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Posts Tagged ‘dishcloth’

Ahh, gauge!

April 28th, 2010

mio

You hear a lot about gauge; every pattern tells you to “save time by checking your gauge”. What does it mean? Well, they want you to crochet (or knit) up a decent sized square (usually) using a stitch pattern used in the pattern. You measure it, and count your stitches. Or you wash it, block it, then measure it an count your stitches. If you match what the pattern says, then you might end up with a finished project in the size you’re expecting. Well, maybe.

I’ve talked about gauge before. I hope we all know now that even if you get gauge with one dye lot, you might not with the next. Different colours of yarn sometimes have different gauges, even if they are otherwise the same yarns… even in variegated and self-striping yarns (I’m looking at you, Bernat Baby Coordinates White)

The other day I made this:

It’s for my cousin; she likes handmade dishcloths and her kitchen colours are blue, green, and yellow.

I also made this for her:

(it’s actually more blue than grey in person… it’s supposed to look like denim)

And then this green-and-cream one:

I finished that last one on the commute home and it wasn’t until I stacked it on top of the other two that I noticed this:

All three dishcloths were made using Bernat Handicrafter Cotton, each with a 6mm hook, each exactly the same pattern.

Luckily, gauge doesn’t always matter. ^_^

(P.S. this post documents the first finished Christmas gifts for 2010. That’s right, you heard me!)

Posted in Motifs

Tags: Christmas, crochet, dishcloth, gauge, swirl, Tunisian

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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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Sweating it out

July 7th, 2009

mio

I bring yarn and hooks with me almost everywhere. You never know when you might have to wait or you might get struck with inspiration! The other day, when I got to work and was pulling my lunch out of my bag I noticed that my yarn was wet. Not a huge deal, as it was acrylic and it dried quickly, but still rather annoying.

The culprit? My Diet Coke. Normally I drink pop in cans, but at my work we are not allowed to have open containers of liquid near our workspace (I work with really old books and expensive computer equipment) and bottled drinks need to live on the floor. (I work in a very dark environment too… this will be important later!)

Well, I’m home today due to my bum knee acting up again, and am kind of stuck in my chair. I felt like crocheting something and the closest yarn to me was the Bernat Handicrafter Cotton I was using yesterday to make dishcloths. I had lots of odds and ends, especially of bright colours, and so my Diet Coke cozy was born:

bottle cozy

With those crazy colours there’s no way my drink will get lost on the dark floor in the dim room!

The back:
bottle cozy

The top:
bottle cozy
At the top of the cozy I did a round of mesh, basically *dc, ch1 (skip a stitch)* repeat, to make holes to weave in a bit of a drawstring. The drawstring itself is mostly just 1 sc in each base chain, except on the ends I did 2 sc in each base chain, to add a bit of a twist.

The bottom:
bottle cozy
The bottom is actually a circle (the shape of the bottom of the bottle makes it look a bit like a wonky-pentagon). 12 dc, followed by 24 dc, then a round of sc in the pattern of *sc, sc, 2sc* repeat

I tried to get a close up of the stitch pattern in this pic:
bottle cozy
After a round of 1 dc per stitch in the base, I started a pattern of *dc sc* repeat, and in the following row *sc dc* repeat, so that sc goes into a dc and dc goes into a sc.

I made the mistake of measuring this as I went with a bottle of Diet Coke I was actually drinking, which means that the sides of the bottle were sweating, and it made the yarn wet every time. Crocheting with wet yarn kind of sucks! (Which, if you’ll recall, was one of the major motivators for making this project…). I finally got wise after a few rounds and found an empty bottle nearby (What? We’re in the middle of a garbage strike here. Of *course* there was an empty drink bottle next to my chair. lol)

Here it is empty:
bottle cozy