Saturday, June 30, 2012

Saturday Links

Look at this little charmer.

Cocker Spaniel Amigurumi from Craftsy.com


Isn't he adorkable? When I was in my teens, we had a cocker spaniel at home, and indeed Mum only lost Winston 5 or so years back. So when I saw this little beauty, I had to make a note of it. He's just so cute :) He's available on Craftsy to buy as a pattern: $4.50

He's not the only thing that this designer on Craftsy has avalable that I would just LOVE. Check this out!

Owl Mug Cosy from Craftsy.com

It's an owl MUG COSY!!! How cute, right??

I think I'm going to be posting a lot of Amigurumi links soon... :)

Friday, June 29, 2012

Week 20 (!!) of the Krista Throw

Believe it or not, it's week 20 of the Krista throw.

O.O

(this is Kim's square from the Krista Group.)


I am behind on this rug, and have decided that even if I'm going to finish the squares (which I would still like to do, since they're doing their job and showing me different methods) I'm not interested in actually sewing it all together. This is OK!

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Block #68: Meadow

From Eaton's 200...

#46 Meadow

Well this was real nice to work up. Easy and quick; you can see the shape & pattern emerge real quick smart. And there are little popcorns in the centre there, so there's a little 3D about the square, without being overwhelming.

A nice 4.5 stars I'd say :)

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

More little monsters!!


Two little monsters with feet! The little pink one reminded me of the baby squid in "Finding Nemo"

"AWwwww you made me iiink!!"

And the little purple one seems a bit surprised :D I like his feet more.


The pink one has the little plastic eyes I bought...


And the purple one has all felt eyes, glued on.

These are keeping me company at work :)

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Block #67: Queen Anne's Lace

From Eaton's 200...


Block #47: Queen Anne's Lace

Had my eye on this block for a while, but hadn't gotten around to it before. Lovely and clean, this block is vaguely familiar to me. I've actually worked the centre circle many times before, deconstructed from the square around it, making it as a coaster. I'll have to take a photo for you :)

Monday, June 25, 2012

Block #66: Arcadia

From Eaton's 200..


Block #9: Arcadia

This was nice to do. Loosey goosey & lacey, it worked up quick too. Could be a bit more square in the middle, however this might sort itself out with blocking.

Saturday, June 23, 2012

Amigurumi...

So...

Amigurumi.

Wikipedia defines it as:

Amigurumi (編みぐるみ?, lit. crocheted or knitted stuffed toy) is the Japanese art of knitting or crocheting small stuffed animals and anthropomorphic creatures. The word is derived from a combination of the Japanese words ami, meaning crocheted or knitted, and nuigurumi, meaning stuffed doll.[1]Amigurumi are typically animals, but can include artistic renderings or inanimate objects endowed with anthropomorphic features,[2] as is typical in Japanese culture.

I've never tried Amigurumi before today. Why? Gees, they looked tricky and difficult to crochet. I'm not a fan of a straight double-crochet stitch (so many stitches for so little result... a project grows a lot more when using treble stitch!) and all Amigurumi seem to be based in dc.

But then I found this site: Crafty Is Cool and their (free!) little monsters pattern.


 (image copyright: CraftyisCool.blogspot.com)

Aren't they ADORABLE!!
So.... I gave it a go. Looked pretty easy: just a little cylindrical shape.


OMG SO CUTE!!

I call them Mike & Sully - from Monsters Inc!

The one on the left has a felt eye, and the one on the right has googeley eyes. 

I have been instructed by my partner to make as many as I like, as he LOVES them!! (These already sit proudly next to his chair where he works!!)

And I've already made another cute little one to take to work and keep me company, but I'll show you him tomorrow!

Friday, June 22, 2012

Block 19 of Krista Rug

Wow, we're up to week 19 of the Krista Spot-Sampler rug.


Here's Spotlight's instructions.

I am behind in my weekly squares for this rug, and I have to admit I probably wont stitch it all together. There's no cohesiveness to it, and whilst I like a sampler quilt, I think in a crochet rug it wont work that well.

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Pretty Purple Hexagons

I seem to be addicted to these hexagons...


