Tag: Crafts

Crafting

Knitting Patterns

Happy New Year!

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Well, here it is, the last day of 2019!

I hope that the year has treated you kindly, and pray that 2020 far exceeds 2019 in happiness.

It’s been a strange year for me, and not always the best. I honestly could have gone without a lot of what transpired in these last few weeks, but I’m really glad things are taken care of now.

I’m ending the year with probably a bit more stress than what I started 2019 with, but with less internal organs!

Just kidding, folks! But not really.

So, for the last day of the year at work, one of us will probably be sent home early. It might be me, seeing as how I have to drive through some treacherous roads. It might not be. To be honest, I wouldn’t be too upset if it was. I am dreading driving on my road this morning.

Just in case, though, I’m bringing some project work-who knows where we might end up today?

My project of choice is a simple shawl I just decided to start.

I’m using James C Brett Marble Chunky, my last ball, a size US 9 24″ circular needle and 2 stitch markers.

I cast on 5 stitches.

Row 1: k1, yo, k1, yo, pm, k1, pm, yo, k to the last stitch, yo, k1

Row 2: k1, p to last stitch, k1

Row 3: k1, yo, k to first marker, yo, pm, k1, pm yo k to the last stitch, yo, k1

Repeat Rows 2-3 until you have reached desired size. Cast off in your favorite cast of et voila!

I’ll continue working in mine today, until bed and post more pictures tomorrow.

Here’s to a great new year!

Christmas Crafts

Holiday Tear

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The last few days have been full of decorating and creating.

I redid my burlap wreath that I just winged years ago. I wrapped and tucked and it looked ok, until I added the ribbon. Then it looked ridiculous. I got down and I put it away.

I finally decided to redo it this year, and to actually do it correctly. Using this tutorial, I got to work.

As I went around my wreath form, I knew I wouldn’t have enough to go all the way around. The tutorial calls for a 12″ form and mine is 18″. My burlap was also pretty beat up and smelled dusty.

I went shopping for burlap the next day.

I chose this one, and got 2. The tutorial calls for 1 30′ roll, but like I said, mine was bigger. I ended up using both of them.

I have the 18″ form, the tutorial calls for 12″

In the end I was pleased with my work and was already starting to make plans for Valentine’s Day and Easter.

I discovered I had several bows in the house, but being my wreath is natural burlap, it didn’t seem right to add a burlap bow or anything like that. I also couldn’t find my pinecone pins or picks (I found them after it was hung up, of course), and my other bows are way too small. So i had also picked up a larger red bow.

It’s nice and simple. And now hanging up on the wall in the living room.

Next up, seeing what I can do with my plain green wreath that’s collecting dust in the closet.

Christmas Crafts

Fun with Foam

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Many years ago, after perusing a copy of Crochet Today (R.I.P.), I had a burning desire to make a wreath. All that was required was to wrap the foam wreath form with yarn and then DC the hell out of a chain and use the natural curves from that to make a rose. It came out nice, but wrapping the yarn around the foam ring was a pain in the ass.I made it with off white so, over the years it has gotten dingy, so we have had to replace it. I have been very lax in that regard. All the crochet wreaths I have seen and liked require a level of commitment I am just not ready for. Seeing all these people crocheting around rings, though…. That seemed easy enough.It isn’t… Not with that size of foam rings.
But commit, I did.Heres what I used:

  1. Yarn. I used two strands Red Heart Super Saver for one wreath, and one strand Hometown USA for the other
  2. Size P hook
  3. A smaller hook, I used an H

Heres what I did:Make a slip knot. Pick up the slip knot through the center of the foam ring. Wrap the yarn around the back of the ring, yarn over the hook and pull through the loop.Now comes the fun part, and the main reason I am very glad the foam rings weren’t larger than they are.. You’re going to leave your hook at the top of the ring. Bring your working yarn around the back of the yarn and wrap around your hook from the back. Your working yarn will be hanging in the front of your ring. These are now your two yarn loops. Wrap the working yarn around the back of the ring and wrap around your hook. Pull the working yarn through your two loops. Continue working around, sort of scrunching your work together to make sure you’re covering the foam ring.Once you’ve made it back to the beginning, and you have sufficient coverage, slip stitch into the first stitch, then switch to a smaller hook, chain 16, then bring it back down and slip stitch into the same stitch.Using craft glue or your handy dandy glue gun, apply decorations as you please. I am using ornaments and other Christmas decorations found in the Christmas aisles at Walmart.Here’s my one finished wreath.And here is the finished camo wreath

