Crochet & Breastmilk

My dears, I am moving.

2008-08-06T13:57:00.002-10:00

I'm porting all of my posts from this blog over here: Sabra Crochets.

I love Blogger, and I am not leaving altogether. I still post on Trailer Park Paradise quite regularly. It is just that, as much as I have loved this blog and love it still, I cannot bring myself to come back to it. (Which makes moving the posts kinda weird, but it seemed right at the time.)

Please visit me again, and on the off chance you've linked to me, please update your link.

Thanks.

A brief note.

2007-10-30T09:59:00.000-10:00

It's not the reason why I took a break from this blog, but I lost the baby. I have the urge to work out my feelings with hook and yarn, but there is nothing that comes to mind. I believe this pregnancy will be memorialized as much in unfinished projects as anything--I cannot bear to look at the baby blanket I was crocheting up until the day I got the news, nor the skirt I started to occupy my hands in the hospital. For now, it's enough. I'll be able to work something more eventually.

If you're at all curious as to what's been going on, there are a few more posts over at my other blog, Trailer Park Paradise, which you can get to by clicking on my profile picture.

Hiatus

2007-09-10T15:41:00.000-10:00

Much as I wish it were otherwise, I am having some serious IRL issues right now, so I need to take a break from all my blogging.

Anyone who reads this, please pray for my daughters.

Finally!

2007-08-29T10:08:00.000-10:00

I was starting to think I'd never get it done!

The shorts were simple, though I did make them more difficult than they really needed to be when I was trying to figure it out.

Then I spent a flippin' long amount of time trying to figure out what I wanted to do for a shirt. I'd first intended to crochet the whole thing, but I just wasn't making any progress on that, so I finally took a onesie and crocheted a turtle motif (yes, my own pattern) to sew on it.

The booties are a variation of the ones I made for a girl, and the hat's just a tube I crocheted the top of closed. (Yes, I wanted it to look like that.)

Very simple, and it all took perhaps half a 6oz skein of sport weight yarn (including several false starts that I simply cut loose & gave to the kids to play with).

So, for all this, I am done! I'm going to consider the hexagonal blanket I made a while ago as being for the new baby (this is how much I hate making blankets), and anything else from here on out will just be for fun.

Absolute silliness

2007-08-26T19:20:00.000-10:00

Conversations over at Mama Drama about what to give a breast-obsessed child for her first birthday and the butt obsession my own kids seem to have led to someone joking that I should knit my kids a butt for their birthday.

Of course, I don't knit. So what I came up with was this:
This, of course, is a butt-shaped bean bag. This is what happens when I am bored and in an ornery mood. I crochet rear-ends. (Well, actually, this is the only one I plan on ever making.)

I'm a little scared by how quickly my mind solved the "how do I crochet a butt" conundrum. Answer? Make two hemispheres, whipstitch them together partially (then put another line of stitching further down, to hold the halves together), and then crochet around the unused stitches to bring it together & finish it off as one piece.

I filled it with good ol' Texas pinto beans, which adds another layer to the joke.

Sigh. Still no progress in the boy's shirt field, but should the little tyke be born assless, I know what to do for a prosthesis.

I am not feeling the love.

2007-08-23T10:43:00.001-10:00

Though I have made a cute little pair of shorts in case I have a boy, I haven't yet been able to make a shirt. I'm just not feeling it. Sigh. Hopefully things will clear up soon.

Whoa, I lost about a week there.

2007-08-14T07:41:00.001-10:00

This is a photo of the completed baby girl outfit. I had almost all of it done within I'd say 48 hours of finding out I was pregnant, but then the first wave of morning sickness knocked me on my rear and I spent a week dozing on my cousin's couch. (Bless you, Maggie.) I finally felt well enough today to do the tiny bit of work it took to finish the hat.

I don't really have a pattern for the dress. As you can tell from looking at it, I basically crocheted a skirt onto the bottom of a wrap-front shirt.

How I did it: I made a chainless single crochet band a bit longer than I thought I'd need, tacked down the starting end of it, then carefully sewed it to the bottom of the shirt (finding out along the way that you really need to snap this kind of shirt closed first), then unraveled the extra. Second round was single crochet again, then next round got into my lace pattern. I believe this is called the fantail stitch. I was doing it (or a modified version thereof) from memory rather than my stitch pattern book. The first round of it was the fantail (9 alternate double crochets in one stitch), skip 2, single crochet, skip 2 around. This wasn't even, but it made a nicely full skirt in the end. After that initial round I went into the normal lace pattern. It's a 2-round repeat, basically like so: rnd 2 of the pattern is a single crochet in the middle (5th) stitch of the fantail, then chain 4, double crochet in the single crochet, chain 4 around. Then the next fantail round is to work the fantail in the single crochet, skip the chains, & single crochet in the double crochet.

If memory serves, the original fantail stitch in my copy of 300 Crochet Stitches is actually something like 13 trebles instead of 9 alternate double crochets. I've never found it to be really workable in its original form, since trebles take me so blasted long to do, so I was happy to come up with this variation.

I'm thinking of flattening it out to make a blanket, but I'm generally not too fond of openwork blankets. We shall see.

The booties...I had wanted to use Pam Gillette's Mary Jane Slippers pattern, but she doesn't have a baby size. So I looked at the picture & figured out how I could make something that looked similar, and that's what I've done.

They're really cute; unfortunately I have no idea if they'll actually fit. (Oh, & in spite of this picture, the "strap" isn't really crooked.) They're also a whopping 11 rounds/rows, and so work up in about 10 minutes. Here's to hoping I got the proportions reasonably correct.

The hat was quite simple as well. I used the base of my hat pattern for the Beginner Baby Set, only from top down this time, and made it just short of 5" long before finishing with a couple of single crochet rounds to help it stay on (it was pretty loose with just the half double crochets).

I'll post the patterns for the hat & booties here shortly; I really don't have one for the dress (which is why I went into such detail for it & not the others).

Tiny Baby Dress

2007-08-03T13:53:00.000-10:00

Wednesday I found out I'm pregnant for the fourth time.

That same day I started a dress. I took a Gerber snap front tee and attached a crocheted skirt to it. Being that I was working at it from scratch, it took me some time to work out exactly what I wanted to do and how I needed to do it.

I finished it today. I now have a tiny little baby dress. There's something about making newborn stuff that brings the reality of it all home.

New Blog Added to Sidebar

2007-07-29T18:34:00.000-10:00

Ae's Page.

Very nice stuff there. I've added her after seeing her completed work in a couple of threads on Crochetville. She's quite creative, & has a great sense of color.

Little Leaf Afghan w/Mini Pattern

2007-07-28T20:44:00.001-10:00

I made this baby afghan for my cousin Becky, who is due in December.

Generally speaking, I don't like making large items like blankets at all, even baby blankets. My round baby blanket, for example, I started while pregnant with my second daughter, & finished two years later when pregnant with my third daughter.

But one of the things you can never have enough of, in my experience, is blankets. Especially for winter babies. So, the task was to make a blanket. And, since I am easily distracted, it had to be a simple blanket and a quick blanket. Thus, the Little Leaf Afghan was born. (I call it this because I believe the particular DC cluster stitch I use is called the leafhopper stitch, but I could be totally wrong about that.)

The blanket is green and white to make it seem to move faster--it's easy to gauge progress in terms of "OK, only four more stripes to go!" I have a nice picot edging on it because I wanted some sort of edging, but it needed to be a gender neutral edging as Becky isn't sure yet what she's having. (She'll find out ahead of time, the party pooper.) For some reason, a ruffle just doesn't strike me as gender neutral. Fringe does, but what baby wants to deal with fringe?

Anyhow, here's the pattern. Note that I am calling this a mini-pattern, as it's more of a schematic than an actual long crochet pattern like you typically see. (Another reason I don't make too many blankets is because the patterns tend to be asininely long.) With no further ado:

Little Leaf Afghan

Materials:
L (8 mm) hook
9 oz green worsted weight yarn
8 oz white worsted weight yarn
(These are guesses, as I used Caron yarn in pound skeins, & I estimate I used slightly less than half of each; better to have too much than not enough)

Leafhopper Stitch: This is a 2-dc cluster stitch, worked as follows--Yarn over, draw up a loop in first stitch. Draw up a loop in next stitch. Yarn over & draw through two loops on hook twice. For the next stitch, you'll draw up your first loop in the same stitch as you drew up the second loop in the last stitch. So, if you have stitches 1, 2, & 3, the first Leafhopper stitch will start in 1 and end end 2, and the second will start in 2 & end in 3. And so on. When you get to the end of the row, you'll work a normal double crochet in it after finishing the leafhopper stitch you were just working on. To wit: the last leafhopper stitch will be worked with the first leg in st 69 and the last leg in st 70. So you're going to put a DC in stitch 70. You must do this, or you'll lose a stitch every leafhopper row, and your blanket will come out looking like an idiot made it.

Picot: This is for the edging. The picot is worked like this: Single crochet in the proper stitch. Chain 3. Slip stitch into the back of the third chain.

Base chain is 71 stitches. The first row is 70 single crochet. (Be sure you don't deviate from the stripe pattern; you don't want an extra row of single crochet.)
Stripe: Work 1 row of single crochet, then 1 row of leafhopper stitch, then 1 row of single crochet, then 1 row of leafhopper stitch. Change colors (stop & cut your yarn with 2 loops left on the hook, line up the next color & draw it through the last 2 loops to finish the stitch) at the end of the fourth row. So: each stripe is 4 rows: Single crochet. Leafhopper. Single crochet. Leafhopper (with color change).

Work 15 stripes. The first & last stripes will be white. Do not finish off at the end, just switch to the green so you can do the border with a lot less trouble.

Border: In green: Single crochet evenly down the sides. I put 2 single crochets in the side of each leafhopper row & one in the side of each single crochet row. Single crochet two or three times in each corner stitch; you'll be able to tell where this is. Single crochet in the free bumps of the starting chain, back up the other side, and in each stitch in your final (leafhopper) row. In the next round of the border, you'll single crochet in two stitches & then put a Picot in every third stitch. Be sure to put one or two extra stitches in your corner stitches again this round, to keep everything flat.

***

Note that you can mess with a lot with this pattern. Obviously, you can use different yarn. You can use a different size hook (changing the number of stitches as necessary to get the desired width) and any number of stitches. You can even do this in all one color.

However, there is one thing you do not want to change about this pattern. Don't mess around with where you start & end the stripes too much. You want to always change colors at the end of a leafhopper row. This pattern has a very obvious front & back. Change colors at the proper place, and you can easily crochet over the yarn ends & hide them nicely at the back underneath single crochets. Otherwise you'll have a metric butt ton of ends to weave in, & who the hell wants to do that?

More pix:
This is a close-up of the stitch. This is the front of the leafhopper stitch. The back just looks like a long line of yarn going straight up; there's absolutely no interest to it. By contrast, the front looks a lot more complicated than it really is. This stitch goes fast, please believe me. There's no way I'd have stuck with it if it was slow. It's a bit open because of the large hook used, but judging by having it on my lap as I worked, it's still quite warm.

This is a handy stitch for a lot of things. I'm going to be making a sweater & hat using the same stitch to go along with it.

This is a somewhat close-up of the edging on the blanket. I frequently have problems with wanting to put my picots too close together; this is definitely one stitch you don't want to stack up on top of itself.

Overall, this is a good "wow" factor afghan--it looks like it was a lot more complicated than it really is to make.

You could probably make this in two or three days. It took me a while, but that's because I'm lazy as hell & day before yesterday I only made one stripe. Yesterday, this sucker was only half done (7 stripes), so I know it can be made quickly.

Crocheted Bunny from a Knitting Pattern

2007-07-24T10:05:00.001-10:00

Jo has this tutorial for making a bunny out of a knitted square up on her blog artsy fartsy mama.

I had been planning to make a crocheted version of this for a while but I never got around to it and eventually forgot I had the tut bookmarked. I came across it again last night after arranging the links in my Crochet & Crafts bookmark folder alphabetically and decided I'd have to take the time to make it today.

I used an I hook and some spare DK weight yarn of uncertain origin. I did it in Tunisian crochet because I never do anything in that technique, but I have no doubt it can be used with any stitch. One of the commenters at the author's site suggests it's a great use for gauge swatches, and I'm certain that's true for the folks who don't frog theirs like I do. (Every little bit of yarn should be used, right?)

I'm a little unclear on parts of the shaping, so I winged it some, but overall it's an excellent tutorial. Plenty of pictures, easily understood text, etc. The big difference, aside of course from using crochet, was that I didn't do a felted tail like she did; mine is several chain stitch loops. I didn't want something Esther could pull off easily. Of course, she was trying to take it from my hands before I was even done with it, but she managed to carry it off and leave it somewhere unknown during the short time I was moving the pictures from my camera onto my computer, so I think this is the record for the least amount of time it's taken her to lose something.

Baby Blankets: An Average

2007-07-22T19:56:00.000-10:00

So I'm working on designing a blankie for my cousin Becky's baby, and as usual I am stumped by the fact that I'm not sure what size to make it. Nothing I'm crocheting looks quite right, and I don't have any receiving blankets on hand to base it off of, like I usually do.

Brilliant me decided to go to Crochet Pattern Central's baby afghans page and see what was there. This somehow morphed into the idea of getting the measurements off of all the blankets with measurements and then averaging them.

I left off patterns that required registration, and anything that was obviously not a "normal" size (there were a couple that purported to be for car seats). After I assembled my list, I knocked the highest & lowest values off both measurements. This left me with 63 numbers, ranging from 25" on the width side on up to 50" on the height side. (Yeah, that'd be an interesting-looking afghan!)

Anyway, a little time with the calculator later, & this is what I came up with for an average baby blanket: 33" wide by 38" long (both rounded off).

I am publishing this because I know that the question of what size to make baby blankets has popped up many a time on Crochetville. My number, of course, is as arbitrary as any other, but it does seem like a handy size just by looking at it.

I'm not a bitch.

2007-07-22T09:11:00.001-10:00

I think I stepped through the looking glass, and somehow wound up in a world where it's an insult to be called a lady but it's great to be called a bitch.

I kind of rolled my eyes at Stitch & Bitch when it came out, as the name just reeks of trying too hard to be cutting edge; nonetheless I own that book as well as Stitch & Bitch Nation and the design journal (which I've never actually used, sadly enough; when I go to designing stuff I grab a spiral notebook by reflex).

I know there's a neofeminist magazine called Bitch, but I'm no more a neofeminist than a neoconservative. Rather, I am distinctly old-school in both respects. (And in regards to feminism, I mean old old school. Susan B Anthony rather than Gloria Steinem.)

Being that my best friend is gay, I'm well-conversant with the concept of conscripting insulting words in an effort to remove their sting. Be that as it may, I have to draw the line somewhere; I'd no more use the word bitch in reference to myself than I'd use the word nigger in reference to my black friends and acquaintances, or fagot in reference to Mark.

I have nothing to prove when it comes to hipness and craftiness. I've been crafting since before it once again became au courant, and I will continue to do so long after it leaves popular culture. I feel no need to declare myself hip and edgy by using a curse word to describe myself any more than I feel the need to declare myself hip and edgy by knitting a Hogwarts scarf.

I'd like to join a crafting group, but I'm not going to hook up with anyone obviously trying to declare themselves to be Really Really Different (and face it, these days a craft circle with the word bitch in it is about as counterculture as your average mall Goth). I like my tea cozies without irony, thank you very much, and although I have the deepest respect for folks who reconstruct clothing (witness the Wardrobe Reconstruction button in my sidebar), craft from found objects et cetera, I am forced to note that it really isn't anything new, although this drive towards proud self-deprecation certainly seems to be.

Here we go again...

2007-07-21T19:44:00.000-10:00

However, i think knitting is more versatile - there is so much more you can do with shaping, the type of fabric you're creating, designs in the knitting fabric, etc. Each stitch just seems to afford more detail than crochet to me, and crochet is often a very thick fabric, whereas knitting is thinner and therefore more versatile.

Grr. It's a good thing you cannot use the magic of the internet to bitchslap people, or my hands would hurt.

I've seen this argument put forth in many different forms lately, and it doesn't get any more accurate with the repetition.

I recall another thread on the same site (MotheringDotCommune) wherein a lady said she wanted to crochet some socks but her mother (in law?) told her you can't crochet socks, only knit them. My response to her is my response to the "you can do more with knitting" theory in general--Just because you can't do it, doesn't mean it can't be done.

Actually, the "you can't crochet socks" thing is the most laughable knitting vs crochet argument in existence, considering I can think of two books devoted to it off the top of my head, & could probably provide you with 20 links for crocheted socks with about 30 seconds worth of searching. Hell, I myself have created two different patterns for crocheted socks! (Only wrote down one, sadly.)

You know, I couldn't knit a doily if my life depended on it. Does that mean it's impossible? Er, no.

If your stitches have no definition, it means you're using crappy yarn, or a bad hook/yarn combo. (I knitted a skirt for Esther, & the eyelets I put in the bottom had shitty definition, probably because I was using a fairly thick yarn for the size needles I had.)

I think one of the best illustrations of "I can do anything you can do" is over at Bev's Country Cottage. (Bev, have I mentioned lately how much I love you? I haven't? Shame on me. I love you. Er, in a platonic, crocheting sort of way.) You can see her original Very Easy Booties here, and there is a knitted version here. Some day I'll make both to illustrate how much alike they are, but trust me there's very little difference.

I've personally crocheted a version of the baby hat from Stitch & Bitch. (Umbilical baby hat? Is that it?) I have a whole book that is dedicated to crocheted versions of common knit stitches.

I defy anyone to come up with something knitted that I couldn't do in crochet. Oh, and to come up with a decent-looking knitted granny square.

New dolls for a customer.

2007-07-20T06:35:00.001-10:00

This redhead was made first. I made her with the plan of selling her, and was lucky enough to find a lady who wanted not only her but also a cousin for her.

So I made the blonde, finished her up last night in fact. I had a lot of fun with that dress, I wanted a princessy sort of look.

Both of these were made with a 4mm hook and yarn I already had on hand. The orange dress the redhead has on is Microspun; I can't remember the brand of. It's my usual soft baby yarn, anyway.

I make the bodies and hair of these dolls from worsted weight yarn, & then go down to sport weight for their clothes, which seems to work out the best.

I am also nearly finished with the mermaid; she awaits only her arms. Of course, I put her aside for the customer.

Sometimes, it's too Easy

2007-07-11T19:54:00.000-10:00

You wouldn't guess it by looking at me, but my favorite thing to do at the gym is lift weights. I'm talking freeweights, baby--serious iron. (OK, by looking at me you wouldn't think I exercise at all, but that's beside the point.) I did upper-body work Tuesday, about half barbell & half dumbbell.

I used the 50lb barbell for most of what I did. I'm the only woman I've ever seen hoisting that sucker, or even the 40lb'er. I did some biceps curls with an EZ curl barbell, but it was only a 30lb'er. By then it was late enough in my workout that I couldn't use the 50lb anymore. And yet the 30lb felt too easy, as if I was wimping out.

The first time I had the cojones to do freeweights at this gym, I didn't know what weight to use, so I grabbed the lightest one--2olbs. I did a couple of curls with it and then re-racked it in disgust, because it was so easy it made me feel like an idiot. (Side note: this is the barbell I see other women with. I've never seen a gal with a heavier barbell at that gym. I'm sure they could handle it if they had any faith in themselves, but even the personal trainers--who should really know better--give women only the 20lb one.)

Anyway, I will now masterfully connect pumping iron to crocheting, because I rock like that.

My cousin Becky dropped by my cousin Maggie's (her sister) when I was over there tonight. She is pregnant again and due in December. This only enables me, y'know.

I promised her a baby blanket, amongst assorted other goodies. (Boy, the look she gave me when I waxed enthusiastic over getting to make sweaters!) I have a mostly-unused Pound of Love from Lion Brand in pale yellow, & I'm using this.

So, the question comes, what stitch pattern do I use? I know I don't have the patience to follow anyone else's pattern (though, of course, props to y'all who write 'em). So I'd have to come up with my own. And I opened up Notepad to write it down so I can post it to my free patterns site.

I intended to begin with to do horizontal stripes of a sort--plain DC interspersed with a lacier stitch. But this is a December baby, and it gets cold here in January/February time frame. So I wanted something not holey. Then I remembered a hat I'd made during Lent. Specifically, this one:
Alternating several double crochets with several single crochets, all on the same row, gives a sort of rippled look, without the pain in the rear that actual ripple patterns always give me. (I don't know why they do, but they do.)

So, I came up with a "pattern." And I WILL post it to my patterns site when I am done with the blanket, and I will call it the Lazy Ripple Baby Blanket. What I'm tempted to call it, on the other hand, is "The Dumbass Ripple Blankie", because that's what I feel like when I sit down to write this down as a pattern.

