crocheting from leftovers

I love using leftovers because it makes me feel like I’m being economical.  The past 3 days I’ve been making this baby blanket out of leftover Stylecraft DK:

babygrannyI used the join-as-you-go method for the squares, since I hate sewing/crocheting them together at the end (although it does look neater).

babygrannycloseHere’s pictures of the border and corner:

babygrannyedge

babygrannycornerAnd no, these were not taken at my house.  My internship has better light and I only saw 1 person today so I had plenty of time.

And guess what?  The cluster stitch, which I recently made a tutorial on, made an appearance (although I clustered 2 instead of 3 stitches together):

babygrannyjoinMuch the best way of joining granny squares at their corners — keeps the border from becoming ruffle-y.

It felt good to be crocheting something again afters such a long break.  I am sorry it’s been so long since I’ve shown you a crocheted item.  Very shameful for a blog called “not your average crochet.”

The baby blanket is kind of small, though… It’ll have to be for a newborn or something.  I just ran out of yarn for some of my colors and I couldn’t put the blanket’s colors into imbalance by continuing further.  I dunno.  Maybe I could use it for something else?  I mean it’s not like I know any babies, or any friends who are about to have babies.  I don’t know what else I’d use it for, though.  My dog does not get such nice things because she unwittingly tears up yarny things with her claws.  *sigh*  The blanket might just stay stowed away until someone I know has a baby.  I could donate it, I suppose.  We’ll have to see.

Well, that’s all for now, thanks for stopping by!

[Edit]:  Btw, did you know that Deramores isn’t stocking the Lucy Pack?  I looked to get another one and it’s gone.  I’ve emailed them to see if they might be getting it back.  I don’t know where else to get one. 😦

2 more stitch tutorials up, plus other stuff

I’m pleased to introduce two more stitch tutorials!  Please welcome the cluster stitch and the pineapple stitch to the crochet tutorial family!

cluster stitch

cluster stitch

pineapple stitch

pineapple stitch

I hope you like them!  If you have any questions feel free to ask!  Now on to the other stuff…

I took a trip to my local yarn shop today, seeing as how it’s been a really long time since I’ve been and I always love buying yarn (who doesn’t?).  After perusing their usual wares for some time, I realized that I was finding all of their usual prices to be really high.  I suppose it’s because my most recent yarn purchases have been such good online deals that I’m finding the store’s prices so exorbitant.  I’ve always preferred buying from the LYS because I want to support the local business and I really like feeling the yarn before I buy it, and the only reason I started buying online is because the LYS has a rather limited and unchanging selection.  So now I’m thinking that I’m probably going to take most of my business to the Internet because there’s more yarny variety and it’s so much cheaper, but I can’t help feeling a twinge of guilt, abandoning the LYS like that.

What do you prefer?  Do you have a nice yarn store near you that you prefer, or do you purchase your necessities online?  Perhaps a combination of both?  I’m interested to see how many people in the current day and age buy online versus in-store.

Thanks for stopping by!

3 new textured stitch tutorials up!

I asked, you told me, I listened!  Here are new tutorials for the bobble stitch, the popcorn stitch, and the puff stitch!

bobble stitch

bobble stitch

popcorn stitch

popcorn stitch

puff stitch

puff stitch

I’ve got two more textured stitches that I am going to make tutorials for, as well: the bullion stitch and the cluster stitch.  Hopefully I’ll get those photographed and written out soon, but I must say it might be a few days.  I’ve got a really long take-home test to do, some studying for a national counselor certification exam, and I’m hanging with my mom tomorrow and having a dim sum day on Sunday.  Of course, it may be tomorrow, or even later tonight — you know how I love to procrastinate and do yarny things instead!  After the next two textured stitches, I do have more stitch ideas to add, as well.

I also realized that some of my knitting tutorials had somehow gotten their pictures all mixed/messed up (probably when I merged my knitting blog with this one), and I’ve fixed those.  I apologize if you’ve looked and been confused — they should make much more sense now!

Thank you for letting me know what you wanted to see!  I enjoy making these tutorials.  Also, thanks for stopping by, and let me know if you have any questions or things I need to fix!

still alive…

Sorry it’s been so long.  I’ve been super-busy and pretty stressed.  As promised, however, I do have a knitting picture for you:

paulieonHere’s my paulie cardigan so far.  The edges are rolling a bit but you get the idea.  It definitely fits and will be perfect once the band with the buttons and buttonholes is added at the end!  Please excuse the dirty mirror and my wrinkled t-shirt.  You can tell I don’t have it all together at the moment.  You can also tell I still haven’t done much work on the cardigan.

My car is fixed, $700 later (shoutout of thanks to my parents for helping a lot).  Took a week, so I’m a bit behind in internship hours now.

This weekend I went to the South Carolina Counselors Association annual conference in Hilton Head.  I was hoping to network and find a job, but not a single resume was passed out.  At least I learned a bit about how to get licensed, and because of that knowledge I’m thinking about moving to Charlotte, North Carolina (which is about 30 minutes away from my town and has higher requirements for licensure, so I’d get more supervision).

While I do like knitting a lot and have been doing a lot of it as of late, I’m still devoted to crochet.  When I come home and want to do something easy, relaxing, and quick, crochet is definitely my fave.  I just haven’t had any good ideas for projects lately, and nothing has really jumped out at me.  Honestly I love the pattern for the ripple blanket, so much I would like to do a third one (first, second), but I don’t really need more blankets and the yarn really does cost too much to make one as a gift.  Not that I don’t like making gifts — I love it — but when it comes to spending large amounts of money, time, and effort on a project I feel like most recipients wouldn’t appreciate everything that went into such a gift.  People like my parents would, but they’ve got so many crocheted items already I’m not really sure they’d want more, haha.  *sigh*  I do love making blankets…

Well, that’s all for today.  Thanks so much for stopping by!

 

this is not a re-post

I made a second blooming flower cushion (pattern here):

blooming flower 2 front

blooming flower 2 back

And I did a better job on the zipper this time — it’s neater:

blooming flower 2 zipper

And I’ve been feeling much better, thanks everyone for the kind words and encouragement, it really made me feel happier!  I’m totally over it.

My exit exam was today, so that was intense.  I felt better learning that you can make under 70% and still pass, and if you just fail one or two sections on the exam you can re-take them.  All is not lost.  It was a really sucky test though — lots of stuff on there that our teachers never covered and I never read in any of our books.  Pretty rough.  I don’t even know when the results will be available, so it’ll be an anxious time for my classmates and me until we learn if we pass or not.

I’m just unwinding at home now, staring at my lovely cushions side by side:

blooming flowers

Yay!  And I’ve STILL got yarn left!  I’ve only run out of 2 colors, so I can make a few more little things.  I AM running out of Chris’ T-shirts…

Well, thanks for stopping by, and thanks again for your support and thoughtfulness!  You guys are the best!