Lesalicious

 

I got my Swap Swap Gals package from Lesa!  She made these amazing sewn bags with dragonfly and butterfly fabric.  The dragonfly bag is really roomy with an oval shape bottom. 

Book bag-size is actually my favorite size bag for everyday use.  I like the circle handles, too.  They’re big enough I can fit my arm through and carry the bag on my shoulder (a definite plus!)  On a side note, I wonder how she managed to cover the handles with matching fabric without it being loose.

The smaller butterfly bag has this great diamond shape sewn on with gold glitter added as an accent.  The style is great!  This is a really nice evening bag that can double for daytime.  The handles are black on the outside and butterfly-print on the inside. 

Both the butterfly and dragonfly print bags are lined with matching fabric and magnetic closures.  I’m so impressed with all the professional sewing!  Plus, I have not tried magnetic closures yet, so I really appreciate them!

Lesa also included this ruffle top crochet clutch with a gusset bottom.  The jewel-tone yarn feels like suede or chenille to me.  Whatever it is, the yarn is really soft and sturdy.

The clutch has a magnetic closure also.  With Lesa’s magnetic closure tutorial for crochet purses and a real life example, I think I might be brave enough to try it out on my next purse. 

 

Along with the purses, Lesa also sent me this light pink candle.  The scent is really mellow, but sweet.  The candle says strawberries, but I think it smells like strawberries and cream. 

Anyway, it smells wonderful and candles are always useful in this area since we get lots of blackouts with the summer storms.    

Along with the purses and candle, I got a nice card, a set of pens, and matching memo pads.  I love the colored patterns on each of the pens and the flower-shaped memo pads are so cute! 

Finally, Lesa sent me a skein of baby blue, light weight yarn.  I’ve never seen this brand before, but the yarn is really soft and the color is really pretty. 

Thanks again, Lesa for the fantastic purse swap package!  I’m so happy to be your recipient this time around; I hope to get you as my recipient in the future.  Swap Swap Gals is so much fun and I’m so glad that you started the group!

 

Read Full Post »

The yarn bearer

 

I won yarn from Kayla!  That’s 1200 yards of hand-dyed, 100% fingering weight yarn.  I’ve actually never worked with fingering weight yarn before, so I’m very excited.

Kayla hosted the contest on her blog, The Yarn Bearer.  All she required was a comment with what you would make from this skein.  I chose the Celestine Crochet, which looks like a spiky ball.  If I like the pattern enough I’ll try the knitted version, too.

 

I plan to start crocheting just as soon as I wind this hank into a ball.  I’m a bit scared about tangles from Angela‘s experience, but I think I’ll take her advice and hang the yarn off the end of a chair. 

Thanks again, Kayla, for the beautiful yarn!

 

Read Full Post »

Warm up america

The twenty-five rectangles I made finally made it to Donna at Crochetville!  They’re for the Soften the World Simply Soft Sweepstakes Caron is holding. You can see a picture of my rectangles and the 1000+ rectangles other Crochetvillers have contributed on the 2 for 1 – Warm Up America and Crochetville! thread.  I crocheted every last bit of Simply Soft in my stash, including two unused skeins in navy and remnants from the Cable and Divine Hats. 

I used Donna’s 7×9″ Rectangle Granny pattern for the majority of the rectangles.  I thought about using a bunch of different stitches, but finding the gauge for each pattern was taking too much time.  Grannies work up fast and once I figured out the perfect hook size the rest was easy. 

To get the right gauge I actually left out Row 8 of the pattern.  My gauge was still too large with a size F hook and I hate using the size E hook with worsted weight yarn.  My yarns splits, the handle is too thin and I generally can’t crochet as quickly.  Also, since I can’t stand weaving in lots of ends with a granny-style stitch, all the little yarn balls that I couldn’t stretch to a whole rectangle were made up in plain double crochet. 

I’m glad I tried Donna’s granny pattern because I learned a new way to join granny-style rounds.  For the last corner, you chain one and single crochet to join the round.  The single crochet ends in the middle of the last corner and from there you make half a corner and continue around.  It’s difficult to explain, but simple to use and there’s no slip stitches involved!

