Halloween weekend

We spent the weekend at Zach's brother's house in Athens, OH. We have gone every year for the annual Halloween block party. Good times. I will post pictures when I get them. Over the weekend, I did some work on my donation for God's Tiny Angels which you can see in the above picture. They are a charity here in Huntington that donates handmade (and bought) items to maternity wards and NICU's around the country. With my Knifty Knitter, I am a wiz at baby hats, so I spent the weekend making them with leftover yarn. I also picked up some yarn on sale at Joanns and have enough to make 6 baby blankets. Yesterday I found a pattern for baby slippers made out of fleece. I had a pretty big piece of white fleece left over (there was 1/2 a yard left after she measured out the piece I wanted, so she offered it to me at half price) I have gotten two pairs done and have pieces cut out for about 7 more pairs. They take me a while because I have to sew up the soles by hand because they are so small (I started with the preemie size). I need to get these sent off and start concentrating on two certain Christmas presents that are going to take a while.

Person in sheep's clothing...eventually

So I have never used wool to knit or crochet anything. I had always been worried that I wouldn't be able to wear what I made since my skin is sensitive. I don't break out, but I get all red and splotchy and wool is really itchy to me. But I thought maybe I could try felting to add embellishments to items with a bit of a softer touch. So I used a coupon and bought some wool (I feel better using a coupon on something I'm not sure I'm gonna like). Well let me back up a step or two. While looking at how to felt wool, I found articles about dying wool with Kool-aid. It seemed easy. When I was out buying the wool, I couldn't figure out what color to get, especially since I didn't know how it was going to work out. I remembered the Kool-aid dying technique and decided to get a skein of white and some Kool-aid and make it whatever color I wanted. The pictures above are my attempts. The little ball of pink-ish wool was dyed with Black Cherry. The green, white and pink striped was done with two bowls, one with Lemon-Lime and one with Black Cherry. I was hoping it would be more Christmasy, but it turned out very bright. I like it. The blue was done with Berry Blue. A fantastic color. And the purple-pink concoction was done by handpainting Grape and Pink Lemonade in a pinwheel fashion. The Grape was a bit strong and bled into the Pink Lemonade, but it turned out very tye-dyed looking. Now I just have to figure out what to use all this yarn for. I crocheted up a small flower with the Black Cherry. I am gonna felt it tonight and see how it works.

Articles I am using on this quest:
http://tinyurl.com/3565nv The PDF from Knitpicks.com about hand felting
http://tinyurl.com/hzep9 Knitty.com article on Kool-aid dying

Busy Weekend

So, I did run off to A.C. Moore to buy more yarn. Got all of these lovelies, and a few non-yarny things for less than 10 dollars. Now what is great about that is, one ball of the ModaDea Kickx is normally $10.99. Yay! Now, what should I do with them? The yarn pile has expanded to another box. The tote is for full skeins and the box holds yarn that has been used then wound into a ball.
Also finished my handwarmers. Had to crochet them. My Knifty Knitters are too big of a gauge. **wishes it was 5 weeks later, so new loom would be here** I wrote my own pattern for these so check out my pattern link for it.
I had yarn left over from my hat and handwarmers, and from the baby blanket I was working on. So I made a few extra items to go with the blanket. I love baby shoes. They are so adorable. Maybe it is because I love adult shoes so much. Hmmm...

A small project note. I had been working on a Gryffindor Illusion scarf. Well, my Knifty Knitter gauge is making it huge. I have gotten through two letters and it is already 12" across and 16" long. So I am adjusting. Instead of a scarf, I am making a blanket. I will work up patterns for all the house names. Make them up and stitch together. I'm sure if you used a smaller gauge loom with one strand of yarn, it would turn out scarf sized. But I don't want to rip out what I have done. As soon as I get the charts worked out I will put them up. **Runs off to buy lots of yarn in house colors**

New Store!!!

Well, it is new to me. I found a store in Huntington, WV called Knit N' Hook. http://www.knitandhook.com/ They are super nice and friendly. So many pretty things that I wanted. I went during my lunch break the other day. I had planned on being good, but I found yarn I couldn't resist (duh). Chunky Misti Alpaca in light pink and black. Sooooooo soft. I decided, since it was a bit on the pricy side, that I would be making my winter hat and scarf out of it. The hat is done. I love the Knifty Knitter. So fast. I used the pattern at the ProvoCraft website for the rib stitch hat. http://tinyurl.com/gn2y7 I did mine a bit different. I did the first part for 12 rows, made a brim then switch the colors so the opposite color was on the outside. I think it turned out great.

