First Attempt at Beaded Tatting and Other Christmas Projects

Every year, I do the same thing:  I see a cute small project that I want to make right away.  And I think, "I just need to LEARN A NEW TECHNIQUE and then I'll whip out 50 or so of these really cute things for all the people I love who would just love this!"  This year, that project was a beaded tatted snowflake.  To the left is the result.    The first problem was that it's hard to tell which way the work is turned with all those beads in the way--which is pretty important--and the second is that apparently I can't count to four, and so put too many beads in the wrong area.  But this gave me time to regain my senses and realize that it is just too late in the year to try to learn this and make a bunch.  But it looks promising for next year....


The next two projects are snowflakes that I made for a White Elephant exchange at my church:

I really hate White Elephants; I think they are tacky.  If I want other people's castoffs I'll go to the thrift store and pay for them.  But I really wanted to support the people who put on this activity, and homemade gifts were suggested as an alternative.  Both snowflakes are from Be-Stitched.com, and they are free!  And fun, easy and quick.


I've finished two ornaments for my family.  This is JazzBoy's:

It is, of course, from JCS Ornament Issue 2011.  "Winter Song" by Primrose Needleworks.

DH gets "Christmas ABC" by Shepherd's Bush:

I am behind on stitching the angels this year.  They are Told In A Garden's free 2000 Angel.  I actually finished one on schedule, then dropped a warm chocolate chip cookie on it.  I washed it with Orvus, which got it mostly clean but left a couple of grease spots.  This disheartened me, so I didn't stitch for a while.  My MIL has advised me to try a paste of Biz, so we'll see how that works.


But I have started stitching on them again.  One thing I love about stitching is watched the design seemingly grow out of the fabric.  I almost always start in the center and do one color at a time, at least as far as I can reasonable count.  This often leads to pools of color that are sometimes adjacent and sometimes not.  I like that; I like how the blobs look like nothing at first, then suddenly you have a beautiful picture.  Sometimes, though, the colors give the outline of the image, and I like that too.  The 2000 Angel is one of those.  One color done, and you can tell what it's going to be:

A couple more colors add a bit of dimension:

And just for fun, a blob of purple:

Halloween 2011 Decorations

 Well, it's official:  I'm a terrible blogger.  I can't even promise to do better.


I have been stitching and hope to post pix when I Finish those pieces.  I've also started working on Christmas ornaments and have finished stitching one of those and am really close to the end of angel #1.


I did make a couple of Halloween crafts for decorating my front room.  The wraiths, above, were from the October 2011 Martha Stewart Living magazine.    They're just styrofoam wig heads and cheesecloth, hung with fishing line.  Below is a longer view:

 The boys, who passed out our candy, report that several people asked about them.


I also made a fuzzy yarn wreath, similar to the Valentine's and Easter ones I made:

This was my favorite wreath, but I think it's also my last one; I'm getting a little bored with them.


And finally, here is JazzBoy's contribution to the Halloween decor:

How Many Size 7 Crochet Hooks Does One Person Need, Anyway?

I know so many pregnant women, I thought it would be a good time to learn to crochet edgings onto baby blankets.  To the left, you see my finished project, which DH will send to a friend of his in the Philippines.  (Whose "baby" is probably a year old by now.)  I am pleased with how it turned out, but getting here was a bit of a process.


Although I've been told that you can poke holes in the fabric with your hook, I bought a kit with pre-poked flannel from a local fabric store that specializes in this kind of project.  I didn't buy my thread there, though, which may have been a mistake.   I don't really care for this shade of green, and don't feel that the thread really matches the fabric.  I started out with white thread, size 20, with a size 7 hook, because I like using thinner thread for a lacier look:

Well, it looked just awful.  Nothing like the picture in my kit.  But I persevered:

But it still didn't look right.  I reviewed the instructions several times, trying to figure out what I was doing wrong.  Finally I discovered it!  It was so stupid, too--the kind of mistake an experienced crocheter would never have made.  I don't know if I can quite explain it, but here goes:  The pattern said, for making clusters, that I should yo, insert the hook and draw the thread through, then continue making the rest of the stitch.  Well, I should have known--but didn't--that after I first drew the thread through, I needed to then yo again and complete that part of the stitch.   Always. In any case, I was so frustrated by the thought of having to re-do it that I took a break and made an Easter wreath:

It was fun, but not quite what I envisioned.  A little off balance, and I think the eggs were too large.  It was supposed to look like colored eggs in grass.


