that and discovered that there is a size limit to the cakes (which seemed pretty obvious afterwards).  We ended up winding a second ball from the other end of the yarn so I wouldn’t have to cut it.  Ah, what fun to have a ball winder.

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.

An idea had been bouncing around in my head and last night at 5:57 I decided I would crochet a bride and groom for my future sister-in-law’s bridal shower that would take place today at noon.  I used the Skeleton Bride and Groom pattern from the book Creepy Cute Crochet but opted for  flesh tone heads instead of the undead.  Had it been a Halloween themed wedding I might have stayed with the skeleton theme but since the wedding is on New Year’s day a more live human color was appropriate.  In an hour I had nearly completed the body and head of the bride.  Then my crochet creation marathon had to be put on hold as my hubby and I were having friends over.  We dined, danced with the Xbox Kinect, and bid each other farewell.  Then I was back to crocheting until a bit after midnight (ah, the luxury of the weekend).  I had a grand time figuring out the hair for the bride and am sure there was an easier, more efficient way of doing it.  I crocheted a veil starting with a ring reinforced with slip stitches around.  Then I chained off the ring to the length I wanted the veil. The veil was built with random single, double and triple crochets (free form crochet might be something interesting to try…).  After completing the bride I started on the groom body but had to stop and go to bed.

Just enough hours later I got up around 8:15am and immediately continued working on the groom.  For the body of the groom I used black and then worked white in for his tux shirt.  After sewing the pieces together I added lapels to the groom and a red boutonniere as a final touch.  I opted for no eyes since I was on a tight time line.  A photoshoot followed completion of the pair.

The Creepy Cute patterns call for joining rounds which is something I’ve stopped doing in general for amigurumis since it creates a visible seam.  I forgot all about this when I was working at first so there are visible seams, blarg!  I didn’t join rounds in the groom so it’s a much smoother shape.  If you’re new to crocheting amis, don’t join rounds unless it’s somehow extremely important to the pattern (though I haven’t found a time when this is true).  Had I decided to make these two amis a bit more before hand I would have probably added some bead embellishments.  I’m quite satisfied with this quick project and I hope my future sis-in-law appreciates the pair.  All together it was probably about 2.5-3 hours each.  Making some amis was a nice break from the Goomba or Warm Up America block knitting.