Pillow Progress

I decided I didn't need to do a whole granny square spiral blanket. I could just do a pillow and finally use up all those pillow forms that are cluttering up the top of my (newly tidied) workroom closet. And add some color and personality to my couch.

Now I just need to pop in to the thrift store and find a matching sweater, to finish it up. (Lucy at attic24 has a great tutorial for how to make a pillow back from a jumper a.k.a. sweater.) Well, maybe I also need to make a cover for the pillow form -- it does show through the holes if you look close...

Speaking of tutorials, I want to make a note here of how I did this, especially the beginning. But that'll have to wait till I'm at my laptop, not my phone. And till I find my scribbled notes...

Eight-Yarn Never-Ending Spiral Granny Square

:: another break from owls; more crochet :: 

The question at the end of my Never-Ending Spiral Granny Square post wouldn't leave me alone. And now I know -- it CAN be done with eight yarns. In fact, after the initial mess of the first few rows, it's even easier than using four yarns.

I think it would look great with 4 strands of white and 4 strands of various colors. Or 8 yarns in rainbowy hues. Or actually anything would look better than the "antique lime" and "harvest gold" and "pumpkin" used below. But it's what I had in my scraps.

Looking at the picture again now, I'm already seeing things I want to change. Specifically, the beginning and the ending. I see more spiral crochet in my future. But, ugh, I must find some new scrap yarn for these test squares!

Never-Ending Spiral Granny Square

:: more owls to come,

but i did some crochet today that i want to keep track of ::

Recently, my friend Mo and I were discussing various patterns for afghans. We both love the look of granny squares but hate the endless weaving in of ends.

I was thinking how nice it would be to make some sort of spiral, which would eliminate the constant starting and stopping of colors. Sure enough, Mo had seen such a pattern on Youtube.

Nice idea. But I didn't like the way the colors didn't all start in the very center. So tonight, I sketched out how it could work, and then tried it with some yarn scraps.

It worked! And I like it!

Then I thought surely I can't be the first. And, once again confirming the idea that there is nothing new under the sun, I found the technique by searching for "spiral granny square" instead of "neverending granny square." Here is a video, by SmoothFox, that shows how to make a spiral granny square afghan with four colors that just keep going and going and going.

Now I want to know, can it be done with eight colors? I will figure it out, but not today...

WIP: Grey Circle Scarf

Here’s one of the things in my Works In Progress bag. I hope it’ll turn out to be a nice circle scarf. I love the design when it’s hanging…

…but perhaps it’ll so much of a jumble when it’s scrunched together?

I guess it could always just be a hang-down scarf, once I crochet it a little longer. : )

Note: pattern is from Encyclopedia of Crochet.

Baby Hats, and Beards

I’m in the midst of wallpapering – kitchen, family room, three bedrooms (pictures coming soon!) – but when I’m not covered in paste, I’ve been crocheting. Mostly hats. Including baby hats (essentially followed this Jen Spears pattern starting with 8 dcs instead of 12, and smaller hook)…

…with beards attached (made up the beard as I went, then attached this Marion Crick mustache).

My cousin and his wife just had their first baby. They were told they were having a girl. They had a boy!

Now he can wear his beard so there is no confusion. Plus, while the proud papa isn’t currently sporting any shaggy facial hair, all his buddies – the babe’s surrogate uncles – are doing the “mountain man” thing. So now he can fit in with them too.

Not sure if it’ll actually fit my newest little cousin, but it seemed to fit Chocolate the Bunny pretty well.

By the way, if anyone thinks I’ve lost it, attaching a beard to a beanie, at least I have company in my lunacy as a google image search for “beard beanie” quickly proves.

Oh, and my younger brother wants one now too.

Crocheting with Company

It’s so nice to have out-of-town friends visit – I get to hang out with my friend while her four girls play with my three.

Talking late into the night with someone who knows you so well, that is sweet goodness.

The fact that this someone brought her crochet project along and you can hook together as you talk late into the night, that’s just goodness piled on top of goodness.

She’s making a lap blanket for her mama…

I’m making a hat for me probably, thought it’s attempt number two, so we’ll see…

Like how our clothes match our projects? Ha ha.

My New Knitting “And More*” Group

How fun! I saw a blurb about a knitting group that meets weekly at a church right near my house. So I called the contact person listed.

Me: “I don’t knit (yet), can I bring my crochet instead?”

Her: “Sure!”

Me: “I’m still unpacking and can’t find my crochet (yet), can I bring some mending instead?”

Her: “Sure!”

So I packed up our holey shirts and buttonless pants and, while looking for thread, managed to find my roomy red bag of crochet WIPs too.

What a friendly group of women! I was good and did the mending first. But then I dug into the bag to see what was in there.

Woo hoo, the girls’ scarves! To match their hats I finished last year. Pink one is long enough now – next week I’ll add the white and grey border.

The purple one just had loose ends to weave in. It is DONE now!

By the way, I found the pattern—minus the border—on Ravelry (Check Stitch Scarf), but it’s also available here. I loved the little slits so the scarf doesn’t have to be so long yet will still fit snugly around a little one’s neck.

