Tag: crochet

Other Crafts

Where are you now, my fingerprints?…er, fingertips?

wittychild

(post title inspiration can be found here)

For my mom’s birthday, I wanted to have at least one homemade component. I wound up with several: a card, a nifty poochie-style bag to hold her swag, an altered Altoids tin meant to hold a gift card, and these fingerless gloves.

Or is that fingerless mittens? Generally the defining characteristic of gloves is that they have, well, fingers. In any case: something meant to help keep her hands warm while affording her dexterity.

I found the pattern in some sort of “Autumn Crochet” magazine I had picked up for myself, and luckily had one of her favourite colours in my stash, so it was meant to be.

(Please excuse the Enid Sinclair-inspired nails.)

Isn’t that purple something? It’s called “Amethyst”, and I think it pops even more in real life.

What was really cool was how the gloves were constructed. The ribbing comes first, created by rows of back-loop-only stitches, then you stitch the ends together to create a tube, give the works a 90-degree turn right here:

…and start your rounds to form the upper part. It’s all done as one piece and doesn’t come off your hook until you have a fully-formed glove. Pretty neat, eh? I’m especially proud of the fact that I kept my tension even enough to produce two the same size. 😉

It’s still a little bit cold out for her to wear them, but these will be just the thing once spring starts springing and she needs just a little coverage.

Thanks for looking! 🙂

Other Crafts

I have all the tender sweetness of a seasick crocodile

wittychild

Other subject lines that were considered for this post:

"I've got garlic in my soul."
Rejected because: As an individual of Ukrainian descent, of course I have garlic in my soul.  Heart, soul, genes - you name it, it's there.  If I still ate meat, I'd probably be working my way through a coil of kubasa from Tenderloin Meats as I type this.

"I wouldn't touch you with a thirty-nine-and-a-half-foot pole."
Rejected because: In these fourth-wave days of aerosolized droplets, this actually sounds like sound public-health advice.  Thirty-nine-and-a-half-foot poles: when two metres just isn't enough.

Back when Craftster still roamed the interwebs, one of the members posted a picture of this same scarf she had made for herself, along with a bit of a rant how, as soon as she posted it on social media, everybody and his brother dogpiled on her: “Can you make me one? I neeeeeed it!” Several duplicates later, she was sick of the yarn colours and didn’t want to see the darned thing again, when all she had originally wanted was something cute to wear to a holiday party.

My crochet skills at the time were pretty rudimentary and I wouldn’t have dared attempt this for myself back then, but I’ve gained a bit of confidence and really wanted to try it this year. I didn’t include it as a Craftmas post because a) this was for myself, and not a gift, and b) I didn’t have it finished by the 25th. But who cares? It’s still warm and cute!

It’s folded in half in the picture above – the bottom half (not seen) is solid red, and altogether it measures 138 cm in length. I didn’t take a lot of in-progress shots because it worked up fairly quickly and there wasn’t a lot to be said. It’s done in Corner-to-Corner (C2C) crochet, which means that instead of working in either horizontal or vertical rows (depending on your perspective), you work it on the diagonal.

Like this:

See how that one side is much longer than the other? There are lots of great tutorials for it online, so I won’t attempt to elaborate further except to say that if I can do it, anyone can. The way you work “squares” of stitches at 90-degree angles to one another makes for a lovely soft and squishy texture.

The eyes and nose are crocheted, too, and then sewn on, and the mouth was free-hand sewn on. I was going for his devious, plotting smirk.

(I promised my model anonymity in the form of decapitation.)

Even though Christmas is over, I’m still going to wear him until the weather warms up – hopefully he’s recognizable by the general public.

Thanks for looking – Happy New Year! 🙂

Other Crafts

Happy kitty, sleepy kitty, purr, purr, purr…

wittychild

When I adopted my oldest from the local humane society, they lined her carrier with what I think was once a pillowcase (essentially, a nondescript piece of flannelette-like material) for the ride home to ward off the January chill. When I adopted my second, they tucked into her little cardboard carrier a small afghan made of six blue-and-pink granny squares. I’ve still got the cat, and her “baby blankie”, and the blankie gets treated with kid gloves on laundry day: gentle cycle, lay flat to dry.

It probably shouldn’t surprise anyone that when I got it in my head that I wanted to learn how to crochet, I practiced the basics by crocheting simple squares to be sewn into blankets for the humane society. I don’t exactly work on them tirelessly, but it’s proven to be something to occupy my hands while I watch TV or talk on the phone, and over the past while I’ve managed to churn out six:

In approximate chronological order:

Unlike the others, which are made of a worsted-weight yarn, this giant granny square is made from a baby yarn and it’s so soft:

I was really excited about this one! It gave me a chance to try some different techniques, and provided wonderful justification for keeping back issues of Bust magazine:

Hopefully these will help some other kitty settle into his or her furever home.

And yes, my cat still sleeps with hers:

Thanks for looking – and remember: adopt, don’t shop! 🙂

Other Crafts

And now for something completely different

wittychild

Longtime readers of this blog may have noticed my crafty endeavours of choice: I bake.  I sew.  And I cross-stitch like it’s the only thing keeping me alive (or if not actually doing it, thinking about it and wishing I were).

But turning yarn into something wearable and/or snuggly has always eluded me.  I can knit scarves, provided they only use garter stitch, and years and years ago I had been taught by my grandmother to turn out rows of single crochet, but that had been long since forgotten.  It was too bad, too, because I have always liked the look of granny squares and wished I could make them.

When a newsletter from the local humane society came out asking for volunteers to make blankets to send home with new adoptees, I decided it was time to bring out the big guns, er, hooks, and learn once and for all how to granny-square.  It took a few different sets of instructions to finally click for me, but for the past few months, I’ve been turning out squares on a fairly regular basis.  It has absolutely gotten easier the more I’ve practiced, and it makes such an excellent and productive television-watching activity: it takes much less concentration than any kind of cross-stitch, and it’s a lot easier to undo a stitch or two if I slip up.

After a few months, fully confident in my double-crochet-and-chain skills, I decided it was time to try something a little more challenging.  I found an easy tutorial on Craftster, and now I feel like I’ve created an exciting new variation on that old playground greeting:

“Guess what?”  “Cat butt!”

20151021_162203

(You can see the originals here: http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=440074.0)  (This pattern is not my creation – I’m not good enough to attempt something like that!)

Mine’s definitely not perfect – kitty looks as though she’s got a little bit of a dislocated hip or two – but I think this was due to not being able to keep track of where my rounds started and ended.  Still, for my first non-square attempt, I’m pretty pleased!

And yes, there will be pictures of blankets forthcoming.