Anyway, I crocheted twenty-six rectangles total.  Twenty-five went to Donna and the last rectangle was sent out in my name for the individuals category.  The deadline for individual square entries is May 1, 2008 with a prize of twelve skeins of Caron SS.  Crochetville is still accepting rectangles through the mail until April 29, 2008 for their effort to win the $300 cash prize.  All the squares collected for the contest will be donated to the Warm Up America charity. 

 

*That’s cool* a random fact

Granny Smith Apples are named after Mary Ann Sherwood (1799-1870), who never saw her apples become a commercial apple variety. 

Read Full Post »

The last two

I’m doing a little blog housekeeping with my FOs from 2007.  These are my two last Soley Granny Square Hats of the half dozen I crocheted.  More of the same, I know, but I never did get tired of making them.  In case you didn’t read my earlier posts on the subject, I made these with scraps as part of a stash-busting goal.

   

 

I like that the granny hats look like they are levitating in the photos.  There’s a yarn ball under them for shape but it didn’t really show up in the picture. 

This green hat was made with RHSS in mint, white and orchid.  It was the very last hat I made and I got lazy with changing colors.  Weaving in the ends from the circle center was my least favorite part because it was easy to distort the spokes.  For that reason I used purple for the first two rows.  Compared to the other two hats I made with the circular start I think it would have looked better if I put a separate color for the first round.  It will have to do though, because I am not going back to fix it!

*That’s cool* a random fact

The Purple Earth Theory suggests that ancient microbes used retinal instead of chlorophyll on early Earth, making organisms appear purple instead of green.

Read Full Post »

Princess and the pea

This short stack of crochet squares will be mailed to various ROAKs and comfortghan requests on Crochetville.  (Click on the picture mosaic in the previous post to see a slide show of them all.)  I had a bunch of random half skeins of worsted acrylic yarn from way back when I first started all this yarn business in high school.  Just sorting though it all was interesting.  There were skeins I had no memory of acquiring and tail ends of yarn from my very first projects.     

So with a dozen or so partial skeins in a big wicker basket I made simple crochet blocks.   It was really relaxing to grab a color and crochet away.  I could fasten off and choose a new color at any moment and the yarn I had selected for demolition disappeared fast.  They’re not exceptionally delicate or precisely planned but I thoroughly enjoyed the process.  Now I’m ready to start the New Year with a slightly leaner stash.  Could a LYS be in my future?

*That’s cool* a random fact

Wood frogs living in the Arctic Circle can live for two weeks completely frozen solid using the glucose in their body as antifreeze.

Read Full Post »

Pay it forward

This is the center of a granny square I did recently for a ROAK on Crochetville.  The pattern is the Multi Stitch Granny available free from Dayna’s Crochet.  I really like her crochet square pattern selection.   There are slightly altered grannys, pretty lacy squares and solid textured designs.  Also, she has nice pictures of the samples.     

I’m not sure the purple flower petals were meant to overlap.  In the picture from Dayna’s Crochet site the petals are arranged next to each other but my flower won’t lay like that.  I like the effect though.  By overlapping the petals it adds an inconspicuous three dimensional texture. 

In other news, it’s time to announce my Pay It Forward blog.  I signed up for my PIF handmade gift at A Mess Put Together Nicely from Melissa.  She sounds very nice and when I left an error in my name on Crochetville she had to hunt me down.  (Sorry about that Melissa!)  I believe she has one more spot available so if there are already three comments here try snagging a spot on her PIF entry.  Below are the ‘official’ PIF rules: 

“I will send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment on my blog requesting to join this PIF exchange. I don’t know what that gift will be yet and you may not receive it tomorrow or next week, but you will receive it within 365 days, that is my promise! The only thing you have to do in return is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog.”

When you leave a comment on my blog for the PIF please leave your name on Crochetville, Craftster or Ravelry.  If you prefer you can e-mail me at thekidneybean@gmail.com or just leave me some way to contact you.

– Edit –  One PIF spot left!

