Oh, did I mention . . .

My husband's a total dork! Before I felted the red and turquoise bag, he put it on his head and claimed to be a Dr. Suess character of some sort. Behold:

Oh, yeah, and there's a small stuffed leopard down his shirt. Sometimes I really wonder about his mental state.

Success! . . . So far . . .

Well, I ran out of the other hand-painted thread I was using on the bottle necklace again, but this time, I'd planned the pattern to be salvageable in spite of it!

It's been a while since I worked on a pattern using the needle tatting method. I think it's because I can't always seem to keep track of my needles, but I can usually scrape up a shuttle. I'm planning to add more along the edges of the split rings I'm using to create the necklace. Probably in black because it will be easy to get a hold of. I'll also add beads because I wasn't able to get the split rings to travel far enough up before I ran out of thread. So far, I like it.

Drat!

So, today I spent 6 hours working on making one of the little bottles into a necklace. I was trying to use what was left of some hand-painted thread and it was looking really good. Unfortunately, I didn't load enough thread into my shuttle and I couldn't join new thread without making a really ugly lump and there wasn't enough left to start over.

Basically, I had something that looked really awesome and now it's trash. Another days worth of work, down the drain. Sigh. I'll have to try it again in some other thread.

Struggling for inspiration

Well, I finally finished and felted these two bags:

The pastel one is done with hand-painted yarn and the red and teal one was an experiment to see if what was in my head would work in the end. It did.

I only wish that was the story with the project I'm working on now. A few months ago, I noticed some tiny little bottles with corks in the jewelry aisle in the craft store and thought that I wanted to tat something around them to create a necklace. So I finally broke down and bought some the other day:

I have two of these cute little guys and nothing I've tried so far is working. I can't figure out if it would be better to do something around the top or some sort of motif that kind of cradles the bottom of the bottle. I hate it when something looks so good in my head and I just can't seem to get my hands to accomplish the finished result! I guess I'll have to keep trying and make something work. Updates to come.

Aren't they sweet?!

I love this pattern. I love it so much, I'm going to start selling it! Of course everyone I know who crochets seems to be busy in the immediate future, so I found a couple people on etsy who are willing to test the pattern for me. It works up so fast and is so much fun to experiment with.

But seriously, don't you just love this afghan?

This is the first one, Creamsicle Dreams. The orange yarn came from Big Lots! Awesome deal! It has a pearly white stripe running through it and it just made me think of a Dreamsicle (Chris insists they're creamsicles not dreamsicles, hence the name).

Someone liked it so much that this one is a special order! My first custom order on etsy! This one is Bubblegum Dreams. It made me think of bubble gum sherbet and those Pink Panther pops I used to get from the ice cream truck with the bubble gum eyes. I miss those.

So there they are the first two afghans made from one of my patterns and the first pattern I'm going to start selling on etsy, as soon as it goes through the editorial process with a few sets of eyes other than mine. I just hate getting patterns with typos or that don't make sense!

As usual . . .

I'm drowning in projects!

I just finished a special order afghan. Pictures will be posted when I get a chance to take them. I'm unravelling a thrift store sweater to recycle the yarn and I have another waiting in the wings, I've got at least a dozen "I Spy" bags to sew, working on a wedding afghan for a friend, helping sew puppets when the pieces are brought to me, etc, etc, etc!

Too little time, too many projects!

Oh, and let's not forget the two multi-week classes I'm teaching.

At least I'm making some money!

Everything Must Go!!!!

Well, at least all the baby afghans. I've started dropping the prices of my baby afghans to get them moved out! If you or someone you know is having a baby, consider a lovely handmade afghan as a welcome addition to any nursery!

Please . . . .

Kind of tired of looking at them all piled up in the corner.


