Katie and cookies

I finished my sister Katie's afghan just the other day. I spent most of the afternoon and evening putting the scallopped edge on it, then it took me over an hour to weave the ribbon through the edges. Quite an undertaking! In the end, however, it turned out really well and quite pretty. (It's a little girly for my tastes though, lol.) Below are two images of it. In the first, I didn't have enough room to lay it out completely, so I folded it in the middle to show the overall pattern. Just imagine that when it's unfolded, the length is just over twice the width. And the second picture is a detail of one of the corners to give you a better view of the pattern itself.

I packed the blanket yesterday in a big box (the blanket itself weighed about two and a half pounds!) and walked to the post office with it to mail it to her. It wasn't heavy to carry, just bulky! She should get it Tuesday because Monday there's no post (Columbus Day). I think she'll really like it. :)

On an unrelated note, I was having a conversation via text messages with my younger sister Sarah about something I'd seen in the news about her former state of residence when the conversation wandered off to cookies. Somehow, the idea of crocheting a cookie came up, and after she went to bed, I grabbed some yarn and started playing around. Using a design I'm really familiar with, I just changed it up a little and then added lots of French knots as chocolate chips. The result of the experiment is this:

It looks burnt, but that's because the only shade of brown that I currently have is "coffee." Black coffee, I might add, lol. But for a first attempt, I'd say it turned out really well. I'll have to try again when I get some different shades of brown. Maybe I'll come up with sugar cookies with frosting and sprinkles next, lol. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Katie's blanket

A while back, I decided that I was going to crochet afghans for my family members.  I even posted about it on my blog asking each person for their preference of pattern and color. Since then, I've finished a green blanket and pillowcase for my sister Sarah, a dark blue blanket for my brother Tommy, a black pillowcase with a white skull on it for my youngest brother Simon (he's a teenager; don't ask), a pillowcase for my sister-in-law Leslie, and a pillowcase for my Aunt Pamela. I have a granny square afghan in the works for my parents, which is coming along pretty slowly. I've had half of it done for about half a year now, and the squares for the other half have been done for several months now, but I haven't gotten all of them sewn together yet. Slow going. I've got about a foot done on a dark green afghan for my in-laws, and come to think of it, I can't remember if I even told them I'm making them a blanket. Oops. And I'm about twenty rows until the end of a blue blanket for my sister Katie, the target of this rambly post, lol.

So the Katie blanket. In order to keep the various projects straight in my head and to make it easier to talk about them to non-crocheters who wouldn't understand what I'm talking about when I describe them via patterns, I just use the person's name who'll be getting the blanket. I got the pattern out of a paperback called Our Best Afghans A to Z, which I really like because many of the patterns are nice or can be adapted to where I'll like them. Oddly, despite the fact that I like many of the patterns in this book, Katie's is the only one I'm making from it. The rest came from various other sources such as a Crochet-a-Day calendar and other books. At any rate, it's not a full-sized blanket in the sense that it could cover a double bed or anything. It could probably be used on a twin bed, but I don't think she has any of those in her house, lol. No, this is what I refer to as a halfghan, something you can drape over the back of a couch or have folded at the foot of a large bed for especially cold nights when the other person in bed doesn't want extra blankets piled on. It's a nice thick pattern that will have a large ruffled border and ribbons woven along the edges as well. I think this blanket will be mostly decorative, and I hope she uses it as such. :)

I originally started this a while back (in July, I think), but have put it off periodically for other projects like starting up my Etsy store and making products to put up there. Now that I've got a number of products on Etsy, I'm taking a break from making little ball decorations and pillowcases to work on something larger for a while. I decided to work on Katie's blanket because the pattern is pretty basic and I can work on it while watching the political debates or old Alfred Hitchcock Presents episodes. A while back, I had to frog seventeen rows because of a mistake along the edge. Normally, I wouldn't mess with a single stitch mistake, but this was going to screw up the ruffled edge and weaving the ribbon in and out! So I frogged the seventeen rows and soon after put the blanket up to work on other things. Since picking it back up again a couple days ago, I've made all those rows back plus some! I've added thirty rows in the past couple days, putting me at row 69 of 84. Then it's the border, adding the ribbon and being done with it! I think that if I have the time and opportunity this week, I can have it finished by Saturday or Sunday. I'll have to make sure to take pictures of it to post here. I should also find my pictures of the other two blankets (and maybe the pillowcases as well) so I can post them all as well. I'd like to start making afghans for Etsy, but I'm going to wait on that until I finish the ones for my family. :) I'll post my progress to keep you updated. It's nice having a blog where I can just blather about crafts, lol.

