Craftiness of 2011 :)

First of all, let me wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! I know I'm a little late, but we've had our family visiting for Christmas, and after they all left, I kind of collapsed and haven't done anything productive for days. But I'm back now, rested and ready for the new year ahead. Will have lots of studying to do this spring (taking an extra class to make up for skipping one this fall), but hopefully I'll be able to blog a little as well :)

To make up for neglecting my blog the past months, here is a summary of the craftiness I did last year :) I didn't think I'd accomplished much, but looking back, I realize that I've done quite a lot! Starting with my own designs in chronological order:

Nesting Love Birds, a free pattern for Valentine's Day.

Three Cute Little Bear Dudes, all made after the original bear pattern (Forest Dwellers vol.1)

Cute Little Dudes - Forest Dwellers vol.4. All birds :)

Cute Little Dudes - Alien Invaders.

In April I got a smart phone, so I knitted a protective purse for it as soon as I could. Important not to scratch the touch screen! :)

Great Big Wasp.

Great Big Aphid.

Finally got round to finishing the Great Big (male) Firefly (to the left). Sorry about the pale picture, I'll never take photos in bright sunlight again! No pattern yet...

Great Big Crane Fly. Longest bug legs ever! Pattern will be done soon, I promise :)

My aunt asked me to make two little bugs for her, so I made these. Mini versions of the Great Big ones. I'm working on the patterns, but I have to remake them to get proper pictures. Hopefully the patterns will be done before Easter :)

Cute Little Dudes - Trick or Treat! vol.1. I had another set planned, but ran out of time (too much school work!). Will save the second set for next Halloween :)

A friend of mine wanted me to make a great big dragon that he could give to a kid for his birthday, so I made this. It's huge! Arms and legs are jointed. I was told the kid's birthday was in October, so I rushed to finish it, but then it turned out the day was not until November. Oh well. At least the kid was happy. From what I heard, the dragon was being fed dinner as soon as it arrived. That's a good sign, right?

Crocheted and felted witch's cauldron, a free pattern for Halloween. I had originally planned to make up lots of creepy stuff to put in it (eyeballs, severed fingers, bat wings, etc.), but once again I ran out of time. Will save the ideas for next time :)

As a Christmas present, I made this heart (from my free heart pattern) that I filled with nice smelling things and put in a pretty bowl with some pretty white stones.

And the very last thing I finished last year was a remake of the Kitty Princess, the first pattern I ever made and published. Gave it to a cousin for Christmas. I am in the process of rewriting the pattern and adding new photos, and hopeully it'll be done before school starts in about two weeks :)

So. That was all of my designs. I did some other things too, but a lot of the projects I started last year are still in progress, so I have no pictures to show you... I will post the few that I have, though :) Again, in chronological order:

In the beginning of January I took out Rose Langlitz's book Tasty Crochet and started crocheting some food. I was obsessed for a while, but I only managed to complete two things, a pear and a salami/lettuce sandwich:

I have more half-finished food items lying around, but no pictures... 

After that I knitted a new bag for my rpg dice, the Dice Bag of Doom! Pattern free for download on Ravelry.

My next obsession was bugs, as Lesley Stanfield's new book came out, 75 birds, butterflies & beautiful beasties. I made a black slug, plus some butterflies and caterpillars that I pinned to a cork board:

Then I moved on to Hansi Singh's bugs. I started with a praying mantis that never got finished, but I made earthworms, a sea slug, Kraken (giant squid) and a Blackdevil anglerfish:

 

 

Again, I have lots of WiPs that hopefully some day will be done. They are just too pretty to be stashed away in a bag...