And I need an excuse to buy yarn and make some more! Visit my shop! Take a look! Won't kill you, I promise ;)

Easy Slippers

So . . . . been searching everywhere for a pattern easy enough for everyone I'm teaching to crochet at church for our shawl ministry. We've decided to do slippers to send to all the nursing homes in the area around Christmas because they're quicker and take less yarn than the shawls (though I'm still doing several shawls myself). I haven't been able to find something that felt quite quick enough so, based mostly on one pattern I found, I came up with the following:

Easy Beginner Slippers

Supplies:
2 balls Jiffy yarn (or hold two strands of worsted weight yarn together)
Size K hook, or size needed to obtain gauge

Gauge: 10 sc x 11 rows = 4” square

Special Stitch:
2 sc tog – (uses 2 sc, counts as 1 sc) [Insert hook in next st, yo and draw up a loop] twice, yo and pull through all 3 loops on hook.

Sole:

Ch 4

Row 1: Sc in second ch from hook and in next 2 chs. (3 sc)

Row 2: Ch 1, turn, 2 sc in first sc, 1 sc in next sc, 2 sc in last sc. (5 sc)

Row 3: Ch 1, turn, sc in each sc across. (5 sc)

Row 4: Ch 1, turn, 2 sc in first sc, 1 sc in each of next 3 sc, 2 sc in last sc. (7 sc)

Rows 5-11: Ch 1, turn, sc in each sc across.

Row 12: Ch 1, turn, 2 sc tog over first two sc, sc in next 3 sc, 2 sc tog over last two sc. (5 sc)

Rows 13-22: Ch 1, turn, sc in each sc across.

Row 23: Ch 1, turn, 2 sc tog over first two sc, 1 sc in next sc, 2 sc tog over last two sc. (3 sc)

Now we’ll work around the sole and create the body of the slipper. The remainder of the pattern is worked in rounds, but we will still turn our work over at the beginning of every round.

Round 1: Ch 1, turn, slip st in first sc, [slip st, ch 1, sc] all in next sc, sc in next sc, working in edge of rows 22 sc along side of sole, 1 sc in free loops of beginning 3 chs, 22 sc in edges along side of sole, sc in first slip st, join to first sc with slip st. (52 sc)

Round 2: Ch 1, turn, working in back loops only sc in each sc around. (52 sc)

Round 3: Ch 1, turn, sc in each sc around. (52 sc)

Round 4: Ch 1, turn, sc in next 20 sc, [2 sc tog, sc in next sc] 3 times, 2 sc tog, sc in next 21 sc, join with slip st to first sc.

Round 5: Ch 1, turn, sc in next 22 sc, 2 sc tog twice, sc in next 22 sc, join with slip st to first sc.

Round 6: Ch 1, turn, sc in next 21 sc, 2 sc tog twice, sc in next 21 sc, join with slip st to first sc.

Round 7: Ch 1, turn, sc in next 20 sc, 2 sc tog twice, sc in next 20 sc, join with slip st to first sc.

Round 8: Ch 1, turn, sc in next 17 sc, 2 sc tog four times, sc in next 17 sc, join with slip st to first sc.

Round 9: Ch 1, turn, sc in next 15 sc, 2 sc tog four times, sc in next 15 sc, join with slip st to first sc.

Round 10: Ch 1, turn, sc in first sc, 2 sc tog, sc in next 10 sc, 2 sc tog four times, sc in next 10 sc, 2 sc tog, sc in last sc, join with slip st to first sc.

Round 11: Ch 1, turn, sc in next 10 sc, 2 sc tog 4 times, sc in next 10 sc, join with slip st to first sc.

Round 12: Ch 1, turn, sc in each sc around, join with slip st to first sc. Finish off, weave in all ends.


So far, I haven't worked out any other sizes. I'd call this one average women's slippers. (They fit me). I had a couple skeins of Jiffy and I like it for beginners because it doesn't split very much, so I thought this would be a good pattern for everyone to make their first pair and then we can use it again holding two strands together of something like Red Heart Supersaver when everyone's a little more comfortable with what we're doing. Anyone out there who wants to test this pattern and make ure it makes sense to someone other than me, I'd appreciate it!