Crafty Pants!

Remember Owly? Well, he now has a buddy that is adept at hiding cottony stuff too!

Along with my cotton puffs, I use cotton swabs quite often for makeup application. So of course, I had to make myself something to hold those, too. Who wants an icky cardboard/plastic box on your counter?

I made stumpy using Lionbrand Lionsuede, which has a great texture and gives a very sturdy result. The pattern is quite easy, so here it is, incase you’d like a stump to hide your cottony treasures in:

Stumpy the Swab Stasher

Yarn: Bulky (Lionbrand Lionsuede)
Hook size: G

Special stitch: Bpdc, Fpdc

Main Stump:

1: With light color: ch 4. In 1st chain (4th from hook) dc 15. Join with sl st. (this makes a circle).

2: With main color: Bpdc around each post of each dc [15]. Join with sl st.

3: Fpdc around each post of each dc [15]. Join with sl st.

4: repeat row 3 until the stump is the height you like. Mine was 7-8 rows. Finish.

Little Branch:

1: With light color: ch 2. In 2nd ch from hook, sc 5.

2: With main color: sc in each st around until branch is the length you desire. Sew branch to stump

And that’s it! I’ll try and get the owl pattern up soon, but I want to experiment some more, possibly with felting, or using lion suede…

What secret is he hiding, sitting there on the edge of the cabinet?

Why, he’s hiding my cotton pads! I was looking for those!

I diligently use a toner every night, and I have been keeping my cotton puffs/pads in their original bag, in the bathroom cabinet. The only problem with this is that the bag is oddly shaped, and it is a bit annoying having to repeatedly open and re-seal it every night and morning. So, I experimented and made myself a cotton pad holder. The yarn was way too soft and thin, so I had to starch him with white glue. I also crocheted some wire circles to the edges to keep him nice and round. I’m thinking I want to make another go at him, but with thicker yarn so that he wouldn’t need starching or wire. I also plan on making a matching stump Q-tip holder…

Mr. Ele, the Elephant, decided he was quite unsatisfied with the gentlefolk of San Francisco. So he tipped his hat to the Golden Gate Bridge, and flew up to Seattle. No, not with his ears, silly! On a plane, of course. There, he met a a beautiful girl, whom he fell madly in love with.

But alas, he towered over her, and looked quite terrifying from her viewpoint.

Egads! He had encountered the Seattle Freeze!

Made using this pattern.

Two-point-five weeks into my life in San Francisco, and I got a great job! I’m very excited to start, but I still have a few days left of ‘vacation’. I had fun the first week wandering around. I still love to explore, but I’ve had to limit myself, because I really haven’t any moola yet. With all these amazing shops around, no one in their right mind could resist, so I had to quarantine myself. To ease my ‘new stuff’ desire, I decided to make something new.

I made it with Lion Brand Cashmere Blend, which I got on sale for 60% off. I used about 1.5 skeins, so I might have enough left over to make a matching one for a Christmas present.

Puffy Slouchy Hat
Bulky weight yarn, size K hook. For Worsted weight use a J hook

The numbers in the [] say how many stitches there should be.

Puff stitch: (YO, insert hook in next st, YO, pull up a loop) 4 times, YO, and draw through all loops on hook. (Here’s a video)

You do not have to join rounds, and this will create a spiral, and there will be no seam. Use a stitch marker if you do this, and keep the stitch count the same.

1: ch 4, 12 dc in first st, join in ch. (Just grab one loop from top of the chain. This makes the seam less visible, and this will make a circle.) [12]

2: ch 3, work 1 dc where chain is (in same st as join - ch3 counts as first dc), 2 dc in each stitch, join with sl st (remember, the ch counts as a st!). [24]

3: ch 3, work 1 dc where chain is, (work 1 dc, 2 dc in next stitch) around. Join. [36]

4: ch 3, work 1 dc where chain is, (work 1 dc in next 2 sts, 2 dc in next st) around. Join. [48]

5: ch3, work 1 dc where chain is, (work 1 dc in next 3 sts, 2 dc) around. Join. [60]

6: ch 3, 1 dc in each st around. Join. [60]

7: ch 3, 1 dc in each st around. Join. [60]

8: ch 3, 1 dc in each st around. Join. [60]

9: ch 3, puff st in same st as join, dc in next st, (puff in next st, dc in next
st) around. Join in top st of first puff. [60 sts: 30 puffs, 30 dc]

10: ch 1, (sc in top of puff, sc in next dc) around. Join. [60]
* It will look like you are skipping stitches here, but you aren’t. Just
remember, sc in top of puff, skip spot, and sc in top of dc post. Make sure you have 60 sts here!

11: same as row 9. [60 sts: 30 puffs, 30 dc]

12: sc around, same as row 10. [60]

13: same as row 9. [30 puffs, 30 dc]

14: sc around, same as row 10. [60]

15: ch 1, sc in each st around. [60]

16: ch 1, (sc in next 3 sts, dec over next 2 sts) around. Join. [48]

17: ch 1, sc in each st around. Join. [48]

18: same as row 17. [48]

19: same as row 17. [48]

20: same as row 17. [48]

21: ch 1, (slip st in next st, ch1, slip st in same st) around. Join in first sc.
Fasten off, weave in ends.

