Mom’s Mother’s Day Mini Clutch

So, strapped for cash as I am I wasn’t sure what to get for my mom on Mother’s Day (Raverly link). She had been complaining about being afraid she’d get scratches on her new phone and I decided to make her a little pouch for it.

My mom is one of those technologically challenged people so I didn’t have a problem picking out the right fiber to make her pouch with. It’s a flip phone so I didn’t have to worry about scratching the screen or anything, just something simple to slip it into.

I had a small skein of Naturally Caron Country in Deep Taupe and thought that would be enough for a small pouch. All I did was a rectangle big enough to fit the shape of the phone, added a row of picot stitch, another rectangle a couple rows bigger then the first, another row of picot, and another rectangle smaller then the last adding in two buttonholes, and lastly a finishing row of shell stitches.

I totally forgot to block till the last moment so I ended up finishing on Mother’s Day. After that I sewed up one of the sides with the excess tails and was off onto the second part.

I wanted to line it with something softer then the yarn so I added a cotton lining with a large pocket. On one side of the pocked I thought I’d add two slots for cards (credit card, loyalty card, etc) since I had extra fabric left over, alas it was not enough. The two card pockets JUST barely hold the cards in. Next time I do something like this I think I’ll plan everything out more carefully, haha.

Honestly the lining was the most time consuming, it’s the first time I lined anything, AND the first time I made anything resembling pockets so there you go. It came out kind of wonky, but mom seemed happy, and she hates everything. I say, mission accomplished, I might even make one for myself!

I’ve been trying to figure out what to make with the yarn I got for Christmas a couple years ago and I think I’ll make a capelet with the Lion Brand Amazing. Thankfully I also remembered I own a copy of Stitch ‘n Bitch Crochet The Happy Hooker, which has what seems like a perfect pattern (Cold Shoulders p. 110) :D yay.

Picture from the actual book.

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Yarn, Yarn, and also Yarn

New yarns :D I have them!

So for today, I’ll add the Christmas gifts I got from my brother :D

I got yarns 8D three of them, or rather two types of yarns.

A Fluffy JDAM

Since this is obviously a habit of mine, I have returned once again from neglect.  Given that I post to coincide with my mood and my mood is oft unpredictable, and  apparently neglectful, I'll nonetheless apologize for my time away. 
That out of the way, I had finished my brothers promised bomb sometimes the week before Christmas.  In true Chango form, I have decided to post about it two months after the fact, yay.
A rundown of what I’m actually talking about…

• What:  JDAM (military) Bomb my brother requested
• Yarn:  2 Lion Brand Jiffy Solid Yarns, one in Dark Grey Heather, one in Silver Heather, and a little bit of mystery yellow acrylic (possibly Red Hear) in a contrasting yellow
• Other:  Some matching thread, some coordinating felt (acylic), and the much important polyfill

1. The Bombs nose, 2. The Bombs guts, 3. 002, 4. 001

For something that didn’t exist before, I think I did pretty good.  Granted the pattern I  had to make up isn’t the most difficult of things to make.  In fact I’d say cylindrical and conical shapes are much more mindless than a square when it comes to crochet.  You don’t have to worry about turning and making sure your tension is spot on for a perfect rectangle/square.  Warning though, if you’re just starting, do your rectangles/squares, although not a noticeable, you can screw up mindless tasks really easily.
So, if you look at pictures of actual JDAM’s you’ll notice the curves from the nose to the body to the tail are much more gradual then what I actually did.  I wanted to make it more accurate, but my brother wanted it with much more pronounced points.
For the most part, the whole softie was pretty easy to make, cone, cylinder, cone, easy right?  Well yes, but the felt “sleeves” (which are removable) or whatever they’re called (anyone?) were a pain to make.  Lots of hand stitching (too small for the machine) and lots of little holes to cut out for my crappy little embroidery scissors.

1. The Bomb 002, 2. The Bomb 003, 3. The Bomb 001, 4. The Bomb 004

Out of the whole ordeal, I learned a couple things:

1. Acrylic is killer on my sensitive little fingertips
2. Burt’s Bee’s Hand Salve is a Gift of the God’s and possibly made from unicorn tears; it’s that heavenly
3. Going off on my own and making something up on the fly isn’t as terrifying as I initially make it out to be
4. I did pretty good, if I do say so myself
5. I need new embroidery scissors…

Mom’s booties: update

So since my mother hasn’t been wearing her house shoes I decided to try them out.  I opted not to line them before I gave them to her because, judging by the scrap fabric I had on hand, I thought everything would be too bulky to line them.  I had already deviated and used a hook size too small since I had yarn too big and thought that would compensate, plus my mom has small feet.  But alas, it came out perfect, too perfect to line.

