The Shriek of Arabia Jack-o-lantern

I have always wanted to make a really neat pumpkin, (jack-o-lantern), for Halloween. Mine are usually always the same.
Triangle eyes and nose, jagged mouth with teeth. Blah.
So, last year after Halloween I picked up this pumpkin-carving booklet on sale and threw it in with all my Halloween decorations in storage.

So, when I pulled out all my stuff this year, there it was. I leafed through it and there were different patterns ranging from easy to moderate, to difficult.

I picked out something in the middle range, (even though I had tried once before to make a cool-looking pumpkin and failed miserably), and today I set out to carve a great pumpkin.

It's called The Shriek of Arabia

So, here it is with the lights on, with them off and a larger photo too. (Click on the photos to enlarge them!)



I'm pretty happy with it. I could have pulled out more of it's innards but I was afraid of ripping off his face pieces and then I'd have nothing but a huge hole. Aaaahhh!

It took about two hours from start to finish. That's a super-long time for me as far as pumpkin-carving goes.

Once again, Happy Halloween everyone!!!

Mr Pickles' Costume

Last month my niece called me and told me my sister, (her Mom), had just gotten a new dog from a co-worker. A chihuahua named Mr. Pickles.

Well, between her and my other niece's giggling, I managed to understand the true reason for her call.
She wanted me to crochet a pickle costume for Mr. Pickles.
(She'd been looking everywhere for a dog pickle costume but couldn't find one anywhere.) She also wanted his name on the costume.

So, without a clue as to the size of this dog, I jumped into this project whole-heartedly.
(A dog named Mr. Pickles MUST have a pickle costume!)

I finished it and sent it off last week.
I got some photos of the dog from my sister the other day.
(Please click on the photos to enlarge them).



Here he is in all his glory. (He looks like the Green Giant's Little Green Sprout. LOL!)

I used Simply Soft yarn in dark green.
I graphed the words "Mr.Pickles" at this Celtic Cross Stitch site with a free graph generator.
Then I tunisian crocheted the Mr Pickles graph with a J-size cabled hook.



Here's the back and the underside. See the seem on the underside? That's where I joined the costume by whip-stitching it there.

I then had to make two leg holes by single crocheting with a regular J hook. I had to guess as to the size and just hoped it would fit.

I also made a spiffy vine hat using a green pipecleaner/chenille stem.
Oh, I forgot to mention, I cut green felt circles out and sewed them all over the costume too.

I don't think Mr Pickles will be trick-or-treating this year but maybe he can help answer their door and pass out treats!

The Joker - Heath Ledger afghan

Gosh, October's already here!

For Halloween this year, instead of crocheting a monster from old classic black-and-white movies, I decided to do a more newer "monster" instead. I chose The Joker as portrayed by Heath Ledger in the 2008 movie The Dark Night. (Yes, a Batman movie).
Please click on the photo to enlarge it.




There's the front and then the back of the afghan.

For the pattern I googled "Heath Ledger" and "Joker" and, boom, there's a great stencil someone had made.
I took the stencil and uploaded it to Knitpro to graph it.

It didn't take long to crochet from the graph because it's pretty simple with few color changes and big blocks of color too.

I tunisian crocheted it with a size J cabled afghan hook.
I used Red Heart yarn in black, white, and burgundy.

Now the border; that's another story! It took me almost as long just to single crochet the border than it took to make the whole afghan!

I wanted to do it in green, (reminiscent of his hair color). So I got out three colors of green I had and decided to single crochet it in the tapestry stitch. (That is; carrying the other two colors within the stitches as I went along. Exchanging them every third color. Well, after a first round of this I thought. oh my God! This is going to take forever!!!! Which it did. LOL!
It nearly drove me as crazy as The Joker himself!!!!

Happy Halloween and be careful out there!