Knitting

I'm three rows from finishing my second-ever knitting project - a pair of baby legwarmers. Here they are in my new yarn bowl made by Tom Emerine of www.raspberrywoods.com.

Christmas afghan #2

I posted last May about winning Ellen Gormley's book, Go Crochet!, and wanting to make a project from it. Since I had made an afghan for my mother-in-law, I wanted to make one for my parents, too. My mom loves sunsets, so I wanted to make a "sunset" afghan. Originally, I hoped to make the entire afghan look like one big sunset, but once I found the "Octagon Medallion" pattern, I knew it would be better to go for a more impressionistic approach. I made the "Octagon Medallion" motifs to look like the sunset, and for the squares to fit in between the octagons, I made "Cherry Cordial," because it reminded me of clouds when I used the right colors.

The picture shows somewhat of a closeup of the squares and octagons. Don't you just love how the middle of the octagon looks like a sun?!

As you can see in the above photo, the edges were still irregular from the octagons, but I thought they looked really neat. I just finished the outside border by doing 2 rows of single crochet around, so I didn't take away from the blanket itself with the border.

Christmas PJs

When Little Miss first joined our family, I really wanted to establish a few Christmas traditions of our own; something that we could do no matter where we were celebrating Christmas that year. We decided to have Christmas pjs every year and open them Christmas eve so the kids were wearing them for Christmas morning. It's hardly an original idea, but we almost always end up buying Christmas pajamas anyway, so why not make the tradition about them? This year, to go along with my crafty Christmas, I decided to make the kids' pjs.

I recently learned how to draft a pattern from an existing pair of pants, so I grabbed a pair of each kid's favorite pj pants and got to work on the patterns. For the top, I had a purchased pattern to follow. I got Little Man's pants done quickly, and cut out the pattern for the top in a size that both kids could wear, and started trying to piece it. For some reason, I tend to struggle with working with actual patterns, and this was no different. First of all, I realized after I started cutting that the shoulders were open, and supposed to have velcro to attach once on the child. I didn't have velcro on hand, but figured I could just put a couple snaps in with my snap pliers. I figured out placement and applied the snaps, but then when I went to sew the top together, the snap got caught on the presser foot, so I had to hand crank it through. Not the neatest job I've ever done! Then I had to take a quick crash course on setting in sleeves. Looking back, it wasn't too awful, but in the process I was ready to give up! As it is, I only finished the shirt for Little Man's pajamas, and we went shopping for a plain matching shirt for Little Miss.

And here are my two lovely models with their new pjs and our Christmas tree!



A Christmas of scarves and hats

In trying to figure out gifts for my family, I was inspired by the scarves I made for my sister-in-law. Part of the reason she asked for them is that she and her family recently moved, and it's colder where they are now, so she needed something to keep her warm. I took this thought, and figured my neice and nephew, her children, could use hats and scarves as well. I found the PERFECT yarn for my 6 year old neice, who is definitely into anything girly. It is Red Heart Shimmer, with a sparkley thread running through it. I'd also been wanting to try my hand at crocheted cables, so I found an awesome pattern that would work perfectly. For her scarf, I pulled the cable from the hat pattern and improvised a way to make it pop.

Continuing with my post stitch obsession, I found a nice, masculine hat pattern for my nephew. For his scarf, I just did a basic alternating 3 fpdc, 3 bpdc to create a wide ribbed look.

While I was working on my nephew's hat, Little Man tried to claim it as his own. I convinced him that it was for his cousin, but when I finished that one, I would make him one of his own. So, once I finished up all the other Christmas presents, I started on a hat and scarf set for Little Man. I used the same pattern as my nephew's hat for his, and then his scarf was the basic single crochet, chain one, repeat, because I knew it would work quickly.

I think he liked it!

(p.s. sneak peak of another gift!)

Finally, we were finishing up a round of secret sister at our church. I'm hesitant to crochet anything for my secret sisters prior to the reveal, because most of the ladies at church know how yarn-obsessed I am. In this case, I got lucky, because I planned to make the scarf as my secret sister's Christmas gift whether or not it was the reveal, but it was. I loved the pattern I used for my sister-in-law's red scarf, and have been wanting to make another one for someone, so I grabbed a skein of green (her favorite color) Caron Simply Soft and got started. The resulting scarf only used the one skein!



Since I've not made too many scarves since I learned to crochet, it was fun to make all of these different ones!

Christmas gifts - last year's top secret

For my first Christmas gift reveal, I'll finally show off the top secret gift that I alluded to much of last year. I actually started this gift with the intention of giving it for Christmas 2010, but I multitasked so much and it took a backseat to so many other projects that it wasn't done. So I kept working and finished it in July.
The idea began a couple years ago when my Mother-in-law and I were shopping the craft section together, and she noticed a booklet of afghan designs. She commented that the one on the cover was pretty, but we both left the booklet at the store. A few weeks later, my husband and I were out shopping, and I saw the same booklet, clearance priced no less! So I picked it up and planned to make the cover afghan for my MIL. I had some trouble with the individual squares curling as I finished them, but once I worked the yellow border and joined them, everything straightened right out. I was very happy with the results, even though I was ready for it to be done after a little over a year.  It was received very  well!

Items for sale - hackey sacks

This is my final Items for sale post! As a fun, relatively inexpensive toy to have on my table, I crocheted some hackey sacks. They are actually regulation weight according to the pattern I followed, but for anyone not a serious hackey sacker, they make great squish balls or just balls to play with.



They are sitting on the felted plate that I made up a while back. The plate was supposed to be a bowl, and didn't turn out quite like I wanted, but that was just because I didn't have as much yarn as I needed to make what I wanted. In the future, I can have a better plan!



I've been busy with house stuff this week, and haven't even picked up yarn or fabric all week! I'm going through crafting withdrawal. Especially after spending every spare second working on something for Christmas, up until the 27th! We had our own family Christmas that day, after being out of town for extended family celebrations, so I was still finishing up my gift for my Little Man the day of. Christmas gifts will be the next series of posts :)

Items for sale - Bibs and more blankets

Along with the ribbon lovies that I posted about the other day, I had a few other options for baby stuff. The first was a large pile of the receiving blankets I make as baby gifts, figuring others may like to give them as well. I tried to select a wide variety of prints, including gender-neutral as well a a couple girly and a couple boy prints. Altogether I had 28 of them to sell!

My newest creation, and my best seller were the bibs that I made. I had small pieces of material left over from cutting the blankets and ribbon lovies, so I made a pattern from one of our favorite bibs. It's one that my kids can still wear, with decent coverage, so I knew it would make a nice bib to try to sell. I ordered a bunch of snaps to go with the fabrics, and got to work.

These are the bibs that were left after the sale. Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of everything beforehand. In addition to those pictured above, I had one other monkey print, that sold out! Both monkey prints have brown snaps with engraved monkeys, the star print has a star shaped blue snap,the duckie print has a yellow snap with an engraved duck, and the others have plain white snaps. The bibs pictured here are available at the Casually Crafty facebook page. Check it out!