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Posts Tagged ‘craftster’

Yukon Octagon

March 8th, 2010

mio

Why Yukon? Mostly because it rhymes. Also, one of these is yellow. This one, in fact:

And that reminds me of Yukon Gold (which is a potato… yeah, I’m not sure where I’m going with this either…)

I made this for a motif swap I was in. It was a scavenger-hunt-style swap, and one of the motifs we were to “look for” was one we designed ourselves, and this was mine!

Here it is again in white:

(Um… it snows in the Yukon Territory! Snow is white! Yes, it’s all coming together now…)

Now, I’ve written this pattern in my usual, lazy style. There is no mention of how to start it, so start it however you like to start a motif made in the round. Use a Magic Ring, or just work into the first chain you made, or whatever floats your boat. I also haven’t described any turning chains. Every round is made up of dc stitches, so use something appropriate. I used no-turning-chain-dc stitches, but you could also use a ch2 or ch3. Whatever you use, treat it like a regular dc stitch for the sake of the pattern.

Oh, and don’t forget to join each round. No spirals here!

Octagon Motif:
rnd1: *dc, ch1* 8 times
rnd2: *2dc in ch1 space, ch1* 8 times
rnd3: *2dc, ch1, 2dc in ch1 space* 8 times
rnd4: *3dc, ch1, 3dc in ch1 space, dc in other space* 8 times

Posted in Motifs, Pattern

Tags: Bernat Satin, craftster, crochet, motif, natcromo, natcromo2010

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NatCroMo 2010

March 2nd, 2010

mio

Happy National Crochet Month!

I have no idea where it comes from, but this is at least the third year it has been celebrated.

The Crochet Guild of America is doing a Crochet-along. Ravelry is having a party. Craftster is getting in on the fun, too! And you can follow the excitement on Twitter by searching for #natcromo.

As for me, I’m going to try and crochet even more than usual this month (though, I’m not sure how I’m going to do that yet…)

This morning on my commute to work I started making another Diet Coke Bottle Cozy, mostly just to see what the pattern would look like with striped yarn. I finished it at lunch, and here it is!

In other news, I finished the Ladybug blanket!

A close up of the face:

I ended up crocheting a separate black wedge and sewing it on for the face, as the colour changes on the big circle really weren’t working for me. Sewing the spots on was quite annoying as well… I’m going to have to find a better way to do that. Not that I plan on making this blanket again, but I’m sure this sort of technique will come up in something else.

So, back to NatCroMo: Learn to crochet! Crochet something new! Learn a new crochet technique! Crochet in public! Talk about crochet! Sing about crochet! But above all… CROCHET! ^_^

Posted in Afghans, Experimenting

Tags: afghan, Bernat Satin, CGOA, cozy, craftster, crochet, Crochet-A-Long, guild, ladybug, natcromo, natcromo2010, Ravelry

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And the lake is damp

February 2nd, 2010

mio

I know this won’t come as a surprise to everyone reading this blog, but Bell sucks. I’ve had the misfortune of being a telephone customer of theirs, as well as a customer of Bell Sympatico. For anyone who pays attention to this sort of thing, my opinion is: don’t use Bell unless under threat of death.

Why? In short:

- they have stolen money out of my bank account (by doing something they *specifically* claimed was impossible) then wouldn’t give it back until I involved my bank

- they’ve cut off my phone service for not paying *someone else’s* bill, and even after it was proven that was the case they still wouldn’t reconnect it, and still wouldn’t even after we proved that it was, in fact, their fault that it was possible at all

- they’ve sold me a service that didn’t exist (which lead to me having to pay the cable company an extra hookup charge since they had to come to my house twice)

- and most recently they failed to fix a connection problem. For two weeks. They claim to have made 6 appointments for techs to check out the problem, but we only saw 2. Each of those techs “fixed” the problem, only to have service go back down within 24 hours. (They also both complained bitterly about working for Bell!)

