Spring, where are yooou…?

 

Danny Daffodil would like to take a moment to point out to Spring, if you are reading this, that it is high time you let the sun shine in.  He’s ready to play, but still worried about the cold.  He’ll even show you the way.

Danny is freeform crocheted out of Caron Simply soft and Red heart Soft yarn.  For some reason, I had a picture of a flower guy pop into my head and I just had to make him.  Probably one of the stranger dolls I’ve made, but he’ll keep Claude company. 

Inspiration

I’ve been trying my best to create more balance between my fiber habit and my other responsibilities. I have been trying to finish projects before more get started, tend to my yarn stash and craft area to keep it manageable and at least be aware of how much time I spend doing what.

Having said that, Ravelry is really not helping. I’m sure many of you know about it already, but for the non-fiber-frenetic among you, it is an online community of fiber folks that is really revolutionizing the way people connect on-line. It has something for every knitter and crocheter. It starts with a place for each user to collect finished projects and include details like yarn choice, needle or hook size and overall happiness with the project. From there your project is in a huge database that you can browse to see any other users finished product, work in progress, or any comments they have in general. You can browse the database of patterns according to the type of item you’d like to make, the yarn you have, or search by pattern name. If you don’t have the yarn you want for the project, Ravelry will tell you where the local yarn shops that carry the yarn are and also list some on-line sources.

And if all that weren’t enough to spend a lot of time on the computer, they also have groups. Any user can form or join any group and there are TONS of them. I find myself looking at 2 or 3 pages of new groups every week just to see if there is one I might be interested in joining. And even then I miss some good ones.

Some dedicated users have formed a group called “This week in Ravelry” which puts out a newsletter/forum just to make people aware of what other people are doing with Ravelry. This is where I found a description of a group called “Picto Create“. This group has a great concept. Every Monday, a photograph is posted. The members of the group then use that photo as inspiration for creating something fiber related. I just thought I would browse, but when I saw the photo, I just had to make something.

Here is this week’s photo.

and here is my inspired work:

Claude the Barrel Cactus

Edit: I’ve written the crochet pattern up in table form. For now it can be found here as a spreadsheet.

Made with leftover Lion Brand Fun Fur and Yarn Bee Icelandic Jewels, this guy took 3 hours to make. Perfect for someone like me, who can’t keep a cactus alive, Claude will join the other crazy toys until he finds a better home.

As you can see, a 3 hour diversion brought on by an exploration of Ravelry is a fairly regular occurrence. If you haven’t found it already, you’ve been warned.

Now to start picking up the house…

Purse Pictures

Just got the pictures from my parents of the purse I sent for Mom’s birthday.

Purse is from a Swallow Hill Creations kit called Lissa that I purchased at Stitches East.

I used 000 circular needles from Hiya Hiya with Perle cotton size 8 and seed beads. The large bead is hematite that I purchased separately to hold down the point that was one of the flap options but not pictured on the kit. I used half of the beads given, but I don’t think I will be using the extras to make a second purse.

Happy Birthday!

Whew, another frenzied gift making time nearly wrapped up. I’ve been out of touch but definitely busy making gifts for a string of birthdays at the end of February and beginning of March.

Today is my brother Brian’s birthday and he got his gift on Friday.

It was Bender Bending Rodriguez crocheted from the pattern here. He’s in worsted weight yarn, so he is roughly 22″ tall, rather than the 13″ that the pattern author got in DK weight. Big enough he can hold his own beer. I sewed a small round “pillow” out of scrap fabric that i filled with poly pellets for his bottom. I’ve had trouble in the past with the pellets falling out of the crochet holes, so I figured this was the safest approach. There are no poly pellets in his feet or hands.

I’ve also fallen head over heels for Shrinky Dinks (plastic that shrinks to 1/3 of it’s original size with 9 times the thickness) and made this card with a magnet on front by tracing a screenshot from Futurama onto a sheet of Ruff n Ready Shrinky Dink that I purchased at Michaels.  I played with pre-printed Shrinky Dinks as a kid, but only recently sought them out for general crafting.

For my Mom’s birthday on February 27th, I knit a small purse from a kit (called Lissa) I purchased at Stitches in Baltimore from Swallow Hill Creations. Stringing the beads and knitting on 000 needles probably make this a one of a kind project. Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of the purse and the card, so hopefully I can update you with a picture from my folks.

For Scott’s Grandma’s birthday on the 24th, I made a little melon ball kitty from mercerized fingering wt. cotton from this pattern, and free-styled a cupcake container. I also made a Shrinky Dink card.

The first birthday was my Aunt Carolyn’s on the 21st. and she got a melon ball kitty named Whimsy in his cupcake house. This was based on the idea that everyone needs a little whimsy on their birthday. He has a Shrinky Dink name tag.

I’m also working on a sweater for Scott out of Cascade 220. I’m hoping to get it done before it is too warm for wool, but since I’m working without a pattern, it could be a trick.

At the prospect of winding all the yarn I would need for his sweater, I decided to invest in a yarn swift and ball winder. In addition to being fun, it has already saved tons of time that I would have spent winding balls by hand. As you can see it doesn’t clamp on every table, but I managed to find a place to use it.

I haven’t been very good at writing a narrative and I do hope to improve, but in the mean time, I do have lots of pictures.

I have not forgotten the improved knitting bag sewing instructions, but the day I was working on that, I was called by a recruiter for an interview and things have been crazy ever since. I hope to have some time in the upcoming week to get that finished and posted.