ATCs and yummy yarn

I hope everyone enjoyed their October.  This past month I did a few little projects, and one big one.  The big project I did was a crochet pattern - the froufrou sweater from the Happy Hooker book.  It's a pretty easy cardigan pattern, and I used some yummy yarn I bought at the Lamb Shoppe.  I used Aslan Trends Invernal which is a angora, merino and nylon blend.  It's so soft and warm, and super easy to work with.  A bit pricey, but I had extra play money last month.  I used just over 5 skeins.  I'd guess I used right around a yard from the 6th skein.  The body was done in granite stitch and the boarder was done by pulling up loops and joining them together, with a chain 3 joining the groups.

I also crocheted myself some hand warmers for my car using acrylic scrap leftovers.  They were done using a DROPS design I found on ravelry - 108-25 crocheted shell wrist warmers.  It was a free pattern :o)

 
Finally I joined some ATC swaps on craftster.org and finally made some new Artist Trading Cards.  The themes I had were my hometown, handdrawn map, gingerbread, and ladies of the seasons.  I have some more cards to do this weekend, so my next post will have more ATC fun.  If you like papercrafts at all these are a lot of fun to make, and are the size of a baseball card.

More yarn projects

This past month I completed three projects.  Woo!  I'd been in kind of a craft rut recently so this month was a comeback.  First up I made a shawl that I had planned to use as a cover up for breast feeding.  It came out a little small, but it will make a good scarf/work warmer this winter.  I used the pattern Nancy & Judy by Heather Zoppetti, which is a free Ravelry download.  It was a fun pattern and pretty easy to do.  If you're looking for just a little bit of lace to get into knitted lace this is a good one.

I finally used the yarn I dyed in the crock-pot awhile ago to make a Nook cover.  I went through my stitch dictionary and found a pattern that I liked (diagonal trip stitch) and modified it to be in the round.  I used a G hook and did a repeat of 38 stitches.  The yarn was Full o Sheep.  As I worked I just kept putting the Nook in the cover until it was the right size. The only issue with this project is that I didn't rinse the yarn enough when I finished dyeing it, so the back of my Nook is now a little pink.  Oops!

Finally, I did another stash buster project.  My craft room is going to be the baby's room, so I'm trying to get rid of stash instead of buying new.  We want her to have all the room she needs when she gets here.  So I used some of my dk weight baby yarn and made the super cute One Day Baby Hat by Susan Rainy.  This is also a free Ravelry download.  It only used half a skein of the Sidar Snuggly yarn, so I may make a second one for a friend who is expecting soon.  I may add some flowers to the lacey parts on the bottom of mine.  What do you think?

The Wonderfully Obnoxious Green Baby Blanket

I've read much recently about how babies can't actually see pastel colors.  If I remember correctly they all blend into grey until the eyes have developed a bit.  Bold primary colors are visible to the wee little ones though.  So I decided to make my baby to be a very bright green blanket.  Some people think it's obnoxious, but I love it.

It's crocheted using Caron Simply Soft yarn in the limelight colorway.  I used the Russian join to put together the skeins.  The pattern is Heirloom Baby Blanket, a free pattern I found on Ravelry.  It's part of the exploded doilie type of patterns.  As much as I love how this blanket came out, I wouldn't recommend this pattern to anybody who isn't very familiar with crochet and can figure out how things are supposed to go loosely based on the instructions.  The pattern is just badly and inconsistently written.  I worked on this sucker for almost two months.  Hopefully I use it more than once after the munchin is here!
Here's a shot of the pretty edging, just to share :)

More projects, including Dr Who stuff!

I haven't managed to get as much done as I'd have liked since my last post.  I've been more into reading in my down time lately than crafting.  That plus a few big projects I'm still working on have meant not as much to share.  I do have some things finally though!  First up is another pair of knitted socks.  I did these out of the "I Can't Believe I'm Knitting Socks" booklet.  The book taught me how to knit socks, and this is the second pair I've done from there.  The pattern is Little Arrowhead Lace socks.  they came out ok, but I really don't like how this book decreases to the toe in all of the patterns, so the book has gone to ARC.  The socks came out nice though.