I returned to the blankets/burp cloths.  The crocheting went a lot faster now that I knew what I was doing.  I had to change to the green because the thread was thicker (size 10, as the pattern called for).  It didn't look as bad as I thought it would, and the edging looked thick and even:

So I ended up happy with the way it turned out.  


I've been cleaning my studio and I have so many unfinished projects, I just don't know where to start.  I had a tote with an unfinished doily hanging on the closet door, so I grabbed that.  I discovered  that it was the exact same green thread I had used on the blanket/burp cloths!  This is what happens when you buy your thread at Wal-Mart.  (We are getting a JoAnn at the end of the month and I cannot wait!)  I also discovered three more size 7 crochet hooks in the bag.  This made me laugh.  I knew this project would take me forever, as I was approaching the outer rounds.  But I learned a little something:  I took it with me to church one day, because I knew I'd have an hour or more between meetings, but I didn't take the booklet because I was sure I'd never make it to the next round.  Well, I had been working on it little by little, and after about 5 minutes of crocheting in the pew, I finished the round and couldn't continue.  I've been trying to apply that lesson (you can get a lot done a little at a time & don't assume you won't be moving on to the next step) to my life.  

The pattern is called Victorian Lace, and I plan to give this away; I just don't know yet to whom.


I'm also teaching my friend Heather S to tat.  I mentioned before that the size 10 thread we were using on our project was a little too large.  I got some pearl cotton 8 and that did the trick, and was prettier to boot:

This is Tatted Medallion by Be-Stitched.com.


Finally--I have been on a roll--while DH was having surgery last weekend, I started a cross-stitch project, and finished it on Monday.  No pix yet--I need to Finish it and it will be the subject of my next post.

One Skein of Yarn

Over the weekend, I reached the end of my first skein of yarn. I was very excited! I was curious how it would be at this point--it's just about 30 inches unblocked. I'm considering, then, making it about 60 inches. The pattern is shorter, but I like a long scarf I can wrap and drape. So it will depend on how I feel.

Across the top are the sheep stitch markers I got the previous weekend at our yarn shop hop. Super-cute, huh? Oh, you can't see them? Here's a close-up:

Still can't see them? Even closer:

I was going to compare the length of the scarf with the yards of yarn I started with, but--I have lost the other two skeins!  I cannot believe it!  I know they must be in the house somewhere.  I sure hope they are!  But until I find them, I cannot be idle--I have far too many projects.  So over the weekend, I:

Wrapped Fun Fur around a wreath form to start on an Easter Wreath.  I hope to finish this one tomorrow and I will post that picture.

Tatted most of a medallion.  I am teaching my friend Heather S to tat and I wanted to see what she might run into if she started working on this.  Good thing I did, too; one shuttle was not quite enough to finish it, as you can see.  We will have to use finer yarn.  But I also learned that I won't have to teach her the fold join yet, so that balanced out.

 Front

Back

Started and finished a Shepherd's Bush tiny Sheep necklace.  (I know, the pictures are fuzzy, sigh.)  It is so cute, just about an inch tall, and all over one.  Shepherd's Bush has several of these, and I've made a few, so I got them out to post here as well:

 Fronts

Backs

They are just adorable.  I know they have an Uncle Sam design for July 4th--I think I'll do that one soon.

Nupps!

Here is where I am on my scarf. It's about two rows shy of being halfway done, according to the pattern. However, I think I will make it a little longer. I do have three balls of this yarn and I'm not anywhere done with the first one. And I think or wonder if blocking will make it larger as well.

What is a nupp? It's where you knit 7 stitches and yarnovers (in this pattern) in one stitch, and then purl them all back together in the next row. It makes a little bobble. Here is a picture of some nupps; they are in the second and fourth columns (from the left):

These nupps are one of the main reasons that I don't regret starting this project over: They do take a bit of practice to get right.