Close up of the switch over.

Also, just found out that a bunch of speciality yarn is on sale at my AC Moore. **runs off to buy more yarn she doesn't need**

**comes back** I forgot to mention that I ordered a new loom. http://www.decoraccentsinc.com/ Over at DA Looms. I ordered the Extra Small Gauge Wonderloom. And now the waiting begins...should I start stocking up on sock yarn now? Yeah, I think so too.

Christmas Presents Anyone?

I am now taking requests from friends and family for Christmas presents. Some of your stuff is already in progress. So if you don't get what you ask for, it is cause I had a better idea. :)

I found some Bloo yarn

I found the perfect yarn. Lion Brand Wool-Ease in Sky Blue. Very blue and very chunky. I used Red Heart supersaver yarn in white and black for the eyes and details. Crocheted circles for the eyes and embroidered on the pupils and mouth. I am working on getting the pattern typed up. Hope I don't get in trouble for it, since it is a copyrighted character. Meh, I don't plan on making money off of it. If you look at the post below, I think I did a pretty good job.




Another project I am working on. Baby blanket (a gift for someone). Making 2 panels of 70 rows each on the blue KK with the zig zag wrap stitch. I found this yarn (can't remember what it is, super soft and chunky though) at Michaels for $1. I bought them out. I am on my third skein of it. I should have enough left over for matching hat and booties and still have a skein left. Fluffy scarf land, here I come. The baby isn't due for a while, but I want to get it off the loom so I can start my Gryffindor Cardigan. Hopefully I'll get that finished before Halloween.

Look Ma'! No Hair!

Well, I still have hair. But I have a lot less of it now. I have been wanting to do this since...August of 2006. I started growing it out for my wedding and kept it long so I could do something cool with it at Becca's wedding. It was a few inches below my shoulders. Much better now.






Proof that cats and dogs can get along. Although it seems only in the circumstances where there is one patch of sun in the living room and there is room for both of them. Thankfully my camera was sitting next to me. This opportunity only lasted about 5 minutes before the cat got bored.





Since this is a craft blog, I suppose I'll get to the crafty part. A little preview of a gift for someone. Isn't the water bottle a fabulous model?


If I can find yarn in this shade of Bloo **snicker** (it's funny cause the yarn needs to be blue and his name is Bloo) I plan on making a hat. Not sure if the eyes will be knit in or if I will attach felt eyes. Like I said, first I have to find the right color.

Fall is upon us

Finally it is cold again. And we have pumpkins to carve for Halloween. Both inspired me to work on these next pieces

First, a cute little pumpkin. The pattern said to make any size pumpkin you wanted and then use the stem pattern. I made a small one first to make sure it looks ok. Well the stem turned out way too huge. The next pumpkin will be bigger.





I am very excited about this project. I was trolling about the internet looking for some interesting patterns and I found http://thestormmoon.blogspot.com/2007/05/dark-mark-illusion-scarf-pattern.html A pattern for a scarf with the Dark Mark (Harry Potter reference) on it. The cool part was it is an illusion scarf. Head on, the scarf will look like small stripes of each color. But when viewed from an angle, the image will appear. Well, since I can now knit at a decent rate, I wanted to try it. But I prefer Gryffindor to Slytherin/Voldemort anyday. I couldn't think of a pattern to put on the scarf. I thought about a Heraldic Lion in Gryffindor colors, but I wanted to start small and easy. So I am just spelling out Gryffindor. So I made my own chart, figured out how to do it on a Knifty Knitter and away I went. The bad part is you can't really see the pattern as you work on the KK unless you work on a long loom and mine was in use. So to make sure it was working, I pulled the piece off the loom last night. And look at that!!! You can see a G. I wish I had taken a straight on picture so you could see the stripes. I'll wait until I'm further along, cause I don't want to take that off again. As soon as I get it worked up, I will put the pattern up on here for all you Gryffindor fans.

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I love Harry Potter

I adore Harry Potter. I attend all the movies in costume, as well as the last couple book releases. It has been my Halloween Costume for three years. I attend Hogwarts Online http://www.hol.org.uk/ And here are some of my favorite HP crafts.


My Hogwarts school robe with prefect pin. I have somehow managed not to get a picture of myself in this costume. I promise I will remedy that this Halloween. Maybe I can knifty knit myself a new sweater to go with it.






