So back to me trying the booties on, we have tile downstairs, except for two rooms with carpet and the odd rug or two scattered around.  Whenever I walk on the tile it hurts the bottom of my feet.  Maybe because its the wool, or homespun, or Lion Brand, or even most likely the crochet structure, but it hurt my feet to wear.  If you can imagine walking on marbles, well it wasn’t that bad, more like marbles covered in wool (o_o sounds bad lol).  So lining it is!

Next project:  Bootie Lining 8D  Something thin enough so there’s no bulk, but cushiony enough to cushion (heh).  I’m not sure I have enough scraps around the house since I barely sew, but I’ll try different fabrics out till I can give them back to my mommy :)

BTW I don't mean to turn you off of the idea of using wool, there are a lot of different wool yarns out there and some are super soft and feel like butter :3  The yarn I'm using for my shawl is wool superwash and its super soft and doesn't scratch or itch at all and I have sensitive skin.  Although I supposed, depending on where you live, nice quality wool might be hard to come by...

::eta:: I had to clear up some confusingness on my post and add stuff I left out.

Amigurumi Optimus Prime Tribute Doll

Amigurumi Optimus Prime Tribute Doll
Originally uploaded by voxmortuum

Found Craft on the Web: Optimus Prime

Awesome Transformers amigurumi by awesome crocheter voxmortuum. It's probably the best one I've seen, but then again I haven't seen a lot of them :p  Check out his/her(?) other works, Pennywise is a creeptastic favorite of mine.

It always amazes me how creative people get with their crochet :3 and people still think its a grandma craft. Aside from the indirect homage to geekery this one takes me straight to my childhood :D

Yet again…

I have bought two more craft books :p

• あみぐるみcollection Volume 7 : another amigurumi book.  I especially like the Kappaxile’s armed with toothpick wepons :D and the alligator.
• てあみのクローゼット-カーディガン&ジャケット (Let’s Knit series) : A knit book of cardigans and jackets.  I’m in love with the raglan cardigan on page 20

In another update, I wanted to crochet something in my かわいいレース編み (Let’s Knit series はじめてかんたんできちゃった!) book.  I was thinking either a cup/glass/mug cover or a cozy for my Japanese tea mug.  I have some garish orange yarn previously purchased at what was formerly a San Diego Daiso, but I didn’t have any hooks so I had to go out and buy my teeny tiny hooks.  For some reason the JoAnn’s near me don’t carry hooks small hooks.  They did have a .90mm one that I bought (!!!)  I was thinking I could try to finish up a tablecloth into my dotage and ultimately die by stabbing my eyes with it and bleeding to death.

I ended up buying two hooks at what was formerly a San Diego Daiso and two at my LYS.
and completely unrelated, but kinda not, are these things that I found hanging around my room.

          

Picked a Pattern!

Technically my mom did :p  And the winner(‘s) is(are):

Falling Leaves Wrap by Dory Brown for my Godmother, because it’s a large lace pattern and because I fear teh lace D: I have a backup pattern, which is the Eva’s Shawl by milobo.  Judging from some of the comments and looking at the time it takes for people to complete, I don’t think I’ll have a problem.  I also really want to do the lace one, just to get the “OMG LACE!!!  I made it!!! and I LIVED!!!” moment out of the way.

Mom picked out her own pattern, which relieves me because she’s such a picky person to please :p  I don’t really mind making her things, but I don’t really want to spend a couple months making something when she probably won’t want to wear it.  Long Open Shawl by Bernat Design Studio is the winner for the Mommeh, and since she picked out her own shawl I think pick out a nice color for it all by myself :D

I still love Doris Chan's Chrysanthemum Tea Shawl, I might just make it to lay on the back of my reading chair, or a kind of table cloth for the kitchen table :3

Evangeline Review

The Pattern:

Just in case you forgot, I used Evangeline (fingerless gloves) by designer Michelle Szeghalmi-Shirley.

