Status of Doooooom!

As you can tell, today I do not feel like sitting still. But is periodically raining resulting in a stuck-in-the-house kind of feeling.  I have crocheted half of another stripe bringing my total up to 2.5 stripes completed but I need to get this light purple one finished so that I can attach the dark blue one and the dark purple one to it.  Hopefully it will all go alright and I am confident that I can finish the stripe by nightfall or a little after but IT IS GETTING DONE TODAY!  :D

The only question is where are my tapestry needles... "Here Needles where arrrrreeeee you?" *evil laughter*

Afghan Etymology... Afghanistan?

NEW PROJECT!!!!  Yesterday I was confined to a car in Amish country, traveling around on a day of family fun and I started a new afghan!  This one is going to be the same basic colors of my first afghan  (blues and purples) because I have sooooo much leftover yarn.  It is from the Lion Brand pattern Wind Chime and it looks really cool.  This is the first project that I've made that has intentional holes in it giving it the lacy look (or really just a patterned look).  I'm debating whether I should adapt the pattern a little and make the intended length into my width and then make a really big blanket instead of a lap throw thing.  Hopefully, this little blankey can be modified into at big ass afghan that I can give to my sister sometime... whenever it's done.  Luckily its just a double crochet so its been going really fast but I am looking forward to trying to attach the stripes together with this fancy crisscross look.  We'll see what happens!

In an Update on my other projects: Work on little Nessie the Loch Ness Monster / Dinosaur / creature has stalled out until early Jully when I can go up to my grandmother's house to take a look at the original pattern and reevaluate shoe size.  And the Supernatural penguins are put on hold until I can find my tapestry needles!! They are no where to be found and it is very frustrating.

So back to my new project and a fun fact that may be commonly known or guessed according to Oxford Dictionary, aka this random website that cites the Oxford Dictionary, the etymology of Afghan goes like this:

"As you might suspect, the word "afghan" refers to the country of Afghanistan.  The coverlet was originally produced by the Afghanis.  In fact, the term "afghan" is a shortened form of reference for three things, in addition to the usual reference to the people of Afghanistan.  In reference to the people, however, the word is capitalized.  The other two "afghans" are the dog [a hound] and woven carpet, produced in a style that is unique to the Afghani people."

Crafting Critters

This blog has sort of been slipping and I want to turn it into more of a day-by-day update of craftdom then a when I get something finished post it kind of blog.  So right now I have a bunch of projects in the works and way too many on the to do list... wait is that possible?! Too many crafts?  I've been focusing on my Loch Ness monster/dinosaur.  I say it like this because although I have intended it to be Nessie and have always thought of her as a sea creature I was informed that she looks more like a dinosaur or dragon.  She told me it looked like "that video game animal that found all a lot of jewels."  Translation: Spyro the Dragon.  I think I could convert the pattern so that it is Spyro... I would have to add horns, wings, another set of paws, and make the ridge spikier.  Anyway she's almost done: head, body, tail, ridge are all made and stitched together.  I have also made her haunches and feet but the problem is I think the feet are too big... lets just say that currently they are the size of her head and half the size of her tail!  This might require a trip to my Grandma's, who has the archetype amigurumi, before she is finally completed.

On another fiber arts note, I just bought a pretty white dress!!!  What does this have to do with the arts you may ask?  Well, who wants to wear a white dress? It's time for dyeing!  I think I'll dye the bottom dark purple and then transition it to a light purple at the top.  Hopefully it doesn't turn out too stripy!  Anyhow pictures and whatnot coming soon!

Purple Haze

Instead of finishing in late August, as was planed, I completed my quilt by December.  Yet it took until the weekend the last weekend in May to finally see the final product, entitled "Purple Haze" (Jimi Hendrix will just have to deal with the repetition) My pieced top and tie-dyed backing had voyaged to my Grandmother's house and her favorite quilting store, the Ivy Thimble, to be sewed together and have the binding attached.  It was funny showing off my artistic quilt to the fabric store ladies because I was one of the youngest quilters they had seen!  In the end my masterpiece, a 90" x 60" quilt ready to fit an extra long twin bed!

Color Explosion!

I started planning my quilt July 2009 with the hope that it would be done by early fall when I could really start to appreciate it. I planned my very own single bed sized quilt based on Ricky Tim's Convergence Quilting book.  Tie-dying my own fabric as well as cutting and sewing all of the pieces proved to be a worthy challenge for a few months' time.

The Supernatural Penguin Army

This little penguin was easy to make and only took a few short hours.  The pattern is free online with a lionbrand account (also free!)

Getting Taller All the Time

This week I gave in and took a request from one of my friends; I crocheted Mr. Turtle a top hat.  Yes, a top hat.  I stumbled upon the pattern on Ravelry, a website library and store of patterns, when I was looking for a crochet pattern for the Mad Hatter top hat.  Then I found this little top hat pattern which was originally designed for the groom in Corpse Bride.  Today I'm also going to introduce you to a newish term: Amigurumi.  This is the word, with Japanese origins, that describes crocheted or knitted animals or toys. They are usually cute and cuddly.  To convey this impression they typically have large heads and bodies combined with stubby limbs.  A large number of them are sold on Etsy, another crafting website similar to eBay.

Hippity Hop Kangaroosker!