During the summer I got started on June Gilbank's dinosaurs. I think I've started about five of them, but none are done yet. It's just silly, really. On one (the Parasaurolophus), all that remains is sewing on one last leg! Sigh. I think I have an aversion against finishing things :/

I found this really cool knitting pattern on Ravelry, of a dancing goddess figure:

The pattern itself is very simple (knit in the round, and it consists of only two parts, so very little sewing is required), but I wasn't quite happy with my knitting (uneven stitches and a few holes - I'm no good at knitting in the round on double-pointed needles!), so I decided to felt it. Unfortunately I felted it after stuffing, so it almost didn't felt at all. It just became sort of lumpy and disproportionate. I wanted to make more of these, but I'll have to do it differently next time.

The last project I finished last year (not counting the Christmas presents) was this little dice bag:

The pattern is Deep Sea Flower Dice Bag, found HERE. Well, to be honest, it isn't actually 100% finished, since I haven't made the cord yet. I just got so tired of knitting with that stupid yarn that has absolutely NO stretch what so ever, I just tied it with a piece of yarn to be done with it. Love the pattern and the bag, though. Plan to make more some time, when I can get my hands on some lovely multi-colored Noro, which the pattern is designed for.

And that was all. Whew! Longest post ever... (It's taken over four hours to write!) Well. My plan now is to finish the patterns for the things I made last year, preferably as soon as possible. I'll have a lot less time once school starts, and I think that if I don't finish them now, I probably never will. So one of my new year's resolutions is to finish all my Bugs, Dudes and any other patterns before I start any new ones. Have lots of projects going right now, but no new Bugs or Dudes before the others are done. Period. Will try to post again soon :)

Felted bags

Two felted Tunisian crochet purses:

Both are made up of one long piece and sewn/crocheted together at the sides.  I used a 6mm hook for the bags and 8mm for the handles. I planned on felting them just a little, but they felted a lot anyway and came out tiny, almost the right size for Bollan to have her stuff in :)

I have also made this Patchwork bag from a free pattern by Lion Brand:

This was not supposed to be felted, but I did, and I don't know how I feel about the result. I forgot how well this yarn felts (Gjestal Cortina), and it also came out a lot smaller than intended. I crocheted the squares in hdc instead of sc to save time, and then I made a sc edge around the top of the bag in brown:

I made the handle a bit longer than in the pattern, and I decorated the ends with a few cross stitches in green and purple:

But after felting the stitches looked like un-even blobs. Pretty pointless...

My boyfriend thinks the bag looks great, though, he even stated that if he'd been a girl, he would love it :p

Black & blue

I have made another felted granny square pillow cover:

This is just one big square with an extra edge. Before felting it measured 50x50cm, now it's 40x40cm. Before felting:

The best part of this project was that I crocheted over ALL the ends as I went :) Look, no ends to weave in!

Along with the pillow cover I felted these two dice bags with similar colors:

Just two more bags to go, and all eight are done! Woohoo :D

April squares & other squares

Today is April 1st, but as far as I know I haven't been fooled yet :p The patterns for this month's squares is posted on Ravelry, the 6'' pattern is Friend Family Square. It looks a little complicated, I hope I can shrink the square down to 4 inches...

A while ago I found a picture of an afghan (but I can't remember where) that I liked, and the pattern seemed simple enough for me to make something similar, and I made up these squares:

If you are interested I have written a pattern/tutorial for these squares, you can find it HERE. I made nine squares and crocheted them together by slip stitching from the back, and crocheting in the back loops only, which I think makes a neat finishing. Then I added three rounds of edge around the whole thing and felted it in the washing machine. 

Along with the pillow cover I also felted these granny square bags, which have been finished for months, just waiting to be felted. The pattern for the bags is HERE.

The past month or so I have been working on the biggest project I've ever started, but it's already almost half-finished :) I wanted to make a granny square blanket that looks like a tetris screenshot, but now that it's half-done it's already the size of a regular blanket, so I guess it will turn into a bedspread instead. It's huge!

I used an extra large hook (10mm) because I planned on felting the blanket, but I've realized that it will be too big to put in our washing machine... I have to make two halves and felt them separately and stitch them together afterwards, and then I can only hope it will never have to be washed again :p

Flu & crochet...