The jack-o-lantern revisited

Behold the cuteness of the turnip jack-o-lantern!

I was playing around on Etsy, looking at various Halloween decorations, and I remembered from school how we all learned that the Irish actually used turnips (because they didn't have pumpkins, duh) to turn into lanterns. Now, it's under dispute as to whether the turnip lanterns were originally associated with Halloween, and no one's completely sure how jack-o-lanterns got their names, but one thing is for sure: now that jack-o-lanterns are here, they sure are cute and fun to make! I already made a bunch of pumpkin jack-o-lanterns, and after a quick search on Etsy, I realized that there were lots of those. So I looked for turnips. There were a couple crocheted turnips, but those were part of vegetable groups, not jack-o-lanterns. I texted the husband to tell him I was going to make turnip jack-o-lanterns, and he sounded less than sure about the sanity of that. But when he got home and saw the first one, he had to admit it was cute. I'll leave you with a picture of the first turnip I made. Enjoy!

Eye extravaganza

After about four days of near-constant crocheting, I've finished making all the eyeball toys for Golden Snail on Etsy. I made two of each of the following colors: brown, blue, light blue, gray, red, green, and black. That's a lot of eyes! The nice thing about eyes as compared to all the other Halloween toys I've been making is that they're pretty simple to make and aren't nearly as intricate or time-consuming as the spiders or jack-o-lanterns. Once I figure out the bats, they'll be just as complicated as the latter two toys, and the eyes will stay the simplest to make. Below is a picture of the eyes in a large pickle jar that I used on Etsy:

I thought the jar would be a fun idea as a display. On a recent trip to Wal-Mart, I picked up some fall-colored leaves to use as background for future Halloween toys. I think they'll look good with the spiders. I wish I'd had them for the pumpkins because they would have looked really cute with them. But I have them now for future projects. It's time to work on arachnids!

Jack-o-lanterns

I've been spending the past couple weeks trying to find a job in the area, so I haven't spent that much time crocheting or working on other craft projects. I'm waiting to hear back from a temp agency, and in the interim, I've made a bunch of Halloween toys to put up on Etsy. They're little jack-o-lantern balls--around three inches in diameter and just a little taller--and they're so cute! I made ten in three days, and I've already put them up on Etsy. Pictures below.

It's a pumpkin pyramid! :) I am going to take a break from making jack-o-lanterns and switch to making eyes. I have a lot of colors I can make: light blue, bright blue, green, brown, and grey. I don't have any yarn that I would call "hazel," unforunate because most of the people in my immediate family have hazel eyes. I have dark brown and the husband has blue. I think it'd be interesting to get some varigated yarn and make eyes with that. Until then, I think I'll just try to make at least two of each of the colors I have now. The eyes won't take nearly as much time as the jack-o-lanterns because I don't have to make leaves, stems, or vines for eyes. Just an eyestalk. ;) At any rate, I'm going to go crochet and probably watch a movie. Have a great day!

Been busy!

Phew! Posting again after too long a break. I've been busy organizing all my craft stuff as well as making several pillowcases and lots of Halloween toys for family members. At some point, I need to start making the toys to put up on Etsy, lol. At any rate, here are the four most recent pillowcases that I've made.

I'm also trying to make a pattern to create little bat toys like the other ones I've made. So far, I haven't had a whole lot of success, but I'm still working out the bugs. Today I need to keep working on organizing my craft stuff, and if I get to it, I'd like to finish the dream catcher I started this past weekend. If only I could teach my cat how to clean for me, lol.

Aren't they cute?