So, what’s a gal to do during this internet outage? (Did I mention that the internet wasn’t working at work either because of a computer virus? *yanks out hair*) Well, I certainly didn’t plan any part of my wedding! (Whose idea was it to keep our notes about it in a Google document? Oh wait, that was me…)

I crocheted, naturally! I also loom-knit.

You all remember Mom’s sorority’s charity thing with the kids hats and scarves right?

Check it!

The plan is to fill a bin with these. The current count is 23 complete sets (I took this picture before finishing a few of them… all of those hats in front of the pile have matching scarves now, plus there is another set not pictured… and a blue hat I still need to make a matching scarf for…)

I also made quite a few dishcloths. And a crochet-on-the-double hat using Bernat Soft Boucle (that still needs sewing up), and blew through a few more balls of red on the Ladybug blanket. I’m woefully behind on motifs, but expect to see a rush of those soon, as I’m in another motif swap. ^_^

A possible conclusion from all of this might be that having no internet access can be really good for my crafting! Another conclusion might be that having no internet had the potential to drive me so crazy that I needed that many projects to distract myself with just to get through it…

*eye twitch*

Posted in charity, knitting loom

Tags: afghan, Bell, Bernat Satin, blanket, charity, craftster, crochet, crochet-on-the-double, dishcloth, hat, knitting loom, ladybug, motif, Patons Melody, rant, scarf, swap

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Too Sexy For My Hat

December 4th, 2009

mio

One of the problems with writing a craft blog is that it becomes hard to keep up the closer you get to Christmas. More time is spent on crafting, and most of those crafts are presents you’d prefer the recipients not discover prematurely.

The other problem, which I suspect affects all types of blog is: computers suck sometimes. :P

I can’t do a whole lot about that last problem, but take a look at these not-Christmas-presents I made using crochet-on-the-double.

A pink and purple hat for Maddie:

Purple side, pink side:

One wedge shape (hat consists of 8)

And a matching scarf:

This yellow one is *slightly* bigger and is for Katie:

Side:

Flat dark yellow, flat light yellow:

The folks on Craftster seem to think these are pretty good (I’m glad I’m not the only one!), so why not give these as Christmas gifts? Three reasons:

1. I’m not entirely certain they’ll fit, as I’m just figuring out the pattern… and giving items made for testing a pattern you’re writing seems somewhat unthoughtful.

2. I already made them each something else.

3. If they were gifts I wouldn’t let myself blog about them. :P

Come January I’ll be looking for more test subjects, including adults, so stay tuned!

Posted in Experimenting, Pattern

Tags: Bernat Satin, cold, craftster, crochet, crochet-on-the-double, hat, Keeping Warm, scarf, winter

1 Comment »

Plan B

June 26th, 2009

mio

BOB didn’t go well (stupid rain) but that’s ok, because I had a backup plan!

These blankets are going to charity:

(I should get a better picture of that purple one made at the show before I send it off…)

I’m going to make these three bigger and give them as Christmas gifts:

These are Christmas presents, and I’m keeping them as is:

And this one is MINE:

My current main project is a gift for someone who reads this blog, and I really don’t want to give the surprise away if I can help it, so pictures and updates will be made on Ravelry (where you need an account to see it). Don’t worry, once the Big Day has come and gone, I’ll post all of the gory details. ^_^

Now that BOB is over, I find myself with my own crafting time again, so I’m waffling around trying to decide what to do. I’ve joined a couple of swaps, I still need to make the June square in the CAL, and I’ve been itching to just make my way through my growing collection of motif books and make at least one of everything.

Of course, there’s still Christmas coming, and various birthdays left to think about. I’ve been hoping that Bernat Satin would go on sale for the last several months, but I haven’t seen it. If you do, could you please let me know? I’m planning on buying a LOT of it, not only because I’ll need it for some gifts, but also because it’s my go-to yarn for worsted weight acrylic and I’m starting to run low. It’s soft, works up well, and the colours are pretty nice.

Anticipated projects: at least one more Snowflake afghan, maybe the Hawaiian Flower afghan, more 3-way Tunisian, lots of hats and scarves, some geeky afghans, and of course, Dad’s Christmas present.