I actually really liked the way this written.  Considering the fact that my knitting skills are near to none, that I’ve only been reading actual patterns since August of last year, and that these are my first freakin’ cables (yey!), these were pretty clear.  I do have to admit that if there were a mistake, I probably wouldn’t have caught it anyway :p.

The one thing I got kind of caught up in was the pages, I would have liked the cast-on instructions to be on page two, then the stitch instructions, but that’s about it.  It just got a little confusing for me when I had to look at the cable pattern after casting on, which I admittedly had to do a number of times with all the frogging I did on this project.

For someone well versed in reading patterns, and in knowing their own knitting, this pattern will be beyond easy.  For someone just starting out with cables, its a great pattern to learn how cables work out.

Other linky-pooh’s:  The Sweet Sheep Ravelry Downloads (more patterns), The Sweet Sheep (website, yummeh yarns!), and The Sweet Sheep Blog (its a blog genius!)

The Yarn:

Again, just in case you weren’t paying attention I used Naturally Caron Country in Deep Taupe.

I love the color of this yarn, its a little weird, like its going through an identity crisis.  I actually first bought it to make fingerless gloves for a friend, she said she wanted something with green yarn.

When I bought it (@ JoAnn’s) I could have sworn it was a muted mossy green color, so I thought “Oooh, purty green for some gloves”, paid for it and took it out and they had a grayish color, at the time I thought it was just the light, so went on home with my yarn, looked at them again and thought it had a purplish color.

When I started knitting it I swore it had a mossy green color again, I worked my gloves for the next couple of weeks not really noticing the color, eventually I IM’ed my friend and by this point I forgot what color she wanted (okay, so it was more then a few weeks xD), she told me green.  I took another look at the yarn and I swear to the Almighty Bob it was a purple color!  Through the course of the day it turned from purple to gray to a green again, which put me in a moment of awe at the weirdness that is this yarn.

I’m pretty sure its the light that gives my yarn its identity crisis because the color changed throughout the day, and its gray in full sunlight.  But since it wasn’t green I was glad I had another ball of green in my basket =D, so the gloves I was making went from being for a friend to being for a Chango (that would be me o_o).

The actually knitting part was a bit of a trial.  It’s a splitty yarn and my repeated frogging’s didn’t seem to help matters.  There were a couple times when I caught the lower loop on the working needle by accident, which made my stitches unnecessarily tight, which made me tense, and I knit tighter when I’m tense, so yeah, hassle.

I really liked the yarn though, and maybe someone who knits at a looser tension will have a better time of it.  Would I knit with this yarn again?  Yes, but probably in a larger needle size, and I definitely want to try crocheting with it (I used my hook a lot, ribbit).

Other linky-pooh’s:  Free Naturally Caron Crochet Projects, Free Naturally Caron Knitting Projects, and the Naturally Caron Blog(geh).

Technorati Tags: knitting,review,patterns,crochet,yarn,joann's,ravelry,knit,needles

Cross Postage, I Wants, and I’m Gonna Kick In Your Face You Cheap Bastard!!!

Since this is a craft blog I thought I’d cross post a paragraph or two from my other blog since it’s pertains to the craftyness… ness… *ahem*

… godmother crocheted for me when they brought me home from the hospital as a newborn.  In fact the requisite baby blankie every child has, and makes threadbare, is a baby blankie I now use as a throw (as in blanket, not “Here, catch this ball of cotton!”).  It’s just a simple quilt blanket, the perfect size for a baby born on a  little South Pacific Island, but it’s special enough that my mother put it in storage before I got so attached to it to the point where I would have made it threadbare.  She knew what it would have meant for me to have it when I was older, because she knew what it meant to the person who made it, see my godmother hand stitched every single square.  Something, in a society where we tend to take things like blankets for granted, most people don’t really understand what it means to make something like that by hand.

 

Knitters, crocheters, and sewers have a saying that “I knit/crochet/sew every single stitch with love”, as someone who does all three, and as corny as that that saying is, I understand what it means.  So even though I never grew up knowing what she looked like, or knowing the sound of her voice, I still know who my godmother is.  Because I have her hand stitched baby blanket she made, her hand crocheted baby clothes she made, her hand crocheted “baby’s first x-mas ornament” she made…

Going along those maudlin lines, I never really get why people would prefer store bought baby stuff (blankets, clothes, toys), or just stuff/presents in general, instead of handmade items (items not stuff, hah!).  I hate the fact that people will automatically assume the handmade items (hah!) are cheaper and that store bought stuff is better because they’re expensive.  Or they think the sentiment of “It’s a better presents because I made it with love” is somehow an excuse for “I’m actually a cheap bastard so I made this macaroni elephant instead, that and I have a ungodly urge to kick in your face”.