There are so many possible variations on this it's silly. If I remember right--I didn't write anything down at the time--the hat is 2 sc followed by 3 dc. The blanket is 3 sc followed by 3 dc. There are two ways to do this--either a multiple of 3 or a multiple of 6 (depending on whether you want it to end with sc or dc--a multiple of 3 but not 6 is necessary to end with the same stitch you start with), plus 1. You just sc in the scs and dc in the dcs. It's really that simple. I'm working with a starting chain of 121, which means I'm ending with 3 dcs. But you could do a starting chain with a multiple of four, five, or seven or more plus 1 (you always need 1 extra st when you start with a single crochet), and then do 5 sc followed by 5 dc, or you could have a multiple of 5 with an uneven breakdown, as with the hat.

It's so simple a pattern, just 3 rows, two of which are the pattern repeat (only different because of the starting stitch, which means a different number of turning chains). It's the crochet equivalent of the 20lb barbell. I can do it, but I feel silly doing it because it requires so little effort.

I'll post a picture of the blanket when I'm done; truthfully that's going to be the hardest part. Finishing the blanket. I tend to lose interest partway through blankets of any sort, but hopefully there's enough variation in this one to keep me entertained.

It's a head!

2007-07-08T08:08:00.001-10:00

I was semi-participating in a virtual sewing/crocheting circle last night, so I took this picture of the mermaid I'm working on. The hair on this thing is a pain. It's a nice wool yarn that's two different-colored strands entwined, with some thicker slubs here & there of almost raw wool. So what I've been doing after sewing it in place is to unwind the strands and attack them with a hair brush to rough it up some. You can see that to the left in the picture; on the right is the way it starts out. Very cool-looking. I'm taking a break from that til I'm finished with the rest of it, as it's very tedious work.

I didn't post too much to the circle last night; I figured out early on that the problem with such virtual klatching is that I'd have to stop working to post. Not gonna happen. I should look into joining the local Craft Mafia, or see about scaring up a crochet/sewing/embroider circle locally. There might be such a thing; I just really don't want to join in on something knitting-dominated.

Anyway, I'm about to go back to working on my mermaid. Fair warning, it's going to be made to Shooter Jennings, Los Lonely Boys and maybe even some Steve Earle.

Dolls

2007-07-02T12:39:00.000-10:00

My temp job has ended, but not before I developed the perfect doll. Well, perfect for me anyway; I like the size, the proportions, & the hands & feet. I still need to tweak some details, like the hair, and I haven't had much luck in writing a pattern, but those are minor details.

This is the first one I made; I gave it to Esther. I haven't changed the doll much from that way of making it. The major change is the way of attaching the arms; I finally figured out how to do it so they're attached in a more natural manner; on this doll one is sticking straight out because I sewed it on in the round & the other has some forward/backward motion because I pinched the starting end together & sewed it shut & then sewed it on the doll. I've since changed the method to have them 'hinged' up & down, with the free end sewn shut. (There was a very brief interlude where I crocheted the start end shut, but it make the arms too long.)
This is a bit of a close-up of the face. I actually haven't changed the way I do the face since this one. The eyes are simple rectangles, the lips a double-thickness line and then a little rectangle or triangle for the bottom lip. The nose is done in matching yarn, I also used it to trace around the eyes and add a little bit more detail.
One last picture of this doll, a close-up of the hair. I laid two long strands over the top of the head & backstitched them down. This isn't as sturdy as I'd like, so I took backstitches on the sides as much as there was room for, & I have refined this with each subsequent doll until the most recent one has almost all the hair sewn down on the sides as well.

This doll took all day to make, but I did finish the doll itself at work; I had to make the dress at home. The next day I made another doll for a neighbor child, which unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of. That doll I used a 4.25 mm hook for instead of the 4.0 mm used on this one. It is actually a significantly larger doll. I used a different hook size because of how much my hand hurt by the end of that first day, but it was worse the second day. The Clover Softouch hooks make all the difference. All subsequent dolls will be made with the 4.0 mm hook, as it gives a much nicer appearance overall.

I actually sold the third doll I made. As I was finishing up the second one, the gentleman who sits behind me asked if I could make a personalized one for his daughter. I quoted a price of $25, but browsing Etsy suggests any more should be priced higher. It's OK, though, I still think I got a good price. His daughter is of mixed-race, & he wanted one that looked a bit more like her, so I used tan yarn from Red Heart for the "skin" & Light & Lofty yarn in a sort of caramel color for the hair. I really love that yarn for hair, it should fray into something quite lovely. The final product was finished in just under half a day of work, & had a very nice tonal look going for it.

I don't have a photo of the finished project because I wasn't certain Tracey would be OK with it, but this is the doll without any clothes. I made a sundress for her all in single crochet so I could embroider on it. Not something I plan on doing in the future. Tracey loved it & I'm certain his daughter will as well.

I have a fourth doll almost finished, lacking merely an arm. I'll edit this post later today to post pix once I'm totally done. While working on this one I fell in love with the tan yarn & so the one I'm currently on uses the same color, & I've got a sort of brick colored yarn I'm using for the hair.

Most of these use Red Heart Super Saver yarn. Economical, & holds up well. Stash yarn, mostly. I bought some yarn from Michael's Friday evening, all wool, that I will use to make a mermaid. That and the doll I am working on currently will soon be up for sale at Etsy; I'll post here when they're listed.

Oh, & I'll have the pattern from the previous post up as soon as I locate the paper I wrote it on.

A couple of my work projects:

2007-06-21T13:25:00.001-10:00

The jacket is from this pattern, from Bev's Country Cottage. You really can't beat Bev's patterns for instant gratification and newbie-friendliness. (I have a shirt from one of her patterns as well, just not with me to photograph at the moment.)

The dress uses the same neckline-shaping technique as the sweater (and a handful of other patterns). It is my own pattern, though. I'll put it up on my site shortly, as soon as I figure out the button issue. I'm calling it the Fiesta baby dress, as it reminds me strongly of the Mexican dresses for sale hereabouts.

Since it's sized for a newborn, the ruffle on the front does not go completely around. There's no ruffle on the back, in other words. It has always struck me that ruffles on the back cannot be comfortable for newborns to lay on. It will need a flat button for the same reason (comfort).

I have made both of these this week. In the past two days, in fact. I probably won't have this temp job for very long, but man it's good for my crocheting.

I love my job.

2007-06-19T16:33:00.001-10:00

I am working outside the home again, temping in customer service. I'm working for Frost Bank, a big Texas bank, taking calls for commercial customers dealing with a new security system they've put in place starting Monday.

I didn't take anything to do last Thursday, which was my first day. I remedied that the next day. Friday, yesterday, & today, I made a baby blanket, a baby shirt, and half a baby sweater. The last two today. We are live, and we are taking calls, but we've got a decent amount of down-time in there. As I told Emile, one of my coworkers today, I have finally found a way to get paid for crocheting! I'll be crocheting tomorrow, & I'll remember this time to put a pair of scissors in my purse. It was heck sawing yarn off with a key.

Life is good. I might buy some yarn this payday.

New Blog/Site in the Links

2007-06-17T16:26:00.000-10:00

My Recycled Bags.com

Wanna guess what it is? Bags of all type, crocheted from recycled materials. The front page right now has a VHS tape/ribbon yarn tote bag, plastic bag pot scrubbers, a granny square tote again out of plastic bags, & a recycled plastic grocery tote bag.

There are also tutorials (like on how to use VHS tape for yarn) and patterns--for the aforementioned grocery tote bag, for starters. Many of the projects are also for sale.

You can't go wrong with DIY recycling. (OK, ok, you can, but there's no fire involved in this, at least.)

Three for the price of one.

2007-06-11T12:34:00.000-10:00

Remember this yarn? I finally used one of the skeins:
First, I made this shirt for Bobbie, using the aforementioned easiest sweater pattern. I used a K hook & a simple DC to keep it nice & airy for summer wear.

Then, I made this halter top for Linda:

I used one size hook (don't remember the size) for the bodice and a P hook for the bottom part. Again, just a simple double crochet for a lacy look.

Esther's was last, done while she was asleep. Which meant that I didn't get to fit it on her as well as I'd have liked. But it still fits quite well. Her halter is very, very simple. I just started out with 5 dc and increased at the beginning & end of every row for about five or six rows until it was wide enough & then went straight down until it was long enough. The whole thing was actually made in one piece, including the ruffles on the sides and the ties at top & bottom. I hate weaving in ends, which is why I did it that way. Esther's:

This is pretty much backless, which keeps it cool and makes nibbling on the adorable back a very easy thing. Oh, I used a K hook for the center part & an I for the ruffles & ties.

The girls wore their new tops to the Folklife Festival yesterday (one of Robert's customers gave him wristbands for us & under six was free). Well-slathered in sunscreen, they stayed relatively comfortable.

I still have some of the first skein of yarn left, and one more large skein as well. This is what I have planned for it:
It's a granny pentagon baby blanket. I was planning on a hexagon, but I couldn't get it to sit flat, so I switched to a pentagon. I plan on using up all the rest of the multicolored yarn and perhaps some white cotton yarn I have as well, if the multi doesn't get me a big enough blanket, though it probably will.

I'm also planning on giving in, joining the herd, & making the Baby It's Cold Outside jacket. My cousin Becky is pregnant yet again, & that gives me an excuse to make baby stuff.

Instant Gratification #2--Esther's Going to be so Happy

2007-06-07T18:39:00.000-10:00

I made this a couple of nights ago & hid it in my closet until I could get batteries for my camera to take pictures.

It's obviously just a simple Barbie outfit. I like this type of Barbie because of the feet, which are natural looking. But that has nothing to do with crochet, so now I'll talk about the clothes.

The skirt...No clue what the yarn is. Some sort of cotton that was given to my mother & then to me. It's 20 stitches long, 8 hdcs followed by 12 dcs, which gave it the shaping; it's obviously worked sideways.

The shirt is a version of what I belive to be called "The Simplest Sweater in the World" or something of the sort. I cannot find the link to it right now, which is upsetting as I seriously want to give credit where it is due. It's the only truly one-piece sweater pattern I know of, and as is obvious from this picture it is adaptable to any size. I'll keep looking and give the sweater its own post--which it well deserves--as soon as I find it.

To let you know how much I love this sweater pattern, I am making a shirt for my eldest based off of it.

The reasoning behind this project, by the way, was simply to see what I could come up with in only about two hours' time. Usually I take a very long time to make anything, because I constantly frog it and start over. I am proud to say that I only frogged each of these pieces once. I undoubtedly would have messed around more without the self-imposed deadline. I'm going to do this more often, as the very pretty Flanders Poppy from my Memorial Day entry was also a spur-of-the-moment creation.

Overthinking is bad.

Cafe Press Store Now Open

2007-06-04T20:02:00.000-10:00

I've opened a Crochet & Breastmilk Cafe Press store.

I have lots of advocacy stuff, mostly breastfeeding, but in my own special way there's plenty of stuff about crocheting as well. I spent tonight working on it. Everything there is 100% my own design, from the graphics to the words to how it's all put together.

Some examples:

The first one is my favorite. It's nearly impossible to read there, so here's a bigger version:
I actually did more calculations than that, but I had to cut it down so it would show up better on the products. That figure for formula is actually a lowball one. The brand-name stuff the hospitals get you hooked on costs more (I was thankfully only given formula for one kid, but it was the $20 a can stuff--not that I used it).

I like to put the cost equation in easy-to-understand terms. It came up at Mothering one time that a woman was trying to convince her husband it was a good idea to breastfeed, and that's when I did a little sleuthing & discovered you can buy a big-screen HDTV for the cost of a year's worth of formula (again, with that lowball figure).

But I don't care about televisions. I care about yarn.

Have you linked to me?

2007-06-01T10:55:00.001-10:00

I want to beef up my blog roll. If by chance you have a link to my blog on yours & I don't have a link back, let me know & I'll add you in. For that matter, even if you're not linked to me, use the comments section to let me know about your blog & I'll check it out and see about adding it in.

Flanders Poppy

2007-05-28T12:52:00.000-10:00

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Lt. Col. Dr. John McCrae, Canadian Army

To those men and women on Eternal Patrol: We salute your bravery and your sacrifice. Thank you.
To those they left behind: We grieve alongside you, and thank you for your bravery and your sacrifice.
To all others: Take time out to thank God that there are those willing to die for our freedoms, and so that others can have freedom as well.

Blue dress for Esther.

2007-05-26T07:54:00.001-10:00

This is based off of the Baby Girl Sleeper Set from Crotiques. I think I've mentioned before that I'd avoided the pattern, though I found it cute, because there's not a gauge listed anywhere on it. I figured out while we were still in Hawaii that if I used a bigger hook along with worsted weight yarn, I can make Esther-sized dresses.

This particular incarnation uses Caron Perfect Match (you thought I was gonna say Simply Soft, didn't you?) and a J/6mm hook. I also used Alternate Double Crochet as the base for all my stitches, a V-st instead of 3-dc for the corners, and at the end of it all switched to treble crochet for the final shells. Other than that, I stayed pretty close to the original pattern, though of course Ilengthened it quite a bit to have a knee-length dress.

The cheap yarn makes it a bit stiff, but it's not uncomfortable & I truly believe it'll soften up quite a bit after washing.

Since the hook is so big for the yarn, and since the stitch pattern for the skirt is quite open, this is appropriate for spring/summer wear. I'm always kind of stymied by people saying that yarn arts are a winter time craft. I mean, they're so obviously not, but how do you refute such an obviously untrue statement when the person saying it deeply believes it? Interestingly enough, this was most recently said to me in a thread of FOs that featured two different non-clothing objects. 'Cause, yeah, when it gets really hot out there, you have to switch to a different purse or you'll be overheated.

KnitPro

2007-05-26T07:20:00.000-10:00

KnitPro is "a web application that translates digital images into knit, crochet, needlepoint, and cross-stitch patterns." You're given a .PDF of your chart. Near as I can figure, they are 100% free, but there is a PayPal donate button, so if you can & you like it as much as I do, share the love.

Link here. I'm adding a link to my sidebar as well. Check it out.

This is the chart I made there (well, a screen shot, as I'm too stupid to upload actual files):
I made a chart of the International Breastfeeding Symbol developed through a contest at Mothering.com. In all honesty I'm not fond of the design It looks too much like a mother simply holding a baby. But as it was chosen by popular vote, I am obviously in the minority for wanting my breastfeeding symbol to look like breastfeeding!

I'm seriously going to crochet this, I'm just not sure when or what I'll do with the finished project. Maybe a mini-advocacy afghan, if I pair it with the runners-up. (I have some of them saved on my computer somewhere.

OK, just because I can, here's the one that was my favorite:
See, this one is much nicer, in my opinion. Not only does it have greater aesthetic appeal, it is obvious at a glance what it's supposed to represent. There you have mother, baby, and breast.

Maybe it's too white...

An interesting stitch

2007-05-19T20:37:00.001-10:00

I know, that's rather large. I wanted to attempt to show the detail, though. They say that the devil is in the details, but I rather think that in this case Heaven is in the details.

This handy-dandy little stitch is linked treble crochet. It's a nice, tall stitch without the openness typical of treble crochet. I also find it easier, though slower, as you don't wrap the yarn around the hook twice. Instead you draw a loop up in two different places on the side of the previous stitch, and it leaves the pretty horizontal bars you can see in the picture above. (At least, I hope you can see them. It wasn't an easy picture to take. Too dark without the flash, too shiny with it.)

This is detail for the skirt I am making for Linda, as the last one I tried to make her came out too small. I am used to the weight of the yarn stretching the skirt out quite a bit; apparently that's not an issue if you use the chainless single crochet (Google it. You'll be glad you did.) The linked trebles actually aren't great for projects worked in the round, since there's a gap only between the first & last stitches, but I'm hoping it won't be noticeable when it's worn. It's such a pretty stitch, though, and it makes nice big stripes.

If you'll look on the left side of the screen, you'll see that I finally figured out how to have buttons for all the blogs I link to in this new version of Blogger (stupid me didn't think to check the format of the carried-over ones until just now). You'll also see a partially cut-off bar for Associated Content, which will shortly have a crochet article I wrote, and even now carries two other of my articles. Pretty cool, huh?

Quickie.

2007-05-14T10:19:00.000-10:00

Yeah, it's odd to post again minutes after the last post. So sue me. I just found this blog, and I have to point it out to all my visitors who sew:

Wardrobe Refashion. It's just what it sounds like, only a little more complicated. Participants vow to not buy any new clothes for a period of time (at least 2 months). The idea is that instead you rework what you have, and also thrift-shop/garage sale finds, into a new wardrobe. Yay rejection of consumerism!

I love this one: 30-Minute Dress.

Yummy yarn goodness.

2007-05-14T10:00:00.000-10:00

Arguably the best thing about being a conservative is that I can be unabashed in my love of Wal-Mart (I've never been able to afford to hate them, but that's another story). This is a salient crochet point because it allows me to sometimes get great deals on yarn.

To wit:
Isn't it gorgeous? Two big skeins of cottony goodness for $9. Total. A savings of $4 off the normal Wal-Mart price, and God only knows how much elsewhere.

I got this at a Wal-Mart on the south side, near my mother's house. It's not my usual style, being pink and orange and yellow and white, but it somehow manages to come together quite well.

The Wal-Marts near my house never seem to have stuff like this. The only Bernat I typically see at any WM, for that matter, is their baby yarn, and sometimes their novelty yarns. This was in a clearance section, and if I'd had the money I could have gotten two or three more skeins of this, or several of another color.

Take a look at this close-up:

Gorgeous, isn't it? It's going to make a cute toddler sundress or two.

Speaking of which! I totally forgot to show off the dresses I sewed for the older two:

That's the best picture I could get, & it was taken at the end of the night, thus the glassy looks. They love 'em, though, & they seem to be very comfortable.

I've still got it!

2007-04-29T18:15:00.000-10:00

The ODD MOJO has returned. Maybe it's Fiesta that brings it out in me. I finally got another strange project completed (conceived & completed all in one day, yay me!). Presenting, the Choomp Ninja:
Robert named it thus; 'choomp' is our term for breastmilk (don't ask me why; I was still delirious from my first c-section when I coined it) and 'choomp ninja' is his nickname for Linda--the darling in the graphic at the top of this page. She has a habit of appearing out of nowhere and latching on.

Nevertheless, I have given this Choomp Ninja to Esther, and Linda and Bobbie have demanded their own, one red & one yellow. I'm not too sure about the yellow, it's not a very ninja-y color.

In future iterations I think I will make the legs in the same fashion as the arms, as they have a quite ninja-appropriate swirlyness to them. I really wanted to get this done in one sitting, so I decided to make limbs that wouldn't require stuffing.

The specs: this ninja was made with a 4.5mm hook (Clover's SofTouch, which I adore) using TLC essentials for the body & Caron Perfect Match for the face.

I'm really impressed with the newer Caron Perfect Match. I have some I bought years ago when we were living in Virginia & it's quite stiff. I bought enough back then to make an afghan with it--why the hell did I ever think I'd make an afghan? Anyhoo, the newer Caron Perfect Match, which I bought to make a head with, is much softer to the touch & more supple. It gives the very distinct impression that with a couple of washes it will become incredibly soft. (I have learned the value of repeated washes; it is only after about three years that my 450-thread-count sheets have earned their cost; they are now the most luxurious sheets imaginable.)

A note on the inspiration for this piece. I have StumbleUpon, an absolute must for anyone with Firefox, as I have said before. Of course one of my categories is arts & crafts, and it brought me to the Wee Ninja (Pocket Ninja) from Shawnimals.com. So if you or anyone you hold dear desires your own tiny ninja, look not to me but here instead. (And please note that my ninja is not meant to be ripoff or an exact copy of the Pocket Ninja; I was shown the photograph only in my Stumbling & used it as a jump-off point.)

Another textile art.

2007-04-27T17:40:00.000-10:00

I posted this link originally at MamaDrama, but the Mamas there simply didn't get it. I think most of my visitors here will, what with almost all of us being insane fiber artists.

The Court of the Splendors of Fire and Ice.

It is Fiesta time once again in San Antonio. In addition to cheap beer, dancing with said cheap beer, cascarones, and stick food, Fiesta is all about the gowns.

There is just an amazing amount of artistry that goes into these dresses, especially the trains (which of course are the showpiece). I have no doubt an entire year's work goes into the embroidery of these dresses. They are brand-new every year, and it is always a great thing when an exhibition of the older ones is put on somewhere. (Usually you'll see them at the Witte, but I remember once seeing them in a display at North Star Mall--home of the iconic giant cowboy boots.)

