Keeping my feet warm

After catching a massive cold two weeks ago, I thought it's time to be a little more proactive about my health and make sure my feet are warm. Or maybe I just wanted to use up some of my yarn. I doubt warm feet will protect me from the people that cough and sneeze in the bus. 

First up - crochet slippers. Not the same size, because I really don't know how to count crochet stitches. Pattern is here. 

And very short socks, because I only bought one 50 g skein of Regia sock yarn. These were done two at a time on one circular needle. In retrospective, I could have made the toes a little less pointy (by casting on more stitches). 

I'm also not very satisfied with my short row heels. Holes! Holes everywhere! 

Next time I'll do some research first, to see if there's a way to avoid the holes. I'm sure there is, it seems like there's a technique for everything. 

Like the amazing Judy's magic cast on and Jeny's surprisingly stretchy bind off that I used on these socks. Pure magic. 

Happy New Year!

Let me introduce you to my new friend. He's a small dude, only about 11 cm tall. He's not all that talkative, but if he was, he'd probably say something along the lines of: Do you smell carrots?

His, um, genetic code came from Lion Brand, as did his wardrobe. His accessorizes color choices were greatly inspired by this:

(he's a bit of a copy cat ;)

My amigurumi friend and I have a message for you all, dear readers.

We wish you all the best in 2011! Happy New Year!

Snoopy

My friend Sandra has a birthday tomorrow, and as she once expressed a wish for a crochet Snoopy doll, I thought this was a perfect opportunity to make that wish come true.

Thank God there was a pattern for Snoopy on Ravelry, otherwise I'd be in deep trouble.


He's done with a 1,5 mm hook and Mirjana no. 5 cotton thread.
My God, those tiny stitches were a total pain. Especially the black ones. And removing the stitch marker (a tiny safety pin in my case) at the beginning of every round, and then making a stitch and putting it back in - Worst.Task.Ever.

But in the end, I'm pretty satisfied with the final result.

Why did Bono fall off the stage?

He was too close to The Edge. ;)

Any U2 fans out there? My friend is a huge fan. Huge as in willing to pay massive amounts of money to see them live in various European cities huge. Me, I like some of their songs. But let's get back to the friend. Huge fan. Last summer she was all about The Edge. That's the guy that plays the guitar. The one with the hat. All her emails and SMS were about how awesome Edge is. So this year for her birthday, I decided to make her an Edge doll. And apparently, I wasn't paying enough attention to her messages, because she now no longer likes Edge the best.Now she likes Adam. The other guy that plays the guitar. It's like we're twelve and get a new crush every week.

I don't get it, when I was into Take That (and mind you, that was 10 years ago), I stayed true in my adoration of Gary Barlow. If I had to choose today, I would still pick Gary. Take That is back, after all.

Anyway, back to my Edge problem. I still haven't sent her the gift. I'm deciding between mailing him to her and delivering him personally, waving him in front of her and saying in an Irish accent: Why don't you love me anymore? I think she'll change her mind when she sees how cute he turned out. I mean, really, Adam who?

Amigurumi Edge is done in Mirabela cotton, on a 3mm hook. I based him on Nerdigurumi Link pattern. His arms and legs are stuffed with pipe cleaners, so they are bendable. The hat comes off. I wanted to add some embroidery on his shirt, but after the terrible job I did on his shoes, I gave up on that.

But I did make him a little felt guitar. Here he is with my ipod for a size reference.


Now I just have to present my friend with this amigurumi version of her SECOND favorite U2 member. I really should pay more attention when she talks about U2.

I just want to sleep...

I've been sick this past week. Still don't feel like myself. The weather is terrible, it's only 9 AM and it's completely gloomy and gray. It's raining like crazy and it's cold. The kind of weather that makes you want to go back to bed. Or at least curl up under the blanket, a hot cup of tea nearby and a book in your hand. Or your latest knitting project.

Good thing my latest project is a pillow. Perfect timing.


It's a crochet granny square with sewn cotton back. The yarns I used are Mirabela by Unitas and Camilla (Madame Tricote). My square didn't turn out exactly square, maybe it's the different yarns or my lack of crochet practice, but I don't care.


Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go test my new pillow.

Look, grandma! A square!

I have finally dared to try my hand at granny square making. Following this amazing tutorial.
Turns out, crocheting granny squares can be quite addictive. I made four. And then I didn't know what to do with them, so I joined them together using slip stitch. And still didn't know what to do, so I added a border. And now I have this crochet granny square and no idea what to use it for. It'll be a potholder, I guess.

I also did some amigurumi-ing. If you can call it that. I bought this nice little book of patterns, called Amigurumi. The designs in it seem simple enough for a beginner and they're pretty much all small toys that can be done in a couple of hours.