 My favorite project from this post is a dalek amigurumi.  I signed up to be an angel for a swapper on craftster who didn't ever receive a package from her partner.  It was a Dr. Who swap so I got to make a Dalek!  You can't see his death ray shooter in the picture, but I promise it's there.  This was my first time doing popcorn stitch, and it was much more simple than I expected.  I recommend finding a video online or a step by step photo tutorial to learn this stitch.  I tried doing it from written instructions and just confused myself.  The YouTube videos made it simple.

 I also made a card set, and did an iron transfer onto a t-shirt for the swap.  The transfer is a quote from the most recent Dr, and the card set is supposed to be left-over thank you cards from the wedding of Rose and the fake Dr regenerated from Dr Who's arm and Donna Noble.  Getting to be all geeky when making this stuff was actually quite fun :o)

 

Last week I made Jerry a birthday card.  I also stamped on the envelope so that's here too.

I'll hopefully be able to start posting some of the baby projects I've been working on in the next post.  I plan to have them finished before the baby is due in February!

Slacker Post

I have been a blog slacker.  There are many projects I have finished, and none that were posted.  I've mainly been yarning lately, but I did embroider a hoop for a craftster swap.  It had to monocromatic, and my partner likes peacocks so I did this:

I finished my first knitted sweater.  The shoulders didn't come out quite right so I need to steek them to lay correctly.  Steeking is sewing the fabric where you want it and cutting off the extra.  I hear it's pretty easy to do with knitting, and I'm too afraid to try it with crochet pieces.

In order to use up some of my cotton stash I made myself a Rust Goes Green market bag (free pattern on Ravelry) that I didn't take a picture of.  Sasha at work liked it and bought her own cotton so I crocheted her this one:

Finally I knit the Vesitality pattern from Knitty.  I don't have the buttons on yet, and I haven't blocked it.  Once those are done I'll share pictures.

I hope everyone is enjoying there summer so far, and I hope to have some bigger projects done to share soon.

Fun with yarn in March

First off I have finished my scrappy afghan.  The ripple pattern is pretty common amount crocheter's but I had never done one.  So I decided, way back last August, to make a ripple out of my scrap acrylics.  Well at least the one's that I thought color coordinated.  I ran out of yarn in colors I wanted to use, so the blanket is done for now.  It's going to be my car blanket.

 

I also tried something new this month.  I was supposed to go to a crafternoon and dye yarn at my friend Rachel's house, but her little ones got sick so I did it myself at home.  I got the instructions for how to dye yarn in a crockpot using food dye from the knitty website.  

First I had to skein the ball of yarn and tie it so it didn't come undone.

 Then I dyed it following the instructions with bright pink and green (the colors are little washed out in the picture).  I love how it turned out and I think I'm going to use it to crochet up some fingerless gloves. 

I used Stitch Nation Full o Sheep yarn (arian weight) for my dying.  I have a second ball of it and may try to dye it to match, or I may try something completely different.  Any ideas?

Finally done! Well kind of.

I finally finished my embroidered quilt top.  I've been working on this for at least four years.  My Grandma Clara used to make these quilt tops using variegated thread.  When she passed on she had made a quilt for each of her daughters-in-law and enough that all of the grand kids got one, except for me.  I love how they look when they are done so I decided to make my own. 
When I first considered it I thought of doing it in purple, but then I decided that blue would be better.  Good thing I switched - Jerry's favorite color is blue and a purple quilt wouldn't look very good in our bedroom :o)  The thread I used is pearl cotton 8 from DMC.

The first picture is of the three panels laid out; I still need to sew them together, pick a backing, sandwich it all, and quilt it.  The middle panel also has the small border with butterflies at the bottom.  However, I'm very happy that I have the embroidery done, so had to share with everyone!  The second is a close up of the tulips in the middle panel.