FOs in Action!

Baby booties in action!  (via DP)
Well, as close to action as a 21-days old baby can get.

DP kindly posted a photo of his sweet girl, MMP, wearing the baby booties I made for her right after she was born.  So, I was working on the second bootie in the lunchroom at work and one of the ladies asked if I was selling them.  I shook my head apologetically and said no.  As much as I love knitting as my primary hobby once it turns, for lack of a better word, job-y my focus starts heading downhill.  Hobbies satisfy a a personal interest that is totally under your own control; not a time limit or a requirement, or a dollar amount or use value--it's always about what ever satisfaction you get from it.


My nephew playing with his Little Teddy Bear. (via LM)

My sister sent me some photos of my nephew playing with the Little Bear I gave him when they visited in February.  According to the email, he put it in his shoe and began driving him around eventually parking him in the laundry basket.  As you can see, I did knit a sweater for the Bear. On a side note, I love his fatty baby hands.

Amigurumi

^_________^

I did it. I crocheted something that is neither a granny square nor a flower but a thing! An actual! Real! Thing!

Yesterday, I was on a cleaning kick and decided to rearrange all my crap.  It ended up being a really good thing because I rediscovered FOUR craft books that I had pretty much forgotten existed.  One was how to knit with beads, one was on general knits for family and home, and the last two were knitted toys and Kyuuto! Japanese Crafts!: Amigurumi that my little cousins gifted me two years ago, either for Christmas or my birthday.

I've seen amigurumi, I love it, and I've read tutorials but I could never completely wrap my head around it because, c'mon, it's crochet and crocheting is weird. Even the word "crochet" is weird--it looks like "crotchet."  Suffice it to say I'll always be a knitter first, a hooker second.  But the designer makes it super easy with simplified illustrations, step-by-step instructions and minimal blather.

My first amigurumi, a gift for my nephew, is the Little Teddy Bear.  He is a wee bear at 5 inches tall. The only mod I made was to crochet the head and body together instead of two separate pieces, but everything else I followed to the number.  Now, to knit some clothes for the little bear.

Mon Crochet et Fil

Tomorrow will mark a year that I visited Paris for the first time.  It was easily one of the best trips, I think, ever.  And even though I didn't get to visit all the Major Tourist Sites (gasp! I didn't see the Mona Lisa!) I still had fun spending time with friends, eating, drinking, taking in the city and of course shopping.  For yarn!


I picked up a ball of Plassard Pop 3 at La Droguerie in Le Bon Marche.  It's a sportweight superwash in this gorgeous shade of saturated blue that wasn't quite electric or royal blue, but  too dark to be cyan and too light to be cerulean.  Anyway, I'd never heard of Plassard, and after doing a Rav search when I got home, it seems it's only sold in France.  I should've picked up more colors!

I didn't want to relegate the single ball to another boring scarf so in the stash it went. 

The other day I pulled out a small triangular shawl I knitted out of recycled sweater yarn dyed with Kool-Aid over the winter.  I've been seeing a lot of young knitters wearing beautifully knit shawls wrapped around the neck and tied in back in a sort of cowboy-handkerchief style (not over the shoulders-grandma style) so that fashion cue plus my current obssession with crocheted scallops means I'm making the prettiest blue neckerchief ever in the world. Ever.

Twinkle, Twinkle!

Check out my Granny Star Afghan! Despite starting a good 6 or 7 times before I understood how the shaping was supposed to work--and, honestly, I still didn't get it all the way right--it still looks like a star. The points came out right but the concave parts were not so hot and I improvised as best I could to avoid making a big pentagon.

The center was the rest of my beautiful BMFA STR in "Jewel of the Nile" that I used to make my first and last ever pair of socks. The border is Muench Tessin, black with bright rainbow slubs, that matched enough with the STR. The Tessin is a true stashbuster as that was the first yarn I put my hands on when I re-discovered knitting almost seven years ago and thus catapulted to the top of my interests, became my primary hobby, and was the gateway to all other handicrafts--a story I'll probably post about another day. I've knit with the Tessin, frogged, debated between keeping and swapping, loved it and hated it, but finally--finally!--found a use for it.

Some other random things:
- This is another example of how yarn colors definitely look different in skein or ball than when it's all worked up.

- I used a 9mm/N hook with sock (STR) and aran (Tessin) so it's very smushy and snuggly and warm. Hello, wool.
- It's pretty small, maybe 18 inches across, so it's safe to say this is still a WIP.
- The rainbow theme was unintentional, and although the black looks a little jarring, the rainbow slubs will make it work. I do have some yarn ideas in mind to keep the stashbusting theme going.