Christmas Crafts

Crochet Wreaths

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There are a lot of crochet wreaths going around right now. I myself was looking forward to making a few.I just couldn’t decide how I wanted to torture myself.I saw a really cute ornament someone had made and thought I could do that. Then I read she’d used a milk jug ring as the base. I wasn’t too sure that would be plausible for me. I did find a suitable replacement, though.I had a bunch of hair ties already from making scrunchies, so I could always use some of those. Then I remembered that I had bought a pack of shower curtain rings, you know those plastic things you have to wrestle into the holes at the top of the shower curtain? Yea, those.I couldn’t find them, so I went and got another from Walmart. They were around $1.I crocheted around the ring in green, then did a little trim of white around the edge. Add a few chains and slip stitch it back into the work et voila! An ornament with a hanger.I did a chain of cotton crochet with a tiny steel crochet hook, which of course made me question exactly what I was doing with my life to have been brought so low. I rolled it up into a little rosette and attached it to one of the wreaths using craft glue that dries clear.

Christmas Crafts

Fun with Glue

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I am a very big fan of the hot glue gun. I am not, however a fan of the glue in the glue gun. Especially the tails I seem to drag everywhere once I’ve glued whatever it is.

So, I am on medical leave after surgery and I am going stir crazy. When I go to the store, I experience pain in my abdomen, which is to be expected having had an internal organ removed. Obviously, it isn’t anything life threatening and sitting down and relaxing helps it a lot. That said, I haven’t done a lot of shopping at all. Short trips and someone is always with me.

Until today.

Now, I’m not trying to injure myself or anything, but I’ve been looking forward to doing something by myself, finally. My first two days post surgery, I didn’t go to the bathroom by myself. Even in the middle of the night, my husband would wake up and escort me to the bathroom. I get hollered at for reaching for things on a shelf that’s higher than my head. I practically have panic attacks when something I need or am putting away is on the top shelf. We were at the store and I grabbed some whipping cream from the top shelf and all I heard behind me was, “TOP SHELF.” In the Dad voice. It was embarrassing.

The trip today was short, but I did manage to walk the length of the store, as my goal was to get to the Christmas decorations. I wanted to get a deer head ornament we had seen at Walmart in another town. I had a stroke of genius, which you’ll see tomorrow.

They didn’t have what I was after at my Walmart, but I found some cute stuff. Including these Glitter Ornaments.

This is how you know I am bored. I am known for saying that things like glitter and tinsel were creations of the devils minions and were part of Satan’s grand plan for world domination. But I have purchased more glitter in the last few weeks than I have ever had the displeasure of looking at.

So, I bought some. And a bunch of other stuff. These were going to adorn various wreaths I made or bought. Then I started thinking. I took them out and laid them out on the bed and I made a wreath with just the ornaments and I liked it.

Here’s what I used:

Hot Glue Gun

Pack of 20 glitter ornaments

Scissors

Wax paper

Here’s what I did:

I cut all the gold hangers from the ornaments- the way they are arranged, the wreath won’t hang right where the hangers were attached.

Arrange the ornaments in a circle on the wax paper. As the picture shows, these ornaments have pentagons on the ends, so they line up nicely, and using those as the connector points makes it easy to arrange them into a circle. Glue the ornaments together at the points that are touching, using enough glue to cover both parts.

Once the glue has set and cooled off (remember, it IS hot glue, a lesson I re-learned after sticking my thumb into the damn glue on one of the ornaments), peel from the wax paper and use the scissors to trim any glue that’s visible from the ‘front’ side.
Add a ribbon or string to hang wherever you’d like!

Here are mine. I used 6 ornaments for each wreath and plain white ribbon for the hangers.

Wednesday Wonders

Wednesday Wonders

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Its Wednesday again!

It’s been absolutely crazy at home!

My garden is flourishing and before long, we’ll be eating home grown fresh vegetables!

I’m very excited. My bell peppers finally got planted and they’re already sprouting.

My daughter was amazed at my corn.

Since she has a lot of extracurriculars, or at least a lot of stuff going on for them, I decided that since I was already going to be outside watering and tending the vegetables, I’d just go ahead and take over feeding the animals. Right now its just the three goats, but we have a chicken coop that only needs a run and then we’ll also have chickens.

As far as the ‘side hustle’, I made my first sale in the Etsy shop! So I’m hopeful that’ll pick up soon. I went a little crazy when I got to go to a Joann’s, but I found some really great charms for stitch markers.

The shop in town where I sell finished items is going pretty well. Last time I was in there, the two blankets were gone, so that’s hopeful. I finished a baby blanket this morning that I’ll bring to the shop today or tomorrow. It’s in school colors, whichbare blue and white. A lot of the logos I see also have grey, so I added that in there too.

