It's a Jungle Out There! - Animals Afghan

This afghan was so hard for me. Following all the complicated and abbreviated pattern instructions was crazy! The stitches use mainly Front Post Double Crochet and Single Crochet stitches, (in the back loop only).

I bought the kit to make it from Mary Maxim's. The pattern is in Leisure Arts booklet called A Year of Baby Afghans and this was the afghan for August. The yarn is Mary Maxim's Starlet in medium blue.

The bright sunshine makes this look a lot lighter blue than it really is.
This was actually fun to make, (despite it being so difficult for me).
I like how it never tells you what animals you were working on. You only had the photo in the pattern book to go by and so you just hoped that you were doing it right. The animals slowly begin to emerge from your stitches and it's pretty neat!

One animal I thought was a baby elephant, I decided must really be a bear. No long trunk. That one in the bottom and top center. But who knows.

It's bigger than I expected too.

Mary Maxim had put into the kit a sheet they printed out suggesting that you begin the project with a smaller H hook and gradually use an I hook and then finally a J hook so I did that. It's to prevent what they called "tenting" in the middle. I guess that's like bunching up like puffy tents. So anyway, beware if you tackle this afghan too. You might want to do the same with switching out the hook sizes gradually.

Earth Day Watermelon Trivet and Graduation Day Trivet

Happy Earth Day, everyone!

I've finished a couple of wiggly trivets designed by Susan Lowman and thought I'd post them here today.

The first is the Watermelon Hot Pad which was published in Crochet World magazine in June of 2008. (Please click on the photos to enlarge them).

This second pattern for Graduation Day was also published in Crochet World magazine in June of 2009.

I love Susan Lowman's designs! She has a Ravelry page with her projects and designs  here - susan lowman

Let's see, I've also started a new Bohemian Sisters challenge brought on by my sister Cindy.

She has challenged the B.S.ers to make a sort of Mini-Me doll in the style of Salley Maver's dolls.

So, this last weekend I began this project.

I tried to dye the wooden beads for the head by staining them with tea. (I at first thought I could just rub them with tea bags, but after that failed I had to soak them in tea for about half an hour and then let them dry.

Next, I painted the faces with whatever I had in my closet. Paint, nail polish, sharpie marker. (Good grief!)
This project was a lot harder than I anticipated. (And I haven't even begun to make the clothes or body yet!)

Finally I put a coat of varnish on them and let them dry overnight in the garage.

Here they are all strung on pipe cleaners. I did all the beads I had because I knew most would look terrible and I will just pick the best of the bunch for my Mini-Me doll.
One bead size is 1/4" and the other is 1"
I need to look through my yarn stash to find some that looks like my hair. This will not be easy as it has many different colors. I don't have any acorn trees around to steal the caps off for the doll's hat. I may have to make something myself.

Let's see. Oh yes. I also bought a Knook crochet hook kit and have been learning how to use it. Very slow going.
I'm trying to make a vest like the Herrschner's pattern I made called the Ultra-Easy Vest. (It's posted in my Ravelry page here
But I'm Knooking it. I've done the long wraparound piece at the bottom and the two sides which will be the front of the vest. But my string is all fraying and snaggy now so I'm thinking of doing the back by tunisian crochet with my cabled afghan crochet hook.
I'll take a few pictures later so you can see what I'm talking about.

Lincoln Link-Up

This past weekend I made a trip down to Mount Vernon, Illinois to the  Cederhurst Center for the Arts to see the Salley Mavor Exhibit.  My sister Cindy and her friend Mary came down from Wisconsin and we all brought our Lincolns so we could see each others' projects.

Here they are all laid out on the hotel bed. Cindy took this photo.

Mary's (on the left), is quilted. Cindy's, (top right), is done with felt pieces, and you've seen mine already, (bottom right), cross-stitched.

I took this photo and the next.

After we saw the Salley Mavor exhibit we headed up to Lincoln, Illinois where we stayed the night  (Cindy and Mary stopped in Lincoln on their way down before I met up with them and had their photos taken with their Lincolns for the local newspaper. I haven't seen if they printed the photo or an article or anything, I'm not even sure what paper it was for, but if they do I will certainly add that to this post!)

The Salley Mavor exhibit was amazing! If you are familiar with her work then you will also know about the book Pocket Full Of Posies which is what this exhibition is all about. About half of the artwork from that book is on display at Cedarhurst until May 5th or 6th. So, if you can scoot out over there to see it you really should. We're so lucky to get a chance to see it up-close. The detail is unbelievable. 

http://weefolkstudio.com/

So, as a remembrance of our trip, I made three trivets - one for each of us - to commemorate our Lincoln Link-Up.