In spite of my great plans of finishing projects I have done very little since my last post. I've been sick since I had the swineflu vaccine on Wednesday. Although I feel better now my shoulder is still pretty sore from the shot, and I have no energy to do much crafting. I have found that when I'm sick amigurumi takes too much concentrating and is harder on my hands than "regular" crochet, so I've mostly been making granny squares. The purple wrist warmers are finished, though, and the purple granny square bag was felted along with them. All the other bags are crocheted, just need to be felted :)

I hate what the flash does to the colors, but there's very little light in our apartment and daylight is pretty hard to come by these days, so without it the pictures would just be a big blur :/

The groundhog has grown a little (the front legs are made but not yet attached), but I've fallen a bit behind on the secret crochet-along, which is now almost over. I have only managed to do the first four parts (head, hat, legs & body):

Not very happy with the girl's backside, it's butt-ugly (pun intended), so I was kind of hoping for a dress that would cover up her "cellulites", but she's going to have a snowflake dress, so I guess I'll only have to show her from the front when she's finished :p Instead of working more on the amis I've started the Block-a-month cal on Ravelry, and these are the squares I've made so far:

The bottom squares are the 6 inch Little Dahlia square pattern for January. They aren't anywhere near 6 inches, though, more like 4. Not sure what I'm doing wrong, I use the hook size (5mm) and yarn weight that the pattern recommends, but they just come out too small. The top squares are made from this pattern from last year's crochet-along (March), and even though the pattern suggested the same yarn weight and hook as the first, they actually would be bigger, so I had to make some changes to get them the same size. *sigh* I don't get it... Anyway, as long as I can stick to the same size I guess I'll be okay :) And again, the flash messes with the colors. That yellow-looking color is actually green...

Ten thousand projects!

Well, it certainly feels like it sometimes... In addition to the two (possibly three) crochet-alongs, I have several other projects going, all of which I hope to finish before school starts for real next week.

I've actually been working these color pencil holders since since Christmas, from a pattern by Amber Jolly (bought on Etsy, A. Jolly Shop). The red one is crocheted with double strands of yarn and a 4mm hook. What's strange is that I started the red one first, but only the blue is finished... The blue pencil is crocheted with thinner yarn and 3.75mm hook, and is perfect for crochet hooks :) I made a few changes in the pattern and stiffened the pencil with a cardboard roll (the ones in the middle of toilet paper or kitchen paper towels).

The next project I need to finish are these knitted wristwarmers for my mother. She used to have a similar pair, but she lost them, so now I'm making her new ones for her birthday. They only need to be felted, but I plan to make an owlet keychain in matching colors, so the present isn't ready to send just yet.

I crocheted this little bag to keep my RPG dice in, but it's too small for me, since it only holds one standard set of 7. The pattern is added to my other blog :) Please contact me if you find any errors, I had some trouble making this up (I'm not used to joining rounds of single crochet), even though I believe the pattern should be correct.

Finally I've been exploring the world of granny squares again :) I wanted to make a bigger bag for my dice, and I came up with a pattern, which is now also posted on my pattern blog, along with a tutorial for a basic granny square. The bags are really simple, if you know how to make granny squares you can do this without a pattern, but I have written it down anyway :) A lady on Ravelry commented on these bags and said she'd use them as soap bags, which of course gave me a new idea... Maybe, if I find the time and the money later this semester, I'll give soap-making a try. I mean, if I could make my own soap and sell them in these bags... They would be great as gifts, too :)

After the first two granny square bags I decided to make some in pure wool for felting. The colors are inspired by the Warhammer roleplaying game, where there are eight different schools of magic with corresponding colors (life/green, death/purple, shadow/gray, amber/brown, sky/blue, fire/orange, alchemy/gold, light/white). That means eight bags, five of which are now made (the blue is not on the picture). I have only felted one of them, though, I want to wash them separately in case the colors bleed. I will probably add photos as the bags are finished :)