And the aqua one is at the same stage as the pink one now, just needs a border so it matches the hats better.

I hope we have a few more weeks of “Knitting” meetings before the weather really gets cold so I have time to finish them up for my girls.

*The veteran group members did mention it’s maybe time to change the name of the group – I was not the only non-knitter there. So for now, it’s the “Knitting and More” group…  : )

Slightly Altered Starling Handbag

Happy birthday, Jenna!

This bag started out as a small Starling Handbag, from futuregirl’s pattern that I crocheted (and photographed) months ago…

…and in which I again substituted a few rows of double-crochet so I could thread some ribbon through, like on the bag I made a year ago.

Next sewed in a bright orange lining, and thought I was done. A brown-and-orange bag for Jenna whose favorite colors are… Guess...

But something didn’t seem right. It finally dawned on me that I couldn’t picture Jenna actually carrying this cute little purse. She’s more of a “I need both hands free so I can embrace life with gusto” kinda gal.

So after a few deep breaths and some frantic whispers of This will be OK, this will be OK, I started frogging. That’s crochet-speak for pulling out your stitches (which I didn’t know until this year). Also known as watching all your hard work disappear into a pile of twirly swirly yarn.

I tried to channel Alice (the pattern creator) while making one looooooooong “handle” instead of the two called for in the pattern.

…I just realized now I could have made it easier on myself by crocheting a separate handle and sewing it onto each end, but I wanted to keep the seamlessness of the original – perhaps that’s why the easier solution didn’t cross my mind. That, and the easier solution seems to never cross my mind first…

Anyway, here’s the strappy seamlessness I was aiming for. Yay! (Camera would not take photos showing true colors no matter how much I fiddled with the settings. Boo!)

   

I’m happy with how it turned out but am not sure I could pull it off again, even though I tried to take notes as I went. Those notes say things like “single crochet two, stick hook in wherever looks right, skip two or so, single crochet again (or half double maybe)” etc. Not the model of precision that I usually like to follow.

Since crochet tends to stretch, I added a fabric strip on the inside of the strap. Hopefully, that’ll keep the bag up where it belongs instead of dangling down near Jenna’s knees after a few weeks.

Sophie, eager to be involved in the gift for her beloved former preschool teacher, came to help me while I was gift-bagging it. I let her pick the bag – she can’t quite read yet, just went for pink. I figured Jenna would be understanding about receiving her birthday gift in a lingerie bag.

Then Lucy joined us and wanted to contribute. She started tossing our IKEA finger puppets into the bag for Mrs. D, which I thought was a cute idea considering what’s arriving in another five weeks or so.

So happy birthday, dear friend. You amaze me in so many ways!

Snaps and Hats

Pocket now stays closed with the addition of a snap on the inside.

Pounded the first part of the snap into place, no problem, over on the hard wooden ledge that runs the length of my wall. But, in another late night lapse of judgment, I decided to pound the second piece of the snap into place right there at my sewing desk…

…my new sewing desk from IKEA, which is inexpensive compared to other desks because it’s essentially hollow. Oops.

So now that I’ve got my pocket opening dilemma figured out, it’s time to start brainstorming how to cover up the rough hole in my desk that I’m afraid is going to start flaking off bits of bits of laminate as I try to get work done.

In happier news, I got the girls’ hats done*. It might be the first official day of Spring today, but we still have plenty of cold days ahead of us before Spring is really here!  (*not really “done” since I intended to add Hello Kitty appliqués, but at least they’re “done enough” to be wearable)

And in even happier news, after trying on their hats, they

1. kept them on (I wasn’t sure Lucy would),
2. sat peacefully together on the couch, reading  (or “reading” in Lucy and Sophie’s case) and pointing things out to each other and just plain being loving to one another for way longer than usual.

 

P.S. Earlier this week, basked in the sunshine on the deck with some friends and had ample time to test out various grey border techniques. In the end, decided to go for one that made the edges flare out ever so slightly. (Original pattern for hat found here on Ravelry.)

Crocheted Headband Mania

The crocheted headbands are multiplying – in my drawer and recently now on my head. (The red one alone seemed too matchy-matchy with my shirt so I tied on the orange one too.)

I first saw the pattern for these over at creativeyarn. And they’re a fun, fast project, but in the comments of the pattern post, I noticed a number of people having troubles. So with Marta’s blessing, I wrote up a tutorial, including step-by-step photos and explanations for beginning crocheters; it’s posted here. 

For me, they’re a great mindless task for when I wake in the middle of the night and need twenty minutes* of distraction before trying to fall asleep again.

*Note: I can’t finish one in 20 minutes. I just give myself that long before going to bed again for 20 minutes and then repeating the cycle til I eventually fall asleep… Tried reading, checking email, catching up on blogs, etc. but that easily turns into an hour. : )

So, what color should I make next?!? : )

Start Crocheting without a Slipknot?!?

How do you start a crochet foundation chain? With a slipknot of course! Isn’t that the only way?