I have started to crochet a kangaroo.  Although its not quite finished it looks like it will be fantastic!  Over Spring break I traveled up to New York and visited my grandmother who I got my crafty genes from.  Although she is now predominantly a quilter, she still has a plethora of patterns, hooks, and needles that I could shuffle through and find my favorites.  This kangaroo pattern is one of the oldies but true coming from a magazine back in the olden times.  This toy already has devious intentions.  In a few more months my friend who is currently in Australia will be welcomed back by a adorable plushy kangaroo hurtling at her head.  To reflect the ruff and tumble ideas of Australia I'm going to update the pattern a little bit and leave off the cutesy flower basket and baby joey, but it will still make a great toy!

My Kangaroo is coming along admirably, in fact he is nearly finished!  Yet I have run into a small problem.  The crochet pattern that I am using is a photocopy from a magazine from over 20years ago; this would be perfectly fine except that it references another pattern in the magazine.  A pattern I don't have.  Unfortunately it looks like I will have to free hand the feet of the kangaroo without directions!

Affirmative Master

Doctor Who is a cult British television show and the longest running Science Fiction program ever.  In the series the Doctor is a Timelord able to travel through time and space in his police box shaped spaceship.  When the Doctor "dies" he has the convenient ability to "regenerate" allowing another actor to continue the franchise.This week I decided to knit K-9, the Doctor's electric dog companion.  Originally featured with the 4th Doctor, Tom Baker (featured in the picture with K-9), this little dog's key phrases are "Affirmative Master" and "Warning Danger Near!"  With a retractable nose probe that can latch onto and identify anything, this little dog has it all.   As a lovable icon of Doctor Who, K-9 was brought back in the new 2nd season with David Tennet as the Doctor.  (Yes, Doctor Who is still running and now the special effects are actually good!)  This little companion took me two weeks to compulsively knit, starting over Spring Break.  He has broken my record of the number of stitches on a needle at one time coming in at 72 st, which filled my extra long needles.  He still needs a little work, I haven't embroidered on his designation K-9 on his right side and top yet but that will happen soon!

Catch It If You Can

So my inspiration for this blog was to crochet with metal wire a Golden Snitch (yes that is from Harry Potter); however, when I saw the pattern I was immediately reminded of the Greek God Mercury and his winged shoes.  Well I didn't crochet a pair of shoes and in fact it's a good thing I didn't because the picture didn't really look like the results.  I'm debating whether it was a problem because I used wire (it probably isn't), I read the directions wrong (once again I refuse to consider this), or the directions were incorrect (that sounds more like it!)  So here's what it was supposed to look like (the wings were the part that reminded me of Mercury):

The following is my version of the golden snitch pattern which is supposed to remind me of Mercury, the Roman Messenger God (sorry for the quality my camera connection cords have run off somewhere!):

"Here they come again, mmmm-mm-mm

Catch us if you can, mmmm-mm-mm

Time to get a move on, mmmm-mm-mm

We might yell with all of our might

Catch us if you can!"

~Dave Clark Five "Catch Us If You Can"

By Any Other Name...

Since I already have a cake, I wanted to dress it up and make it look fancy.  So I found a pattern book for crocheted and knitted flowers called 100 Flowers To Knit & Crochet.  So this week has been particularly difficult in m my crafting universe as I attempted to knit my first 3-D knitted craft.  It may not seem like the end of the world as I already know how to knit, but I had firmly fixed in my mind that crocheting was for multidimensional projects and knitting was for flat objects, preferably small blocks.  Of course the project I decided to christen my venture into artistic knitting happened to be marked ADVANCED, which I didn't notice until after U was midway through the project and bothering my knitting buddy how to make new stitches!  So thanks to my friend Abby, who had to put up with me, and her amazing skills at surfing the Internet for new techniques!  That being said, this week I constructed a rose in the spirit of Valentine's Day, hoping that it will be good enough to decorate my cake.

Now that my rose is finished I think it is to big and bulky to be attached to my cake.  If I were to undertake this project again I would use a thinner yarn and smaller needles.  Also do NOT bind off and cut the yarn unless the pattern expressively tells you to.  I must have stopped early three or four times when I made the stem.  It is simply planned to be one continuous project that does NOT have to be sewn together again.  Also if your giving out these cute crochet flowers as party favors or decor give them a squirt of perfume to surprise whoever gives them a pretend sniff!

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet" ~ Romeo and Juliet

Eat Me!

On this dreary day in February, I decided to crochet a delectable chocolate cake from Amigurumi Two!: Crocheted Toys for Me, You, and Baby, Too.  Yes, a cake.  It turned out bigger than I initially imagined, rising to the height of twelve inches and a diameter of eight inches.  Taking about a week and a half of crocheting through my club meetings and all of my free time, this delectable treat nearly had the word "Eat Me" embroidered it on the icing as a spoof on Alice in Wonderland's Drink Me potions.  As I was crocheting this latest project, it was once again humorously misinterpreted as a hat and thus it needed to be worn as one by many of my friends.

"One taste is all it takes" ~ Chocolat

They Call Me... Mr. Turtle!

The turtle took me about two weeks of on and off crocheting and is my second crocheting project ever!  It was fun to learn how to single crochet and stitch in a round.

"Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming" ~ Finding Nemo

To Curse or Not to Curse... That is the Question

I learned to crochet this week and have compulsively completed my Harry Potter Ravenclaw House Scarf!

One Loose Thread Can Unravel the Whole

This is a knitted afghan with Cannon multicolor yarn.  It is currently incomplete with very little hope of being finished due to the fact that they stopped selling the multicolor yarn I was using!  D:  It has taken me forever to finish this afghan because I used VERY small needles and took long breaks.  However after two or three summers of making this I just have to finish up a few loose ends--literally.  All I can really do now is to sew in my hanging threads and call this project complete!