While that is washed and dried, I picked up my raised waffled square blanket. I haven’t touched it in quite a while and I need to get it done sooner rather than later.

My wonder for today is my husband. Yesterday, the first day he was going to be getting home before dark had set in, he had to pull over and call the police. He called me and told me that, then he told me that there were 2 little girls playing on the highway with a dog. These were very young girls and who knows how many people drove past without stopping before my hubby got there. The girls were apparently at their grandma’s house and wanted to go home. The town they live in is 30 minutes from my house in the car.

So, kudos to my husband for being the person who was kind enough to stop and help get those kids somewhere safe.

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Wednesday Wonders

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It’s almost 6 AM.

I’ve been awake about 2 hours. I slept pretty well, but then I was exhausted. Monday, my husband left with his crew to a fire. The call came through after 5 pm, so it was all zoom, zoom, zoom, because they had to get the crew together and get all their equipment and be there by 10 that night.

I ended up having a panic attack, because it was dark, I couldn’t get GPS directions to where I was going and my husband was sending me text directions, in several texts. So, me driving in the dark, on a road I might have been on once… not the best. I took the last turn because I freaked out because there was someone behind me and I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. Luckily, I turned the right way. I cried driving home in the dark, and just drove. Thankfully I arrived at a point where I knew how to get home. I did not buy myself a bag of donuts to comfort myself. I did go to the store though and bought paint. And a bag of Sour Patch Kids (that I didn’t end up eating until the next day).

With me being upset, I came home, said good night and went to bed. It was late already, well past my usual time of going to bed, so I fell asleep. For about 2 hours. I had gotten a text telling me they had arrived and were bedding down for the night an hour before. I was still raging, so I left it unread.

I stayed awake for awhile. I woke up later than usual for doing my morning chores and had a hard time getting myself going.

I had some extra work to do, though. Monday morning, I spoke with the owner of Blue Pond Boutique in Taylor, AZ and we came to an agreement for rent and space size for me to start selling. My husband made me a beautiful table that afternoon (he was a busy bee that day).

My job was to paint it, which is why at 9 pm Monday night, with a tear streaked face and a terrible attitude, I went to Walmart.

A shout out to Younique for their waterproof black mascara! That’s some magic right there! I LOVE mascara, it is the one thing that is consistently part of my makeup routine and this is the real deal, y’all!

I did my normal stuff and was chomping at the bit to get to painting. I chose Waverly chalk paints in Agave and Crimson. The agave color was just about perfect in the bottle. The Crimson I lightened up with some white to make a pink.

So, I did a coat of each color and jeez! All I could think was it was a Barbie Dream House nightmare or something. Very, very garish. I did not want to have to start over again so I waited for the paint to dry. For the next coat, I lighted the crimson up more, and added some white to lighten up the agave a bit. I then painted over the first coat. Not meticulously, to try and cover it up, but to sort of try to give it a faded kind of look. Like parts were lighter. It ended up looking pretty cool. And not really something that screams me. I’m more of a blue or purple person, and have been shying away from pink practically my entire existence.

Once everything was dry, I applied a light layer of the Waverly wax for chalk paint. So it has a nice sheen to it. After a few hours, we brought it back into the work shop. I’m really glad I did all the work outside, even though as soon as I started working I was set upon by a gang of ants and flies and a few bees.

Last night, I tried arranging my items on it to see how it would look. And man, theres a lot of stuff I made! Almost the whole thing was covered.

Today, I’ll go back into town and set up my space and breathe a small sigh of relief. And this afternoon, hopefully, I’ll get to hang out with a great bunch of ladies and their kids.

Tomorrow, I’ll get back to work.

Last night, I had a stroke of genius and today found exactly what I was looking for to make it work. Watch this space for some new stuff going into the shop!

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What Happened?