As you know, I like crocheting in my daily commute, since I rarely drive but carpool. Not unhappily, this is coming to an end in the next week or so, as my carpool person is moving down to the city and away from where we live. So sadly, I wont be doing much commuting-crochet after this week. I will miss it.

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Cowl v2

Today, a MUCHMUCH better picture of my deluxe woollen cowl in Ruby!


See? Lovely red isn't it ;)

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Cowl

So... I completely forgot to take a photo of my cowl the minute I got home yesterday because I was late getting home, and pretty darned dark by that time. So, we've got two awful photos - I'm sorry!


This is the better photo: it's a bit orange, but it shows the more right colour.


Yes... it's a bit washed out. 

I shall take my camera to work and take some photos in better light :) Just about up to Winter Solstice here, so I'm leaving before dawn & getting home after sunset! 

... and I missed the earthquake that just went though Melbourne! HUH! That hairdryer must really have been something ;D

Monday, June 18, 2012

(Mostly!) Free Patterns for Cowls

(This post was originally posted on July 3, after I realised I'd missed a day by not posting up all these links!)

I'm just loving my cowls at the moment. Here are some other patterns for cowls: most of them are Free Free Free! :)

Crochet Cowls: The New Crochet Cowl Scarves

This blog is dedicated to cowls. Check out some of these beauties!


Ravelry: Wintergreen Cowl (this is available in a book of 4 patterns from Interweave Crochet $6.99)





Judi's building block cowl available as a free pattern through Ravelry


Thaxton hooded cowl by Vashti Braha (available through Ravelry for $5.99) This is EXACTLY the kind of cowl I was looking for the other day.. I mean, check it out!


Loooove cowls. I mean, their scarves, but you pull them over your head and they snuggle around your neck! How awesome is that!

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Let's Talk About... Gauge

Let's talk about... Gauge.

I've never really looked into gauge before this year. And in fact, it took the purchase of the infamous (in my house) 10 ply pure wool yarn for me to think about gauge.

(I should have thought about it a bit more before this, because of the blanket I'm making. The gauge is a bit off for for my green blanket, and that's because I'm using a finer 2ply yarn that's good for light jumpers or socks instead of a thicker 4 or 8 ply. This has made the blanket exactly how I wanted it: light and airy, with virtually no weight in it, but the hexagons themselves are smaller than intended, which isn't really what I wanted.)

I bought some beautiful 10 ply deluxe woollen yarn earlier in the year and I thought I'd make a hat, or a scarf. I put the yarn aside after undoing my project approximately 13 times. It defeated me. I'd never worked a 10 ply pure wool yarn before, and I just couldn't get it to work how I wanted it. It was took thick: any pattern I tried looked wrong and there was no drape about any of them. (not good for a scarf in my opinion!)


Last week, I went back up to the store and bought the exact same yarn, but in 8 ply. I was damned it was going to defeat me completely. See? Isn't it beautiful? The above picture is about as good as I can make it look like it does when I work with it. It's a bit lighter, but in this picture you can see that beautiful dark shade of red.

Let's see this side by side.


Here's the two balls side by side. Now, to be far, the 10 ply ball was a 'second', so it only came with about 167mtrs of yarn in it, instead of the posted 200m that each of Bendigo's yarns come with standard. The 8 ply on the left is the ball I bought straight off the shelf, so it's 200m. And, I hadn't rewound yarn back onto the ball approximately a bazillion times yet. The ball on the left is the infamous 10 ply, and it shows the wind-back.


Here's the yarn side by side unwound. You can see that the 10 ply is denser generally, and a little thicker. The denseness is the problem I think I was having.


When you can't find the yarn that a pattern specifies, or decide to change it, this is when the gauge becomes important. I must admit, I usually don't bother. I find a yarn I want to work the pattern up in, and use that. I haven't come across a piece before where this has been a big issue. (I spoke earlier of the hexagon rug, and I guess that's the first piece that it's been an issue, albeit a small one.)

In order to check the gauge differences of two yarns, the yardstick is to make up a swatch that measures 10cms. Most 8ply yarns use 22 stitches for 10cms. (This is almost-always printed on the band that surrounds your yarn when you buy it in a ball.)


