new project: another shawl

October 20, 2012 by 5 Comments

The last shawl I made made me so happy that I want to make another one with different yarn.  I’m using this:

Two balls of Cascade Yarns Heritage Hand Painted Sock Yarn, 75% Merino Superwash, 25% Nylon, 437 yards each (or 400 meters each)

The pattern, again, is here.  Here’s what I’ve got so far:

It’s a little blurry but the color came through surprisingly well.

The hook I’m using is the G/6 hook from a Susan Bates set.  The set is really special because it belonged to my great grandmother:

The G/6 is in the top right corner of the picture.

My grandma gave the set to me, along with a set of steel hooks for lace work, but I don’t really use those because I don’t work with thread much.  I’m really glad she gave them to me — they mean a lot.

On another subject, everybody else is blogging about their beautiful fall weather and sharing their beautiful fall pictures.  I’m so jealous!  We’re having weather in the 70s every day, but that just started recently, and the foliage isn’t looking so great.  Much of it is just brown so far, with pretty colors occasionally interspersed.  I really hope this winter is colder than last winter (during which I mostly wore my usual t-shirts with a coat, and maybe a scarf).  That’s what happens when you live in South Carolina, I guess.  Winters in Oklahoma, where I lived until I was 15, were actually colder than they are here.

Also, I was asked to mention how I like the new JKR book, The Casual Vacancy.  Honestly, I’m still only about halfway through.  It’s dramatically different from the Harry Potter books, and not just because it’s written for adults.  It’s not a fantasy book, there aren’t really distinctions between good and bad people, and there’s a lot of depressing subject matter (i.e. horrid parents, awful relationships, rebellious teens, and drug users, to name a few).  I think the biggest difference, though, is that I haven’t laughed once.  The Harry Potter books made me laugh a lot, just because of funny/witty comments or situations.  This new book feels much different because there isn’t really any humor, although there is some irony.  Also, there are many points of view to follow, which is a little confusing sometimes.  I think it’s well written but it’s such a different kind of book than what I would usually read.

That’s all for today.  I’ll probably have an update on the shawl soon, and my Stylecraft Special DK should arrive within the next week or so.  Thanks for stopping by!

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crochet shawl: complete!

October 16, 2012 by 10 Comments

ta-da!

I finished the crocheted shawl in 3 days, crocheting for hours each day.  It took a surprisingly long time once I got to the longer rows.

Sorry that picture is a little blurry — it was hard to hold my phone steady and far enough away to get the whole shawl in the frame.

The pattern is $6, which, after making the shawl, seems like a lot… While it took a long time, it was pretty repetitive and easy.  Oh well.  Now I have a shawl big enough to wrap around my neck comfortably!  And even though the yarn was all leftover from other projects I think the colors are great!  I can’t wait until it gets cold enough here for me to wear it!

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back to crochet: following the neon trend

October 12, 2012 by 5 Comments

It’s been about 21 days since I even touched a hook, but this yarn was just calling to me:

color’s a little off

It’s Aslan Trends Royal Alpaca yarn, and it is definitely tied for the softest yarn I’ve ever used.  It’s 100% Royal Alpaca wool (220 yds), and it’s worth the $18.50 I paid for at the LYS.  Because of the price, though, I only got one skein, and with just one my options were limited.  With yarn this nice, though, I had to make something wearable.  Neons have had a resurgence of popularity this year, and while at first I thought it was a horrible resurrection of 1980s style, I was pleasantly surprised to see it done tastefully in many instances.  Well, as tasteful as you can get with neon.  Anyway, I thought about making fingerless gloves, but I decided on a hat.  I know I have tons of hats, but I didn’t have a chartreuse one!

this is probably the most accurate portrayal of the real color that I got

As you see, I have a little leftover.  I don’t want to waste it; any ideas of what to do with that smaller amount?

Of course I have to show the hat to you on (although the lighting in my apartment at night is awful):

It’s made in-the-round with hdc, and the edging is sc with the last row sl st.  Hdc is probably my favorite stitch for hats and scarves.  Simple, quick pattern.  I honestly made it a little big because I was terrified of making it too tight or short, which happens with my hats sometimes, even though I was trying it on as I went. I hope it doesn’t stretch too much, but if it does I’ll just roll up the edge — the yarn was too expensive and the hat too soft and pretty not to wear.

I’m sure that since it’s alpaca it will be nice and warm, so I’ll take it on my Christmas trip to England.  Man, my suitcase is going to be full of knitted and crocheted items — I just can’t stop making things for the occasion!

Soon I’ll be introducing another crochet project with you — I’m just waiting for something in the mail.  As soon as it gets here I’ll share with you what I’ll be doing next.  It could take as long as a couple of weeks to get here, though.  Hopefully not.