So I finished the snail magnets that have yarn as their shells. They turned out much cuter than I could have expected! I think I'm going to follow my aunt's advice for the next batch and use beads for the eyes or use the end of a paintbrush to create dimpled eyes instead of just using marker. Still, they're adorable! Below are some pictures of my little yarn Golden Snails. :)

Pictures!

I've got pictures of my more recent snail-related products as well as some of the other things I've been working on.  I don't have the greatest pictures in the world; pretty much everything I take a picture of looks ten times better in real life.  The husband says it probably has something to do with the difference between digital and real film, and I think I might try playing around with the flash to see if that might have something to do with it.

At any rate, the first picture is of stitch markers I made a while back using shrinkable plastic paper.  I traced my logo onto it a lot of times, colored it, cut it out, punched holes in the tops for the metal rings, and after they were all baked, I attached the metal hoops and lobster clips.  They're pretty cute, but because they all melted in a convex fashion, taking a picture was hard because the flash bounced off them at funny angles.

Next up is a mix of Halloween-themed toys (or decorations, depending on how you use them) that I've made for family members.  I'm still working on getting the pattern down right; they turn out a little too cylindrical for my tastes.  Still, they're cute and I'm going to make some more today.

The last project with the snails that I have completed (and have images of) are little charms I made.  I used gold-colored wire to make a little mesh sphere for the shells with a bead inside.  Then I made the eyestalks with more wire and beads.  I put the whole thing together with Fimo clay and baked it.  They are a lot larger than they should be in proportion to their shells, but at least my first batch is successfully cute.  :)  Now I just need to get pictures of them on a chain to show what they'd look like on a necklace.

I do have other snails that I've recently made, but they're not quite done yet.  I made a lot yesterday using yarn and Crayola Model Magic, but they're drying.  I also made leaves and bodies for more snails that will be magnets, but I'm letting them dry before adding the shells later today.  I'll take pictures, of course!  The snail magnets made with yarn balls for their shells?  Extremely cute!!  I can't wait to get pictures of them up to show people.

At any rate, it's time to get back to watching my World War II documentaries and working on pumpkins and spiders.  Since my cat doesn't seem to want to go outside today (I think it's going to rain, and she knows it), I guess I'll just have to do all this from the comfort of my couch instead of my porch.  Have a great day!

Oops!

Well, rather without realizing it, I've stayed up until six in the morning again. I became aware that it was becoming late when all I was finding on TV were infomercials. Whoops. Well, I was immersed in what I was doing, so I didn't care much as to what time it was, though now that I've slowed down, I'm getting groggy. Too bad the husband has fallen asleep on the bed on the diagonal with all my blankets under him. I guess I'll just have to clear off the couch and sleep here.

The reason why the couch is a mess and why I'm still up is because I've been crafting. I finished the crocheted spider for Tommy, and was debating between crocheting some more or working on another project. I opted for another project and pulled out the Crayola Model Magic modeling material. I had figured on just making a few little things to test out the material (I've not yet decided what modeling material I like best), but the packages say that once opened, you have to use the entire container because it won't keep at all. So I just opened the green and grabbed some round magnets and began working on making leaves with magnets in the middle. I can't remember how many I made (somewhere around eight or nine, I think), but I put those aside to dry and started playing with yarn again. This time I was making tiny balls of yellow yarn, about an inch in diameter with about three or four inches of tail on each. After making about ten or eleven of those, I put them aside and grabbed my gold-colored wire and frosted glass beads and began toying with them. I made about half a dozen small spheres with a glass bead on the inside as well as a half dozen Vs with matching beads on the ends. I also made a number of small hoops with the gold-colored wire. Then I got out the Fimo polymer clay and assembled the spheres and Vs into snails, adding the hoops at the end of the tail. I put those in the oven to bake for thirty minutes. While they were heating up, I made a couple more leaves on magnets using a different type of modeling material called Hearty Super Lightweight Modeling Clay. Like I said, I'm experimenting with which one I like best. While the Fimo has to be baked for thirty minutes, the Crayola Model Magic and Hearty clay have to air dry for twenty-four hours. The Crayola stuff has to be used all in one shot whereas the Hearty stuff can be stored in an airtight container like the Fimo clay. Pros and cons all around.