I made Sidney Snail. A learning experience, you might call it.

I learned that I need to practice my color changes, my sewing of body parts and most of all, the invisible decrease. Dc2tog creates stupid looking holes.

So I practiced the decrease, using this tutorial as my guide. Worked like a charm. See?

Actually, you don't see because the lower half of the head is not visible in the picture, but even if you could see where I decreased, you wouldn't be able to. If that makes any sense.

Love the Frog head keychain (or charm, the pattern intends it to be a cell phone charm), not so sure about the snail and I'm super proud of my new granny square skill.

Amigurumis and granny squares are basically the only things that appeal to me in crochet. I see more squares in my future. Maybe even a blanket. I just need to learn how to join the squares in a prettier way.

When life gives you one skeins, make amigurumi

So, according to Sandra, the best way to solve the one-damn-skein problem is to make amigurumi.
So I did.
I give you Amigurumi Mouse Doorstop. Only mine isn't a doorstop. And to be honest, it doesn't look much like a mouse.

The face of a cartoon, nose of a rat, ears of a koala and the body of those plastic eggs inside Kinder surprise. And a bit asymmetrical too. A Mousekoalarat only a mother could love. Which I kind of do.

I also fiddled a bit with my blog look. Don't worry, that header is not going to stay up there for long.

Guess I'm in a blue mood

As the warmer weather approaches, then leaves again, and comes back for a day, only to be scared away by torrential rain, I find myself pulling out shorter sleeved shirts from my closet.
Like this dark blue one, with half length sleeves, perfect for not quite so warm days, but sunny days nonetheless. The only problem with it - it was kind of plain.

So I stenciled it, using a lace paper doily.

A couple of dabs of white fabric paint and a few smudges later I had this:

Also, i finally finished the crochet bag I started ages ago. This was mostly improvised, I started with a pattern, then I messed up, and gave up on the pattern, slip stitched the bottom shut and added the flap for closure.

I'll probably need to line it, because it stretches like crazy.


And here's a blurry shot of me wearing it. The strap is long enough for the bag to go across my chest. The bag itself is 18 cm wide and 24 cm long (yes, it stretched way too much under the weight of my wallet and cellphone - in retrospective, I should have seen it coming.).

An apple a day...

The pretty much only reason I wanted to learn crochet was to make amigurumi toys. Cute little things that you have no idea what to do with, but they're cute, so you make them anyway.
I'd like to say I practiced and practiced, mastered the art of crochet and THEN tried amigurumi, but I'd be lying. I'm far too impatient for that. So I chose a simple pattern, and grabbed a hook. And this is what an inexperienced crocheter's amigurumi looks like.
Not too bad, no?
The pattern is Amigurumi Apple by Lion Brand. Simple and quick. I did mess up in a few places, of course. I dropped my paper clip marker couple of times and after that I couldn't tell where the beginning of the round was.
So it's not really symmetrical as far as decreases and increases go. But that's okay, real apples aren't symmetrical either.
See?

And here's a work in progress. Redwork cross stitch. This will probably go on my wall when I finish it. Red to match the color of my couch.


Edited to add : It has been brought to my attention that my apple looks more like a pear. I wondered why that is, and I'm ashamed to say it took me a while to realize that I SEWED THE LEAF AND THE STEM ON THE WRONG END OF THE APPLE!!

Obviously, this is how an apple looks like. The sad thing is, I didn't even notice, until romantales pointed it out. Sometimes you just don't see things that are staring you right in the face. Thanks romantales!

Round two

Just spent the entire weekend trying to crochet flowers.
I've just about had it. It's time to take a break before I go completely insane.


Knitting, I'm coming back to you!

Crochet flowers all around me

... and not a single one that looks good.

I've been taking a break from knitting in order to work on my crochet skills. I did maybe two rows in a few basic stitches before I proclaimed myself to be the master of crochet and went on to more complicated stuff.

And then the crochet proved to be the master of me. But I did learn a lot. Like the fact that you don't need the turning chain if you're working on a circle. Or that you' re supposed to keep the stitches on the fat end of the hook, not the narrower part on the top.


I also learned that I suck at crocheting flowers.

These are all trials and failures. All the same flower, from the Happy Hooker crochet book. It all goes great until I come back to the first stitch and have to join the petal with the slip stitch and finish off.
Obviously I don't know which stitch is the first. Or I'm not chaining enough, um, chains?


I should really read that book from the beginning. But I'm impatient. And I wanted to crochet flowers! Pretty, perfect little flowers, not the mutilated kind you see up there. Damn.