That’s it for today, thanks for stopping by!  Let me know what you think I should do with the leftovers.

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have you seen this yet?

October 9, 2012 by 6 Comments

So I was browsing Pinterest today and came across this really cool program.  When making a granny square project, if you’re like me, the colors have to be used an equal amount of times on the edges, in the middle, and in the center.  This can be very difficult to keep track of — my last granny square blanket‘s colors were distributed evenly like this, but I did it by keeping all the squares in carefully organized piles, and it got kind of ridiculous because I kept knocking piles over and having to re-sort everything.

That picture doesn’t show everything, and actually looking at it makes it seem like I didn’t do a very good job distributing the colors… but trust me, there’s every combination possible in this blanket.

But now there’s an easier way (do I sound like a TV ad?).  Check out this program from Double Crochets, and you’ll see what I’m talking about.  You can see the results of the math permutation in a printable chart.  Now you can’t select your colors, at least not yet, but you can choose the number of colors.  Once you see the way the chart is made it would be easy to just draw out your own with colored pencils or markers.  It just makes the whole process of distributing the colors evenly easier to visualize.  I will probably use this in conjunction with Design-Seeds (for picking out my color palettes).

What do you think?  Would you use this program, or make a chart of your own?  Or do you prefer to just wing it and not worry about such things as even distribution?

That’s all for today!  Thanks for visiting!

Oh and PS:  I made an extensive post the other day with lots of great information about makeup & skincare, but I didn’t publish it because I thought it might not be very interesting to everybody, since it’s off topic (I don’t want my dear readers to be put off by posts that aren’t about crocheting).  I was just wondering if any of you would like me to publish it.  It’s made specifically as an extensive and detailed regimen for people with really oily, acne prone skin like mine, but there are other great tips too on how we should really be applying our makeup, how to contour, and more.  I spent lots of time writing it up and putting videos and links in, not to mention the years of trying to find things that work and suffering through lots of embarrassing skin issues.  Just let me know if you’d like to see it.  If only one or two people are interested I can just e-mail the content to you instead.

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post-birthday

October 2, 2012 by 1 Comment

Thanks everyone for the kind birthday wishes!  It was indeed fantastic!  Here’s a blurry picture of me taken by my dad at Buca di Beppo, a yummy Italian restaurant, with my free birthday dessert and candelabra, haha.

 

We had a great time, and my parents bought me some awesome yarny birthday gifts from the lovely yarn shop!  Unfortunately for this post, almost all of it is stuff for knitting — there’s just one neon ball of yarn that I got that could go either way (see post here for full birthday gift details).

While we were at the shop, I asked the lovely ladies there about spinning, thinking that I might like to start spinning my own yarn.  I asked if it is generally cheaper to spin your own yarn than to buy it, and basically they said it depends on what kind of yarn you’re making/buying and how much pre-spinning stuff you might need to do.  Of course the wheels are very expensive — upwards of $400 for the good brands.  The yarn shop does have spinning time where you can have a lesson and rent a wheel for $25/4 hours (which you spread out over the month), which sounds great.  I just need to get up there and try it out.

Again, I’m afraid I have no crochet to show you today.  I thought about starting a dog sweater for my baby girl but just couldn’t get motivated to start, even though I have enough of that frogged cotton yarn to do it.  Is it possible that I’m getting bored with crochet?  Goodness I hope not — I’ve been doing it for years and it’s meant so much to me!  I’ve just been knitting so much more lately… I don’t know if it’s the fact that knitting poses a new challenge for me (whereas I haven’t been too challenged by crochet in a while) or the fact that knitting takes up less yarn and therefore I have to spend less money on it.  Or perhaps I’ve run out of fun patterns that I’d like to try, or just don’t have the money to buy the yarn for it (which I know is the case for some projects, like blankets).

On another note, I’ve decided to go through my old crocheted hats and scarves and give some to Goodwill.  I’ve got TONS of items from over the 7 or 8 years I’ve been doing this, and since I live in South Carolina there’s no way I could possibly wear all my hats and scarves in one winter.  It just doesn’t get that cold!  But for someone less fortunate than me, these warm handmade items might be very welcome.

Sorry this has been such a wordy post.  I’ve just been feeling some post-birthday down-ness and this blog is sort of like a journal — I feel like I can say whatever I feel and nobody that I know personally will ever know (except my mom, who does pop in sometimes, and I tell her everything anyway so that’s fine).  Even if I don’t go into detail, the writing process itself is soothing to me.  Thanks for bearing with me today.  Hope to see you again soon!  Maybe then I’ll have some great crochet things. 🙂

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