It’s that time of year again when my hubby and I venture out to play at the Faire…and no ren fair is complete without a hurried crochet outfit.
Let me backtrack. I have been super busy with graduate school (currently pursuing a Masters in Library Science), and crochet time has suffered, and by extension, my blogging time. I have crochet outfits I can wear, but I wanted something new. So of course, I started crocheting two nights before our planned visit.
Instead of starting from scratch, I pulled out an older crochet outfit I had made for Disney bounding. I never wore it though so I figured it would be perfect. I would simply add on to it and voila, I’d have a new outfit.
This is the original skirt I was working with.
Well, that turned into two furious days of crocheting nonstop.
My daughter has requested a throw blanket that looks like lined paper and sent me a couple of examples. I have no idea why someone would create a blanket that looks like paper, and would have never thought of it myself. But once I saw it, all I could think was why didn’t I think of it.
Yarn
After looking at the examples, I had to decide about the yarn. I have so much yarn. Yarn is coming out of my ears. I didn’t want to buy more yarn. I had white and blue, but unfortunately, I didn’t have enough of any single white color. I was so frustrated because I don’t need to buy more yarn! My child was willing to buy it (and I will probably take her up on it), but I decided to play yarn chicken and see if I could make it work. I have two large skiens of off-white that are close enough to each other to give it a go. I’m hoping with the two of them, I can finish the blanket. If not, I’ll mix in some of my other white yarn. Then I’ll make her a brand new one with the yarn she buys. 😂
The Stitches
Then I had to decide on the stitches I wanted to use. This didn’t need to be fancy. I was going to go with just single crochet, but opted for half double crochet for the white portions and single for the blue portions. I also went with back loop and front loop on alternating rows for the blue. That was another thing I had to decide: did I want it to be double sided or have a front and a back side? I went with one dominant side.
I only did one row of blue so I was able to alternate my mismatched whites at the end of each block. I figured that that would create a pattern. No haphazard mismatch here! So far, it looks good. I can’t even tell the whites don’t match. 😁
What to do when I have a half-finished doll the kids are salivating to get their hands on? I let them play with it of course! Not sure if this was prudent, but it sure was fun. I’ve allowed the kids to play with her because I wasn’t sure I could finish her before the end of the school year. I’m glad I did because they’ve been having so much fun with her. Especially the hair, they can’t stop messing with the hair! They even put this cute flower in it that came from a cupcake we had for snack.
I went off and started another crochet coat (sweater, cardigan, I never know how to label it). I’m almost done with it and realized I hadn’t done a single post about it. Well, if you count the post I made about the Bavarian square, then I guess I did post about it (at least the idea of making a sweater from it). And here I am , almost done with it.
The process for this one has been interesting. Here’s what I knew I wanted in a new sweater (coat, cardigan): It needed to be long. It needed to be dense (i.e. no holes to plug up). It needed to be easy. Lastly, it needed to fit! Oh, and feel good too, let’s not forget that. Continue reading →
I’ve created all kinds of dolls over the years. I’ve even attempted a life-size doll (which is still missing legs). I’ve made small dolls too, but never a tiny doll. Well, I pulled out a ball of cotton thread that was lurking in a yarn drawer and thought it was about time to try it. I’ve been seeing these really cute miniature dolls created by other crocheters that have inspired me. I pulled out a C hook and went for it. Continue reading →
Ok, so not everyone needs an egg apron (admittedly I don’t either) but kudos for originality! I saw this on Pinterest and had to share. Maybe it’s just me but I’ve never seen anything like it. So maybe I don’t need it to collect eggs but an apron with pockets like that does open up other possible uses. I kept looking at it, loving it, and automatically trying to think up other uses for it. I couldn’t think of anything concrete but the possibilities of possibilities was infinite! Hmm…maybe I could adapt the pattern to have bigger pockets to hold yarn and other yarny supplies. That way, I could walk while I crochet. I can’t even think straight to other possible uses but I know there ARE other uses. Surely, others will have ideas of their own. I have to go give this some more thought. All I know is that I love it!
Picture it, three small children, smitten with half of a life size doll. I finally attached arms to my doll and three of my Kindergarten students couldn’t stop hugging her and dare I mention, one of them couldn’t stop kissing her. The doll is a bit heavy because I stuffed her body with rags but that didn’t stop them from picking her up and squeezing her (and kissing her). Continue reading →
For those who read my post on crochet/yarn hacks, you know I wanted to make a crochet caddy. The sad truth is that there are many, many things that I want to make that get forgotten or, due to lack of hours in a day, never get made. But this is a post about what did get made so, YAY!
I guess I really was pumped up about that post because, not one, but two crochet hook caddies was born and are already in use. There was the added desire to have something pretty to store my new Clover Armour crochet hooks I got for my birthday.
At this stage (below), this one was in two pieces, the outer bottom and the snug upper layer. There was no top and it looked pretty nice but I wanted to give the hooks more separation.
Progress on the creepy life-sized doll is slow going. The body is done but I haven’t really had a chance to work on anything else but I did get started on the hands and am hopeful I can get the arms done by the end of the month.
That’s a kindergartner hand. Pretty close.
Once the arms get done, I can give her a shirt and finally give her some hair. Once she gets hair, she won’t be quite so creepy. I threw a small work shirt on her so the kids could stop worrying about her state of nakedness. Although, I might let her keep the shirt. 🙂
The kids are super excited now. One of my second graders was in her last week with us before a move to another state and she used the ‘moving’ card on me. I wasn’t letting any of them play with the doll. It was weird to me she wanted to play with something that looked like a bowling pin but how could I say no to my student when she looked at me all sad and telling me she won’t get to see it finished. I handed it to her and the kids all squealed with delight. Honestly, I didn’t understand how they could have so much excitement over a half finished doll that looked creepy to boot. Must be a kid thing.
So I gave my star stitch sweater away to one of my sisters. The other sister is still waiting for her granny square sweater so I am diligently back to plugging up holes. That leaves me with no sweater…again. I’m back to making a new sweater for myself. I’ve been visiting (more like moving in) Pinterest looking for inspiration, ideas, stitches, granny squares, anything I might like to make a new sweater. I saw a Bavarian granny square I found interesting. I tried following the pattern and in my hubris, I thought I had it down and kept going on my own. What I ended up with was huge and definitely not a square. I used a bigger hook size than the one called for in the pattern and a thicker yarn so it naturally came out big (but still bigger than I expected).
It was a little under a foot long from one end to the other! I thought it was pretty but not exactly right. More importantly, it wasn’t square.
yochet 