Of course, it is a great honor to be chosen to wear one of these gowns; it's a daydream of many a young San Antonio chica, but of course unless you are from one of the city's richest families you'll never have a chance. Nonetheless, these women are our own royalty--along with King Antonio and El Rey Feo, and of course Miss Fiesta--and people camp out literally a week in advance for the Battle of the Flowers parade, which is your best chance to see them. (Side note: all public schools in the city close down on the day this parade takes place; it's that important!) Since these gowns are so elaborate they are very very heavy, and the women wear their most comfortable shoes underneath; therefore it is tradition to shout "Show us your sneaks!" as no one can get enough of the contrast of wearing athletic shoes with these gowns, apparently.

It is one of many things that make San Antonio San Antonio. Most of the year we are a huge tourist city, but for these ten days it's all about us. The mayor, Phil Hardberger, described it as the ten days we take a collective vacation from thinking. Of course, tourists do participate, and no one really minds, but it's by us & for us, which is quite refreshing.

I have got to make something weird!

2007-04-24T18:30:00.000-10:00

I've been so sucked into doing proletarian things lately. I really enjoyed the hats project, but now they're mocking me with the need to weave in 40 little ends.

I need to do something odd. Or at least vaguely naughty. I'm just not sure what. I'm poring over Naughty Needles for inspiration (I know, it's knitting, but I can crochet anything you can knit).

I'm also sewing dresses for the older two munchkins. By hand, because I am insane and I think we left the sewing machine in Hawaii. (Yes, I know how pathetic it is that I apparently lost something that big, and no, we haven't finished unpacking yet.) Not that it's a particularly difficult project, as it involves a grand total of three seams. But it's two new dresses made for maybe $12 total, not a price you can beat!

Pattern up.

2007-04-23T11:25:00.000-10:00

The pattern for the bottle cover is available here. The main pattern page is here, and it's always linked over to your left. I didn't make another bottle cover, 'cause, well, what the hell use do I have for bottle covers? None.

I did buy some more crochet hooks at Hobby Lobby today, and even another copy of Crochet! magazine, which purports to have maternity clothes in it.

Mama's Milk Bottle Cover--Instant Gratification #2

2007-04-22T20:25:00.000-10:00

If the ladies at MotheringDotCommune are to be believed, some women are hesitant to give Baby a bottle of expressed breastmilk in public for fear other nursing mamas will assume it's formula. Not something I can identify with, but something I can sympathize with. (For the record, I assume that everyone is feeding expressed breastmilk, so that my happy place stays happy.) There are apparently some glass bottles out there that say "Mother's Milk" or some such on them. I have long wanted to come up with an alternative, a crocheted bottle cover with "Mommy's Milk" or "breastmilk" or some such embroidered on it.

I must confess, I don't get bottle covers. Of three kids, only one of them was ever willing to take a bottle, and she only did so for about two months, one bottle a day while I was at work. (She eventually decided she'd rather wait & get it straight from the tap.) I have long been opposed to bottle covers in general; I see their prevalence as one more subtle push of formula feeding. That, and I really don't understand what they're for. I mean, I realize they're to cover baby bottles. But why? Maybe it's part of the innate drive to crochet a cozy for anything and everything you come across.

So, this is the final result. (Well, semi-final, I'm going to crochet another one where the yarns contrast better.) The project was in some ways much harder than I expected. The cover itself was simple enough--there's no bottom on it as I didn't want to chance unbalancing the bottle, so it's a mere 12 rounds including the trim--but it was more difficult than I had anticipated to get something embroidered on it.

See, when you hold a bottle, so much of it is covered up by your hand. (In my happy place, no one props bottles either.) I wanted to have only half the cover taken up by the embroidery. So Mama's Milk & Breastmilk were both out. I settled on this:

I don't know if that's even readable, much as I messed around with the contrast, but it says Milkies. This is a fairly common shorthand for nursing/breastmilk. Even so, it takes up slightly more than half the bottle cover, and in all honesty I think if you have something like this it's more for yourself than any theoretically judgmental strangers. So it's OK.

I'll be posting the pattern soon at my patterns site & will post here when it's up. It's 1:36 am as I type this, so I need to go to bed & get some sleep. It only took me an hour to make this, and that's with having to frog a couple of times, stop repeatedly to check the fit on the bottle, and jot down the pattern as I was crocheting. So it's a fast, fast project--hence being Instant Gratification #2.

Even without the embroidery, it might make a good gift for any exclusive pumper or working nursing mama you know, and it's a stash-buster. I used a 4oz Soothie bottle for the fitting, but I believe Avent bottles to be much the same size. (My first two were so insulted by Avent bottles that I never tried giving one to Esther, so I've none in the house.) At any rate, it is sized for the wider bottles that breastfeeding mamas tend to use.

Wordless Wednesday

2007-04-18T07:32:00.000-10:00

Instant Gratification #1

2007-04-11T20:10:00.000-10:00

I was in the mood to make something quickly. This is what I came up with:
It's kind of bulky, but for something to make in half an hour starting at midnight, it can't be beat.

It's a very simple stitch pattern, a multiple of six stitches + 1.

Here's the pattern:

***

3.75 mm hook
cotton yarn (Sugar & Cream or the like)

Gauge really doesn't matter for this pattern; it'll either be wider or narrower, depending on how you do it. You can always add on more repeats if you really want to.

ch 14

1) Sc in second ch from hook & each rem. chain. 13sc
2) ch 1, turn. Sc in first st. *Ch 5, sk 5. Sc in next st.* twice. (End with sc in last sc.)
3) ch 1, turn. Sc in first st. *5hdc in ch-5 sp. Sc in sc.* twice

repeat rows 2 & 3 until cuff is almost large enough to encircle your wrist. Make it about 2 repeats FEWER than you think you need.

Ch 1, turn. Sl st in first 7 sts. IN SAME ST (#7): Ch 3. DC 4 more times. Drop loop from hook. Insert hook in first DC & back through dropped loop. Pull loop through st. Slst in last 6 sts. Finish off.

Join yarn in free loop of starting chain. Sl st in first 6 sts. Ch 3, sk 7th st. Slst in rem. 6 sts. Finish off.

***

I think this might work better with a button closure instead of the popcorn closure, but it was a matter of using what I could lay my hands on quickly. I'd also like to try it with a finer yarn. Maybe the bulkiness would have more of a punk edge if it wasn't pink. I'll be tinkering with this pattern & eventually get put it up on my permanent patterns site. But I don't think this is half bad for something made on the fly.

See this?

2007-04-11T12:33:00.000-10:00

This is my acceptance letter into nursing school.

I'd be prouder if they didn't accept everyone who passes their entrance exam.

But it still feels good.

There's no way in heck I'm going to have everything in by Friday, so I'm shooting for the August class start instead of the May start.

Y'all know what this means, don't you?

Crocheted microbes.

Makeover complete.

2007-04-10T17:05:00.000-10:00

For now, that is. I am not a web developer, which is ever-so-obvious. I merely edited the hell out of the template that Blogger provided. Thus, I am sadly lacking in a proper title up at the top of the browser. I can't get the title of my blog to show up there unless it's also written across my graphic. I'll get it straightened out eventually.

Also, please note that although I've technically changed the title of the blog, the URL stays the same. So if you have linked to me, it's really up to you whether you want to change the title of my blog in your links area.

Remind me never to buy a "knitting and crochet" book again

2007-04-10T09:27:00.000-10:00

This post is mostly a review of the book you see in the picture. It is One-Skein Wonders: 101 Yarn-Shop Favorites, edited by Judith Durant.

I suppose the subtitle should have been my warning. After all, when was the last time you saw an LYS that treated crocheting as anything more than an afterthought?

I bought it because it was $9.48 instead of the $18.95 cover price. Now that I think on it, the very fact that a secondhand book store had several copies of this 2006 book, all brand-new, should also have been my warning. But I was drunk on having found a bookstore with nine shop cats (hence the name Nine Lives Books) and I somehow managed to open it up to one of the few crochet patterns, and hey I knit some now (I've made three whole projects in the past four or five months--2 Barbie dresses and a baby skirt).

I hate buying books that advertise themselves as having both knitting and crochet patterns, since that's usually shorthand for "we threw in three crochet patterns to pacify you hookers." This book, sadly, isn't an exception to the rule.

There are 101 projects, divided into seven chapters based on yarn type. I am anal, so I went & counted. The chapter-by-chapter breakdown:
Bulky Weight: knitting patterns: 20; crochet patterns: 1
Heavy Worsted: knitting patterns:4; crochet patterns: 0
Worsted-Mohair: knitting patterns: 5 crochet patterns: 0
Worsted Weight: knitting patterns: 45 crochet patterns: 2
Sport Weight: knitting patterns: 4 crochet patterns: 0
Fingering Weight: knitting patterns: 9 crochet patterns: 2
Novelty Yarns: knitting patterns: 11 crochet pattners: 2

So, that's 98 knitting patterns and 7 crochet patterns (and yes, I know that adds up to more than 101 patterns, but some of the projects had two or more pieces to them, & actually I'm certain I missed a few "extra" knitting patterns).

The book was 93% knitting patterns. This irks me for more than a few reasons. First, but least, there's a better ratio of knitting-to-crochet patterns in knit.1, or almost any other knitting magazine. Second, but far more important to me: it gives the false impression that you cannot crochet much of anything with only one ball of yarn.

Now, I know that crocheting takes a lot more yarn than knitting, but that doesn't mean you cannot make plenty of crocheted objects with a single skein of yarn. In fact, a good many of the knitted objects in that book would also work well crocheted. Coasters, doll sweaters, minipurses...You're gonna tell me you can't find a crochet pattern for this stuff? (Especially the bookmark. I really expected that one to be a crochet pattern!)

Most of the projects I make, in fact, are single-skein projects. And if I make a lot of baby stuff, well so what? I didn't do a specific count on this, but easily half the projects in the book were hats or scarves, scarcely less repetitive than booties or sacques.

Someone needs to write a book of one-skein crochet projects. If anybody knows of one in print, please let me know in the comments section.

40 Hats for Lent

2007-04-08T20:15:00.000-10:00

There ya go. Forty hats. I need to do some major end-weaving, as you can see. I wasn't in the mood to deal with it. I never am.

As far as I can tell, there are 40 unique designs there as well. Many thanks to Bev Qualheim of Bev's Country Cottage, whose Hats! Hats! Hats! pattern provided my jumping-off point. (From that pattern I used a 10-dc foundation round, an H hook, and the finished length, but nothing else, so I am honestly comfortable claiming the finished projects as mine.) 300 Crochet Stitches, the book, also proved to be an invaluable resource, but easily half of the stitch patterns came from my own head, and most of the ones I got from the book were heavily modified to work in the round with the number of stitches I had to work with. So again, I am comfortable calling all of these designs my own.

I only wish I had thought to make a note of what stitch pattern I was using on each hat. I thought, foolishly, that I would be able to just look at the hat afterwards & tell what I had done. By and large, not true.

Most of the hats were done from stash yarn, but I did buy some new yarn. Most of them are done with Caron Simply Soft. One was made with my Knifty Knitter loom.

I've also made a slideshow:

Create a Free Slideshow

Not my favorite slideshow of all time, but it works. Or should; I can't actually see it in the composition screen.

Fair warning: upon seeing how poorly I've been doing at updating this, I am working on a retooling of the blog. I am going to expand its contents beyond crochet a bit, though that will still be the central focus of the blog.

My kingdom for my card reader...

2007-04-08T14:04:00.000-10:00

I just spent an hour or so photographing my 40 hats, individually & as a group, and now I cannot find my card reader to load the photos onto my computer. I swear to you that I am done though. I actually finished on Maundy Thursday.

I also crocheted three cropped sweaters for the littles, as Al Gore has yet to deliver on his global warming promises and thus it's 48 freaking degrees today. At least in theory it is, though it feels just the same as it did yesterday when it was 37 degrees pretty much all day long. Seriously, what the heck? I'm in Texas, it's supposed to be hot by now. It was 93 degrees last Easter.

40 Hats, a progress report

2007-03-07T11:15:00.000-10:00

Thirteen hats there, & the 14th on my hook will finally catch me up. I'm trying to be creative & so far no repeats. But the chances of coming up with 40 different, workable, variations...I don't know about that.

I love this yarn.

2007-02-23T20:37:00.000-10:00

Pretty, huh? It's Frosting by Yarn Bee. I think Yarn Bee is Hobby Lobby's brand; at least I've never seen it before now. It's so lovely; it reminds me of a field of wildflowers. I'm about to make a baby hat with it.

2/40 so far on the Lenten Hat Project.

Hooks & Hats

2007-02-22T11:22:00.000-10:00

This is my new rosewood crochet hook. My cousin Maggie & I went to the Yarn Barn Tuesday. Yarn Barn seems to be the closest thing to an LYS we have in this city. We seriously need a real LOCAL yarn store. Many apologies to the elderly ladies at the Yarn Barn. But I'm trying to make an effor to shop locally, so one chain store is as good as another.

Their selection of crochet hooks was pathetically small. Aside from some bone and abalone hooks up by the register, these rosewood hooks were the only ones I couldn't have found just as easily at Wal-Mart or Michaels. There were beaucoup knitting needles that were different from the typical stuff, but there was only one rotating rack of hooks. Pathetic.

It was only $8, though. I started out trying to make a hat with it, but it was splitting the fibers too much. I will try again, just not with something I'm trying to make quickly.

Hats...Someone on MotheringdotCommune mentioned that she was doing "40 hats in 40 days" for Lent. Sounds like a great idea, so I'm stealing it. Well, copying. I'm Protestant, so we're less about giving stuff up than we are about taking stuff on. It's my biggest charity project to date. I hope to find a local hospital for them to go to, but I'll mail them somewhere if necessary.

Valentine's Day Purses UPDATED

2007-02-14T10:36:00.000-10:00

I was hunting all over trying to come up with something to make for my girls for Valentine's Day. At first I was going to make little pillows with their names on them, and then I remembered that they're girlie girls. So I made purses instead.
They're insanely simple & fast to make. I used an H hook, Caron's Simply Soft & Simply Soft Brites, and HDCs. Each one is an hour's work total, and that's being generous.

I'll have the pattern up on my patterns page within a day or two.

In other news, we went on a magazine hunt yesterday, and I finally found a copy of the KnitScene that has Lady Linoleum's pattern for the mini top hat in it, and that's going to be my next crochet project.

UPDATE: The pattern is online here. Please let me know if you find any obvious mistakes.

I got it.

2007-01-28T11:16:00.000-10:00

After a few hours' feverish work, there is now a link to my free patterns page immediately to the left. It'll stay there permanently. Here's another link, to make this very simple: Sabra's Crochet Patterns.

It's not pretty, but it's functional. There's a reason I'm a crocheter & not a web developer.

I'm working on it.

2007-01-27T20:35:00.000-10:00

I've gotten several PMs over at C'ville asking for photos for my Beginner Baby Set. I'm working on getting all my patterns up on one webpage where they & their photos will stay more or less permanently (at least, I've no intention of taking them down!). I will devote much of my Sunday to that & will make a post both here & there when I finally finish.

I have more patterns than I realized! I did a search for threads I'd started at C'ville & was quite suprised to discover I've a total of 14 patterns (not 14 threads on it, though, I sometimes grouped 2 or 3 patterns in a thread).

It also brought home to me how desperately I need to write a new pattern! I haven't written anything in a very long time.

I am working again, though, so my crocheting time is once again severely curtailed. I do data entry at work and spend my breaks pumping milk for Miss Esther, so I don't have time to crochet there.

I feel so dirty.

2007-01-25T06:59:00.000-10:00

I made a scarf. Yes, a scarf. But it was for a good cause:
I made Linda a scarf for her birthday. I didn't take a separate picture of the project by itself, apparently, so you're stuck with the photo from her birthday party.

I used Wool-Ease, which I'd bought years ago for a totally different project. I think it works better this way, though. The hat is from the same yarn, with another yarn that I think is a cashmere blend, but again it's so old the label is missing, used for trim. (You can see it in the flower.)

Both hat & scarf were made from the same skein, with a tiny bit left over. Not bad, not bad at all. I made the scarf in a manner similar to Mile-a-Minute Afghans, which is to say I worked down the chain, then back up the other side of it, with extra stitches in the "end" chains. It's essentially worked in rounds. Not terribly original, but still better than the typical back-and-forth you find in scarves.

Happy Birthday Miss Linda

2007-01-19T06:51:00.000-10:00

One of Miss Linda's 3rd birthday presents is this outfit for her baby doll.

The doll itself was a Christmas gift, & a really great find for about $10 at Wal-Mart. No bottles (my pet peeve), and pretty lifelike aside from the white cloth body (and why can't they make the cloth body the same color as the limbs?). Anyhoo, it's a nice doll for the price.

I stayed up until about a quarter past one in the morning finishing this up. The dress is based off of Crotiques' Baby Girl Sleeper Set. I have made a few dresses from this pattern, but never actually made the pattern as written.

The yarn I used came out of my stash. I bought it years & years ago in Virginia because it's such a pretty color, but it's too rough for me to have used as clothes for an actual baby, but of course that's not as much of an issue with doll clothes. I have no idea as to the brand or weight (though it seems to be a light worsted weight), as I lost the label years ago. I used it to make one of my Christmas ornaments & fell in love with it again, so I wanted to use it for something.

Linda adores her doll's rainbow dress, and now I'm itching for more of this yarn to make other doll clothes. I am that insane, yes.

There will be more pictures tomorrow from Linda's gifts. I gave her just this when she woke up this morning because it will probably be pretty late when Rob gets off work tonight; she'll get the rest of her gifts then, two of which are crocheted.

Mittens!

2007-01-17T12:56:00.000-10:00

This is what it looked like outside today:
That is my car. Note the icicles.

It got up to a whopping 32 degrees yesterday, but was below that much of the day. Unfortunately, we lack central heat. So, even though we had heaters going yesterday, it got to where my eldest was complaining about having cold hands.

Obvious answer?

Mittens!

I used this pattern from Bev's Country Cottage:
Bev's Hat-Mitt combo.

It's a great pattern. It's all single crochets & slip stitches, and it works up quite fast. I did have to lengthen it some for Bobbie's mittens & use 11 rows instead of the suggested 10 for Linda's mittens, but other than that, the construction is just great. It is so simple & works up quite fast, probably about a 1 or 2 hour project for someone without small children climbing all over her.

Oh, for Esther's I used a G hook instead of the H hook, but other than that made it exactly according to pattern. She seems to quite like hers. She spent some time staring at them and clapping her hands, and even tried to put one of them on her foot instead of her hand.

Blast from the Past

2007-01-14T14:26:00.000-10:00

This is Linda wearing a dress. Not just any dress, mind you. This is Linda--age about 2.5 in this photo--wearing her baptism dress. Which she had last worn at 4 months old. No one was more surprised to see that it fit than I. It was not particularly large on her as a baby, or at least I did not think it was at the time.

I wish I had a decent picture of her in the dress as a baby, but I am holding her in the only one, and you can't really see the dress.

Her third birthday is this coming Friday, and I am taking a break from crocheting her birthday gifts to post this, because my hands hurt.

Bobbie's Sweater

2006-12-27T10:10:00.000-10:00

I actually finished this about a month ago, but haven't had a chance to post photos for it yet. So here ya go:
Cute, eh? The stripe pattern is modified from one of Candi Jensen's, but other than that it's 100% original work.

I had originally intended to make her sleeves in the same stitch pattern as the body of the sweater, but it was taking far too long, so I frogged it in the interest of time. (And yes! it gets cold enough in Texas to need a sweater like this. Geez, people!) I did the sleeves and collar in two days and rushed the collar through right before going to work so she could wear it that day.

But I didn't like the collar, so the very next day I frogged it & replaced it with this:

It's now almost a turtleneck. Two rows of HDC (one to establish the neckline, one to decrease its size some) and then several rows of a rib stitch comprised of 1FPDC followed by 1BPDC. Smaller hook too. She can wear it without a shirt under it now without worrying about it falling off one shoulder.

I got the usual comments about "working up the courage" to crochet a sweater when I showed this off at MamaDrama, so my current project is to make a tutorial on sweater-making while making a sweater for Linda. So look for that within the next few weeks. It's really ridiculously easy to make a sweater.

Oh, before I forget, the specifics:
yarn~ Caron's Simply Soft
hook~ H for the body & sleeves, F for the collar

Merry Christmas

2006-12-25T19:05:00.000-10:00

Of course, it is just barely still Christmas here, and for those of you already on the East Coast it's Boxing Day already. (No, I don't celebrate it, I just read far too many Regencies as a child.)

Here is my contribution to Christmas crochet, a project which occupied way more of my time than it should have:

I crocheted all the ornaments for my tree this year.