 The two different plys I worked up into not a 10cm swatch, but a 10 stitch swatch. The 10ply worked up slightly bigger, using a 4mm hook, than the 8ply.


The 10ply's 10 stitches measured 7cm across.


The 8ply's 10 stitches measured only 6cm.


Here they are with the 8ply swatch directly on top of the 10ply swatch. There isn't that much difference, but already in just 10 stitches, that difference is a full 1cm. Over a garment that's 100 stitches wide, this is going to come out in a difference of 10 cms. That's a big difference.

The bigger different to me was how the 10ply felt worked up against the 8ply. It was MUCH stiffer. The 8ply has more give in it, and that's the issue I had when I was working the 10 ply: it didn't have enough give.

I've already worked something up in the 8ply. I'm VERY happy with it, and I'll show you tomorrow!

Saturday, June 16, 2012

Block #65: Fretwork (v2)

From Eaton's 200...

Block #198: Fretwork v2

Already posted up the first version of Fretwork back in March and this one's quite different. I actually like it very much. The dark blue surrounds the interior like a window frame, which I might think it the purpose behind the square a little.

Friday, June 15, 2012

Krista Rug: Week 18

Week 18 looks familiar:


Reminds me of this square....


And this square!


Of course, it's virtually the same. I can't say for real that it's the same, since I haven't worked it up yet, but it certainly looks close enough :)

Here's the pattern...

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Next set of cute hexagons :)

Still liking these :)






 Yep, totally cute :)

Also, WOAH with the blog traffic yesterday. If you've stuck around to see what's going on, say hi! Everyone's welcome :)

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Block #64: Marigold v3

Another Marigold from Jan Eaton's 200 Blocks..



A cute little garden square!

It really is kinda cute, isn't it :)

Monday, June 11, 2012

More cute little hexagons

Some more cute little hexagons!


Just so cute :) Here they are with the other two I posed a few days ago:


 See, they go together so well :)

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Free Pattern: Project COWL

Today I have a project to share!


It's a cowl!

Using the one ball of the Moda Vera Bouvardia that I bought yesterday from Spotlight, I had to stop myself from continuing to make this any bigger, because (a) there wasn't enough yarn to make it big enough to twist twice around one's neck, and (b) it was big enough as just a single pull-it-over-your-neck cowl as it was.

The pattern was simple, and isn't actually a pattern.

Using this yarn, I used a 5mm hook (the wrapper on the yarn suggested using a 5.5mm hook, but I don't have one of those!) and the width of it is 30 ch wide. I used a treble (UK) stitch and hooked it like I was making a scarf. When I was about 2 feet down, I stopped increasing the length, and simply joined the two ends (use your preferred method of joining: I dc'd the two pieces together).

Ta da :) A lovely warm cowl.

It's actually a little *large*, so I might be undoing it and decreasing the 'length' a bit in the next few days, but we're test driving it first.

Saturday, June 9, 2012

Yarn Yarn and more Yarn..

Soo.....


My yarn stash grew today.

*head/wall*

Completely SPOTLIGHT'S FAULT. Apparently someone decided it was World Wide Knit In Public Day and Spotlight had 20-50% off ALL their yarn.

I couldn't help myself!! I've been missing doing bigger projects, since I'm so focused on trying to produce single, different squares for the blog. So, this weekend I'm focused on producing as many squares as I can so I can put together a rug I've been working on (I showed it in.. February? and yes, it's STILL not finished, to my horror), but I've got somewhat distracted after my yarn purchase today... I'm working on a cowl with the yarn on the right hand side there. *shifty look* Not sure it's going to work out...

Anyway, then I hit Bendigo Woollen Mills...


I bought a 2nd's ball of this in 10ply earlier in the year, and it has COMPLETELY defeated me. But, I love the type of yarn it is (100% pure wool, and it is sooooo soft. I have no idea how they've woven it...) so I went back to get a ball of it in 8ply. I think this might end up being the cowl that I'm trying to work out with the rainbow yarn above, as this is much more yarn to work with, and the other one... yeah, I'm going to run out of it.