NOTE: As I mentioned in my original craftster post, I had intensely studied a pattern online. I don’t have a printer, so I tried to visualize it as a crochet chart. I have an insane memory, and graduated with a 3.98 GPA by only reading the texts the night before the tests. When I made this hat, I thought I was only being inspired, but I essentially recreated the hat. People have pointed it out, and I am very disappointed that I wasn’t being creative, I was just recalling it. SO, all accolades should go to the original author here: http://patternsbydot.blogspot.com/2005/11/bobble-beauty.html. My sincere apologies. I know it’s hard to believe, but it wasn’t intentional at all. I posted this at craftster, but I never got around to posting it here. :/

Over at Craftster  I finally decided to participate in a swap. I chose the newbies only swap because it would be the perfect introduction to swaps.  My partner liked Nintendo and had a sense of humor so here are the things I made:

Crocheted Boo:

Gnome, Mario Mushroom and Boo. These guys are made from polymer clay and the gnome is about an inch tall:

Hand carved stamp:

Stationary. I made magazine envelopes to go with too:

Everything together:

I also made a wooden ring for her, which is not pictured. It is the beech wood with beeswax finish, like the ones available in my shop.

#11-16 of 50

The boy works for a commercial real estate company that reps a few well known chocolate stores. As a result, I get more chocolate than any girl could ever dream of! Inspired by the Craftster Crochet Challenge I made myself a calorie-free alternative to truffles:

We’ve got a cherry cordial, coconut covered rum ball, chocolate noir,
dark chocolate covered strawberry nougat, mocha latte, mint chocolate
and dark chocolate covered vanilla. Yum!

Whoops, looks like someone already half of the dark chocolate strawberry truffle!

Challenge Entry

#8 of 50!

My brother and his wife off-handedly commented that they are “thinking of trying for kids soon.” So of course I got excited, and began planning the baby blanket! I have a multitude of very small balls of yarn all in the pastel-ish range of colors. Many are from my sister-in-law herself, and others are thrifted. Some are acrylic, some are cotton and some are ‘who knows’ (just not wool). I was inspired by the wonderful granny-along movement but I just couldn’t bear to make a granny square. They bring back memories of horrid orange-brown blankets that I just don’t want to delve into.

Instead, I’m using this as an excuse to play with texture. Each square will be a different solid color, and using a very wide range of patterns. I can’t imagine doing 50 of the same square, so I think this will help reduce the tedium. Below are my first three squares, un-blocked:

They are very wonky but hopefully blocking will help straighten that out! I have learned that I need to go down a hook size for the slightly thicker yarn, but hopefully the size difference will be fixed when they are sewn together.

I’m on a no-buy kick for the entire year of 2007 (It really works! My stash is dwindling!) but once all the squares are finished I plan on edging each in a soft cream/white color, to prevent any clashing. We’ll see when I get there.

I feel that this will be a long, but rewarding project, and will use of all my small balls of yarn quite nicely. As I see it, I couldn’t possibly finish this in 9 months, so I might as well get a head start!

This bear has quite a story to tell! His head, body and arms were made during the ridiculously long drive from Washington to New Mexico during December. I then became car sick and had to put him away. I made one leg in Albuquerque during the only 10 minutes of downtime I had. The other leg was made during January near Seattle, WA. Finally, I assembled him in April, on the east side of Washington state! He had a beret, but it’s lost somewhere in my yarn pile…

I made him using this pattern.

While this only took about two months, it too felt like the never-ending project. I started it in late January, and crocheted a few rounds per week, whenever I found any time to watch TV. I used the small-head size from the pattern Cranium. Well, either I have a very large head (actually, I’m kind of pin headed) or my gauge was pretty far off. I checked it a few times but I guess I measured wrong! It was about two inches shorter than I wanted.

So, I added a few more rounds of blo single crochet, but the hat was growing too slowly for me. My patience near the end was wearing thin. I did two rounds of regular sc, and then the round of slip stitches. I didn’t like how the slip stitch made it slightly tighter, so I ripped that row out and called it good.

Here it is on me:

My stitches are a bit wonky, and you can see the weeks where I was really stressed, and my tension was tight. I want to try the technique of “killing” acrylic to even things out, but I think I’d need a hat block for that. Instead, I think I will just throw it in the washer and dryer with some fabric softener.

Last spring I found a wonderful pattern on Craftster, and crocheted it slowly over the course of three months. It’s quite quick to crochet, but I only had time to do about one row at a time. Once finished, I realized that it needed a lining, so it promptly went into the ‘To-Do’ pile where it stayed until Christmas. What is it about ‘To-Do’ piles? They seems to be a black hole for projects…

It took me a good three days to put in the lining, because I was too lazy to sew it in, and could only glue small sections at a time. Now, it has been hanging in my room, just waiting for a picture for three months! I’m done with finals AND I finally have my camera back, so without further ado, here is my never-ending purse, ended!:

I used two shells as buttons for the closure, and a bright teal fabric for the lining.

It feels very ‘beachy’ to me, so in another two years, maybe I’ll make another in a raffia or twine;)