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Well, Saturday is gone. That was pretty quick.I did spend most of the day knitting. It was very productive. I was also looking into tables I can use to set up my section at Blue Pond Boutique.Mostly, though, I was being distracted. Kids were playing video games. Oddly enough, they figured out a schedule and stuck to it for the most part, so that one of them wasn’t playing all day. And they all played Assassin’s Creed. Just three different versions.I made more washcloths. Crazy Eights washcloth from Simply Notable, is perfect. I love it and the pattern is easy to follow and memorize. I did modify it a bit, casting on 14 stitches and doing 7 short rows. 9 wedges seemed to bring it to the correct size to close it so it lays flat. And their Vimeo was perfection, even if the wind made my connection sketchy.As I was working on the last one (I did one 16 stitch cast on, and three 14 stitch cast on and used up one whole ball of cotton and had a bunch left over of the second ball!) I started thinking about a crochet version. So I went hunting.Ravelry has a LOT of dishcloth/washcloth patterns. I had to whittle it down considerably to see if I could find what I was looking for. So far, I have not, though there are some amazing patterns.What I am looking for is one that’s constructed in the same way as the Crazy Eights dishcloth.I did, however, find one that’s crochet and similar to the Almost Lost Dishcloth pattern that I did last week!The Circle Point Washcloth by Glamour-4-You is perfect! Working in the back loop makes it bumpy enough to be able to wash something, and the points make it look adorable. I started one last night and was interrupted by a phone call from the husband-man-person.I also attempted to make one on my own, with the parameters I was looking for. So far so good, though I’ve only done 2 wedges, I think.I went ahead and bought some more lobster clasps to make more crochet stitch markers. Most of what is in the shop is for knitting needles up to US 10.5, with two of the crochet sets being virtually identical, so I think the rest of the charms I have I’ll add the lobster clasps. Also, I fell in love with these blue teardrop type charms! I love blues and purples and have been looking for something different from what I have been using.

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A Hidden Pattern

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When I was a newer knitter, I bought a bunch of yarn at a Goodwill. Pretty often. On \none of my forays, I got a cone of cotton yarn. Peaches & Creme yarn. At some point, I looked into the underside of the cone and found a piece of paper. I took it out and found a washcloth pattern! It was handwritten in beautiful script. I knit it up to see if it was actually workable.

It was!

I can no longer find the piece of paper I originally got the pattern from, but I did manage to type it up. It’s available for download on Ravelry. But I thought I’d add it to the blog as well, and maybe get into the habit of having free patterns regularly.

So, here it is:

Supplies needed:

Worsted weight cotton yarn, approximately 50-60 g

Size US 7 needles

Yarn Needle to weave in ends.

Pattern:

First stitch is slipped purl wise

Cast on 5 stitches

Row 1: sl1, bring yarn to back, knit across

Row 2: sl1, yarn back, k1, yo, k to end of the row.

Repeat row 2 until you have 52 stitches on your needle

Decreases:sl1, yarn back, k2tog, yo, k2tog, k to end of row.

Repeat this until you have 5 stitches remaining on your needle.

K across

Cast off, weave in ends.

And there you go.The ones I have been making lately are only 40 stitches across, but they’re pretty good sized.

My hand fits in the main part of the cloth at this size. They’re that small because I used leftovers from making Almost Lost Washcloths from Simply Notable and I wouldn’t have had enough to get yo 52 stitches and made it down to 5.

I’ll be making more of all the washcloths in the next few days, so you’ll hear about it, I’m sure.

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Almost Official

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I’m closer, at least.

Once the business gets a little momentum, it’ll be golden.

I took a wild step outside my comfort zone a few days ago and started the ball rolling for actually selling in person items. Mostly it will be already knit and crochet items, but who knows what will come down the line, right?

I also ordered business cards! It was exciting choosing them. Their design will be a jumping off point as far as logos and such go.

Inventory of stitch markers is all uploaded into the shop. I have patterns in the works, they just need pictures and to be typed up and uploaded as .pdf files

The big news:

I went and spoke with the owner of Blue Pond Boutique, a consignment kind of shop in town. There is a space I can have, I just need a shelf or table to showcase everything that won’t make it impossible for a person to see everything from the other vendors sharing the space (right now, just one in the space I’m being offered).

Other big news, I have a commission! It’s for a large, warm blanket. The yarn we chose arrived today. I’ll get things set up tomorrow.

12 cakes of yarn! Each is 590 yards of striping 80/20 acrylic wool blend from Lion Brand yarns. That’s 7,080 yards of DK weight yarn. It’ll make a great blanket.

I have almost nailed it down to which pattern I’ll use. I was leaning more towards crochet, since that seems to work up faster.

I have to get working on it soon as it’s supposed to be big and it’ll have to be delivered in time for the winter.

I have some other projects in mind too. Like my bedroom. The husband finally agreed that we should remove the very large and heavy entertainment center his dad made many moons ago. I’ll just have to find room for the stuff on it. I do have some other caveats to removing it. Like mounting the TV on the wall-it’s just too small to have it be the only thing on the wall. So I need options!

Well, it’s pretty early in the morning and I was woken up by feeling something on my face that ended up being a bug I killed when I went to brush away what I felt.

So now I’m awake. More awake than I was a few hours ago. Insomnia stinks!