The reason behind this is rather odd, which is typical for me.

I had never before gone out on Black Friday, but this past day after Thanksgiving I actually did.

Some issues with an overheating van prompted me to stop at Home Depot for a cool-down, and I decided this meant I needed to buy a tree.

I found this adorable little potted tree there and had to have it. I am odd in that I prefer small Christmas trees to large ones. A carry-over from my childhood when we just couldn't afford the bigger ones, I guess.

Anyay, I bought this one and brought it home and decided I wanted to have it decorated by the time Robert got home from work. I confidently opened up the box marked 'X-Mas Decorations'...only to find nothing more than a few strands of lights and a jingle-bell wreath.

Darn.

So I grabbed the materials I always dohave to hand, and set about crocheting the popcorn garland. Then I made a couple of balls and a couple of spirals.

The project grew from there. I decided to make a snowman. Then I knew I had to make other stuff too, so I set about finding stuff to make.

But, since I can't let anything be easy, I set myself some simple guidelines. Number one: no novelty yarns. It would have been all too easy to use up some of the fizzy furry stuff I have sitting around to make interesting ornaments. But I wanted to stick to the plain Jane stuff. Most of what is there is actually worsted weight too. Number two: only use my F and E hooks. I hate small hooks, and I rarelyuse anything smaller than a G. So I set out to do something different here. I think this is mainly because the first hook I found was an F. Number three: no patterns. It was OK to look at pattern pictures for ideas, but I had to figure out how to do it on my own. Number four: whenever possible, use HDC. My favorite stitch.

Close-ups of some of my favorite ornaments (and I apologize in advance for the poor quality of these photos):

C'mon, you know this had to be there. Self-explanatory. Texas flag. Crocheted sideways to make it easy, using a vague intarsia technique for the red and white stripes. (I wanted to work them at the same time & make sure they were connected.) The star is simply embroidered on it, of course.

This picture frame was a royal pain in the rear end to make, and I am not thrilled about the final product. The picture is only somewhat secure in there. This is really just an excuse to put a picture of my girls up on my blog.
I'd re-take this picture, but I am far too lazy. I hung the cross backwards in this picture. There is actually a very nice slipstitched green border on the front of the ornament. The overall effect is reminiscent of a stained-glass window, or so I like to tell myself.

Of course, it strikes me as a bit macabre to have a reminder of Jesus's death displayed for the holiday celebrating His birth, but I was doubtful of my ability to crochet a manger. (I think I will save the crocheted creche for next year.)

This was requested by my husband. He works for Roto Rooter now, and this is my first iteration of the Roto Rooter emblem. It's not very good, but it is recognizable as the subject at least.

By the way, the Roto Rooter guys are authorized to work on gas lines. Surprised me. My husband is in training and thus far seems to have spent as much of his time unclogging drains in the city zoo as anything else. But I digress.

This is my favorite:
Miniature sweater. I got the idea here, but that one is knitted. I have such a short attention span and this in particular really played right into that. I think it took about a half-hour's work, total. I may need to get into miniature crochet some more.

That is all for now, Merry Christmas to everyone out in the blogosphere, and hot coffee vibes to all my fellow Episcopalians. For those of you who are Christian, especially my fellow Protestants, spend some time this busy holiday season thinking about Mary and the huge sacrifice she so willingly made. We tend not to give her the credit she is due.

New Book: Crochet Squared

2006-12-12T19:32:00.000-10:00

I love this book. Indeed I do. I bought it about three or four weeks ago, or rather made my hubby buy it for me, because I've been once again fascinated by the idea of modular crochet, and the entire idea of this book is that you use two stitches (chain and single crochet) and two shapes (squares & rectangles) to create a number of garments.

Of course, I am not enamoured of scarves, or ponchos, and this pushes my "stupid invented names for everyday stuff" (is 'shrawl' really a necessary part of anyone's vocabulary?) buttons. But it is, at it's heart an excellent description of a fascinating technique.

So last week I decided I'd blog about this book, and I went on to Amazon.com to swipe an image for it. Which you can see that I've done here. While there I came across the reviews. A good many people apparently bought this book because the author is black.

My bad. I didn't realize what hue the author's skin was until actually the day last week that I decided to write about it here. I know how to crochet already, so I tend to skip past the front section of a book if that's where the how-to stuff is. I was bored at work, though, so I decided to read through the front section, and it was only then that I noticed the author was black. Far be it from me to give a darn what the ethnicity of a book's author is. (Sometimes, gasp, I even read books written by liberals.)

But this review in particular has caused me to invent a new rule. First the review, then the rule:

I bought this book primarily because it's by an African American author--I rarely see people like me crocheting, let alone, publishing a book. I also bought this book because I thought it'd have some innovative techniques I was not privy to.
Unfortunately, I was very disappointed with my purchase. I love Ms. Polk's yarn selections, but they are not cheap and you need a lot to make most items featured in the book. Also, it takes forever to make her items since she only uses about two small stitches, particularly single crochet. Granted she uses oversized hooks for some of her projects, many crocheters might have trouble finding these hooks. Also, I tried her scarf pattern but was confused because the stitches look elongated, but she does not say she's elongating--just using a size S or T hook. I used both of mine and did not get the same effect she did. Some of her patterns also are a little hard to begin, as if the author assumes readers know what to do.
Once again, I feel deflated by the crochet/literary world. No wonder I turn to knitting books and magazines, and adapt the patterns into crochet.

OK, now for the rule. If you buy a book 'cause the author is black, then that damn well better be the basis for your review. Don't say "I bought the book primarily because the author is black, but I don't like the techniques in it." Uh-uh. If you're gonna buy the book because the author's skin tone matches yours, then review it on that basis. If you buy a book 'cause the author's black, then your review ought to read "This book's author is indeed a dark-skinned woman! Woo! Great book!" If you want to be a grownup and buy a book because of its content rather than its author's color, then review it on its content. (Geez, where have I heard this content rather than color stuff before?) But if you buy a book just because the author looks a certain way, then review the book on that basis.

Sheesh. It's like buying a book just because Sean Hannity is on the back cover and then complaining that his sentence structure sucks.

I made a doily! A DOILY!

2006-11-23T19:36:00.000-10:00

I don't do thread crochet. Nothing against it per se, just that it is in such small scale it generally takes forever and I honestly find it a pain.

So, much as I like doilies, I've not made any until now.

Some time ago, it occurred to me that I could simply follow the pattern, but with hook and yarn of my choice. This idea first came to me several years ago--and yeah, I realize it's nothing unique to me--but I forgot about it for whatever reason. Then it came up again, but I spent some time finding the "right" doily pattern. I still want to blow up a very large, involved doily into a throw for my friend Mark's apartment, 'cause his pad is funky like that, but I've had to go for instant gratification first:
This is from the book 24-Hour Crochet Projects, which I have checked out of the library. I seriously must now own this book. This is the "Diamonds in the Square" doily. I only deviated from the pattern a bit. (I still need to block it & weave in the ends, I know.)

I used a 3.5mm hook (much larger than the 1.5mm called for, but still quite small for me) & Bernat Be My Baby cotton yarn, which someone gave my mother & she then gave me.

This motif would make a really cute bedspread for a little girl, I think.

I am even more of a fan of Lady Linoleum's than I have been, now that I am working again. How that woman manages to stay so creative--and so prolific!--whilst working in the Cube Farm...! I am in awe. To be fair to myself, though, the Lady's offspring looks quite weaned, & I am spending my breaks & lunch attached to a breast pump for the benefit of my little Ro-Bear.

So I am still crocheting, but slowly. I have reluctantly given up on NaNoWriMo, because my schedule is just too hectic for me to catch up (I fell behind without realizing it, because their little word count widget screwed up). I am still going to complete that novel one of these days, though! Thanks to NaNo, I've gotten a lot farther than ever before. But that has nothing to do with crochet. This does:
This is going to be a shrug for my eldest. She's quite excited about it. I originally started doing it in track stitch, which is simply 4 rows of single crochet and one row of treble crochet, and very nice looking, but it was a bit too big when I wrapped it around her arm (I want a fairly snug fit) and so I frogged it. When I restarted I wanted something that would go faster than the track stitch, so I came up with this. It is quite simple, just 11 dcs, a 5dc shell, then another 11 dcs.

I couldn't get a good photo of it with the flash on, so though you can't really tell I'll enlighten you that it's Caron Simply Soft in Off White & I'm using an H hook. Basic work is good. I wanted just a little tiny bit of fancy in there, but simple enough that, like I said, it'll work up quickly. So far so good, though I'm not even up one arm yet.

In Progress: LetterBaby Jacket

2006-11-07T20:30:00.000-10:00

I decided to make Esther Ro a jacket for her birthday. Probably should have decided this much sooner than about 3 days in advance. Her birthday was over a week ago, & I am still working on it. Oh well, we're having temps in the low 80s during the days anyhow.

Still, as I've been updating so infrequently lately, I thought I'd share a picture of it in progress:
I decided to call it the "LetterBaby Jacket" because, as you can see, it is vaguely modeled off a high school letterman jacket. This is mainly because I didn't think I had enough of the purple yarn (yes, that's purple; my flash did funny things with the color) to make the sleeves as well. So I decided to do this. I probably do have enough yarn after all, but I'm paranoid. I'll make a hat or something with the rest. For one of the older girls who will actually allow a hat to rest on her head, that is.

This is obviously a very simple design, with minimal shaping (decreases on every other row of the front neckline only). It still needs, obviously, sleeves, a collar, & a button/snap placket (havent' decided which to use yet). But I took the time out to crochet a little E. The yarn is a bulky version of Caron's Simply Soft which I don't remember the exact name of, the hook is J, and the stitch plain ol' HDC (except the E, which of course is done in SC).

But I just couldn't let her birthday pass by without somethinghand-crocheted, so I went to Big Lots (which I now worship, by the way) and bought more yarn out of the Amazing Dollar Yarn Display, and made Esther a hat for her birthday:
As you can tell, she likes Fun Fur about as much as I do. I had to have someone hold it on her head (I think that's Jon Jr, coz Maggie's kid) to get a picture, but I do have a couple of cute video clips of her yanking it off her head & throwing it on the floor. What she is holding in her hands, if you can see it, is a box of tights, which proved to be the most-loved gift of the evening. The box, that is, not the tights. She spent most of the night gnawing on the box of tights, even threw down her cake to chew on it instead.

(The Fun Fur hat is also partially the result of my joke to my supervisor at work that I was going to make Her Baldness a wig for her birthday.)

Today's photos, by the way, are brought to you by Image Enhance. It's actually free, rather than just a trail version or a limited-use version or some other such nonsense. It is quite simple to use. I don't know how good it is at editing photos, but it works quite well for resizing them, which is really all I need it to do right now. The only thing is that it defaults to saving them as bitmaps even if they're orginally JPGs. So watch that, since a lot of photo hosting places won't work with BMPs.

Awash in UFOs.

2006-10-28T21:00:00.000-10:00

I swear to you, I am still here. :-)

I keep starting things, and then getting confused/burnt out/bored and wandering off to do something else.

No excuse. My cousin just learned how to crochet & she's crankin' stuff out left & right. Made my baby a scarf for her birthday even.

I'm working on a sweater for Esther right now. I'm feeling the itch to get back to sculpture crochet soon, but I'm not sure what to make.

I am working out of the home now, too, so I have had more time sucked from me. I pump milk during my breaks. I am bound & determined to buy a hands-free breast pump so that I can crochet and lactate at the same time.

Hmm...perhaps I will make a breast...Wouldn't that be fun to explain to my supervisor?

Proud of my cousin.

2006-09-30T03:49:00.001-10:00

My cousin Margaret decided she wanted to learn how to crochet. Since we're both southpaws, she asked me to teach her. I'm not great at teaching, but I was able to show her how to single crochet, and this was the result:
Cute, huh? She made her daughter a little purse. It's not the most perfect crochet I have ever seen, but I'm still mightily impressed. I mean, it's not a scarf. It's something she came up with the idea for all on her own, and she figured out how to do it with essentially no help from me.

I bought her I Taught Myself How to Crochet, the kit that has been around at least the past 15 or so years, because I used it back in the day. So hopefully it will work for her as it did for me, and if not we now live in the same trailer park (Yes! I am true to my roots!), so she can easily come to find me whenever she needs help.

In other news, I've shelved the skirt I was working on for myself. Mainly on account of the fact that my husband put it up somewhere & I've no idea what he did with it. You'd think he'd put it with the rest of my yarn & WIPs, but no.

I am also working on an outfit for Margaret's daughter, Cheyenne. She picked out her own yarn, the Bernat baby yarn that's supposed to stripe up. Damned if I can figure out how to get it to make neat stripes, though. I am making sure to use the hook the label mentions, and I have gone so far as to fold in half the length of pink I'm working with in half so I can hopefully get two rounds out of it, and nada. It's driving me nuts.

In other yarn news, Big Lots has some pretty nice yarn--again, Bernat--on sale for a dollar a skein. I am now the proud possessor of 12 skeins (four each of 3 different yarns) of this magical dollar yarn. It's nice too. I don't recall the name of most of it, but it's acrylic/mohair/angora, a nice fuzzy yarn. I have baby sweater plans for it.

Yarn Haul

2006-09-20T13:58:00.000-10:00

In the past two weeks, I've bought 20 skeins of TLC Cotton Plus yarn for $20. Total. That's a buck a skein, for those slow in math.

Where did I come across this bounty? Texas Thrift & Dollar Stores. So anyone who reads this who happens to be in the San Antonio area, it's worth a trip if you really like red, green, or yellow. Those being the 3 colors they have. I have only red & green. And no, I'm not making a Christmas afghan. I'm making this:
This, of course, is the Citrine Skirt from the Fall 2006 issue of Interweave Crochet. Designed by Annie Modesitt, who of course has some great designs for someone who identifies herself as a knitter.

I of course, am not making the skirt in the yarn called for, and therefore it will be single-colored & not striped. I'm probably violating the entire purpose of the pattern by not using that particular yarn, but oh well. I don't like orange (it's one of those colors I seriously think no one looks good in, though I've been told I do), and I don't like stripes.

What I do like is that this pattern actually comes in my size. I am making the biggest size, since the pattern says it's to sit low on the waist. I'm very appreciative of the fact that it comes in my size, as so few crochet patterns do (I wear a 16/18, which is an XL or 2X depending on the brand). I am even more appreciative of the fact that it comes in a variety of lengths. Though I do like long skirts--and am, in fact, making mine to be about ankle length--I am nevertheless quite short, so ankle length on your "average" woman (I put that in quotes because I am 5'5", which is exactly average height for a woman, but all clothes seem to be designed for gals taller than I) is tripping-length for me.

While I am on my list of things I like about the pattern--there is a diagram in the magazine for the bottom part of it, which is kind of confusing.

Still, either there is something wonky in the supply list, or I crochet even more tightly than I thought. The yarn is listed as being #2/Fine & the hook a 3.75mm/F. I am using the Cotton Plus, which the label says is worsted weight (though looking at it I'd guess it's sport weight) and still need a G/4.25 mm hook to obtain the stated gauge. I started with the 3.75mm and then moved up to 4mm before settling on the 4.25mm.

Not that it's really a problem, though. Just an observation. So wish me luck, as I don't tend towards complicated, adult-sized projects often.

Safe & sound in San Antonio

2006-09-07T11:36:00.000-10:00

We're home. Most of my stash is still in transit. I've only bought yarn once since moving here. Unemployment does funny things to my YAS (yarn acquiring syndrome). I've only crocheted 2 doll dresses in the time I've been here. I'll check back in when I can, hopefully with some FOs to show off; I'm borrowing coz's computer.

Packing.

2006-08-05T22:04:00.000-10:00

We are outta here on the 22nd or 23rd of this month (Robert kisses the Navy goodbye at 1400 on the 22nd, but we haven't gotten our flight times yet, so there's a possibility we won't leave until the 23rd). Our household goods are being packed the 21st & 22nd, so I have to have the computer stowed for travel by the 20th. The representative at household goods said that our stuff will take 48 days to get to San Antonio, & that means that shortly there will be a long space between updates.

Moreover, it means that right now I'm packing. We've been here about 18 months, which has led to quite a bit of yarn accumulation. I have a fairly large box packed already, and have only cleaned out the bottom part of one closet. And I'm not taking everything, either. There is some stuff I have tossed.

Packing is an adventure. I am coming across finished objects done with varying levels of skill, and plenty of WIPs. I have packed a disembodied pair of legs, two heads, and several squares that are all the same and quite obviously meant to become something, but I am not quite sure what. Obviously, I would greatly benefit from having taped or pinned a note to my WIPs as I set them aside, listing what the heck I was making & with what hook. It's kind of sad that I had to toss some things because I simply could not make sense of them.

I am also having fun trying to figure out what is good for long-term storage, what I will mail home in advance, and what I will carry with me on the plane. I need to have a small stash on-hand once I get to San Antonio. Though the severance pay is nice, and Rob will be able to collect unemployment, he doesn't yet have a job and so prudence dictates that I not enhance my stash too much while waiting for household goods. So I'll need to have something there with me.

Being home means we'll be geting Esther baptized, and that means I'll need to make her dress. I came across a size 12 months petticoat (at least, I suppose that's what it technically is; it looks like a dress made out of tulle--though not $200 tulle, LOL--with a full skirt). I'll use that as a base for her dress, & I've decided to make a very nontraditional one, moreso even than the ones I made for her sisters. I'm going to make it out of a dark blue pompadour yarn that I have on hand, and I'm thinking a classic pineapple for the skirt, but I just don't know yet.

See, I cannot stop planning new projects, even two weeks from moving 4,000 miles!

FINALLY! The latest sculpture is finished.

2006-07-31T17:29:00.000-10:00

I am quite pleased with this. It's my most ambitious sculpture to date. I wish I could list all the yarns that went into it, but I'm honestly not sure what everything is.

The hair (which was worked as part of the head, sort of intarsia) is a mohair yarn I bought years ago; I think it's something from Paton's, but don't quote me on it. The curls were fairly simple corkscrews (done by working multiple DCs into each chain); the difficult thing there was that I used an E hook to keep it from getting too big. (The main part of the head was done with a 4mm hook.) The body is my beloved Caron's Simply Soft, as is the yarn I used to embroider the face (which I am also quite proud of).

The arms & legs were both made with bends in them. The legs were the most difficult because of crocheted-in bends at both knee & heel. I used a technique described in the book Simple Crochet for Cherished Babies; it's how the author makes the heels on the baby slippers in the book. Well, an adaptation thereof.

The shoes are "leaves" crocheted out of a nice tangerine colored TLC Cotton Plus yarn. I used I think a J hook. That same yarn appears in the shawl, along with some scrap Simply Soft (you may remember it from the girls' Easter skirts, LOL). I just held the two together and used, if memory serves, a 9mm hook.

The skirt is some ribbon yarn I bought at the same time I bought the yarn I used for the hair. I haven't been able to successfully use it for anything else. It was kind of expensive, but better it should be used for this than continue to sit in the closet unused!

This is the flower. One of the rare times I've used Fun Fur. The stem is a pipe cleaner wrapped with sport weight yarn from my stash, attached using a bead, then doubled and wrapped again. I was originally going to do a whole armful of flowers, but I've decided it looks better with just one.

I'm going to throw this up on eBay, with a modest reserve, & see what happens, if anything. I'll make sure there's a link here once I'm done listing it.

Here are a few more photos, and a link to a large collage of the sculpture as a work in progress:

Note, if you can see them, the individual fingers & thumb on the hand. They were made as I closed the hand, by slip stitching through two of the previous round's stitches, chaining a little, and then single crocheting down the chains. I thought I'd taken pictures of the arm itself before I attached it to the main body of the sculpture, but I can't find them if I did.

This is the leg. You can see the two bends in this picture pretty well. It was a bit of a challenge getting it to line up properly.

Here's another view of the completed project. I have no further plans to use fringe on any garments, even a shawl. These photos, by the way, were taken outside in the back yard. Yes, we need to take the Weed Eater to it, but it makes for a better picture a little unmanicured.

Work in Progess Ladder. This is just too big to put here. If you follow the progress, you can see that it was kinda frog-like for a while there. I sewed the ankles and then the hands together to get the appropriate posture, another first for me.

And now, the experiment. I have the sculpture listed on eBay. Will it sell? I have truly no idea. I have a fairly high starting bid, and I do have a reserve because I don't want to wind up with it selling for five bucks. I don't really have expectations at this point in time, but it's worth the shot.