It's crocheted in the "Wiggly Crochet" Susan Lowman style. I designed it myself. He's so scary looking I told the gals they could use the trivet, not only for Lincoln's Birthday/President's Day or 4th of July, but they could take it out for Halloween or Day of the Dead/ Dia de los Muertes too! LOL!!!!

I had such a great time and I learned a lot about the civil war, (as my sister read aloud from a Civil War recipe book she purchased at the Lincoln museum while Mary drove us around).

Now we need another project for the Bohemian Sisters Club!

Baby Afghan Animals Filet Crochet Number Three

YAY! I finished at last!

This is a filet crocheted afghan using an Elizabeth Hiddleson pattern.

I got the 1979 pattern book online and I also found a pattern in an e-bay offer which was taken from a magazine.

(I got that one, too, in the hopes that there were more animals to the set but there wasn't. In fact, the magazine one didn't even have the nice border and wasn't even attributed to Elizabeth Hiddleson. It says "by Gloria Hodges" in the magazine. I think she just took the Hiddleson animal graphs and put her name on it. (Unless they are the same person with an alias? Or maybe a relative/daughter/whatever with her own copyright?)

ANYWAY, I've seen the animals in another pattern too floating around so - whoever created the patterns - there you go.

Here's the back. You can see the seems where I joined the squares and the center panel pieces.

The hardest part was making those two middle panels. In order to have the crochet stitches go the same way as the squares, it had to be worked up width-wise instead of the longer length, (which would have been SO MUCH easier!) In fact, for the sides of the afghan, I just went ahead and did those along the length of the afghan to save my sanity!) LOL

I altered a couple of the animals that I thought looked a little weird on the graphs. The rabbit's head I made come to a pointed nose. (The graph was so icky! It kinda had a double cheek thingy going on.) I also made the cat's nose come to a point. (The graph looked like one of those flat-faced cats, (like Crookshanks!),  which didn't seem to look right in profile like this.) And also the elephant was too small for it's square. So I added a mound and some clouds to fill in the square.

I liked these squares because each one was finished with only one ball of Cebelia thread. Not having to buy two. YAY!!

The border is done with Coats and Clark Old Fashioned thread in ecru. Both threads are size 10. The crochet hook I used was a 7 (1.65 mm) steel Boye.

Happy Easter everyone! 

edit: Monica Foster from Ravelry sent me a note explaining that Glendora Hodges is Elizabeth Hiddleson’s niece. That solves the mystery of who 'Gloria Hodges' is from that Magazine pattern with these animals in it. Thanks, Monica!

The Great Lincoln Face-Off

I challenged my sister to a Super 70's, nostalgic, Great Lincoln Face-Off earlier this year. (Wow, I think it was a month and a half ago now!)

I named it the Bohemian Sister Challenge. (Now known as the B. S. Club).(We are both part Bohemian on my Dad's side of the family).

 I ordered two old rug hooking kits from two different etsy sellers. One was sent to her and one to me. It contained the printed fabric of our most-loved president Abe Lincoln in a really mod-looking, pop-art design just waiting for us to adorn/embellish/create his face however which way we choose. 

(Originally it was made for those old rug punch crafts but I see a new use in them as felt rugs or transferred to a needlepoint canvas, or even graphed and crocheted into an afghan. Who knows. It's however you want to tackle it. 

(I thought immediately of my sister when I saw that there were two available on etsy since she had just seen that new Lincoln movie with Daniel Day-Lewis.)









These are the pictures from the etsy sales. The first two are of mine. It's still in the package so I can't tell the condition of it. But it has the color key and the picture on the front to use as a guide. The third and forth photos were of hers. It looks great. The last one is just a cropped close up I made.

My sister had told her friend Mary about the B.S. Challenge. (Mary is quilter with mad sewing skills). 

 So I told my sister, absolutely Mary could join. The beauty of the title Bohemian Sister Club is that Bohemian is also a word to describe crafty, creative people; sister can mean sisterhood and not just a true sister; and their initials are B S so we can call it the B. S. Club and sound really cool. (Or "hip" as us B. S. Club members will say). Snap snap snap lol!!

So this was the beginning of a project that I have only now finally finished myself. This project had some bumps along the way. 

When I went to get the mail and in my mailbox was the package with a big "Postage Due" note written in black sharpie pen across the top and a small envelope from the post office signed by my carrier, (Barb - AHHHHH!), with the words "Please pay 80 cents. Thanks" written on it. So I had taken two photos of this to prove to you all that I'm not just making this up...



Yep that's right. It's not my etsy sellers fault. She took it to her post office and mailed it. Surely they weighed it all out and calculated the proper postage, right? Well, in the time it took for this package to get from Ohio to Indiana, I guess the postage rates went up. So, what do you think happened? My guess is that my cheap, Carmel post office went ahead and weighed all their packages that were still en route to where ever and added on the extra postage due.
CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT??!!!!?!?!?!?!?!? 
 So, then I had scrounged around all through my couch cushions and cruddy car seat floors and laundry room lint areas and have came up with 40 tarnished, moldy-looking, linty, Lincoln cents to put into their little envelope.