First of all, in most cases handmade items are in no way cheaper then store bought ones.  Do they have any idea about how much money actually goes into buying those supposedly cheap things?  Good yarn if freakin’ expensive!  So is nice fabric, not to mention the patterns, and the actual thought process that goes into making a handmade quilt, sweater, bag, dress, hat, scarf, hell even doggy doodoo takes some thought to make (and a pooping dog is a perfect complement to those thought).

When someone makes something for someone else they’re usually thinking about that perfect something for that someone (… or something like that…).  My point it that its something individually made just for that person (you ungrateful macaroni elephants!!!).  Plus, tell me if you can find these things in a gift shop: crochet spermies with condom pocket, crochet Sandman Helms (eee do want!), knitted tangible something to worship  (hint: its a monster :D), a Giant Knit Squid Hat, an awesome Nintendo NES Plushie, or um… this thing in all its freaky cuteness!

… Well maybe the Nintendo if and when they get around to it >_>  I’d still prefer the handmade one (so neener neener neener).

Side Notes (Bottom Notes?  So You Actually Read Everything Till The End Notes?

• I’ve been thinking I want Valerie Van Arsdale Shrader’s Sweet Nothings book, things look sweet lol
• I’m hungry for a cupcake
• I have an odd urge to make a macaroni elephant…

Umm, I Have no Title...

So I frogged again :D Only it was one of those going overboard type of frogs. I made a mistake a couple of stitches on my last row and, again, I wasn't really paying attention and I frogged way too much XD. It wasn't until after that I realized I didn't really have to do that :/ I kind of like frogging, except until I realized I didn't even have to x_x heh

I think thats what I love most about sewing and knitting and crochet and even art. I start out with absolutly nothing and then go from nothing to frustration and frustration to frustration and frustration to disgust and disgust to indifference and indifference to eyeing it and eyeing it to swearing I'm going to finish it if its the last thing I do and swearing I'm going to finish it to frustration and frustration to finishing it and finishing to withdrawl and withdrawl to thinking I did a pretty good job :D the end.

At least that the usual way I go about completing things, I rarely ever frog an entire project without first finishing it, same thing with books (even if I'm hating it), I HAVE to finish it only so I can just say I finish it. I'm the type of person who will kick myself mentaly if I don't follow throw with something I start, which is probably why I rarely have more then two projects going on at the same time :3 I'm starting to learn that I might stay saner if I do more projects though, and just rotating the projects as I get frustrated/disgusted/indifferent to whatever I'm currently working on.

Also sorry about not blogging on the 16th, was just lazy :p and yesterday I had a really bad migraine, I could barely do anything really, just plurked a bit.

Why God WHY!?! /melodrama

So I realized my head is abnormally big :D

Rather if you were able to felt my hair into a ball it would be equivalent to an adult sized head, with hair to spare (creepy visual o_o).

I ended up finishing the Hat Numero Two hat and realized how cute it was. So I decided to try it on only to come to terms with the fact that it doesn't fit my head ;_; More then that, it didn't even touch my head, the hat just kind of floated at the back of my head hanging onto my hair. It was literally something like 3 inches away form my scalp and sitting on top of nothing but crazy frizzy hair. Which made me sad ;_; (pity me) and made me realize I really needed to get a haircut :D, I'm thinking of going super super short again :3

So in the meantime, I adding another row of decreasing puffs and starting another project with some bulky yarn I have. I plan on either making some cute fingerless gloves or a scarflette, and I have to decide on knitting or crocheting.