Quick & Easy

2006-07-29T17:12:00.000-10:00

Got a new copy of Quick and Easy Crochet in the mail the other day & whipped up this little outfit for Ro in a couple of days (but only a few hours' cumulative effort):

Cute, eh? It will serve her well this winter once we're home in Texas. It's Bernat yarn, but I'm not sure exactly what kind. It came in a kit for making a baby blanket (which I never made because the yarn was too much of a pain to work with, and no it wasn't much easier this time around, with greater experience), & the individual skeins are only labeled as Bernat. It's some sort of boucle yarn, though.

The byline for this pattern was D's Zigns. I have no idea who or what that is; if anyone knows please drop me a line. I'd love to contact the designer directly & tell him/her how much I enjoyed this pattern. Many if not most of the patterns in the magazine had the same byline. I did a Google search but wasn't able to find an exact match, and all the D Zigns, D'Zigns & other such variations seem to take me to a variety of web design studios, which somehow I doubt have anything to do with crochet.

I like this issue as much as I did the previous one, by the way, though the dreaded Fun Fur seems to have made an incursion & there's one very strange, ugly poncho too. Overall, though, it's nice, though I question the need for two or three different swimsuit coverups. There's a very neat skirt pattern that I hope to make, some time in the distant future when I'm able to procure sport weight yarn in adult colors.

I had this all typed out yesterday.

2006-07-11T23:49:00.000-10:00

I had this all typed out yesterday. I had my finger hovering over the button to select a picture to upload to Blogger...And the browser crashed. Just...closed. I have Firefox, so this doesn't happen very often to begin with, but this was like it just closed on its own. No error message, nothin'.

Of course, I haven't crocheted my browser window. So I need to get to the fiber-y goodness! First off, I have to give another shout out to Lady Linoleum over at Monster Crochet. I had to call my husband over and show him her Bacon Wrap. Sheer genius! Of course, she is probably themost talented crocheter I can think of offhand. I love her stuff. If you had told me it was possible to faithfully create a rasher of bacon in intarsia crochet...Well, I would have believed you, but I'd have wondered why you wanted to do it, and I'd have expected it to be, you know, life sized. There is something so truly bizarre and wonderful about a giant piece of bacon. Wool bacon. A pork product made out of a sheep product!

Moving along...

After that goodness, I am almost embarassed to show off my most recent completed project. I'm still stumbling along with my sculpture. It was more difficult than I thought to crochet a leaf that looks like a leaf and has the right dimensions without curling up upon itself. I wound up having to use a much bigger hook than I'd used for the rest of the project. I'd been using 3.75mm and 3.5mm hooks for most of it. Now that I think of it, though, I think I just used like a 7mm hook for another part. I am sadly prone to forgetting such things if I don't write them down. But it was necessary, because I was using ribbon yarn. I am pleased to report that I've finally successfully crocheted something using ribbon yarn! Strange little things make me happy.

Anyhoo...This is the latest completed project, made for Linda, my middle daughter (she's 2):
It's a simple little outfit for one of Linda's Cabbage Patch Kids. I have the pattern in rough form, I just need to remember where I put it, and then I'll post it on Crochetville. There seems to be an odd shortage of free CPK patterns out there, judging by the requests I keep seeing on the 'Ville.

I'm also thinking about adapting the dress part of the pattern into a shirt for Esther.

This outfit was a little lesson in learning to listen to the yarn. I know that sounds funky. I guess I should say, in letting your subconscious take control. I spent way longer than I should have trying to fancy up the dress. I was going to do a full shell-stitch skirt, but I couldn't get it to come out right, and then I was going to do crossed DCs, and then bobbles and then...Finally I had to go cook dinner. Yarn is fun, but it doesn't feed the children. Sadly, though, if I wasn't breastfeeding I'd probably hole myself up in my room in a yarn-induced stupor and let everyone else fend for themselves. See, breastfeeding really is good for you! LOL

Anyway, the next day I picked it up again, because I'd promised Linda a new outfit for her baby, and if you knew Linda you'd know she can't be deterred. Then again, what 2-year-old can? I finally thought, Oh, heck, I'll just make it plain. Plain DCs. See, I'd planned from the start to put the pattern up on the Ville, and I try to make my patterns simple enough for beginners when I do that. I think a lot of crochet patterns are written just to be confusing, though that is improving somewhat. So I just quit thinking and started working and before too long conceived of the idea to do some BLDCs (actually, since I am left-handed & so tend to work inside out, for me they were FLDCs) so I'd have something on which to anchor a double tier off ruffles.
Of course, that's not the only place I put ruffles. I don't actually care for butt-ruffles on real baby clothes (though we do have one pair of pink ruffle-butt pants that both Linda and Esther have worn), because they seem as if they would be uncomfortable. But I couldn't resist the urge to put ruffles on the undershorts here, though I did manfully (womanfully?) resist the urge to put ruffles around the legholes.

You can see from this picture, too, that I did tie closures. That was for simplicity. Linda has actually managed to yank the clothes off without undoing the ties, and to put the clothes on other dolls (and even, once or twice, back on this one) as well. So the ties aren't an issue. By the way, they're not my usual drawstrings, but extentions of the trim at neckline & waistband. I'm interested to see if this can be successfully adapted for use in actual clothes, say in my daughters' skirts. I'm afraid I will run into the old problem of the weight of the yarn making it too saggy, though.
These are the booties. The photo didn't come out so well on account of the flash, but that's OK. You get the general idea. These were significantly easier than real booties. Real booties require shaping; these are pretty much just tubes. They do have drawstrings; I needed some way to keep them on, however briefly.

The ruffles on these were much easier too, as they were crocheted in the normal part of the stitch, rather than in free loops.

The whole thing was done with a J (6mm) hook and, of course, Caron's Simply Soft. I love that yarn.

And now for this week's Gratuitous Esther Photo. (It was supposed to also be my contribution to Saturday Sky, but that got seriously sidetracked.)

I know, it's not too clear. But I like it that way.

A few things.

2006-06-25T13:41:00.000-10:00

This is a really neat effect.

It's called couching. Link to where I StumbledUpon it. (Link to StumbleUpon for Firefox, and if you don't have Firefox yet, why the heck not?)

It's an embroidery technique, a very interesting one wherein you sew over a fiber with thread to attach it to your base fabric in whatever shape pleases you. (There are many more pictures on the STITCH website, I just grabbed my favorite.) Fascinating, no?

Here's a quote on couching:

The main couching stitch uses two threads and two needles. A thicker thread is positioned or 'laid' on top of the fabric and the thinner thread is stitched over it to hold it in place.

I can see this having a deal of use in crocheting as an embellishment, though of course you'd have to be picky with both the couching material and the thread used to hold it down, given of course crochet's innate stretchiness.

I'm envisioning an Afghan-crochet stole with couching decoration on the ends. I really want to make it, but it's obviously a very long-term project, because I've got so much other stuff in the works!

Another shot of my WIP

I know, I know. I'm still being mysterious. I so seldom get a chance to be secretive about anything. I'm truly horrible at it in person. Heck, I have never once, in three kids, been able to spring my pregnancy on my husband as a surprise. (In fact, two out of three times, he was the one to tell me I was pregnant!)

I am actually a bit farther along than is apparent in this photo. I am almost done with the main part of the sculpture itself, in fact. One might say, 3/5ths of the way done. I didn't work on it much at all yesterday. I started to, but was having too much trouble with it, so I put it down and started on yet another project. Heh. I really need to finish some of the ones I'm already working on!

A la Drew

I don't usually jump on the blogging bandwagon, but this one I can't resist. Saturday Sky. See Drew's blog for more info and a link to the originator of the idea (I'm too lazy to do it myself). See my sky:
This is my backyard, which I put first because it's actually viewable from my desk. Well, were it not for the blinds covering the sliding door, or the canopy (whose edge you see in the photo) otherwise blocking my view.

Here's the view from the front lanai:
You can see somewhat the glory that is post WWII military housing.

Once upon a time, there was a discussion on MomsWhoThink about a member's upcoming trip to O'ahu. "Be sure you go see Pearl Harbor!" was the comment.

I almost hurt myself laughing. It's a common misconception, but I'm really not sure what people expect. (I actually liken the belief that you can go see "Pearl Harbor" to the one that afflicts my hometown that the Alamo is some massive compound out in the countryside.) Let me set y'all straight. There is such a thing as Pearl Harbor. It is very important to the Navy even now. It is not something that you tour. It's a shipyard and a Navy base. They don't allow on any civilians who don't work there. And even if they did, and you went on the base, it would bore you senseless unless you're really into steam pipes and large pieces of ordnance used as lawn ornaments. (Which I am. But that's another topic for another blog.)

Still, this is my sky. Purty, ain't it? It's Hawaii, the sky is always blue. Except for those 43 days earlier this year. And the day of the craft fair. But hey, we haven't dumped raw sewage into the ocean for months now! Come see!

Saving the best for last

This week's Gratuitous Esther Photo:
Isn't she cute? That's Linda's Halloween cat ears I crocheted, put on her just so I'd have an excuse to put another photo of her in a crochet blog. As you can see, she loves having her picture taken, just like the other two do. (This photo reminds me of another long-term project: a cover for that hideous Boppy in the background.)

WIP Wednesday

2006-06-21T12:32:00.000-10:00

I am almost done with this particular sculpture. I want to show it for my Work-in-Progress Wednesday post, but I don't want to reveal it ahead of time. So you get an odd-angle shot.

I can't say a whole lot about it without giving it away, but I will tell you this is the top. The pinkish-red part is yarn I bought so long ago I don't remember what it is (no clue what happened to the label), but I do believe it involves mohair somehow. I think this because it's scratchy on my stomach, but fine enough a form of wool that it's not scratchy on my fingers. I used an E hook to make these spirals, and it was painful & slow-going. But necessary for the overall project.

I'm still working on Smoochie's sweater, too, but I put it aside for this project. I just haven't made any sculpture crochet in such a long time. I felt the need to get back to it. The sweater will wait; whether I'm done with it by the time we get back to Texas or not, it won't be needed til October or November at the earliest.

Ooh, sparkly.

2006-06-12T22:48:00.000-10:00

For the record, no, I didn't intend to make another post today. But I made up this bracelet on a whim & so have to show it off:
Isn't it purty? I know, I know, the picture's not too good. But when the only problem I have with a project is the way the photograph of it turned out, I know I'm doin' alright. (Dig my engagement ring too; nothing so boring as a diamond for this girl's best friend!)

The really cool thing about this? OK, there are two cool things. First is that I did the whole thing, from idea to completion, in less than 2 hours, while watching Monster Garage (though not paying much attention) and with about a 30 minute break to nurse Esther.

Second cool thing? The approximate material cost for this little bracelet is less than a dollar. Yep, you read that right. One buck. It's only an estimate, unfortunately. I actually had all the stuff on hand; have since before Esther was born. But the price on the bead package was 59 cents, and the floss typically can be had for under 30¢ (I bought it as part of a larger package of floss, and I don't recall either the actual price or the number of skeins in the package, so I'm just going off my memory of the price of stuff at Wal-Mart.)

Technicals~ I used: D hook, DMC craft floss (unlike embroidery floss, craft floss doesn't split), & faceted 6mm beads in a translucent turquoise. Here's a scan of the bracelet, which will give you slightly better detail (though of course it's a bit pushed out of shape since it's been flattened):
I had to mess around with the color balance on this scan to get the beads to be easily visible. In reality, the beads & floss are much closer together in color. In fact, I switched from my original idea of using blue floss to green floss because the beads are more green than blue.

Now, how did I make it? Fairly simple, actually. That's only 3 rounds of work there. First round was 50 chainless single crochets. Second round, where the beads are, was beadedDC, ch-1 skip 1 sc, then another beadedDC around. Third round was SCs all around again.

It's a bit looser than I really wanted it to be, but not so much that it will fall off. It's easy to put on, though.

Very pretty for such little cost & effort!

Pants.

2006-06-12T20:33:00.000-10:00

Finished these today. It's a fairly straightforward project. Bluejeans embellished with little flower motifs. More stuff for when we get back home to Texas, once winter comes along anyway. I still need to embroider the M on the other back pocket (it's for our last name) & go back and see how much I can touch up the E, but they're essentially done.

Sized 12 months, so they're Esther's. They were actually Linda's originally, but Linda is in 3T stuff right now, and Esther will be in 12 months stuff by the time it's cool enough to wear these. And I've been wanting to do a couple of embellishment projects.

I adapted a pattern out of the book So Simple Crochet, one of the motif patterns in there. Used DMC embroidery & craft floss I had on hand, and a 2mm hook, to make the motifs. Much smaller scale than I usually work in, but for a good cause.

And now for a gratuitous Esther photo. Here she is modelling the shorts from my Beginner Baby Set:
This will probably be the last time she wears these shorts. They're supposed to fit up to three months, & she's seven months, so I'm already getting more use out of them than I figured I would, but there's no need for the drawstring in them anymore.

It wasn't that long ago that she was swimming in them. Sniff, sniff.

Quick WIP for Wednesday

2006-06-07T23:06:00.000-10:00

This will one day be a sweater for my eldest daughter.

I just wanted to prove that I haven't lost the ability to crochet!

The stitch pattern is an adaptation of one in Candy Tots by Candi Jensen. The hook is an H. The yarn is, of course, Caron Simply Soft.

We will be going back to Texas this summer/fall for good (YAY!), and so will be somewhere it actually gets cold. So I'm working on sweaters for the girls to wear this coming winter. 'Scuse me while I twitch at the thought of again living where it dips below the high sixties...

The starving supermodels ate their brains!

2006-06-01T23:48:00.000-10:00

I suspect it was her:
She looks like the type, doesn't she? (To be fair, I'd be homicidal if I had to dressin that "outfit" as well.)

I am speaking, of course, of the July issue of Crochet! magazine. Y'know 'em, they're the ones "defining crochet." I've made fun of their new starving supermodel motif in this space before, but it is unusually apparent in this issue. Enough so that I actually wrote a letter-to-the editor.

You see, it all started out so hopefully. Today is payday, and there's a book out with novellas from Kelley Armstrong & Kim Harrison, two of my favorite authors (and I highly recommend them to anyone who used to be an Anita Blake fan but ran screaming from Ms Hamilton's novels when they turned into poorly-written soft porn). So after leaving Wal-Mart--where, by the way, I scored some great new baby yarn--we went to Borders so I could look for Dates from Hell and, of course, dig for new crochet magazines.

This was the only one. And I was so very excited when I saw it. Because this dress was on the cover:
Isn't it gorgeous? Très mod, no? It's got an übercool '70s vibe to it. I so wanted to make it. I mean, I was gonna come home and hop on the internet and find the yarns to make it. I've got a strapless bra, I'm fearless. I'd wear it to church, even (we've got a very laid-back church here).

And then...

And then, I got to the pattern. And to this little tidbit:

FINISHED SIZES

Instructions given fit 28-30 inch bust (x-small); for 32-34 inch bust (small) and 36 - 38 inch bust (medium), change hook size.

Um, OK. Extra small, small, and medium. Most American women are a size 14 or above. In other words, not extra small, small, or medium. WTF? Seriously, have these women looked at actual crocheters lately? Come on, this thing is published in Texas! TEXAS! I'm from there, I know what we look like. And we do not look like "extra small." Not by any stretch of the imagination.

There are several really cute things in there I'd love to make...Oddly, though, all the ones I truly want to make stop short at size medium.

I'm not a size medium. I don't want to be a size medium. I weigh 185 and I wear a size 18. Back in high school when I was eating like one meal a day and walking probably five or six miles a day, I was a size 14. Send me off to Bergen-Belsen for a few months and I might come back a medium, but don't bet on it.

I'm used to this silly attitude towards plus size women from the fashion world in general. We're supposed to wear sackcloth and ashes while we nosh on our celery sticks in a concerted effort to become the new ideal of a size 4. (Once upon a time, the ideal was a size 8. Size 8 is the size off which all other sizes are based, in theory. But now a size 8 would be considered too big.) Certainly, we're not supposed to want to dress attractively.

Know what, though? We do. Oh, not everyone. But take a look in a Lane Bryant or a Torrid or an Ashley Stewart the next time you're in a mall. Even those of us whose sizes are firmly in the double digits like to wear attractive things.

It's OK, though. It's not all lost! These two tops actually do have directions for my size:

Those first two are the same top, by the way. A front view, and then a back view.

Cute, aren't they?

Not any more firmly rooted in reality, though. I don't know any women, no matter their bust measurement, who are willing to go out in public bra-less. And you really can't wear a brasseire with either of those tops. (They weren't the only offenders in this area, by the way, just the most obvious.)

That first one, the one with the tie back, goes up to a 46-inch bust. I assume this to be an over-the-bust measurement. OK, boys and girls, this is me. I could wear that top if I made it in the largest size. Click that link, look at my photo, and then ask yourself if you really want that to happen. (Not that I think I am ugly, but me without a bra is only a good idea for the nurslings.)

Again, both of those are beautiful pieces, but horrendously impractical & unrealistic for most crocheters.

But again, all is not lost! If I want to use that magazine to crochet a top that is a) in my size and b) can be worn with a bra, I still get to make this:
That sound you hear is me whimpering in pain and submission.

Holy Moses!

2006-05-24T11:44:00.000-10:00

So, back in January one of those college students selling magazines came around to our door & I got sucked in to subscribing to a crochet magazine. Quick and Easy Crochet, which I'd never heard of before, nor seen. Yeah, I know, pretty dumb.

Well, I was starting to think I was going to have to track these people down, 'cause it's been four months. But I got my first issue of the magazine in the mail Monday. It's great! I mean, it's not perfect, but it's a lot more my style than anything else I've come across.

The most amazing thing of all?

NOT ONE SCRAP OF FUN FUR ANYWHERE IN THE MAGAZINE!!!

Dude, is that even legal?

With the total dearth of eyelash yarn, I'll even forgive this being on the cover:
Poor child, doesn't she (he?) look just...dumbfounded? Like Mommy, why are you doing this to me?

I'm telling you, if I put Esther in a get-up like that, she'd gum my jugular out.

Actually, I think the sweater might be doable, just not in that yarn. Hmm, Red Heart Hunny bulky weight yarn. Can't say I've ever heard of that before.

The hat, though...That's just wrong.

When I checked the mail, the magazine was buried under a bunch of junk mail, & originally I took it to be another Mary Maxim catalogue. This was my first glimpse of it:
Well, not that exactly. Because, like I said, it was under a bunch of other stuff. I saw it and thought immediately how cute it was, and then saw that it came with directions.

Now, blessed as I am in the milk-making department, there's no way I could actually wear that top, which not only is strapless but leaves much of the back bare. And I hate shrugs. But the skirt appealed to me, so my immediate thought was "Wow, I bet I can figure out how to make that from the picture." Then I saw the notation that directions begin on page 27. So I was all happy thinking I had a catalogue with a couple of patterns included. I was ecstatic when I realized it was a magazine.

And I'm only getting happier about it, 'cause like I said I actually like nearly everything in there--even the stuff I won't make, I can appreciate--and I have a subscription. Doing my happy dance.

This outfit, by the way, uses Paton's Grace yarn & an I hook. Nice yarn, though not cheap. At least it's not an F hook like so many are.

Here's another one:
Cute, no? I don't see myself making it, because it's a thread project and those just take too long for me (especially with a D hook!). It's very pretty, though, and would be a lot more appropriate for this area than many of the coverups I see people wandering around Ala Moana Shopping Center in.

There are twenty-five patterns in total (counting the seperate pieces of the outfits as their own pattern). Twelve of them are for clothing (discounting accessories like belts and hats, but counting shawls & the lone shrug). There is the requisite doily, of course, and a "Christmas Year Round" lapghan. There is also a fashion doll "butterfly" outfit, with wings, which is appropriate with the current Fairytopia Barbie craze. (It's not made with thin thread either, but Aunt Lydia's Quick Crochet worsted weight thread & the same brand's microfiber sportweight.) Very cute. The whole thing takes up one entire page, no more. Très cool, and something I might actually make for my girls once I'm done with my current project. (My knit theory died a swift death; it just takes too long!)

I'm not sure how long I am subscribed for, though...There seem to be only five issues in a year...Wait, I finally found a website for the magazine! It's bimonthly. I have the May/June issue. So I should get one in, what, July? Too cool. I can even buy cat jewelry from the website, should I so desire!

Eggs!

2006-05-16T11:24:00.000-10:00

This is one of the best amateur patterns ever: Egg Babies.

This was my first attempt:
Not too good. I did not have any felt for the faces at the time, so I crocheted a circle out of some yarn I did have. I did a crappy job of embroidering the face too.

About the only useful thing about my first attempt--other than verifying that the pattern does indeed produce an egg-sized and -shaped baby--is that I came up with the idea of swaddling it in a little granny-square blanket.

Back to the drawing board.