My Skiving Snackbox and chocolate frogs. Which as you can tell from the second picture, was a huge hit at the book release. I used plain white crayon boxes from AC Moore. I got the Skiving Snackbox label from The Leaky Cauldron website and I made the chocolate frog label. The actual chocolates were made using Wilton Candy Melts. For the frogs, I used a frog mold and regular milk chocolate. For the skiving snackbox, I had a bunch of left over colors and used a bug mold and did half the mold in one color and half in another.

Every good Gryffindor must have a S.P.E.W. badge and a "Weasely is our King" badge. I can't find my nice prefect badge.

And of course you have to have school books. I took regular writing notebooks (the bound, but not spiral types) and painted them. Then decoupaged on pictures. latin text, jars of herbs, potions bottles, etc. The quill, I took apart several pens and removed the writing part with the ink. I cut off the end of several feathers with a large ?stem?. I shoved the pen up into the feather and sealed with a hot glue gun. Ta da! Magical self inking quills.

First Blog Post

My dog has a blog, so I figured it was high time I got one too. But what could I post about? My Craftiness!!! I knit, crochet, cross stitch, scrapbook, sewing and most other crafty type activities. If I don't do it, I'll try it.

For the most part right now, my posts will consist of stuff I've made. Once I get caught up (and start on some new stuff) I'll post about those. I will try to add links to patterns that I can. A lot of times, I start with a pattern and head off into a tangent. So if I do that, I'll try to remember what I've changed.

The Knifty Knitter

I recently discovered the Knifty Knitter. I got an AC Moore (a craft store) gift card as a gift and was wondering what to get. After wandering the yarn section I decided to buy a Knifty Knitter. I had always wanted to try them, but never wanted to spend money on something I wasn't sure I'd like. Boy, I was missing out. I love these things. The best part is, I used to use this technique when I was little. I had a little red spool with nails stuck into it and I would make cords of yarn for my Nana. Same principle, much more versitile equipment. I have had them since Wednesday (10/3/07) and have already made 2 baby hats, 2 grown-up hats, 2 scarves and a pair of slippers. I suck at knitting. I learned to crochet first and two needles just throws me off. But here are some of the great things I have made:

This is for my mom. I had been working on a similar hat (knitting) for like a year. This took me two hours, and only because there was something good on tv. But it is just a basic hat. I used two strands (1 fun fur and 1 of some white yarn I had laying around) knit together for the cuff and switched to a red boucle yarn. Yay for a Christmas present she has been waiting for, like forever. Maybe she'll get a matching scarf this year.

I actually made three of these slippers. The first one I made, was huge. I used a pattern that was written for one of the speciality sock looms. The blue Knifty Knitter has a much bigger gauge. The second slipper turned out much better after a bit of adjustment. So in all I changed the loom, number of stitches, the yarn, and in the end the whole technique of the heel and strap. I think that gets me free of any copyright stuff. But I got the original pattern here http://decoraccentsinc.com/mjparkers_instructions.html
This is for my friend, Becca. She is getting her PhD in Molecular Medicine, or as I like to call it Curing Cancer 101. She has done a lot of research with breast cancer so I whole heartedly support her. I think about her the entire month of October when everything turns pink for Breast Cancer Awareness month. It is one thing that companies can make me do to buy products; turn it pink and donate some of the procedes to breast cancer awareness.

Super simple baby hats. NOT FOR ME!!! I was working on these at work and when people asked what I was working on, I would get some interesting looks. No babies here. Two people in the office who are having babies. All for them.

Introducing the Cast of Characters

Ashes in the old yarn box.
This is Ashes. She is our roommate Steven's cat. Her hobbies include giving balls of yarn to Heidi to unravel and chewing through yarn. She got to model the hat after playing in the old yarn tote and trying to chew up some yarn. Heidi with Zach (the husband)
This is Heidi salivating over the balls of yarn. She loves nothing better then unraveling balls of yarn. I have had to switch to keeping my projects in plastic totes because she knows how to work the zipper of my old bag. I came home from shopping to find about 5 balls of yarn unraveled around all of our living room furniture.
That is Zach and my wedding picture. November 18th equals one year.

I thought I would start out with some older stuff

These are two stuffed animals I've done. They are both crocheted and I found the patterns in books.

Eeyore was for my husband. He is done in Caron Simply Soft and some Lion Brand for the hair. He is very soft and snuggly.


Tenderheart Bear is for me. The best part about making a character that should be recognizable is when people actually do recognize them.