Read Full Post »

The wrong side

I made a bunch of these headbands for quick Christmas presents.  The purple one is the Elizabeth headband from Nadia’s Crochet free elegant crochet headbands web page.  I used stash yarn for this but I’m pretty sure it is Red Heart Super Saver.  The headband was really quick project with worsted weight yarn.  Weaving in the ends probably took as much time as the actual project.  Plus, the wrong side has a bobble look to it that I like. 

The pink headband was from Family Circle Easy Crochet Spring 2007.  I used left over yarn from my Through Any Window Baby Blanket.  This one took about three times as much crocheting since it calls for a size F crochet hook and DK weight yarn.  However, the shells were a repeating pattern and it was pretty easy to memorize.

Now I’m off to frantically crochet more Christmas gifts.  I am seriously behind!

Read Full Post »

Gray v. grey

Good guess Christina, but nope, my mystery project isn’t felted. This is the Crochet Half Moon Shawl from Lion Brand in Jiffy. The color is Pearl Grey*. I wanted to make it in a darker color but (surprise, surprise) JoAnn only had six color choices and only two in the amount I needed.

I saw this pattern first in the Spring/Summer Lion Brand catalogand put it on the back burners as a project I would like to complete. (I’m sure there’s a snazzy acronym for this but it’s lost on me.) Anyway, then I saw the Half Moon Shawl CAL on Crochetville a few weeks ago, and suddenly I had to try it out. It’s amazing the motivation you can acquire from a CAL by the way. So somehow I thought that it only required three balls and now I am stuck. I need to buy another ball of Jiffy or frog it. I’ll probably keep it and pick up another ball when I get off island again, whenever that is.

There are a million different versions of this shawl now. The one I really wanted to make used Lion Brand Romance. I liked the lime color in the picture and the mohair-ish look, but Jiffy was on sale and Romance wasn’t carried at that store.

Also there is a version that uses a new yarn called Cupcake. I’m partial to bright colors so I’m excited to lay eyes on the actual yarn. It looks like a slightly sturdier version of Bernat Baby Coordinates Sweet Stripes, the yarn I used for the Chromium Star Blanket. They are both four ply and, from what I can tell, have the same spinning technique. I had trouble with the Sweet Stripes yarn splitting, but to be fair this was probably exacerbated by the fact that I frogged the blanket lots before settling on the structure. Say what you want about RHSS, but you can frog that acrylic a million times and still look fine incorporated in a FO.

In all, I liked this project. It’s an easy project, but not sc-square boring. I hear there are some corrections to the pattern, but I wasn’t looking and didn’t see any. Plus, it’s warm, kinda soft and pretty. I can’t complain.

*Was anyone else ever taught that gray is the correct spelling for the color? I noticed that Lion Brand spells it with an “E”. I even looked it up on Merriam-Webster. Although they don’t make and distinctions definition wise, they list grey as a variant and the definition is under gray. This whole gray/grey topic reminds me that the television show Grey’s Anatomy changed the “A” to an “E” from the book Gray’s Anatomy. (I didn’t notice this by the way. A Grey’s Anatomy enthusiast pointed it out.) I guess that it’s sort of like through and thru: same meaning, different spelling. Is it wrong to prefer gray over grey? Hmm.

*That’s cool* a random fact

The Chinese see a “toad in the moon” as opposed to the “man in the moon”. When there is an eclipse, folklore says that the toad is trying to swallow the moon.

Read Full Post »

Autumn chill

Time to bring out the fall scarves. The leaves are fiery red and the gas pedal is more tolerable with a blast of heat to the toes. It’s officially chilly.

Read Full Post »

Happy Birthday, Grandma

My maternal grandma turned 84!

She has introduced me to so many crafts and nursed my interest in yarns. I saw my first log cabin motif when she spread her knit afghan across the couch and pointed out the light and dark diagonals. (Such a novel idea to my eight-year-old self.)

This pillow is a beautiful example of her needlepoint. I just love the color scheme of bright and cheery pink with cool blue. Blues and yellows have been my favorite since I was little and the gold yarn is a really pretty accent color for this piece.

Thank you, Grandma for all the beautiful handcrafted gifts. There is love and warmth in every stitch.

Read Full Post »