Shawl

Made my mum's christmas present tonight, a Solomon's Knot Shawl. Took me about 5 episodes of Bones, with the mandatory cat interruptions, wool detanglements, and general absent-mindedness. Plus a little bit of time learning the Solomon's Knot in the first place.





I used Moda Vera's Burro in grey-blue with a 6.0 hook,and stopped the pattern three rows short, cos I'm not a fan of the point at the bottom. Easy beginner shawl! Hooray. :)

Solomon's knot tutorials : Here and a video one here

Futurama Brain Slug!

I love Futurama, and what better way to show that than making my very own brain slug?

Here's Hermes wearing his:

I can't remember where I first saw a crochet one, but I knew I had to make (at least) one asap. Pattern is well written and its simple to make. Hardest part was sewing on his eye, two buttons that fit so perfectly together you'd think they were designed for this exact purpose, I just didn't have a long enough needle!
I think I'm going to put him on a hair comb, one of those plastic thingies that you slide into your hair to hold it in place? I'll be all set if I ever need a costume!

Free Brain Slug Pattern, from Hookandneedles.com.

More hearts

Still making Christmas presents for everyone, I'm getting stuck now, I've made heaps, but still stuck on what to make my family!

The big heart is a pincushion. I used a 5.0 hook and some fancy slightly fluffy wool, which was hard to crochet! I trimmed it with some pink sequin trim I bought from Spotlight.

The small hearts I used some variegated crochet cotton, and a 2.25 hook. I attached some keyring chains to the top also.

The basic pattern I used is here at Pepika. For a couple of the small hearts I modified the pattern ending, I didn't end the heart so suddenly, I added an extra few sc stitches here and there to give the hearts a more pointy base. Sadly I can't remember exactly what I did with them, because I was just experimenting!





I recently reorganised my craft things, and made myself a sewing kit out of an old make up bag I bought years ago. These are my needle holders: where the mirror used to be. I've got magnetic strips running under the purple felt, and another stuck to the back of each of the needle collections, so they're easily removable. I separated the needles by type: wool, beading, general, cross stitch. I'm still finishing the pincushion and the rest, but these took so long to do, because I kept changing my mind!

Octopus

Isn't he cute?! :)
I found him over on Ravelry, along with a ridiculous amount of other projects I want to make. Next I think I'm making a hat. Which is totally besides the point. Here's the Ravelry Pattern Link. To the octopus, not a hat. (Although, I really, REALLY want to make this hat for my boss for some reason: Shark Hat! Maybe his birthday in Jan. What 28yo fisherman with a good sense of humour wouldn't like that hat?)

When making this octopus, you have to remember that he needs 8 legs. And even if you know this, and think I'm a moron for pointing out that an OCTOpus has 8 legs, it's different when you have to make those eight legs. It's boring. And just as I get into the rounds I have to stop! So I guess I'm complaining that they are boring, but too short? Haha, I'm totally running on pure caffeine at this stage, its 6:10am and I've slept about 8 hours in the last three days, now. And for no reason, other than reading and crochet. Which are, always will be, and always have been totally valid reasons for losing sleep. :)

Aaand, back to octopus tips:
Just tack the legs into place so that when they aren't lined up properly, you can replace them easily.
This took me a few goes:

He's not perfect, but I'm not moving those legs again. I just couldn't get them any better! They're sewed on tight this time.

My lovely blue octopus has plastic hacky-sack-type beads in his body/head, and aquarium filter wool in his legs (I upgraded my aquarium filter and no longer need the excess wool... figured it may as well go to a good cause!) I put both of the types of stuffing materials into a cheap nylon stocking first to keep the beads in place, and so that the whiteness of the stuffing didn't show so clearly. I'll do it again next project too, it's useful, especially for the beads.

Used a 4.0 hook for this, and about half of a 50g ball of wool which had a recommended needle size of 5mm. And two plastic safety eyes.

Anyone know why they are called safety eyes?

Minor updates

I've been pretty quiet the last couple of weeks, I've managed to get myself slightly more than full time hours at work lately, which leaves limited amounts of time for my hobbies of both reading and crafty things, when I'm used to part time hours.

But I've made a few things:

First up, I finished my tribbles juggling balls, and they are very fluffy. I managed to make each very distinct by using a different wool for the netting, one is squishy, one is hard and the other is kinda pointy, somehow. It makes it easy to keep track of the juggling patterns, so that's a handy unexpected bonus of my planless diving into projects thing I do.

Next:

This little dude. I made him up all on my own, no patterns involved. I'm so proud of him! :) But it will be interesting if I ever want to replicate him. But I'm sure I'll manage. I have plans for this little fella, but I'm not mentioning them til they're done, so I don't spoil the effect. Or hype it too much, if I can't manage it.

Also I came home to this on my whiteboard the other day:

I laughed so hard.