 

Take THAT Barb the Mail Lady! Snap, snap, snap! LOL!

Well, to shorten this already humongous blog post, here's my finished Lincoln.
(Please click on the photos. Some of them can be enlarged, some not.)

I cross-stitched it on monk's cloth.

It has initials RK in each corner for my initials; Rebecca Kelly.

Here's the back. It's a kitchen tea towel with the entire Gettysberg address on it. I found this on e-bay.

That's another strange tale for you.

The tea towel ebay listing didn't match the photo. So I ordered it from the description only, (after I contacted the seller and made sure it was for the Lincoln Gettysberg towel!)

Anyway, so that's what I've been busy doing for the past two months.

I am currently working on yet another filet crocheted baby animal afghan.

This one isn't as awesome as the first two, but it does have a few adorable animals on it.

Sorry I have been so lacking of by blog. Sometimes I get too focused on one thing and forget to 'come up for air' until I realize I'm drowning and about to die!

Thanks for hanging in there to any of the regular blog readers I might still have left out there!

Apocalypse, now? .... No, not yet

In preparation for the Aztec calendar's Apocalypse prediction on 12-21-2012, which doesn't seem to have happened; (unless it's a slow process that has only just begun),I wanted to make a sweater with an Aztec design. I found a knitting pattern booklet on e-bay called Inca Fashion by Sirdar Limited yarn company and used the graph of one sweater (#4) and I tunisian crocheted it. I changed the guy that was supposed to be in the middle. Originally, he was really short with big long ears like a rabbit. I think he was supposed to be an alien. Anyway, I made him more human-like and put a crown on him like a Sun King.

This is the front.

And here's the back. I ran out of the cornflower yellow at the top so I just used a brighter yellow up there. It doesn't bother me. I mean, who really cares, it's the end of the world for goodness sake!!!!! LOL!!!!!

I put this in to show you all my new camera I got from my for my birthday in November. It's so heavy and complicated but it does take great photos. As readers of this blog know, my old camera stopped focusing properly and it was so frustrating. Now I have this new camera and a brand new computer I got for Christmas so I have no more excuses but to get all my stuff photoed and posted in here. I just hate having to learn how to use new things.

I thought I'd put the sweater on and have my son take a couple of photos because just seeing it laying flat, it's hard to envision it on someone. Here's the front.

For the sides I made two panels. What can I say? I'm not paper-thin and neither are most people. You're going to need to add some sides, trust me. I like how these turned out tunisian crocheting them with variegated yarn. It makes a nifty pattern all by itself.

Here's the back once again.

One Small Step - One Giant Leap - Sweater Jacket

This project is my tribute to the late Neil Armstrong who passed away in August of this year. Please click on the photos to enlarge them.

Here's the front. (Yes. that's me). It shows a rocket taking off and an astronaut attached with a cable to a space capsule. Below there is a planet and the middle has pockets on each side for the hands. (It's supposed to be a sort of flying saucer spaceship. I was going to put two alien pilots in the control bubble at the top but I didn't. Maybe if I find two alien head patches that fit I might sew them on later. If they exist. On the alien spaceship pockets is the quote below.

This is the back. This is supposed to be Neil Armstrong as he steps off the space capsule onto the moon and says his famous quote, "One small step for man. One giant leap for mankind." I tried to emphasize the step footprint there at the bottom with the moon boot tread in the dirt.




The sleeves are front post double crochet, back post double crochet all the way around several rows. So they sort of stretch to expand. I wanted them to look kind of space-age Jetsons - ish.


Oh, good grief, there I am. Is my new camera broken now? Inside the sweater is a crocheted cord threaded through some belt loops I made to cinch it around. Otherwise it was just way too puffy. I made a hat to match the sweater too.

This is an old Mary Maxim sweater pattern from 1966 I bought on e-bay a few months ago. I used the astronaut and capsule on the front. It has a rocket pattern inside too for the back or sleeves but I thought it looked too "blocky" so I made my own rocket ship for the front with some nice curvy lines on graph paper.

For the back I graphed some old Marimekko fabric of an astronaut. Someone had used the fabric to make a tote bag. So I bought the tote bag, photographed the fabric, then graphed the design.
This whole sweater was tunisian crocheted using a size J cabled afghan hook. The sleeves are crocheted as stated above with a regular J size crochet hook.
This moon landing was one of the biggest events in my life and I'm happy to have made the event into a sweater to cherish the moment forever.

I'm a Craftster Best of 2012 Winner!