Work in Progress

So I started another hat a while back :3 I got the pattern from creativeyarn so cute~ And a lot of her other stuff is nice, the cowl neck capelet is on my to-do-NOW list.
I of course have to modify things a bit, considering my head size, and the shear amount of hair I have (I swear its about the size of my entire head right now x_x). I'm making it bigger my using a larger weight yarn and a larger hook, that seems to work for me, in fact while I'm working on it it kind of looks a little larger then it should be >_> if that's the case I'll just make it an oversized beret ^^;;

Pretty color yarn~ It's Lion Brand Wool-Ease in Rose Heather. Easy yarn to considering this is my second hat and I have to modify hat patterns, its 80% Acrylic and 20% wool. I had the hat partway done when I saw Lei last month, only I had to unravel everything since I had started with one hook and then at some point I switched hooks. Why you ask? The hell if I know @_@ I just noticed it was looking a little too huge and I knew my head wasn't THAT big. So I had to unravel and start all over XD

On a side note, nice fabric? I guess you can call it vintage :D it has that 70's look to it keke. It's actually the underside of my baby blanket my godmother made me when I was born. My mom hid it away so I wouldn't become overly attached to it and make it threadbare lol, so now I use it as a throw.

The Background

Since I already have a WordPress
blog I decided to use this one as a crafty blog, and the WordPress one as a personal blog.
Lately I've been really into making crochet items, and since I just started sewing I've been looking at things to sew XD A several weeks ago I decided to make a hat from a pattern I found on craftypants' blog site. Since this would be my first hat I decided to use some extra acrylic I had lying around, if the hat came out really bad, its just acrylic. I did make a couple modifications though, since I have REALLY thick unruly hair and a big head (o_o) I had to enlarge the pattern a bit, I also added three rows of basket weave stitch (front post back post).

This is what I ended up with :3

Yesterday I just received my invitation to Ravelry, which I was really excited about. I didn't realize they had like an organization area for your account with a database of patterns, which is great for me since I had pdf and notepad files scattered throughout a couple CD's and over my hard drive, now all my patterns are in one place <3 They also have a current projects area where you can post what project you're doing and how far along you are, which would come in handy when you get stuck at a certain point and aren't sure what to do. And the patterns are awesome, I found a couple that are already on my to do list and some new ones that made the list longer then it already is.

One of my favorite categories is the naughty one XD mainly because the typical picture you get of a crafter is like granny types. Then people realize there are patterns for anatomically correct genitalia, unconventional cozies (for... yeah), and amigurumi sex toys with faces and all. Which reminded me of the uterus plushies on etsy.com, I actually thought the idea for the healing uterus might be something lighthearted to give to someone (with a twisted sense of humor) who had/has a gynecologic cancer like ovarian or cervical cancer, it even comes with its own band-aid :D the idea for the happy uterus is kind of weird though o_o I'm not really sure I'd have wanted one of those when I was younger.

Technorati Tags: Ravelry,corhet,hat,plushies,unconventional,patterns,WordPress

The things I Like

This post is actually from a post on my WordPress blog that I decided to repost here ^_^

I'm on a total plushie binge right now :3 sewingstars' makes the CUTEST things! I LOVE her crying eggboy and some of her newer stuff are the pumpkins to celebrate Halloween I guess.
One of my other fave softie makers is ElizabethD from Gourmet Amigurumi. She has a book out if anyone is interested. She insane with attention to detail. You can pretty much figure out her aesthetic since everything she does is really distinctive. I'd have to say the eyes are signature though, lots of detail around the eyes that just makes it pop. The fawn at the bottom is patterned in her book, only its just all brown, cute no?

And as long as were talking about plushies, combining food and craft just seems genius to me :D although that might just be because I'm super hungry right now and lack fiber in my diet... Here's some food related softies, starting from the left, some spoiled boneless chicken by Robyn D: poor thing is totally aware of his demise, next is some dim sum by .lani, and because I love anything having to do with Mexican folk art I added the Small Cat Club's softies of calaveras de dulces D: haven't had one of those since I was like 8 x_x

Of course the classic plushie is from an animal, though an octopus isn't really the normal creation :D

This one's another creation of the Small Cat Club's and its been painted. I love her expression and the two front teeth just makes it super cute D:

DeviantArt is also a nice place to see plushies~ (I'm starting to sound really obbossesd ._.) anyway, I like this one of matches

Summary of Life by ~FrealaF on deviantART makes you kinda look at matches in a new light XD

And last but not least there's a fiber artist named Patricia Waller. XD I like, but then again I have a bit of a sick sense of humor.

A crochet collection of S+M gear lol

Technorati Tags: amigurumi,softie,plushie,sewingstars,Gourmet Amigurumi,ElizabethD,Patricia Waller