The next day, I bought felt. Got lucky, & scored some "light peach" felt at the craft store for nine cents a sheet. Armed with a pen, a nickel, the felt, and all my previous equipment, I came up with this:
Much nicer, and much closer to the look of the original pattern, but still some problems. Poor placement of the face. Since I couldn't figure how to place my stitches on the opposite side of where I'd traced the nickel, I had to embroider it on the same side, & didn't do a great job of cutting it out, so you can see (barely) the ink I used to trace it with. And the face is kinda iffy still.

Hmm. How to address the issues?

First off, get rid of the nickel. Too small. What else did I have laying around the house that was small--but not as small--and round and rigid? A quarter! Yes, I know a quarter isn't that much larger than a nickel, but that little bit made all the difference. I didn't get perfect circles, because my determination to avoid the trace lines (coupled with my lack of money for a disappearing-ink pen) meant I had to hold the quarter tight against the felt & cut around. But it actually turned out well.

I also decided not to embroider any more noses. It's much cuter without. And I placed the face--and tacked it down--before reducing from 15sts to 12sts, instead of before reducing from 18sts to 15sts. Small changes, huge difference:

They're still not perfect--I suck at spacing my embroidery stitches evenly--but they're pretty good. Good enough to make me happy.

Good enough to make the girls happy, though actually they all were. There are now stuffed eggs scattered about the house. Much better than real eggs scattered about, I suppose, and nowhere near as stinky, at least.

Even Esther loves them.

The yarn, by the way is Red Heart Super Saver. It was also on sale. Off-white, if memory serves. The blankets are made out of Baby Econo, which I think is also Red Heart. It's lovely yarn, but I wouldn't use it for a real baby. Too scratchy.

I may be the only person ever

2006-05-09T09:40:00.000-10:00

to return from a craft fair with more merchandise (my own) than I went with.

Yes indeed, I sold nothing. Not one flipping one dollar scrunchie.

No one bought this:
As bad as I may feel for selling nothing, the fact that this dress, which is even prettier in person, did not sell makes it obvious it wasn't totally my incompetence stopping sales.

Actually, I don't think it was my incompetence at all. I thought to begin with I was going to be up against one civilian craft fair. I was wrong. We were up against three civilian craft fairs.

The Hickam craft fair was the 31st annual, and according to a conversation I overheard, they always have it the first weekend in May, which isn't the case with the other fairs.

Even so, once they figured it out they should have moved it. So they could at least give the impression they cared about their vendors, which they don't.

A couple of days before the fair, I was watching the news and saw that the forecast called for thunderstorms. So Robert called to find out what their plans were in case we got rained out. Their response? "It won't rain. Your fee is nonrefundable." That's it.

It did not, thankfully, storm. I was indeed able to get set up and put out my wares. I just wasn't able to sell anything. The people to our left, who obviously did this sort of thing much more often, said that it was an unusually dismal turnout. While it did not storm, it did indeed rain on and off much of the day, which led to an interesting conversation with one of the event's organizers. The head honchette, in fact; I recognized her name on her tag. After half an hour of no new people coming from the parking lot (which I was set up facing, by the way, a position I had reckoned as ideal), I broke down. This was at 2:30; we weren't supposed to do anything until three.

Head Honchette came around to scold me and the people to my right who were also packing up. She told us we weren't going to be able to rent booths from them for any future craft shows, and was utterly shocked when I told her that was fine by me, since they stood no hope in you-know-where of ever getting my money again. She made the mistake of asking why, so I got the pleasure of telling her. It was my one happy moment of the day. I brought up the lack of plans in case of rain, which if nothing else would prevent me from being so much as a customer at any of their fairs again (even the upcoming craft fair/car show, which would provide me the opportunity to combine two of my great loves--crocheting and muscle cars). Her response was one for the ages.

"It didn't rain!"

Um, yeah. What was it, then, a flock of incontinent pigeons flying overhead? (For once, I actually said this instead of only thinking later on that it'd have been the perfect comeback.) It wasn't that much, she said. It was enough, though. Enough to negatively affect turnout. Enough to dampen my merchandise, even with the rented canopy. I realize fully that with outdoor fairs you're risking rain. But I don't think that obviates the need to have a plan in case the rain is too heavy to even set up (earlier this year, we had 42 straight days of rain, mainly heavy showers and t-storms; this should function as a clue). And the fact that she looked straight at me and spoke such an obvious lie...! I don't let my four-year-old get away with that behavior! I expect much better from a woman old enough to be my mama. Of course, since she was old enough to be my mama, there really wasn't anything useful to say to such a stupid statement, so I just ignored her after that.

Oy.

There was one other woman there selling crocheted things. And, as expected, her items were a lot cheaper than mine. (I had the dress above priced at $20, she was selling baby dresses for $15.) Of course, the biggest difference was that I designed my merchandise all by myself. Her items were obviously from patterns. So, apparently, in order to sell I'd have needed to underprice my work and violate multiple copyrights. (The whole 'personal use only, don't sell these items' thing.) Not that she did much better, from the looks of it. I know she sold one thing, because I saw someone buying it from her, but unless she had a huge amount of stock behind her tables and was reloading quickly, that was about all she sold, because I didn't see any holes. It just sucked all around, apparently. The woman to my right--one of two in my immediate vicinity who broke down early--had some pretty cool merchandise. I was really hoping I'd sell something so i could buy one of her kitty cat tissue box covers. She sold thing. The people behind me, who left even before I did, had probably the neatest thing there--Hawaii license plates shaped into various things, like purses. I'm not sure, but I got the distinct impression they didn't sell anything either. They apparently have a store on the North Shore, though, and I'm going to hunt them down before we leave the island. I need a license plate purse. I just do.

Lessons learned:
1) More newborn stuff.
2) Be certain to have gender-neutral items.
3) More toddler stuff.
4) When a potential customer asks if a poncho is a shawl, say that it is. I really thought I was going to sell that poncho. But she wanted it to be a shawl. I should have let it be a shawl.
5) A camouflage blanket is not a sure sell at an Air Force Base. Being that plenty in the Air Force wear BDUs, I'd figued it'd be a slam-dunk. I'm still proud of that blanket.

The question that thus far remains unanswered:
How do I draw in the people pushing around strollers? If hanging my prettiest pieces up out by the street (and they were visible for more than a block away) doesn't work, and having toys out front doesn't work, what will? I had plenty of childless folks come in and pick over my stuff, but very few with actual babies. And I spent most of the day unsuccessfully trying to figure out how to change that.

To add injury to insult (yes, I put it that way on purpose) the van decided to die a long, slow death. Thankfully, the engine did not cut off until we were literally pulling into the driveway. Good news on that is that it's most likely nothing more than a bad thermostat. Bad news on that is that, well, it's a Dodge Ram Van, with about a yard-long nose, and what that translates out to is the alternator has to be taken out to get to the thermostat. So it's not something we can do on our own.

With all this, I am taking a brief break from crocheting. I'll be gone maybe a week, no more. (And I have enough other projects to show off you can count on at least one more entry from me in that timeframe.) I dusted off my knitting needles that I've never really put to use, and I am currently working on a version of this shawl. It is simple enough for an utter beginner like myself, but nice enough to suit my craft snob self. I simply cannot have my second knit project be a scarf. (My first, some eightteen months ago, was a buttoned, shaped cell phone case; ironic as I didn't own a cell phone at the time!) I'm using up some scrap yarn, so it's going to be interesting. But the pattern is so blessedly simple that I've already gotten it down; it only necessitates doing math every other row. (My sole criterion for picking a pattern, by the way, was that I could knit it on the size 10 straight needles which were the only ones I could find.)

There's nothing cuter...

2006-05-02T11:15:00.000-10:00

Than something for a baby made out of granny squares:
Not that that's the greatest picture in the world, but there's the dress I just finished. The bodice is six one-color granny squares, and even that was almost enough ends-needing-weaving for me to go insane. The skirt is granny stitch. Overall, a very easy piece, simple construction.

The particulars: Size H hook for the bodice, size J hook for the skirt, except the ruffle which again used an H, and the trim at the top used a 4.5mm.

OK, that photo is driving me nuts, so here's a close-up of the bodice (have I mentioned how much I love my digital camera & the card reader built in to my computer?):
There, much better. You can actually see the granny squares now.

I used, as usual, Caron's Simply Soft worsted weight yarn. All told, this is about a size 6 months, being that it fits Esther.

It's not actually for Esther, though. I'm going to be at a craft fair on Hickam AFB this Saturday, and this is one of the things I'm taking as merchandise. Hopefully I'll be able to make back the $65 cost of the table. Er, well, not the table. The table's not included. The $65 for the strip of grass, I suppose would be more accurate. I suppose they had to ship the lawn in from the Mainland, or something. As the locals say, auwē! My husband signed me up for it yesterday, so I guess the cost doesn't seem too much to him. I about died when he told me, though.

Oh well, off to crochet scrunchies...

A Quick FO.

2006-04-27T22:38:00.000-10:00

I realized yesterday I hadn't completed anything for nearly two weeks now. The dress reconstruction I was working on is giving me fits, so it's joined the UFO pile for now. I was feeling the need to accomplish something, though, so I started digging through my pattern stash in search of something I could make in a day or less. And this is what I came up with:
Nice, huh? It is a dress from this pattern: Baby Girl Sleeper Set. It's very popular at the 'Ville, but I've been burned so many times by online patterns that are supposed to be for babies but might fit a doll, in reality. Being that the pattern contains neither gauge info nor finished measurements, I was leery, to say the least.

Of course, my trepidation was met with utter disbelief by my fellow villagers. That I could possibly want to know something would fit before I put in the effort to make it! Or, perhaps, it was my belief that something on the internet wouldn't be perfect. Now, mind you, I do not doubt that Ms Goss's dress, made with sport weight yarn and an I hook, fit whatever baby she tried it on. However, I know myself. I tend to have a pretty tight tension. I generally have to bump myself up a hook size with whatever published pattern I am following, in order to get the gauge right. But without a gauge, I'd have simply no way of knowing whether what I made would fit. And to be honest, just looking at it makes me doubt it would really fit a 3-month-old.

Anyway, I am not making this for a three-month-old, but for a baby girl who will be six months old this Sunday (Goodness, has it really been that long!?). So I knew already that I'd need to make some changes. So here are the ones that I made (mind you, this is fairly obviously only the "dress" part of the set to begin with, and I do not intend to make anything else): I used worsted weight yarn (Simply Soft, of course) and a J hook. I was very careful to keep my tension loose (Lily Chen is right that you crochet faster this way). I increased in my second round of off-white shells, because I wanted a fullness to the skirt. And I used a single button as a closure instead of crocheting two sets of ties.

My gauge for this project, by the way: 6 rows of shells = 4 inches, and 3 shells from end-to-end = 4 inches. It will easily fit Esther now, and *might* generously be called 6 - 9 months size. Get back to me in three months & I'll tell you if it still fits her, LOL.

Off topic comment: I weighed Esther today and she weighs 19 pounds. Considering that one criterion for turning around her carseat is that she weigh 20 pounds, that's a good size. (Yes, I know the other criterion is "AND one year of age," and no, I won't turn her around early. Don't worry.)

Easter Outifts all Done

2006-04-19T23:50:00.000-10:00

Here are the girls in their Easter outfits:
Aren't they just adorable? The tie-dye is a bit hit-or-miss, but they like it, and that's what's important. The shirts are just toddler camisoles I bought at Wal-Mart, where I also got the tie-dye kit. There are two more for me to embellish in a different way.

You can see, too, how much nicer Cathie's skirt looks on her than it did in the flat picture of it. I think I said, but I'm not sure: the pattern is called "soft fans".

Now, here's the photo of the dresses they actually wore Easter Sunday:
Janett (which is pronounced like Jeanette, not like Janet), Rob's mom, made them. The box with the dresses arrived on Good Friday, so I wound up slacking off instead of making the shirts, so the tie-dye was just finished up today.

I'm working on another crochet project, but this one may wind up taking a while, as it involves my primary nemeses: thread and small hooks. I am a sucker for punishment indeed.

Finished Smoochie's Skirt

2006-04-15T00:18:00.000-10:00

Much to my surprise, the multiples for the skirts worked out much the same. Cathie wound up needing 60 sts to start with, and 18 rounds of length before the start of the lace rounds, just the same as did Linda's skirt.

One of these days I will remember that, even though they are two years apart, they wear the same size! I suppose this is why folks always think they are twins. Of course, I look at Cathie, who is a head taller and much skinnier than her sister (not to mention obviously more advanced!), and wonder how people can make that mistake.

Anyway, I wanted to give this skirt a different look in spite of the necessary similarities. So instead of increasing from 60 to 90 in one jot, I increased to 90, then 80, then 90. So this skirt has a much more gradual increase, almost an A-line silhouette.

I know the bottom of it looks goofy in the photo, but I assure you it's much nicer in real life. The lacework isn't really smaller than the skirt body. This pattern is "soft fans", taken from Donna Kooler's Encyclopedia of Crochet, though it is also in the 300 Crochet Stitches book.

As you can see, Cathie changed her mind at the last minute in regard to the color of yarn she wanted. This is most assuredly not the rose colorway she'd originally picked! It's nice, though. It goes better with her sister's bright skirt than I think the other color would have, which is one reason I encouraged her to change her mind.

Thursday being payday (it is technically Friday, but 12 minight on the East Coast is 6pm here in Hawaii, so we get paid early), we went to Wal-Mart and bought a package of toddler camisoles and a tie dye kit, plan being to tie dye them shirts to go with their skirts.

Unbeknownst to me, my darling mother-in-law (who has been mentioned here before as the woman who is not only a skilled crocheter and talented painter but also a master seamstress) was also hard at work on Easter dresses. And I mean Easter Dresses. As in, cannot possibly worn for any other occasion. As in, featuring 3-D bunnies, button-on "basket" pouches (bedecked, of course, with 3-D flowers), and Easter bunnies around the hems. And she so dearly wants my kids to wear these that she spent $22 overnighting the package containing them to us.

Oy.

I really wish she had asked beforehand, so I could have let her know I was making something. Or maybe she told Rob & not me and he thought it would be a great idea for me to be surprised. The girls love their dresses, though, even if they kind of scare me. And, well, they can wear the outfits I made them whenever. So Grandma's stuff it will most likely be, although I will allow them to choose between the two. I have no illusions as to the allure of my little crocheted skirts as opposed to Gramma Jan's bunny dresses...

I think I'm finished.

2006-04-11T22:37:00.000-10:00

With Linda Margaret's Easter skirt, that is. I put four rounds of the lace ruffle on the bottom, but I need to try it on her to be 100% sure it's long enough. I am proud of the way it turned out, though. Not bad for three days' work:
Cute, huh? So simple, too. The waistband is chainless single crochet (which I have also seen called "double chain"), then it is simple double crochet down to where the lace starts. I did put in an increase round, as you can tell, and then the first lace round is also an increase.

I think the pattern for the lace is called "flying shells." It's from the 300 Crochet Stitches book.

Bobbie's will be much the same, but tailored to her. She is taller than her sister, and thinner, but I will use the same construction techniques. I will, however, use a different lace pattern at the bottom. I don't want them to be matching.

Vintage-y goodness.

2006-04-11T10:48:00.000-10:00

Now that I have a scanner, I can actually put it to use and show you some of the cool things I've scored at the thrift store. Up now: The Complete Book of Crochet, from 1973. Which means that it is older than I am, and coincidentally my husband's age.

Some things in crochet are refreshingly constant. Like hideous projects. Dig this groovy lampshade:
I always thought the seventies must have been much better the first time around, when drugs were readily available so that you wouldn't have to actually see what was around you. After all, what else could explain that hair? (Realize, please, that a) I am kidding and b) I am referring to the men's hair.)

I am guessing, from looking at this, that it stretches over a clear form of some sort. I could see making several of these and hanging them about an Italian restaurant, perhaps. Wouldn't they really spruce up Buca di Beppo? (Speaking of that restaurant, if you want to have their tiramisu for dessert, be sure to designate a driver first; it's even more alcoholic than tiramisu tends to be.)

Other than the lampshade, I actually do like most of the patterns in the book. I don't see myself making most, if any, of them, simply because it is 99% thread work, and I haven't the patience for that. (I have the deepest respect for those folks who do have the patience, though.)

Here's a lovely skirt, even if it does look as if you could use the same pattern for a bedspread:
The lady looks as if she is just recovering from seeing that lampshade for the first time.

This is actually made in DK (double knitting) weight yarn, which is close to sport weight (I debate that they're the same). I love the stripes. You do, however, use an incredibly small hook for the yarn given--3.5mm. Which I think is like an E hook.

The book calls this a "Long Evening Skirt", by the way. I can so totally see this being worn out to the symphony, but maybe I'm just odd that way.

I could also, as I hinted earlier, see this as a baby blanket. But I am odd that way.

Next, something I think I might actually make for myself:
It's a snood. I'm not 100% sure what snoods are, mind you, other than apparently something lacy to hold your hair up and away from your face. This one appears to be done in a Solomon's Knot (also called a love knot), which is actually explained in detail in the beginning of the book.

It is, of course, thread crochet.

I love things like this. So elegant. I know that at the time it wasn't kosher for Catholic women to go to Mass without a headcovering of some sort. Plenty don't these days, of course.

Being Protestant, that's never applied to me or mine, of course. But wouldn't it be a lovely thing to start up again? A snood at church? Something to put you in the correct frame of mind...

Last one:
This is called a "Baby Shawl" in the book, not a baby blanket. I cannot figure out what kind of yarn it uses, since it just says "3 ply". I'm guessing sport weight, as it also calls for a 3.5mm hook. The motifs seem to be relatively simple cluster-stitch squares. There is a certain elegant simplicity to it I appreciate greatly.

As a sidenote, I actually have a pram similar to that one. I bought it for my first child but I've never actually used it. It's currently in storage on the Mainland.

Skirts

2006-04-10T23:41:00.000-10:00

I let the girls pick out the yarn for their Easter skirts yesterday. I've decided it will be much more doable to just make skirts than to try & whip up two dresses inside of a week (Esther actually has an Easter dress I purchased a couple of months ago, before I decided to make the girls outfits, but I'll be crocheting her a cap). I am about 3/4 of the way through with Linda's, which means I should have no trouble at all completing Bobbie Catharine's as well. I'm doing Linda's in WW yarn, in the hot pink CSS Brites she picked out, solid DCs until about three or so inches above her knees, then I'll segue into a lacy ruffle to get to her knees. Bobbie's will be done in the same manner, in the Victorian Rose CSS she picked out (I showed them both about six colors to choose from). If I finish the skirts in time, I'll go back and make hats for them to wear too.

Shrug

2006-04-06T23:08:00.000-10:00

Not common for me, but I'm putting the photos first tonight:

I know, I know, she's cute. The shrug doesn't exactly go with her dress, but I wasn't staging the photos, just trying to get them taken before putting her to sleep, that's why she's already in bed. She's also wondering why I'm taking photos instead of nursing her, LOL. You can tell it especially in that last photo; it looks like she's about to take a flying leap at me to try to latch on.

The technicals:
Yarn: Caron Simply Soft (what a surprise, eh?)
Hook: I
Technique: I measured from wrist-to-wrist and then crocheted a rectangle a little longer than necessary. The stitch is a modified V-stitch, 2 HDCs in the space between the 2HDC groups in the previous row. Then I made ruffled cuffs by simply putting 2DCs in each stitch, and then doing ch-2, slst in the back loops of the DCs, then just sewed it up partially to have sleeves.

This is the first shrug I have ever made and is likely to be the only one, unless I make them for the elder girls as well. Not sure yet if I will or not. It worked up pretty fast, or would have if I hadn't kept putting it aside to make stuff to sell. I'm trying to reach some sort of balance between merchandise & personal projects. I doubt I'll have anything else for sale before May, just because I want to concentrate right now on making the girls things for Easter. I'm contemplating amigurumi bunnies.

One of my favorite blogs.

2006-04-01T00:20:00.000-10:00

Knotty Generation is Pam Gillette's blog. I no longer recall exactly how I came across it, but I love it. This woman is so very talented, and her blog suits the crochet snob in me as well. Why? Quite simply, because when I scroll down her blog, each and every project I see is crocheted. How can you not love that?

She's also got great hair, but that has nothing to do with anything.

Out of all the projects on her blog right now, I think this capelet is my favorite. Just because it looks so great with that skirt. Her suede pieces are nothing to be sneezed at either. She's also working on a book, and I do hope it gets published because I'll show up at the bookstore just as soon as they open on the day it hits the shelves, something I haven't done since Laurell K Hamilton's Narcissus in Chains came out (and what a deep, deep disappointment that was!). I am confident there will be no werewolf sex in Ms Gillette's book, LOL.

