Relics from the WIP-box

Yesterday’s monkey was at the top of my WIP box. Digging deeper, I found something I hdn’t seen in quite a long time:

This is a quilt-top that I made back in high school when my grandmother was teaching me how to quilt. It was just a simple block pattern, baby-sized. To make it more interesting, I decided to embroider something on each of the large blocks. The embroidery (which, looking at it now, was quite the massive undertaking) is finished, but I haven’t backed it. It’s for my daughter. Since I haven’t got a daughter yet, I don’t feel too much pressure to finish it. (Oh, and to all of my relatives who said I couldn’t possibly give something that beautiful to a baby to use, I’ve had two now and I disagree. Babies are nice to their things. Toddlers, on the other hand, are murder with sticky fingers. She won’t get to use it once peanut butter enters the diet, but I’ll give it back when she’s older.)

Man. Looking at it, I loved doing it so much. Although many (in fact, most) of these designs were inspired by other artwork, these were all done from my own drawings. Click to see the designs more closely.

Gee, that gryphon looks familiar… Sorry for the poor lighting. It’s what we’ve got. I love the artistic element of embroidery, but the thing is - you need something to embroider on. And I can’t seem to come up with too many things that ought to be embroidered, so I don’t do it much. I want to do it more…I need to think about it.

Stuff I finished yesterday

Yesterday was quite a day, as far as crocheting goes. I sat down with hook and yarn, buckled down, and finished some stuff. I’d have posted yesterday, but it rained. A lot. All day. So no pictures.

First up, I finished Max’s hard hat! (Yaaay!) He was thrilled.

What? No, seriously, he was! Every time he saw me working on it he got all excited about the ‘yellow hat’ and tried to get his hands on it. Apparently, though, what Max really wants a mask. Every time we put a hat on him, he pulls it down past his chin, and runs around giggling and bumping into walls. I had to bribe him with the fire truck to get him to keep his hands off of it long enough to get the photo. And then, I guess…

…the truck got cold. I think I have the sizing figured out, which means that the pattern will be put into testing soon and will be added to my sale patterns! I really need to beef up the number of patterns I have to sell. Compared to my freebies, their number is shockingly low. Not that you mind, I’m sure, hahaha.

Next up is something that I wasn’t sure would ever be finished. Yesterday, for reasons unknown even to me, I went into my craft closet, unburied the WIP box, and brought it downstairs. Inside was this little guy:

Poor little monkey’d been taped up in the box for at least a year and a half. He was only missing two legs, half an arm, and a tail! That was a quick finish. I didn’t actually finish him yesterday, but when I started on him this morning it was dark out, and when I finished it was still darkish, so I’m counting it. Poor little guy doesn’t have a name yet. That’s all right, though. He’ll also be for sale.

And, finally, there were mittens.

You didn’t think we’d get through a post without mittens, did you?

Mittens, Mohair, and, uhhhh…Yarn.

Let’s see: what have I been up to? Well, there’s another set of mittens (of course) - and if you like them, you’re in luck! You can find the free pattern here, at Inner Child Crochet. (Enjoy! I think they’re very cute mittens.)

I’ve also been thrift shopping, again, and I found a nice big sweater in a lovely shade of blue - mostly synthetic, but with 15% mohair! I can’t wait to dismember - er, I mean, recycle it.

I’ve also overdyed some of my cashmere. I took about two ounces, just over 850 yards, and overdyed it using two packets of Ice-Blue Raspberry Lemonade. (That was our favorite flavor, back when we still drank the stuff. We had a bunch left over!) Let me tell you, though, I have never questioned my own sanity as much as I did while I was coaxing my cashmere into a bowl of koolaid. Anyway, I only wanted a subtle color change, and subtle is the word I would use to describe it:

I’ve put it next to an undyed skein for comparison, because I think that without the comparison you might not know there was a change at all! (I kind of wish I had used another packet, but I dyed it twice and was NOT up for a third time.) Here’s another picture, taken inside, that hopefully illustrates the color difference better:

See? There you go. Definitely a different color. Now it’s a pale pale blue instead of a seafoam green, and richer instead of a smidge greyish. There. Now I feel better, it’s definitely an improvement, and it wasn’t a bad color to begin with. I wound it (doubled) around a toilet paper roller, which works fine for my cheap behind, thanks. It’s due to become something special. (The cashmere, not the roller. Although the roller is pretty sweet, too - we buy Cottonelle, and that stuff comes cleanly off of the cardboard. Niiiice.)

New Stuff!

There’s new stuff on the site! Go check it out.

First and foremost, after a great deal of fancy footwork, I’ve moved all of my sale patterns over to the new site! Yaaaaay! All of the pages for them are still here on the blog, but each one has a link that will take you to the new page on ICC. Any new patterns will be added to Inner Child Crochet rather than getting a page over here, just like new free patterns.

There’s the first in a new series - Inside the Design Process.

There’s another segment in How to Design, where I discuss triangles.

There are also three new patterns.

Enjoy. There will be a nice picturey post tomorrow.

Help me, I’ve dyed…

and it’s GREAT! Oh, do try it. It’s ridiculously easy, even more ridiculously satisfying, and it smells pleasantly of Kool-aid. Remember this?

I took a smidge of it, stuck it in a cup with some water and a pack of Kool-aid (Berry Blue, if you must know) and nuked it for two minutes. Waited, nuked it again. Rinsed, hung, wrapped up - tada!

It’s now a heathery purpley burgundy, with flecks of red where I tied the skein too tightly. Lovely. Goooooorgeous. (Can you tell I’m impressed with myself?) It was only about 20 yards, though, so for a while I kicked around, at a loss as to what to do with it. I tried a headband, and it was awful, so I knit a little bag. It’s really cute, and I designed it myself! I made eyelets, and learned how to do I-cord, and all sorts of stuff. It was really fun to knit again. I’ve been focusing on my crocheting pretty hard lately (new content coming soon, folks!) but I really want to improve my knitting design skills. Start small, right? And it is:

But very satisfying.

This week in mittens

What have I got to show for myself? Why, nothing less than three more pair of mittens! You know you’re thrilled. We’ve got a green pair with a yellow stripe -

- I think I’ll make the stripe one row narrower next time. Also, a yellow pair with red cuffs and thumbs:

And one more pair. Shield your eyes:

Yeah, I know. This is not the shade of red I had thought I had purchased. I thought I had gotten another skein of Cherry Red, which is a nice, bright, respectable red. As you can see, it is not. I accidentally grabbed a skein of ‘Hot Red,’ a bright, blazing, incandescent shade of red (Wren agrees that incandescent is the correct term). Max likes it, though, and since he’s my test audicence, we’re running with it. We may see a few more pair of plain red mittens in an attempt to go through it quickly. I also worked up two more plush hangers. If you want to see what they look like, please reference the previous post. They look the same.

Here’s your warning, folks. Posts - especially posts with projects - will be sparse for a few weeks. I’m finishing some things up for the spring Crochetme, and then after that I need to prepare the new March content for Inner Child Crochet. See ya!