More Girly Stuff

Simmy B. of Echoes of Dream offers a free crochet flower tutorial with pictures and, naturally, I had to try it out.  I love flowers--I'm named after one (well, unintentionally)--and I'm typically drawn to flowers, leaves and modern floral or "natural" motifs.

As usual, I never make anything to the correct gauge.  Sigh.  I need more hooks.  I loved how the flower puffs came out though and given the correct gauge, they'd work well with almost anything: adorning a gift, pinned to a lapel, or popped over the bulbs of Christmas string lights.

Digg, Stumble, Whatever--Let's Promote It!

I recently came across flickrer Sarah London Textiles who not only makes granny squares in totes cute colors and designs, but also provides an EXCELLENT photo tutorial on how to join your granny squares.

The way I intended to join my squares together was to lay them all out and sc them together in two-by-two clusters, then sc cluster by cluster, and continue sc-ing clusters exponentially. I'm sure it'd work out fine that way until I discovered SLT's tutorial. I'm completely new to everything crochet so I don't know if there is an official name for this particular join the way it is with knitting, but the basic idea is to simultaneously connect the squares to each other on their final rounds. What?! Yes, so it's pretty obvious that I came across her tutorial after my individual squares were already bound off. No problem though: I picked apart the sewn-in end of my working square and pulled until I got to the start of where my join was supposed to go. As always, only ONE loop to pick up--I love it. If you're someone who doesn't read directions (me), you'll find her step-by-step pictures are really clear and easy to understand.

Pros:
After making so many squares, I'd feel overwhelmed at having to then sew them all together. But with SLT's method, there's no extra seaming; you are simultaneously finishing your working square and attaching it to the previous square . I think everything works up so much faster.

The methods seems to use less yarn (or I'm making my loops tighter) as I've found after pulling apart the last rounds and re-working/attaching, I now have all of these straggly ends to weave in.

Unless you encounter some 5th dimension time-shift, there is no way you can lose any of your diligently-crocheted squares. Ahem.

Cons:
There really weren't any cons. It was a little fiddly at first, orienting myself with this method, but that's probably how it is for every first-timer.

Done and Done

LOOK WHAT I DID!

Last night, I debated on adding another section of color but I don't have any more baby pastels or anything else that is also machine washable so I went ahead with the final scalloped/shell edging using up those odd remaining strands. You can see the places where I ran out before I made it to the end of the round, but that's what made this the BEST stashbuster project ever.

I would definitely do this again. Just like knitting, sewing or any other sort of creative hobby, it's the best way (at least for me) to relax. With granny squares, you can make them as big or as little as you want. There isn't much to think about. It was surprisingly portable even as it grew to blanketing proportions and I took it with me to the park once. I simply stuck a bobby pin through the loop, rolled up the whole thing with the yarn inside, and tossed the hook in my bag. And anytime I needed to pause to do something, or if I pulled a a few chains out by accident, there was always only ONE stitch to look for.

If I was going to make a gift next time, I'd use the correct hook size and matching yarn weights. Since the green and purple blanket was a stashbuster I didn't really care what it looked like. I only own three hooks which were shared between my mom and grandma and now me: a 1mm which was too tiny; the one I used, the 3.75mm/F; or the gargantuan 9mm/N. As you can tell in the pictures, the white center which was a worsted/heavy worsted tends to skews a little bit and is also slightly stiffer, while the purple sport flares out more and is more drapey.

I loved the making the scalloped edging. I used the pattern from Woolcrafting and as helpful as it was I'm a visual learner so a quick Flickr search later, I found IamSusie's photo of her granny square coasters and improvised a pattern:

*5 dc in the first loop, ch 1, sc in the next loop, ch 1*

My corners got kind of sketchy because I didn't do the math at all. I had an uneven number of loops so only two of my corners have the 5 dc scallop, the other two are only sc.

For corners: (when I got to them) end on sc, ch 1, 7 dc in the corner, ch 1, continue as normal.

The End... Almost

I pulled the mega granny square back out once the crazy weather made an about-face and turned all dreary and rainy.  I don't know how big it measures right now, but it's definitely reached the blanket stage.

The soft colors look nice together and those 400 yards of purple boucle have quickly wittled themselves down to maybe less than 100 yards.  I think.  I don't really know; I'm really bad at estimating units (area, volume, distance, time, you name it).  For the border, I'm going to try a fancy scallop/shell edging. 

Almost at the end!

Fancy La La

I've wandered into the fancy-la-la territory of crocheting and landed on Warm Fuzzies' free earring pattern. So pretty! However, a pain in the butt for a noob; it took several false starts and I've still only completed one so far. Also, I replaced all tr with dc.