(Random aside: my stupid spider-bitten toe is at that "I hate you" phase of the night and is thus driving me to distraction. If I lose my train of thought completely in this rant, it's because I'm cursing my toe and probably pausing to try and find something to relieve the annoyance.)

So the plans for all these disparate parts is to make the following items:

1. The green leaves made out of the Crayola and Hearty modeling materials will eventually get snails on top of them once I make them. I'll be using the Crayola stuff (since I haven't any Hearty stuff in blue) which means using it all in one sitting. Oddly, the blue package is twice the size of the green or the yellow, the colors of the leaves and the shells, so I'll be using half the blue with all the yellow to make snails to air dry and later glue onto the leaf magnets.
   
2. The other half of the blue Crayola modeling material will be used with the tiny balls of yarn. I'll sculpt the blue around the magnets, run the long end through the back of the clay as a trail and probably figure out some way of attaching eyes as well. In the end, it'll be a leafless magnet, but it'll be one with an actual ball of yarn on it.
   
3. I think you've already figured out the Fimo snails I made. They're charms for necklaces or whatever. The way the sphere is, it's like a webbing of gold with a little spot of color in it on the back of a snail with glass bead eyes and a hoop in the tail where a necklace chain goes. The next batch I make need to be shorter in length though. The ones cooling in the kitchen are proportionally too long for the spheres attached to their backs. I'll have pictures of those up once I can move them from the pan and take some shots to upload.
   

A snail project I've long since finished a couple weeks ago involved shrinking plastic paper and some lobster clips. I traced my Golden Snail logo onto shrinkable plastic sheets of paper, cut them out, punched a hole in the tops of them, baked them until they were about an inch long, added metal rings and lobster clips, and essentially made stitch markers for crocheters. Crochet stitch markers have to have some sort of opening or clasp because it's the only way they can be removed from the work in progress. Knitters can have solid rings because once going back over a row, the stitch marker comes right off the needles. I think I have pictures of the stitch markers somewhere, but I'm not sure if they're on the computer. I should take some pictures of them as well.

So tomorrow I hope to get the snails made for the magnets, though they probably won't be assembled until sometime Friday when they're all dry. Maybe while I'm waiting on them to dry, I'll come up with a crocheted version of my Golden Snail. Maybe I'll work on that right now. I'm suddenly less tired. Maybe it's the cold ice packs I put on my foot to stop the insane itching sensation in my big toe. It sure as hell isn't the infomercials keeping me awake.

Progressing

I think I'm finally getting pretty decent at crocheting.  One of the major reasons why I picked up the hobby in the first place was because of these little toys my grandma used to make, which were basically just little balls with long strings attached to them.  We used to use them as yo-yos or as projectile weaponry.  :)  There were a lot of us (there are about fifty to sixty grandkids on that side of the family; I lost count long ago), and the little spiders (Grandma often put legs or eyes on them and called them spiders) were toys that Grandma could make quickly.  With all my fond memories of Grandma's little spider toys, I desperately wanted to make my own.

So I learned how to crochet and then looked up lots of patterns on-line for making ball shapes.  I messed up the first, oh, fifteen or so that I made mostly because I was always trying to make them with other people around or while watching TV which meant I lost count a lot and therefore had to frog them over and over again.  Finally, I decided to give it another shot just last week, and lo and behold: balls!  The first one I made was this eyeball:

I'm fairly happy with it.  The stitches for the bottom and upper halves didn't match up quite right, so it's a bit lumpy.  I tried again, this time being more adventurous and attempting to add legs to the ball.  I came up with this spider, which you can see I put on the cat to pose it:

I also made a pumpkin, and while I have photos, for some odd reason my jump drive is not cooperating with my laptop at the moment, so those pictures will just have to wait. I've alreayd made a second pumpkin (technically, jack-o-lanterns because they have faces) and am halfway through the third. These do go pretty quickly, provided I'm paying enough attention to keep from losing count of my stitches. :) I think after this pumpkin, I'm going to go back to eyeballs for a while. They don't have leaves or stems to be added, just optical nerves. Have a great day!