By Nancy
Here are my 6″ crochet squares for May:
Archive for the ‘Other Crafty Projects’ Category
May 6″ Crochet Squares
Friday, June 10th, 2011May 12″ Quilt Square
Thursday, June 2nd, 2011by Nancy
This is my 12″ crochet square for May. I have my 6″ blocks finished as well, but I haven’t taken a picture yet. Now, it’s on to June…
February Crochet Squares
Thursday, March 17th, 2011by Nancy
Here are my afghan squares for February:
They were fun to do, and I did some stitches for the first time: picots and popcorns. I really like how the smaller 6″ squares turned out. Now I’m working on my March squares – I’ll post them soon…
Progress on my Crochet Scarf!
Sunday, March 6th, 2011by Nancy
I’m very happy to report that I have finally found a way I like to connect the squares in my crochet scarf! For those who are interested, I am single crocheting the squares together, working in the back loop only of one square and the top loop only of the other square. This will be the back of the scarf. I’m using navy yarn to connect the squares. You can see how it looks in this picture:
The front of the scarf looks more plain, which is what I wanted to achieve. Here is a close-up of that:
Now that I finally like my joining method, it’s going pretty quickly and is not as monotonous as I feared it might be. Yay! I currently have 16 rows done. The pattern calls for 20 rows, but I may do a few extras so the scarf is a little longer.
News from the Crackpot Crochet Corner
Sunday, February 13th, 2011by Nancy
I’ve been doing some crochet lately, as well. I’ve finished all the little squares for my scarf (just as the weather is finally warming up!), but I haven’t been happy with any of the joining methods I’ve tried so far. So, I’ve put it aside to ponder a bit more and try to find out more about joining method options.
I’m slowly continuing on my crochet cardigan, though I have to admit I’m finding it kind of monotonous. I may just have too short an attention span to be a sweater kind of person. I’m hoping that I’ll feel motivated to do some serious work on it on our next long car trip, whenever that is.
But the fun thing I’ve been doing the last two months is participating in a Crochet Along on Ravelry, a web site for knitters and crocheters, which Rebecca introduced to me. It’s a lot like a Block-a-month quilt project. You crochet an afghan square or two each month and then at the end of the year, you have enough squares for a blanket. The leader of the Crochet Along picks the square each month, and then everyone posts what they are working on, so you get to see lots of different color options. It’s fun! For this one, there are two 12″ squares and a 6″ square option each month. You can do one or all of them, depending on your interest. I’ve been doing one 12″ square and four 6″ squares each month, so far. Here’s a look at what I’ve done. From left to right are my February 12″ square, two of my January 6″ squares (I have two more that are the same as those), and my January 12″ square. I’m working on the February 6″ squares now.
Crochet Christmas Ornament
Friday, January 7th, 2011by Nancy
Now that Christmas has passed, I can post a picture of the crochet Christmas ornament I made for Ann, Marty, and my German host parents. It was a lot of fun to make!
Pride of Place
Tuesday, January 4th, 2011
Once again this year, Marty has created stunning Christmas ornaments as gifts for Crackpots (and possibly others). They are just too lovely to hang on our Christmas tree, where they tend to get lost among all the other ornaments. So this year, I finally got smart and decided to give them pride of place hanging from the dining room chandelier. Here is another photo showing them closer up. Gorgeous!
Happy, scrappy gift bag
Thursday, December 2nd, 2010by Nancy
I just finished getting a Christmas package ready to mail to Germany, which involved making a gift bag for Martha from some very cute light purple snowman fabric. I am pretty sure I received the fabric from another crackpot, possibly Marty, either as a gift or as part of a fat quarter exchange. Does anyone recognize it? Well, after the gift bag was done, I had some scraps of the purple snowman fabric left. It wasn’t enough for a whole gift bag on its own, but I had some scraps of white snowflake fabric that I had used for the bag lining, so I combined the two and came up with this:
one side
second side
I haven’t made a lining yet for the bag. I think it needs one because the white fabric is a bit thin, and there are lots of seams on the back. The lining might just be plain white, or maybe something scrappy will present itself.
P.S. Pictures were taken with my phone, uploaded from there to the blog, and then I wrote my post on the computer. Much quicker than getting out the digital camera, taking a picture, downloading it to the computer, and then uploading it to the blog!
Gifts for Hungary
Sunday, November 28th, 2010by Ann
Now that it is time to be getting Serious about Christmas, I have been working at finishing the counted cross stitch ornaments that I made for my two Hungarian grandchildren, Blanka and Kristof, last winter. I started on them shortly after Christmas when I am usually inspired to do things Christmasy, and finished the stitching sometime in March or thereabouts. Then they got put aside in favor of more fun stuff, like the beginning of the nativity set I am making for James. I remembered to bring them here to the CLH for finishing and just got them done. Each one is backed with a piece of stiff cardboard and finished with a piece of small-print Christmas fabric. I forgot to take a photo of the backs, and I am too lazy to get the camera out again, so you will just have to imagine what they look like. The backs are cute but boring.
Now I just have to shop for some gifts for the grown-ups. Not nearly as much fun.
Third Time’s the Charm
Friday, November 26th, 2010
by Nancy
I realized recently that I was committing a major fashion faux pas by wearing my off-white gloves with my black and blue-purple winter jacket, so the obvious solution to the problem was to crochet myself some black mittens! I looked around for a little while at some possible patterns and then decided to give one a try. The first pattern I tried is from the Coats and Clark website and uses standard worsted weight yarn. This mitten is the first from the left. I like how the ribbing turned out, but for some reason the transition from the ribbing to the main mitten is very tight. Also, the top of the mitten looks a little odd where it finished off. I didn’t even bother to do the thumb because I wasn’t happy with the mitten. So, I tried pattern number two, from the Bernat website. This is the middle mitten in the picture. It uses a chunky weight yarn. I like the shape of the mitten and the thickness of the bulky yarn, but the hand part of the mitten turned out too short, and the ribbing is too loose and too short. So, it was time for mitten number three, the last one in the picture. I mainly used the same Bernat pattern as for mitten number two, but went pack to regular worsted weight yarn and used the ribbing instructions for mitten #1. Once I got to the end of the ribbing, I used two strands of worsted weight yarn to try to recreate the thickness of the bulky yarn. And I made it longer in the fingers than the directions call for. I’m quite pleased with how it turned out! It feels like it will be very warm. Now all I have to do is remember what changes I made to the pattern so I can make a second mitten to match the first!