What prompts this entry, in part, is that Ms Gillette has left a couple of comments in my blog. It is such a pleasure to find that someone whose work I admire so much also reads my blog. I mean really, how cool is that? This isn't really an attempt to suck up, though. Just a plug for someone whose work I truly enjoy, for anyone who finds my blog through whatever means and has somehow managed to miss hers.

***

I've frogged the suit I was trying to design in favor of one of my other ideas: a baby layette gift basket. Not a normal crocheted layette of afghan, sweater, hat, & booties, but a more practical one similar to the layette gift sets you buy in stores. I've been kicking around this idea since I bought a gift set for Esther at the NEX a while back. It was very nearly a whole little wardrobe--one pair of pants, two pairs of shorts, and three shirts. Very useful. So for mine I am thinking: blanket, two diaper covers, one pair of pants, two shirts, two sweaters, two hats, & two pairs of sockies/booties. Now, the real deal will be marketing it, since with all the work that goes into it, it will have to be priced higher than even my usual stuff. But it's just one of those things I feel compelled to do. I know it will turn out well. I'm going to work on writing patterns for most if not all of what I make, too.

Right now I'm working on the blanket. It will be a cable stitch. The stitch is modeled off one in Donna Kooler's Encyclopedia of Crochet, one of the stitches for the Philosopher's Coat. I have dickered with it quite a bit, though, retaining only one small part of the stitch there. Certain aspects of it made it well nigh impossible for me to tell where to put my stitches for the row after the cable row, and so I had to really re-work it. It's OK, though, because I'm no longer feeling compelled to use SC. I was getting twitchy at the idea of crocheting a baby blanket, lengthwise, in single crochet. I'm now using HDC, which is the tallest stitch I can pair with an I hook (and my beloved Simply Soft) without leaving apparent holes.

I'm using the dark country blue yarn to make the blanket. Oh, how I love this yarn! My favorite color is navy blue (which my hubby, a sailor, did not believe at first), and this is so dark a blue it is almost black. I love it.

Pretty necklace.

2006-03-26T22:55:00.000-10:00

Isn't she cute?

I bought Crochet from the Heart a couple of weeks ago. There's not a whole lot in there I'll be making, but I got the idea for this from there. I was originally going to follow the actual pattern, but the pattern in the book is for an adult's necklace and really do you need a pattern for a rectangle?

That's really all the base of this choker is. I crocheted five rows of SCs just slightly longer than necessary to wrap around her neck, and used a couple of ch spaces to make a button hole. The flower is a spiral similar to the one in the book, with several DCs in each ch and then wrestled into the general appearance of a flower and sewn into place.

As usual, I used Caron Simply Soft. I think a 4.5 mm hook, but I really don't remember.

She loves it, she really does. I'm not letting her just play with it though. I told her she can wear it to church next week.

My girls love modeling crochet things for me, as I think I said. I still wanted to get a good picture of the poncho being worn, so today I decided to give it another shot, but with Linda instead of Cathie doing the honors. I did get some good advice about dressing the girls for these photos, and followed it with Linda:
I love her expression in this photo. I have no idea what brought it on. She's good, she really is. I told her I wanted her to be a model for me and she ran and grabbed the poncho right away. She's smart too.

I've not made any more progress on the little suit I want to make, but I have had another indication of interest for a custom job. Another halter top, which just amuses me to no end. She doesn't want acrylic yarn, though, so I am trying to find something else to suit her. She said initially she's kind of wary of cotton yarn, but I have some nice Peaches & Cream yarn that I think I can change her mind with. I crocheted a sample swatch and scanned it in and I'll send it to her tomorrow. I am planning on charging the exact cost of the yarn plus $12, excluding shipping. Seems fair, anyway.

I'm going to put more effort into making halter tops, as they have sparked the most interest. But I still want to make some good baby stuff too.

Another thing I did was spiff up and resize some of the photos of my projects that I've freehanded and posted them in a projects gallery in my MWT store. You can see it by clicking here. I have over thirty things, which kind of surprised me when I counted. I'm a lot more prolific than I realized. It's not everything I've done, either, only the nicest stuff. I'm in hopes it will get me more commissions.

The same lady who asked about a halter top also asked about the fairy dolls. But I need to find them before I can answer her questions! So I have a full plate once again, it seems. And many ideas floating around in my head.

Poncho

2006-03-23T23:33:00.000-10:00

Here's the poncho that was giving me so much trouble:
It's not my greatest effort, but it is pretty nice. Very simple too. Just two rectangles of double crochets sewn together. The trim is a very simple shell stitch around the hem & a plain sc around the neckline. Then the flowers were freehanded and sewn on.

The yarn, of course, is Caron Simply Soft, mostly CSS Brites. The flowers were made with leftover yarn from the Berry Blue Halter top. I might make a cap to go along with this and sell them both together, but I'm not 100% positive yet. I may just keep it for Smoochie & make another for Linda, as they've outgrown their ponchos I made 'em in '04. We'll see.

Here's another photo, a close-up of the neckline:
I do like those flowers. I started out planning to put them all down the seam, to hide it, but after those I was starting to think maybe a whole line of them would be overkill. So I threw it up online, with my trusty doll Annabel wearing it, and most agreed that three flowers are enough.

Of course, most also thought it was a doll poncho. Which is understandable, considering my model. But the kids were in bed! I'd be insane to rack 'em out just to have them model for me.

Smoochie, of course, loves to model things for me. She's a natural ham. Loves having her photo taken, always has. And since she's the eldest, we have a huge amount of pictures of her, LOL. Not so much of the other two. Lucky me all my kids look alike, so when they get older I can lie and say some of Smoochie's baby pix are of the other two. (No, I won't, not really.) I did take photos of Smoochie in the poncho, because I think that photos of someone actually wearing whatever make the product more appealing, but I just couldn't get great pictures. Here's the best of them:
Of course, ideally you don't take your modeling photos after dark! But I was just not willing to let yet another day go by without getting photos of one of the kids wearing the poncho.

It's actually been cool enough here lately, in the evenings at least, for ponchos to be worn without roasting the kids. We took them to McDonald's last night and we were practically all sitting on top of one another to keep warm. The rain has kept things from heating up too much, but it's already starting to be appreciably warmer during the daytime hours when it's generally pretty sunny. Spring has arrived in Hawaii, and it is wet.

I have actually spent the day not doing much crocheting. I've done some, because I don't seem to be able lately to pass the day without doing something, but I've only been doing swatches and trying to make up my mind about my next project. I have the yarn, Simply Soft as usual, & it is in dark country blue and light country blue. I was about to say they're some of my favorite colors, but I don't think Simply Soft has a single color I don't like! At any rate, I've just decided to make an infant boy's suit, a very simple one, just overalls and an open front jacket. I know the stitch too. Not sure off the top of my head what it is called, but it's sc, dc, then on the next row sc in the dc & dc in the sc. Produces a nice, knobby fabric. I'm going to make it in a size 6 mos, mainly because I haven't done anything infant sized in a while, but also so I can have Esther model it. She can do drag, LOL.

Finished with the commissioned halter top.

2006-03-22T19:43:00.000-10:00

I am so ridiculously proud of myself. This turned out about ten times better than anything I've done in a while, I think. It's even nicer than the ZigZag Halter.

This is about a child's size 4. Caron's Simply Soft again, in berry blue & grape, two great colors. I used a 4.5mm hook for the bodice and the first four rows and then switched to a 5mm hook for the rest of it, as the Mama says her daughter's got a little potbelly. I wanted to make sure there was enough room.

I frogged the bottom part, the ripple, countless times. I truly have no clue how often. I had a heckuva time getting the correct number of stitches to base the ripple on, and I also kept getting distracted while I was working on the first ripple row and thusly messing up. And then when I got all of that ironed out, I wound up frogging the first four rows of the ripple stitch because the way I was holding it, the wrong side of the fabric was coming out toward the right side of the garment. So I had to frog the first few stitches a couple of more times to figure out exaclty how I should be holding the blessed thing.

But I finally finished it. And I'm very happy with it. The photo isn't the greatest, so it's kind of hard to tell, but on the last round I put a picot instead of the c-1 space at the increase. It's subtle, but it gives it a nice finish which, I think, enhances the overall pointyness of the design.

I will also use this space to give a belated shout out and thanks to the Crochet Mafia. I left the thread where I was accused of copyright infringement right before I made that entry into my blog, so I didn't see the people who apparently jumped in to defend me. I only learned about it today. I just want to say thanks to all of you. I do indeed appreciate it.

A commission

2006-03-19T01:23:00.000-10:00

I have a commission from a lady at Mama Drama to make her daughter a halter top. She was contemplating buying the Berry Halter outright, but her kid is just a little too big for it, so she opted for a custom design. So I'm making for her the ZigZag Halter, but in the colors (purple & blue) from the Berry Halter. Totally cool. I'm really looking forward to it. I have the top part finished already, & I'll start on the bottom tomorrow. I told her I'd need a week to do it, but I think I'll be finished much more quickly. Which is good. Underpromise & overdeliver. I am trying to make that my mantra, as far as business is concerned. I added in a little purse with the ZigZag Halter when I sold it. I don't think I'll do that every time, but sometimes it's good.

I have to do some math to figure out exactly how many stitches I need for the bottom part. I'm thinking an extra six, as it takes six to make a half of the zigzag pattern, but maybe it's an extra 12. The pattern I base mine off of I think is a 12-st repeat. But that's flat, and I work these in the round. That makes it a wee bit more difficult.

See, kids, you really willuse math in real life. It's actually algebra, sort of. How many stitches do I need to have my pattern come out perfect? It's kinda hard with ripple stitches, because they're a two-part deal. Down, and then up. (The way I work, anyhow. I don't know why I start that way.) You have to start with one and make sure you finish up with the other, so it's a complete unit all the way around.

I love the way ripples look, but I find them fiendishly hard to do.

One of these days I'll do a zigzag two-rectangle poncho in Fun Fur and combine all the banes of my crochet existence into one...

My poor daughters...

2006-03-16T00:04:00.000-10:00

I am seriously considering making these for Easter:
They're strangely cute. I don't know why these dresses appeal to me. I guess it's the tacky crocheter in me. Or maybe that they don't look like the sort of thing I usually make on my own (I tend towards stuff that's much plainer).

The first one is out of the latest issue of Hooked on Crochet, the other from the latest Crochet World (the one I liked a lot more than everyone else at Crochetville). I really want to make them, but I honestly don't think I'll have the time.

I am thinking, sales-wise, I am going to seriously start concentrating on halter tops. I have now a commission for a custom version of the Berry Halter shown a couple of entries ago. Lady liked it, but it's just a bit too small for her daughter, so I'll be making it to order, bar her changing her mind. And I doubt she will. Because of course, my taste is so poor that no one likes what I do. Except, you know, the people who want to buy the halter tops.

Halter tops. Who'd have thought they'd be popular? (OK, two isn't like overwhelmingly popular or anything, but when that's what sells...) Well, obviously, I had an inkling, but still...I really need to get the pattern written up and see about submitting it. Or selling it. Whichever.

I'm working on a poncho right now. Oddly, the simplest version, the two rectangles sewn together, baffles me when it comes time to sew up the second seam. I got it figured out, though not before convincing myself I'm an idiot when it comes to ponchos. (Ah well, at least I can spell it.) It's hot pink. I'll be trimming it in black and then sewing on some flowers made in several different colors. If it doesn't sell, it can be a nice wrap for one of the girls when we're somewhere it's chilly (it's often chilly indoors). I'm also working on a very basic shrug for Esther, something I can keep rolled up in my purse for use again in those cold buildings. Both projects, though, are gonna be shelved until I get the custom order done. Paying customers come first, of course. If the Esther shrug turns out well enough, I'll post the pattern over at C'ville. An infant-sized shrug isn't anything I've seen before, though of course I doubt I'm the only person to think of it.

I had the most wonderful dream last night...

2006-03-14T22:46:00.000-10:00

I spent most of the night crocheting and went to bed with hook marks still on my fingers. In my dream Rob & I were at an antique store, and not only did I find a vintage F hook (with a lovely fluted handle), but there was a huge stack of pattern books and magazines at the store as well. The strange thing about the dream--and there must be something strange in every dream, mustn't there?--is that these publications were all kept behind the counter, and when I asked the saleslady to give them to me so that I could look at them, she gave me a few of them but also some knitting magazines and also--here is the very strange part--some Christian books. More of those than anything else, and I got the distinct feeling in the dream that she was trying to convert me. Which is odd, as I'm already Christian. (Episcopalian, to be exact. Here, have some coffee.)

It occurs to me that I have a wealth of crochet publications in real life, and I haven't made fun of them for a while. So it's time for another round of that.

But first, your Moment of Crochet Zen:
Knit Simple spring/summer 2006

Click on that link. Behold the cover of the spring/summer issue of Knit Simple. A knitting magazine. Read and savor the largest headline on the cover:

fresh picked!
easy crocheted flowers for pretty knits

Yep. Easy crocheted flowers. It is a knitting magazine featuring...crocheted flowers. I love it.

Now, on to the magazines and books:

First up, the February 2006 issue of Hooked on Crochet! Hey, ladies, it is your grandmother's crochet! Aren't I glad. I won't speak too much of this, since I also have the current issue in my lap. I'll just say that I adore the hooded baby poncho, and if it wasn't, well, Hawaii here, I'd make it for Esther.

Next, the February 2006 issue of Annie's Favorite Crochet. I haven't seen the March issue yet, but it's out, according to the website. Anything related to Annie's Attic always has plenty to make fun of, and this issue of course is no exception. I think someone in Big Sandy is smoking Fun Fur. (It's nowhere near Houston, so that can't explain it.) Again, please excuse the images I am about to provide; we don't have a scanner at the moment so I'm stuck photographing shiny magazine paper.
First thought: Hey look, it's that chick who played Winnie on The Wonder Years. Second thought: How many shag rugs had to die for that wrap? This photo really doesn't do it total justice. You can't see much of the long stringy things hanging off the bottom, but it seems as if the rug(s?) resisted valiantly. It is, of course, made using Fun Fur. But not the chintzy Lion Brand Fun Fur! Oh no, this is Moda Dea Fun Fur. Nevermind that such does not exist. (Moda Dea does make fur yarn, but nothing with the same name as the Lion Brand product.) They apparently mean Fur Ever yarn (I matched up colorway names, at least). The mix-up in names hints to me that they switched yarns from what the designer intended. The Moda Dea yarn doesn't seem to be any more expensive than the Lion Brand stuff, just a bit more difficult to find (really, when was the last time you saw Moda Dea anything at Wal-Mart?) Because, of course, nothing sets off your butt-ugly design like elitism.

It gets worse, much worse, on the very next page, though. Turn the page and you are confronted with this monstrosity:
Apparently, some sort of alien fungus has attacked this poor, defenseless denim skirt. My God, I just realized there are beads on this. Beads. On eyelash yarn (just generic eyelash yarn this time, not FunFurSure). Wow. It is worse than even I thought.

You will notice that there is some hope for mankind. The aliens have not yet managed to infect the back of the skirt. And in some ways that is worse. Because you could come up behind this lady and think she was just a normal, law-abiding citizen. You would never know she's been colonized by the Alien Bead Moss until it was too late.

Luckily, if I know my HG Wells well enough, Earth germs will eventually triumph.

What, you may be wondering, is the perfect accessory to set off your lovely Skirt Fungus? Why, this, of course!
Riddle me this, Batman:
Does the hideous headband cancel out the scare hair? Sort of like when you touch your doppelganger, the theory is you might both wink out of existence.

Or perhaps it's a different strain of the alien moss?

Just for a minute, put these three hideous creations together in your mind. The wrap. The trim. The headband. Imagine one person wearing all three. It could happen. Someone, somewhere, looked at these same patterns and thought to herself, Man, they go together!

The aliens, my friends, are winning. They have already assimilated the crew over at Crochet! I reported some time back on the attack of the supermodels. It seems that with this new issue, their takeover is complete.

Mind you, I actually kind of likethis dress. Except for, you know, the rug-fringe on the bottom and the inexplicable fuzziness of the straps/bodice trim.

But you pair the minidress with the fishnets and the "Howdy sailor, new in town?" shoes and the pillbox hat (which has a gorgeous little veil) and the elbow-length gloves, and it occurs to me for the first time that this issue could well be called Crochet for Streetwalkers.

Crochet for Dying-of-Starvation Streetwalkers, more like. Chick looks like she hasn't eaten in a month. I mean, Barbie's looking at her and shaking her head in disbelief.

Seriously, though, I'd make this dress for myself. If it didn't mean lots of math to recreate it in my actual size. Large fits up to a 40 inch bust. Let's just say there are certain undergarments I have to get made-to-order 'cause they're not generally available in stores. (And I'm not like hugely fat either; I'm a size 16, only one above the nationwide norm of 14.)

As a parting thought, I will note how incrediblyflattering horizontal stripes are for those of us not weak from hunger.

Next exhibit in the Crochet for Streetwalkers theme:
This particular...lady...apparently has lost the fight with the Alien Skirt Moss.

Really, it's almost too easy. They make this stuff too easy for me. The people at Crochet! claim to be defining the craft. Which, I assume, means it's Today's Crochet and of course Not Your Grandmother's Crochet. Once again, Granny is heartily thankful.

I can't get over the sheer...surrealness of this particular model. Methinks the photographer went a little overboard with the airbrush tool. And I think she stole the hairdresser's boyfriend. Because someone did that to her eyebrows on purpose.

Final bit of Streetwalker Crochet:
Unfortunately, I took a bad photo of this one, foolishly zooming in somewhat on the skirt, so you don't get the full effect of the camisole top. Really, ladies, the whole underwear-as-outerwear thing is soover. Not even Madonna is doing it anymore.

For the record, this is another pattern I sort of like. Except for the ubiquitous Fun Fur trim. (WTF isit with Fun Fur, anyway? Do they have a whole room full of compromising photos of the foremost crochet designers or something?) Oh wait, my bad. That's Moonlight Mohair. Oy. So it's not just inexplicably fuzzy yarn, it's inexplicably fuzzy yarn that itches.

This is also another design made for the starving supermodel crowd. It comes in three sizes: 2, 4/6, and 8/10. I dunno about y'all, but most of the other crocheters I know are notsize 10s anymore than I am! Way to market to the minority! (I've said before and I'll say it again: only in the fashion industry can you get away with aiming 90% of your product at 40% of your perspective consumers.)

Thankfully, though, ugly sweaters are still available.

Once again: They make this too easy for me!

Where to start, where to start?

Oh hey, that hideous fuzzy thing comes in my size! Yay! Because of course us fat chicks look sogood in bulky stuff. I wanna wear it with my boffo Quacker Factory embellished sweatsuit.

The first words uttered by the baby in the middle: Please, Mommy, no!

I fuzzed out the face of the poor child in the last photograph. No one should risk being recognized while wearing that. Seriously, it ought to count as child abuse. Because if you send you child to school wearing that, she willget the crap beaten out of her for being a dork. I mean, really. As if the very concept of a fuzzy crocheted jacket wasn't bad enough, the sleeves are a different color! Might as well tape a "kick me" sign to your child's back.

Next, we come to the April 2006 issue of Crochet World, wherein we learn once again just how different I am from my Crochetville.org peers.

Once upon a time, when I was in San Antonio visiting my mother, she gave my eldest daughter a very special stuffed frog. The unique feature of this frog was that it was furry. A furry amphibion. Special.

Quirky the Blue Bird is likewise special. Because he, too, is furry. Fun Fur-ry, even. (I know, the Fun Fur people are Reptilians.) I think this is about the ugliest toy pattern I've come across lately, but everybodyelse in the thread loved it.

Of course, this means that they all have zero taste. Because I am the sole arbiter of what is good crochet.

Well, me and Lady Linoleum, of course.

This magazine also brings the Inexplicable Crochet Patterns of the Quarter:
First we have Clay Pot Annie. A wall hanging, apparently. A "charming but 'potty' little lass" who will enliven my kitchen. Well, not my kitchen. But someone's. Someone with a deep, abiding love for pompons. And plastic flowers.

Then, you have the Baby Set for the Stupid. "Geez, honey, I forgot, did we have a boy or a girl?"

Now, I'll be the first to admit that I've thought about putting a t-shirt that says "I'm a GIRL!" on my daughters, as putting them in frilly pink dresses has never been enough of a clue. But really, this is taking it a bit far, as some of this stuff isn't even meant to be used outside of the house. Of course, industriously crocheting this set and then giving it at the baby shower pretty much guarantees the ultrasound will be wrong.

And the lactivist in me has to note the subtle pushing of bottlefeeding...

Thankfully, that's about all I can find to ridicule in that issue.

Last for tonight, this month's issue of Hooked on Crochet! I will make it brief.
Now, the purse really isn't that bad. Except for the yarns. And the giant button. And the knot in the strap, normally something you punish your children for, not something you do to your own purse on purpose.

