11 Questions From Hanni

Hanni tagged me!  This seemed like the perfect Saturday morning, sit-back-and-sip-your-coffee type activity...and it was!  One mug Two mugs of Starbucks Tribute blend later, I've got 11 random things, a photo and 11 answers to share with you.

The rules:

1. Post these rules.

2. Post a photo of yourself and 11 random things.
3. Answer the questions set for you in the original post.
4. Create 11 new questions and tag people to answer them.
5. Go to their blog/twitter and tell them you've tagged them.

Three Skeins of Yarn: The Final Chapter

Guess what?  There's still snow in Red Lake, so these hats may be coming in handy.  (Actually, there's still snow, here, but just little patches on the lawn and dustings on the roof....and I'm willing it to go away!  Here are photos of some of the hats sent to big sister Ivy that I blogged about earlier.  The last time I saw Ivy she was looking pretty hip in her high chair in a red and black lumberjack jacket.  That was about 1.5 years ago, so:

1. time flies and

2.  she sure has grown up a lot!

The earflap hat was a little big, as I had suspected, but it fits her momma.

This one's her favourite.  It DOES look pretty cute!

My motivation for crocheting has dwindled a bit with the arrival of warmer weather.  Speaking of arrivals, though, we've got several friends and family members with babies on the way, so I'm now off to Pinterest to find some good ideas for crafty shower gifts...

(I love Saturday mornings!)

Pinned It, Made It: Ruffly Flower

Since I'm home with time to blog every day this week, I was looking for a quick and easy project to finish in a day.  Inspired by my recent jewelry acquisitions, I decided to try this flower from sew ritzy-titzy.  (Follow that link for a great tutorial with photos at every step.)

Red, ruffly and waiting to be pinned on. :)

I made this flower using just shy of one 50g ball of crochet cotton and an H hook from my collection that's a little on the small side.  (I started to fret as I neared the end of the ball of yarn, but there was just enough to make this a one-skein project!)  This made a flower that's about 15-20 cm in diameter (BIG and floufy).

There was enough scrap left over to make four of these teeny tiny flowers using my favourite pattern from Lucy @ Attic 24.  I keep making these little flowers from scraps and then leaving them...well, I'm not sure where I'm leaving them.  In the bottoms of project bags, perhaps?  Yesterday I got smart and started collecting them in this vintage canning jar.  Hopefully I'll find the others before I forget about the jar!  The ultimate goal is to string them together as a garland.

Contained beauty.

Bear-y Sweet Variation

The post that gets the most hits on my blog on a day-to-day basis is my pattern for the Bear-y Sweet Hat.  Here is a variation of the same hat, now listed in my etsy store.

To make the bow: Crochet a rectangle in sc and then wrap a strand of yarn around the middle of it to cinch it into a bow shape.  It's that easy!

To add the ruffle: 

Round 1:  Add one sc in each stitch around.

Round 2:  Shells!  Ch 3.  *Skip 2 sc.  5 dc in next sc.  Skip 2 sc.  sc in next sc.  Repeat from * around the circle.

This pattern is listed on ravelry.
Posted on Skip To My Lou, House of Hepworths, Somewhat Simple, The Crochet Way, These Peas Taste Funny.

WIP Wednesday - Granny Bag

Today's project started with reaching into my bin of sportweight yarn and spotting the following three colours nestled together:

Unlikely allies.

These are definitely not three colours that I would normally combine into one project, but with a bit of black between them, it's turning out like funky stained glass.

Granny bag in progress.

On my way home from taking hubby out for lunch this afternoon, I browsed through Generations thrift store and found a bin of "Sassy Singles" (their label, not mine...but I love it!) priced at 5 for a quarter.  (Five cents each!  What did you buy for 50 cents today?)  These are all clip-on earrings.  I learned when making my pomander that clip-on earrings are actually the easiest costume jewelry to work with.

Behold, the merry widows.

I also picked up two novels to add to my bookshelf: Brown Girl In the Ring (a 2008 Canada Reads finalist) and The Sentimentalists (Giller Prize winner).

My etsy Store Is Up! :)

I set a goal of trying to get my etsy store up by March Break and I'm happy to report it's online and ready to go.  I'm still getting the hang of things, but I have to say that etsy makes it easy to make everything look good.

Clicking on any of the photos below will take you to the listing on etsy.

Technicolour Tweed Baby Blanket

Bright Green Spring Hat - 12-24 mos size

Ruffly baby blanket

Black Spring Fashionista Hat (6 to 9 mos size)

Bold Red Spring Hat (6 to 12 mos size)

Make: A New Summer Beanie

Using a very popular pattern on ravelry written by Betsy Thompson at The Dainty Daisy, I whipped up this lacey beanie using crochet cotton.  The simple flower, also made from cotton yarn, is from The Pumpkin Patch.

I made the 6 month size, but I think it's going to fit a 1-2 year old, based on the way it fits on my trusty (if a little bit creepy) styrofoam ball. :)

Here's the beautiful part: this hat uses less than one ball of worsted weight crochet cotton.

Currently, the flower is safety-pinned on, but I'm going to try some experiments with stitching on a piece of felt and a backing pin to see if I can make something a bit more stable.

I love the colours.  They look great with my blog colour scheme.  I'm a little curious about what this will look like with hair underneath it:  weird or cute?

Make: Tea Towel Holders

We're trying out something new in our kitchen this week: crochet tea towel holders that aren't actually attached to the tea towel!  I found this idea over at Simply Crochet and it seemed like a great one because:

1. This doesn't involve crocheting a topper for every single tea towel in my collection.
2. Any old tea towel will work--not just those with "crochetable" tops. (How do you like my new word, there?)
3. These take a very small amount of yarn and time to create.  (Who doesn't like a quick project?)

The brilliant part of this simple pattern: it uses a ponytail holder to make a stretchy ring.  I added a round of sc to clean up the edges, but it turns out that the pattern's creator was feeling the same vibe on the same day, because she added this update to her tutorial this weekend.  The full tutorial is available at Simply Crochet.  Do check it out.

Yarn: Lily Sugar 'n Cream Worsted Weight Cotton

Cost of this project:

-approx. 50 cents worth of yarn

-2 cents for an "ouchless" ponytail holder

-50 cents for a button.

====

$1.02.  Nice!

Shared on Craft-o-Maniac and The Crochet Way.

Goodbye February, Hello March!

The February blues are behind us.  It's time to take some punchy, powerful steps forward into the optimistically named March.  March is National Craft Month AND National Crochet Month...in the U.S.  I think I'll make myself an honorary American for the next 31 days.

February was a prolific craft month.  In January I pledged a make-a-month, but I managed to finish four projects in February:

• Monogrammed mittens
• A rainbow tweed blanket
• A scrappy girly ruffle blanket
• A Valentine's hat

I've shared my work in the Monthly Make's 2012 flickr group.  Combined, we've got 296 photos posted there, so we were a productive bunch of crafters last month!

My March crafting has started with crocheting, but will hopefully include some home decor over March Break (6 more teaching days, but who's counting?).  It's nothing too exciting yet, but what's a post without a picture?  Here's a peek at what I've hooked so far:

Eventually, this will be one of two birdie pillows.  I've got the picture in my mind; hopefully I can make it a reality!