This was made using good ol' DMC embroidery floss on a 3.5mm/E-4 hook. I think it was only hard since 1) embroidery floss is slippery and splitty, 2) I didn't have the recommended hook size, and 3) it was my first time making something this small (+ the floss, the hook, and the chains the hook made) so every part of making that earring required a lot of attention.

Would I use this pattern again (or at least complete the second earring)? YES. They're a good jumping off point to other designs, maybe use metallic cord and 3 scallops instead of 5.

They're Multiplying

Sigh.

The mega granny square had to be put aside during this brief Bay Area heat wave. It's slowly becoming a granny square blanket, for sure, but with the +80F temps and a heavy project made of acrylics and wools on my lap it felt like a granny square oven. And with summer quickly looming in the foreground, it'll only get warmer so I don't see myself pulling it out anytime after November.

So...MINI SQUARES, IT IS! They're cute and fast, and I want to eat them. Color-coordination has become difficult though--shiny acrylics don't go with flat wools and cottons, sport doesn't go with heavy worsted, etc., etc.--I'm stuck, in manner of speaking. To solve that, I do intend on making single-color squares, but for the mix and match look I'm finding inspiration from TV/Film and popular holidays.

Here is my list so far:
Gryffindor (Harry Potter) - burgundy, gold
Jayne hat (Firefly) - red, orange, yellow
Browncoats (Firefly) - brown
Niners - red, gold
A's - green, yellow, white
Sharks - black, teal
St. Pat's Day - a bunch of greens
Christmas - red, green

Help! What combos can you think of? I may or may not have every yarn color in the spectrum, but I always appreciate new ideas to toss around in the brainpan.

"Just one more chain..."

Holy yarn balls. This crochet thing? Getting a little too into it, I think. Yesterday, I sat in my room crocheting like mad while listening to good ol' Alice 97.3 for probably 8 hours. Sure I got up to take food, bathroom and stretch breaks, but I was totally into my granny square. I was in the groove, in the flow; it was quite meditative.

Then, as I was putting my stuff away for the night, my wrists and knuckles were clicking. They were clicking. CLICKING. Dude, my bones were CLICKING and it IS as disturbing as it sounds. To prevent (or at least reduce further) repetitive stress I immediately stopped what I was doing and did silly-looking wrist and shoulder rotations and jazz hands for a full 5 minutes to the get the blood flowing again. I owe full thanks to Mr. Volpa, my high school typing teacher, for getting me into that habit.

Today, the veins are less bulgy and progress on the blanket has slowed of course, but that is fine. I've got a full life of knitting and crafting ahead of me, I need to save my hands.

**I have run out of the green and white/white-ish yarns. After I posted this photo I started adding some purple boucle that has been sitting untouched for about 2 years . There is over 400 yards of that stuff... should be interesting.

***Boucle sucks.

What the fug?

This is my very, very first crochet project from about a week ago. I'm not sure what to call it except the Beginner's Ugly Crochet Swatch. The green is Target boucle (remember Target's brief foray in yarn crafting?) and green Patons Grace held together, and the yellow is Target boucle held with white Bernat Sport. Those made up a worsted/heavy worsted yarn and since it was my first swatch, I wasn't sure how knit gauge translated to crochet gauge. This was on a N/9mm hook which was kind of like crocheting with a baseball bat--that hook is huge!--and also resulted in those gargantuan-sized holes.

Anyway, I intended on making a blanket inspired by Lindamade's big ass granny square blanket and that boucle is just so darn soft. Then I took another look at that awful swatch and began fearing the day said blanket would become sentient and try to eat me. Seriously, go look at it again. Another day, and without the yarn-doubling, maybe.

Oh no...

What have I gotten myself into now.

It started with the Purl Bee and their incredibly well-written granny square tutorial. Crocheting hovered in the back of my mind for awhile and I'm not sure why I resisted for so long. Probably because I felt like it'd be traitorous to knitting. But then I kept reading about some crocheted potholder swap and when the pictures started popping up on Flickr and Rav--in all of these fun saturated colors like chartreuse, teal, and cherry-slurpee red; and paired with awesomely retro designs--I couldn't help but want to try it.

It's been 3 days and I've crocheted a 16" square. It's slow-goings (a 16" square in knitting time would take 1 hour at the most) but it's strangly calming and when you mess up, you can frog back as far as you want and you'll always have only have ONE stitch to pick up. HOLY EFFING MOLY.

I'm stashbusting some oldass acrylic baby yarn that I deemed unworthy for this new batch of 2009 babies. And my hook? It's one of those old school ones without that comfortgrip handle so I had to engineer my own with rubberbands.