Fun Fur Valentine Wreath

A few days ago, a couple of friends invited me to make a Valentine's wreath with them. We had a great time! I didn't take pictures of the process, just the end results. But it's very easy: You basically wind yarn around a wreath form--we used the vine-y kind--and then hot-glue decorations to it. That's mine at the left.

The huge difference between ours was the yarn. The project called for a nice, thick yarn, but I fell in love with the fun fur. It took me about 5 times longer to wind the yarn (and they wrapped theirs two and three times!) but I felt it was well worth it.

I did wrap some shiny heart garland over the fun fur, but you can barely see it in the picture. After that, we just glued some heart-shaped gems onto some glitter hearts and glued them to the wreath. Hot glue rules!

Missy's:


Jen's:


All three together:

Scarf Progress

Here's my progress since last night:


I'm enjoying it quite a bit. The yarn is perhaps a bit fuzzy for a newbie, but I'm being careful. Here is a close-up:


Looks pretty good. I did discover a mistake, which actually reminded me of the biggest mistake I made in it's last incarnation: I purled wrong-side rows when I ought to have knitted them. In the previous case, this was along the sides, creating a stockinette stitch, which rolls, instead of the necessary garter stitch. I'm glad I did figure that out, so I can do the main part of the scarf correctly. In this case, I'm a little ticked at myself, but I'm going to leave it. It's not ugly, or even noticeable, if you don't know, and it will be OK as long as I make both ends the same.

One other thing I did was to add one repeat to the rows, to make the scarf a bit wider. This caused to have to do actual math because the number of decreases changed.. But wait--I found this cool site that did the math for me. But I do need to learn to do the math someday.

Now I'm ready to start the body of the scarf.

I've Been Working on Stuff, Really

I've been working so that I'd have something finished to show for all my work. And I do! First, though, the unfinished: I didn't do the December Tatted Heart, and I won't. I started and the directions just made no sense to me, and I wasn't sure I had enough thread anyway, so I decided not to waste any more time and effort on it. The tatting group has another challenge--jewelry--and I'm deciding if I want to do that.

But I did finish my first quilt! It took over a year and I wrote about the process here, here, and here. Now it's hanging on a wall:


And here is a bit of the back:


I'm so proud of it and I have a couple more lined up.

I also finished the projects from the red tote. I had finished GameBoy's in May. Here is JazzBoy's:

I may have already posted that, but I couldn't find it. You may remember that also in the red tote were DH's ornaments from 2007 and 2008. They're the ones with the checkerboard backs that were too small. Well, they are nicely finished now:




With dark green backs that fit:


Now, for what I've been working on: I decided to knit Nancy's Bush's scarf "Peacock Tail and Leaf Scarf" from her book Knitted Lace of Estonia. It's been a lot of fun. First, I learned a new cast-on, the knitted method:


The yarn I used was Wildfoote Luxury Sock Yarn in Gunsmoke. I'm really in a grey mood these days.



I got this far with one skein:

But I decided I was kind of unhappy. First, the yarn was the wrong weight. I thought I could live with this, but with the other problems I had, I couldn't. Second, I had started off reading the chart wrong--I started at the bottom left instead of right. I actually did this twice. Third, I had made several counting mistakes--not super-noticeable, but annoying nevertheless. So I ordered more yarn and set this aside.

I thought in the meantime, I could finish up the ornaments from 2009. (Also here, here, here, and here.) And maybe work on some flannel blankets I started some time ago:


After all, DH's friend in the Philippines had a baby a few months ago, and DH really needs to send a gift. But then-- I got my new yarn today! It's Classic Elite Silky Alpaca laceweight in Cloud Gray:


I cannot wait to get started! Oh, and I almost forgot to show the tote I'm using for this. It's a Maggi B tote I got for Christmas:


It's huge! And here's where I'm keeping my stitch markers and needle ends (it's from Nordic Needle):


It's tiny! Here they are together:


Now I'm off to cast on again.