And, of course, the fact that they expect you to hold together two strands of bulky-weight yarn & use an H hook to crochet 'em.

More egregious is the hairy child's poncho. It uses not one but two furry yarns--neither Fun Fur, oddly enough. And the whole thing looks oddly stiff, as if you merely cut a hole in some carpet for your daughter to wear. This reminds me of the MWTer who told me about being traumatized by the crocheted garments her mom forced her to wear.

My contribution to the ugly amigurumi craze...

2006-03-13T13:36:00.000-10:00

I may make ugly pigs, but damn I make cute babies. This, of course, is Esther (and doesn't she look wonderfully alert & grown since her last appearance in this blog?) with Kalua (as in the barbequed pork, not the coffee liquer) in her lap.

I was originally planning to sell the pig on my MWT store (link in the sidebar, since I just got a comment asking about it), but it just turned out too ugly. One of the legs is 14 sts around, and the other one is 15 sts around--still not sure how I added in that extra stitch. The arms are sewn on oddly, and the amigurumi-style eyes give the whole thing a distinctly evil cast. So I really don't think it would sell, but that's a-OK, because Esther adores it. And I learned a lot about how I'm going to be making amigurumi in the future. I stumbled across a miniature Cabbage Patch Kid that I adore the size and proportions of, so I matched the pig up to it, roughly. I'll be doing that in the future since it turned out so well in that regard. The heads are going to be bigger, though (I liked all that doll's proportions). Here's a close-up of Kalua's head:
The nostrils turned out kind of off-center. I'm still not certain how that happened.

OK, technical stuff: I made the pig from Caron Simply Soft using a 4mm hook. I made the head from the snout down, and used actual embroidery thread to embroider the features. For the ears, I crocheted in one loop only where I wanted them to go, so I'd have a loop free to come back to later. Then I attached the yarn and crocheted them in place. I finished off the head in what is now the back, then joined the yarn on the bottom and crocheted the neck & torso from there. To close up the torso, I did a row of sc through both the front & the back of the last round, then to make the first leg I merely crocheted in first the front loop only and then the back loop only of the single row, did 10 rows of sc in pink then two in black, reduced in black once, stuffed, & sewed the leg closed. The arms were crocheted seperately from the hoof up & sewn on.

***

I swear, I don't try to create drama. But it sure seems to be finding me lately. As I mentioned before, I asked for feedback for my crochet store. Part of that feedback included, unbeknownst to me, someone hotlinking to a photograph of a blanket and doll. (I don't think either was crocheted, but honestly I didn't look that closely, so the blanket might have been.) Understandably, a relative of the woman who owned the photo tracked the thread down and complained. The photo was taken down immediately--the poster didn't have a clue what she was doing was illegal, and the admin had thus far not known what was going on either.

Anyway, to shorten the story somewhat, admin decided to make a general announcement that we shouldn't hotlink images or infringe upon copyright. Stupid me decided to point out that you cannot copyright an idea. So now I've had some dolt accuse me of advertising my willingness to violate someone's copyright by copying their idea. Now, I don't do this to begin with. I have zero interest in packaging blankets and dolls together. I have little interest in making blankets, for that matter. I did volunteer to take custom orders, and said that as part of showing me what you wanted, you could use photos to point me in the right direction. Which, of course, was interpreted as "I'll make exactly the same thing." Well, it was interpreted that way by this one person, who is now waging her own little "Sabra is evil" campaign.

Let me be clear. I do not LIKE drama. I want no part in drama. I take incredible offense, however, at the accusation that I am infringing on anyone's copyright. I am not. This particular woman understands most aspects of copyright (though she is apparently clueless on how it applies to handicrafts), but is totally clueless about crochet. And this is the perfect example which occurred to me last night (because, like most people, the brilliant comebacks occur to me after the fact): right now I have in my possession at least three different patterns for "crocheted Mary Janes". And by that I mean just the baby bootie version. There's a version in the issue of Annie's Favorite Crochet Patterns on my bedtable, another in a bootie booklet, and one I'm positive of in my large collection of books. And I'm pretty darned sure there are more lurking in there somewhere. Of course, this doesn't speak of the many versions I know to exist online. They all look alike, and most of them use the exact same weight of yarn, and I'd be surprised if they didn't share a hook size or two. But none of them have infringed upon anyone else's copyright. No more than the shrug I can buy at Wal-Mart infringes upon the rights of whoever makes the shrugs Lane Bryant sells!

Happier Things

I have one more project to share, another toddler halter top:

I used Caron Simply Soft Brites for this one, & a 4.5 mm hook. It's a variant on the pattern I made for the last halter top you saw in this space. The top is exactly the same except for being striped. The bottom is a variant on the ZigZag Lozenge stitch from the Harmony Guide's 300 Crochet Stitches, which, by the way is not a violation of copyright. There are several more photos of it in my MomsWhoThink store, where it's up for sale. Because, of course, it's winter and no one will buy a halter top. Nevermind that a halter top is all I've actually sold. (I appeared for a brief time to have a commission for a hat, but I haven't heard from the member in several days...)

D'oh.

2006-03-08T12:00:00.000-10:00

Forgot I linked my store to my blog. Violated marketing 101 there. Nothing connected with your business can be in the slightest bit personal. Just got reamed for being unwilling to lower my prices. Oh well, as far as that is concerned. Yeah, if you walked past a store that had a sign saying "I could lower my prices, but I won't", you'd go right past. But know what? It's a two-way relationship. You're probably not the sort of customer the store is looking for, not if you think they should underprice themselves.

I listed the Lemon Lovely Dress on Etsy. Perhaps I will have better luck there. The blog issue was a big one, but I do still think that my main problem with MomsWhoThink is that they know me too well. I've got it paid for another two months, but after that I will close it. I went ahead and said that I would make items outside of my usual size range on commission, and I am glad I didn't waste money making anything. Because of course I got plenty of "Well, if you had this I'd buy it" but when I said to contact me and I'd make it, nothing happened. (And all of this happened outside of the blowup over the blog, so I do not think the two are related.)

I did, at least, have the sense to remove my blog link from my store. Won't make that mistake again. Of course, the damage has already ben done, 'cause the gal was so helpful as to take quotes from my blog and post them there. How nice that she had the class to do that instead of saying something privately. I mean, I did have one member choose to be critical privately. And that's OK. Honestly, I know not everyone is going to like what I do, and I'm fine with that.

But I hate it when someone decides to be a backbiting bitch under guise of being helpful. I cannot--and will not--argue that her point was valid. (Though I was not complaining about either my nonexistent customers or saying anything bad about my work, as I was accused of doing.) Linking my blog to my store and expecting to still be able to be honest on it was stupid. But that violates an unwritten rule at that site that you leave what's outside of MWT outside of MWT. I can see no motivation behind it other than to damage any hope of success I might have had, which is honestly leaving me sitting here wondering what on Earth I did to her. I suppose that will teach me to try to support someone through an initially difficult pregnancy and then tell her how cute her babies are!

I have been thinking about it more, and I realize now that opening up a store on MomsWhoThink was a bad idea overall. The main part of that site is still a debate site, and so I run the risk of people deciding to not consider buying from me based on my debate positions. It's not something I would ever do, but honestly that is the only thing I can see that might have happened with her. I'm not entirely stupid, y'know. I did stop myself from changing my avatar to something political (and I'm talking reallypolitical, far hotter than the whole red vs blue thing) because it wasn't a good idea when I'm also trying to promote a business on the same site.

In other, possibly brighter, news, Robert said he's gotten some small interest in what I make from the people he works with, and he wants me to make up some business cards. I'm loathe to do that, as my stuff hasn't exactly been selling like hotcakes and I really don't want to get the kick of uninterest yet again. But perhaps I should. I've been thinking about making up a brochure with things.

I've also had a couple of requests for toys and beanies. So I'm going to work on some amigurumi and see if there is any interest in them. I don't want to make just "normal" stuff. Normal has never been my forte. So, hopefully, this will be a nice bridge. What to do about the beanies, I've not a clue. I'm thinking to make a few more things like the ones I created for Clara and Eleanor, as Mindi really liked those (and they were free, of course).

I also need to get a gallery website set up so that I can have something to use as a show-and-tell of my work that doesn't link here. Because I have learned that lesson.

And today's question is...

2006-03-05T14:58:00.000-10:00

Do I make what potential customers have said they want to see, and hope they actually buy it (keeping in mind they were all excited about the prospect of what I am making before I made it)? Or do I keep making what I want to make and hope I find a buyer?

This isn't an easy question.

I got set up at HyenaCart. BellaLinda Designs there too, of course. And I've gotten a few very nice comments. Not that comments count for anything, 'cause of course you don't make money off of them. I never expected to get rich off this, of course, but I did have the fond dream that my crochet habit would eventually become self-sustaining and I'd be able to create without amassing a huge number of things that would go unused.

Let me tell you this story to further illustrate my conundrum:

One of the feedback comments went something like this: "...since it is the dead of Winter for many of us, crocheted halter tops just aren't on our minds as we battle the heating bills." Valid feedback of course. And yet...And yet, a halter top is the only thing I have sold! Oy. Sadly, I am very easily discouraged, and am tempted to shutter my MomsWhoThink store altogether. I know I also battle familiarity there. I've been on that site as long as that site has existed, very nearly six years now. It's about like selling to your family.

It's frustrating. One of the projects of which I am most proud, the Lemon Lovely Dress, got this comment: "The Lemon Lovely yellow color is awesome. I would match it, though, not with a common blue, but an orange and pink." Oy. Blue is common, yes, but dark blue and bright yellow are nota common combination, especially for infants.

I know this could devolve into too many cooks spoiling the brew, of course. I suppose the only answer is to expand my line to incorporate the few of the suggested items I actually want to make. We're off to Wal-Mart later on for inspiration and measurement info for larger sizes (sewing patterns...)

200 Crochet Blocks & a purse...

2006-03-03T18:25:00.000-10:00

I just finished this up today. Made two blocks from the book 200 Crochet Blocks for Blankets, Throws, & Afghans, then crocheted them together with a single crochet and did no-chain single crochet for the handle. So the joining and handle are all the same piece.

I used Caron's Simply Soft yarn & a 5mm hook. Each block came out 9" long, but it's fairly obvious by looking at them that they're not square. I was hoping I could recreate one or both to send off to the Crochet Dude for his Heartmade Blessings square drive, but those squares need to be 12" and, well, square. So, back to the drawing board on that.

I actually made a sale! The ZigZag Halter top is gone. I actually got a fair amount of interest in it, which means I need to make more. Especially in different sizes. I'm thinking of doing several different ones with the same basic top but a variety of stitches on the bottom. Right now, though, I'm working on a size 0 - 3 months Easter dress. On that one I'm thinking solid stitch bodice and a very full lacework skirt. I'll have to make a matching diaper cover...

#($&*@Y# Debbie Stoller and the horse she rode in on...

2006-03-01T14:48:00.000-10:00

Excuse me if I fail to piddle myself in excitement over the release of Stitch & Bitch Crochet: the Happy Hooker. Ooh, Debbie Stoller, the Saviour of Knitting, is now going to rescue crocheting from the abyss of unhipness.

Riddle me this, Batman: Why does it have to be hip?

To quote Emily Dickinson, how boring to be somebody!

Yeah, I share my fellow hookers' consternation that crochet is so often seen as knitting's bastard stepchild. Hillbilly knitting, and all that. I hate having to dig through piles of knitting books to find the lone, lonely crochet book. I hate having to move aside even the cross stitch magazines in an effort to find Crochet Fantasy while Vogue Knitting occupies pride of place in the front row.

But I don't need to be saved by Debbie Stoller. I fail to see how a lifelong knitter "discovering" crochet and deciding to introduce it to her disciples is going to solve the issue of crocheting being considered a secondary craft. Snapping up a book that once again disses the history of our craft does no one any favors. "These aren't your grandma's doilies," indeed! (I swear, I'm gonna go up into a clock tower with a high-powered rifle and start picking off people with ugly scarves if I hear that line too much more often.)

Yes, crochet needs acceptance. But we need it on OUR terms. Not knitters' terms. We need to embrace doilies and afghans and yes even antimacassars and GRANNY SQUARES NOT USED IN A "NEW AND CREATIVE" WAY. The Lord's Prayer done in filet crochet using thread has at least as much artistic value as anything sporting Fun Fur.

In the meantime, let's embrace our craft as the unique thing it is. No, you won't see a photo of Kate Hudson crocheting a doily. So what? There used to be a time when the American spirit embodied individualism. To quote Cowboy Troy: Do your thang, baby, do your thang.

And I'm up and running...er, walking...er, limping along

2006-02-19T22:11:00.000-10:00

BellaLinda Designs is now part of the MomsWhoThink Member Stores. Yay me. I have four items up right now...A total of 223 views...And not the slightest nibble. Sigh. I could lower my prices, but I don't want to. I work damn hard on my pieces, 99% of them are original designs, & the ones that aren't are so modified that they might as well be. I'm not going to undersell myself. Which, of course, means that I run the risk of not selling at all. Ah well. I'll have to take it if it comes down to that. At least I will have tried.

I've been working my butt off to get the store stocked, too. My latest projects are the Blue Bubbles Purse already in the store, and this:
This was a total pain in the ass to come up with. I am so anal about how I want my stuff to look. Especially with toddler clothes. I am violently allergic to "prostitot" clothing, so when I make stuff like this I have to make sure it's something I'm willing to let my daughters be seen in. That, and it's got to look good.

I started out crocheting it from the bottom up, using the block-and-offset-shell stitch. But I frogged that--and I honestly do not remember why--and started crocheting it from the sc portion so I could get all the shaping out of the way. I made the front, the straps, and the back (in that order), then sewed it all together and did the bottom portion in the round. Of course, that required frogging it multiple times until I got the stitch multiplier just right (it did not match what was given in the book!), then frogging it yet more multiple times until I got the pattern down. It actually moved rather quickly from there.

Now, technical info for those of you who are curious: This piece is crocheted in Caron's Simply Soft, using a 4.5mm hook. The top part is plain ol' single crochet, the bottom a ripple stitch done in the back loops only. Since I'm doing it all in one color, I wanted it to have some good definition to it, thus the ridged effect.

I will be writing the pattern up and posting it for sale along with the actual item. There are a few other crocheters on the site, with some luck I can make a bit of money off selling the patterns, if not the actual items.

Today also brought a trip to the bookstore, but I'll go into that more tomorrow.

Next project: a circular baby blankie in camouflage yarn.

In honor of St Valentine's Day...

2006-02-12T00:56:00.000-10:00

Wish I had an FO to present, but I do not. I did, however, come across an interesting coincidence while out thrifting today. At our first stop I found The Complete Book of Crochet, with a copyright date of 1973. At our second, I found the Reader's Digest Complete Guide to Needlework, with a copyright of 1979.

My hubby was born in '73, I in '79. Finding books our ages is romantic in a geeky crochet sort of way...

More to the point, it also lets me go off on one of my favorite subjects: the myth of "modern" crochet. Each generation seems to like to think it's come up with whatever craft all on its own. This may have been true for crochet a couple hundred years ago, but not now. Folks were indeed making ugly ponchos back in the 1970s. I know, I know. Quelle suprise. I think ugly ponchos are one of the odd constants of design. Along with hideous hats.

But there are more subtle similarities. The older book, for instance, has a pattern for a "long evening skirt" that isn't wildly different in attitude from the famous spiderweb lace skirt over at Weird Mirror. Berets are still quite common, as are tote bags. And throw pillows.

There are differences, of course. The Complete Book of Crochet has a very large number of thread crochet patterns. Very nice, intricate ones. Yes, my dears, the dreaded doily. Sometimes I wish I had the patience for thread...

It's the second book I am most excited about, to be honest. And, you know, I can't think of a single book published today that follows up its directions for basic techniques with a discussion of designing your own garments! Oh, woe betide the old-fashioned crochet!

(I am secretly rubbing my hands together in glee over the macramé directions; I've been longing for a hanging macramé onion basket for longer than I care to admit...)

More interesting stuff from the second book...

The double chain stitch (otherwise known as chainless single crochet), a technique very few crocheters my age seem to have heard about, is herein presented as a crochet basic, as is a Solomon's knot (which they call a double knot stitch).

Their suggestion for a first project is not a scarf. I will repeat: NOT A SCARF. It's a tote bag. A striped tote bag. With purchased handles. Which means beginners are expected to be able to grasp the concepts of changing colors, shaping, and sewing. Which means crocheters are expected to be reasonably intelligent!

They give patterns for an oval, a triangle, a mitered-corner square, an octagon, and, elsewhere, a star. Do you have any idea how much trouble I had trying to find a coherent, non-openwork star pattern so I could make a stuffed star for my daughter for Christmas? I had to come up with my own!

There are also techniques I haven't seen clearly explained before. Like overlaid meshes, two different versions. One where you slipstitch across a mesh background. Very interesting look.

Getting back to that design thing...It tells you how to shape three different necklines (square, high round, and V)...Three different sleeves (set-in, raglan, & semi-raglan)...Four different techniques for ribbing, four different buttonhole techniques...I'm so happy. This book doesn't seem to exist in a newer edition past 1981. I really don't think there is anything comparable to this out today. This book managed to pack into only a few pages more information on garment-making techniques than even Donna Kooler's Encylcopedia of Crochet! I'm in love!

And this is what I'm working on right now:

2006-02-05T23:48:00.000-10:00

Nice little banner, isn't it? Now I just need somewhere to put it! And stuff to sell!

It's been a dream of mine for a very long time to make a little extra money selling my crocheted things. I like making clothes for little ones, so it makes sense to me to specialize in this area.

I designed the above banner a few minutes ago. Took a little doing. Which I will now explain here because I am just that narcissistic, & who knows maybe someone else needs a mini class in banner design.

First thing I did was 'borrow' a banner ad from the website I intend to first have this on. This is to make certain I get just the right size. Then I opened it up in Paint Shop Pro 9, which is my graphics program. Added a layer. Opened up a graphic I'd already made, which is a clip of a close-up of one of my projects. Shrank it down so the height was exact (80 pixels). Pasted it on this new layer to cover up the old banner. Did a gaussian blur on it (2.5, for those interested in the techs). Opened up the photo of my daughter you see there on it. (Why this one? Because she's cute & that is one of my more original designs.) Resized it so the height was exact. Copied, pasted. Added in the text. Saved. Cursed myself for forgetting to rename the file, then went & renamed it.

Then PM'ed the owner of the site I spend most of my time on, MomsWhoThink, and asked her for specifics on price to advertise my fledgling business in my signature.

I'm sitting here now with a knot in my stomach, for no good reason. This is a huge step for me. I am so scared. Will my items sell? Are they good-enough quality? How on Earth do I keep proper records for tax purposes? Oy. Change scares the living crap out of me.

Wish me luck...

Neat find at Wal-Mart:

2006-02-02T22:01:00.000-10:00

Saw this at Wal-Mart this evening. A pretty little toddler aloha dress with crochet trim. Ten-fifty is the price. A good price, but I can't bring myself to buy it when I can make it myself. But I couldn't resist taking a photo so I could show it online. Crochet really is starting to be everywhere!

Needless to say, from there we went right over to the craft section where I picked up some aloha fabric of my own (and if you want to be totally correct, btw, you'll stop calling them Hawaiian shirts & start calling them aloha shirts) and a cone of Sugar & Cream so I can make my own version.

This goes to prove, once again, my theory that crochet is very, very Hawaiian. You can't really tell from the picture (I took it pretty quick, since it looks strange to be photographing merchandise), but the bodice is a simple shell pattern.

My own version will be much plainer than this. My crochet skills are up to it, not so much my sewing skills. I may just go back and buy these some day soon. They're that cute. (And I'm not quite easy with the ethics of photographing something & then making my own version, but it's not like I intend to sell them or anything.)

In love with Leisure Arts...

2006-02-01T22:22:00.000-10:00

I love Leisure Arts. Really I do. I especially love their relatively large books. Like In Love with Crochet, which I ordered from Amazon and which just arrived today.

This is unapologetically hokey stuff. It starts off with eight afghan patterns and segues right into four doilies. There are dishcloths. Fridgies. A filet crochet picture frame. And then there's my favorite: Quick Birthday Fairies. I used to have this book, you see, but it got lost somewhere along the way in one of our many moves. I have been tearing my hair out for a while now trying to find this particular pattern, as I wanted to make it for my older daughter back when she was an only (and she's turning four in a month, so that gives you an idea of how long it's been!). I knew I had it somewhere, but I didn't know where, and of course I couldn't find it because the book was lost. But now I have it again! So I am very happy to have ordered this book so I'd qualify for free shipping!

Sigh. I am such a happy little crochet nerd tonight...