I thought so, but not according to Marianna from Romania. Here’s a video where she demonstrates a crochet chain stitch, but it’s the way she started that had me intrigued. She shows it three times, 1:00-2:20.

In a nutshell, you just hold your yarn taut with no knot, yarn over and twist (this makes a pseudo-knot), then hold twist, yarn over and pull through (to make the chain) – which results in this…

…instead of the “usual” method of making a slipknot and then yarning over and pulling through the loop for your first chain – which results in this…

It’s a little harder to see the first chain in the “YO twist” photo up top than when it follows the slipknot. Once there are three chains total, you can see the “YO twist” start just leaves a little extra loop at the very end, compared to the slipknot start.

 

So what’s the big deal? Perhaps not much. But since I’m a tester, I did make some quick swatches. They look essentially identical: both are 10 chains, then two rows of sc; the swatch with the purple clip uses the YO twist start; the pink uses a slipknot. And they’d look even more similar once the starting tails are woven in. (I usually crochet over the ends as I go, but I wanted to leave them out in this case).

But I can certainly feel a difference. Both swatches are nice and soft, except for where the slipknot is – a hard, firm lump right there. It’s a small thing (literally) but I think it’s great news that I can now avoid it, like when making slippers that otherwise end up with a hard slipknot lump right in the middle of the ball or heel!

I also made some swatches of 10 foundation sc and a row of sc: dark green clip shows YO twist start, light green shows slipknot start.

In this case, I didn’t just feel a difference; I could see one as well. Whenever I do fsc the “usual” way, i.e. starting with a slipknot, I end up with just a little bit of extra yarn at the start where I don’t want it. (This really bugged me while making my Hello Kitty Scarf.) Perhaps my technique is a little off. But with the YO twist start, for some reason, that “extra bit” just isn’t there.

So why have I never heard of, read, or seen this method before?!?

* * *

P.S. While watching another video I heard someone say “you always start with a foundation chain because… that’s really the only way to start anything when crocheting.” Nuh uh! How many more “secrets” are there out in the big world of crochet?!?

Hello Kitty Granny Square Scarf Pattern

OK, so people keep asking for the pattern for this scarf. I wrote it up and have been sending it out, but I keep finding out about more mistakes and confusing parts and and and.

I want to help people enjoy making this scarf, not pull their hair out while they muddle through.

So next idea, put the pattern here instead.

But it got way too long, so I put it here... 

All I can say is Longest. Post. I Ever. Wrote.

Picot Edging How To (and Comparisons)

I am a tester. I like to know things. And I like to be “right,” do things the “right” way, whenever possible.

So is it really any surprise that I recently crocheted four samples of picot edging, trying to find the “best” one? No, the only surprise is that I was able to stop after four; seems like every book and website out there does it differently! But I think I’ve settled on one I like….

First, let me back up a quick moment. Picots are those little loops or bumps that you sometimes see on the edge of ribbon, clothes, etc. And it’s a common edging on crocheted projects.

The basic technique is the same: space the picots apart with a set number of stitches, often 2 sc, and make each picot with a set number of chains, often 3-5, depending on how big you want the “bump” to be.

But it’s the way the chains connect to the rest of the piece that changes.

Behold, my comparison photos: (this is where some of you start to shake your head, saying, “Karin, they’re all the same!” Undaunted, I forge on.)

Is it just me or are the bottom two less symmetric, with the left side of the picots straight up-and-down and the right side at an angle? Plus the one at the very bottom has little holes near the bottom of each picot. Not what I’m looking for. So clearly, the top two are better.

Well, then let’s look at the back sides… I like that the grey stitches on top of the pink portion look nice and even on the first (and last) one; the middle two have these funny horizontal “dashes” under every picot.

So, clearly, version #1 is the winner in my book. (Version #2 is what I used on the scarf because I hadn’t found version #1 yet.) I’ve written the picot stitch as the photo caption. The pattern for a whole row would be:

Ch 1, sc in first 2 st, * ch 3, sl st in first ch of ch-3 (picot made), then sc in next 3 st *; repeat from * to * along row, ending with sc in last 2 st.

The other trick, no matter which picot stitch you use, is to tug each little picot so it lays nice. Sure, if you made a blanket, that might be 264 little picots to tug, but I didn’t say I like to do things fast. I said I like to do them “right.”

Oh, and the final trick – after you’ve tugged all those tiny bumps – is to keep them laying nicely by blocking your finished piece. Here are some photos of the Hello Kitty scarf: top shows “pre-blocked” and bottom shows “post-blocked” . I should’ve lightened up a wee bit on the iron, but maybe you can see how the stitches in the bottom photo are all much flatter and sort of meshed together. That’ll help keep the picots looking neat, too.

Maybe another time I’ll tell you about baking three different batches of banana bread, all on the same day (I had lots of brown bananas), then asking everyone in the house to blindly taste them and pick their favorite…

But I think I’ll reserve the next post for my favorite new skirt. Or our new pet and his handmade habitat; he’s “singing” to me as I type this…