My work situation has changed and I suddenly find myself with a good chunk of crochet time. That time can only be spent working on a pattern I know really well, and that doesn’t have any tricky colour changes. The project I’ve been working on lately has recently become too large to do while I do my job, so I need a replacement project. For now, I’m prepping some scarves (doing the base chain and first row at home on several), and I’m thinking of doing some granny squares. Any thoughts on what else might work? Basically, anything I don’t have to look at too much, that can easily be done a couple of stitches at a time.

Finally, check out this Spiral Granny Square I made: click here.

Posted in Afghans, Geeky, charity, swap, yarn

Tags: afghan, baby, Bernat Satin, Big On Bloor, blanket, charity, Christmas, craftster, crochet, Crochet-A-Long, geek, hat, scarf, Settlers of Catan, swap, Tetris, Tunisian, yarn

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Where’s Waldo meets Tetris

May 17th, 2009

mio

It isn’t stuffed yet, but here is the L piece:

It’s in the picture somewhere, anyway…

In other news, welcome to my new visitors from Craftster! For those who didn’t know, you can also find me on Twitter and on Facebook.

Posted in Geeky

Tags: craftster, crochet, Facebook, geek

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Green Eyed Monster

May 16th, 2009

mio

So, I was at the first Toronto Craftster meet-up a couple of weeks ago, and I got a message on Facebook from my brother (you may remember him as the one with all that flexible tubing in his basement) asking if I knew anything about the Cricut machine.

It turns out that his wife was thinking of getting one. I’ve thought about it, but I don’t do enough scrapbooking to warrant the financial outlay. When I mentioned that to my brother he said that he was more worried about the cost of the room he had to build for it.

It doesn’t look like much now, but that’s going to be a really sweet craft room!

I’m so jealous! (Well, I do have green eyes…)

Posted in Uncategorized

Tags: craftster, Facebook, tools

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What’s his super power?

May 15th, 2009

mio

He’s amazing.
Amazing?
Terribly amazing!

Who am I talking about? Why, my best friend, Chris! (You may remember him from such posts as Mystery Project, and Whatever could it be? or most popularly, Mystery Project Finished!. Well, ok, I never named him, but trust me, it was Chris.)

Chris and I have been friends for almost four years now. One of the things I really like about him, aside from his profound geekiness and his love of the old Godzilla movies, is that he is the best Photoshop Touch-up Artist in Toronto. His being a graphic designer comes in handy sometimes!

Check out this banner ad he made for me to be displayed soon on Craftster:

(click to see the full sized version)

And he did it all from my vague request that went something like “I like green” and “here is my flickr stream”

I’ve been going back and looking at this all day… between obsessively refreshing Craftster webpages, that is. I’ll let you know when it starts showing up!

Amazing, isn’t it?

Posted in Experimenting

Tags: craftster, geek, Settlers of Catan

4 Comments »

BOB looks pretty in pink

May 8th, 2009

mio

Now presenting further progress on the inventory for Big On Bloor:

pink striped crocheted baby blanket

I took about a dozen pictures of this and not a single one caught the beautiful colours of this blanket. I suppose you’re all just going to have to come visit me at the show (and then buy this).

This blanket is also an excellent example of how wonderful that “no turning chain dc” technique is. Here is a close-up of the edge:

example of the no-turning-chain technique

Isn’t that amazing? If I look really, really closely, I still have a hard time telling which stitches are real double crochets, and which are the no-turning-chain stitches.

I’ve found it to make working in the round a bit easier, too. In the past, I had always had problems figuring out which chain in the beginning chain was the one I needed to make a join in. Using this no-turning-chain method, it’s pretty obvious where the join goes.

If you haven’t tried out this technique already, I urge you to do it. You won’t regret it!

I just realized the other day that I never posted pictures of the motifs I received from craftADDchick here on the blog. I’ve put them under the cut (Dad, if you’re reading this, don’t read any further on this post, please!)

(more…)

Posted in Afghans, swap

Tags: Add new tag, baby, blanket, craftster, crochet, Crochet-A-Long, swap

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