Happy Halloween + free pattern :)

Hi! How are you all doing? Looking forward to Halloween this weekend? I've been really busy and stressed out these past weeks, but I've still managed to cook up a new free pattern for you! A crocheted and felted witch's cauldron, complete with lid :) 

It's a fairly simple pattern, and if you are just a little quicker than I am (which doesn't take much), you can easily make this up in a couple of evenings and have it done and filled with goodies by Monday :)

You find the pattern on my other blog. I would have posted it last night (to give you more time to make it), but I had trouble uploading the pictures, and in the end I had to go to bed. But now it's finally up (and added to Ravelry's database), and I can get on with my math homework. Have an assignment due Wednesday, and I'm clueless... So you probably won't hear more from me in about a week, when I might have another pattern ready. We'll see :)

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

Flowers, a new book & fancy gadgets

The third craft book I was waiting for arrived in the mail yesterday :)

200 crochet blocks by Jan Eaton. It looks like a good book, there are lots of pretty squares with varying levels of difficulty. I think I'll use some of the patterns for my 2010 block-a-month afghan. The only thing that disappoints is that there isn't actually 200 different squares in the book, only about 130. The first section of the book has 100 squares, but the second part has about 30, with additional color variations that for some reason count as different squares...

I have made a number of flowers from Crochet Bouquet, and I naturally picked one of the advanced patterns to start with, the Poppy:

This was a lot of work, with about a million ends to weave in at the end, but it's a very pretty flower. My favorite in the book :) Then I made a pretty yellow rose:

I decided to felt it, but when it came out of the washing machine it had turned into a horrible green! 

I can swear the jeans had been washed thousand times before and should not do this :/

The other day I realized that I really needed a 4.5mm crochet hook, so onto the internet I went looking for one, because none of the craft stores nearby had one. I ordered a Clover hook from the same place as the last ones, and then I came across this thing:

It's a yarn-cutting thingy :) It's very practical, I don't have to carry scissors around with me everywhere I go (I'm not even sure it that's entirely legal), and there's no risk of cutting my fingers if I have to rummage around in my bag to find it. Unless you have very long fingernails you can not reach the razor blade in the middle:

I put the pendant on a green leather string and wear it around my neck as a regular necklace because I think it's pretty :)

Happy Paddy's Day :)

Not a holiday I normally celebrate, since I'm neither Irish nor Catholic, but I take it as a good reason (or excuse, if you will) to drink lots of beer and make green stuff :) Not that I actually drink beer, I leave that to some other creatures in this house... By the way, dyeing beer green with food coloring makes the beer flat and according to my boyfriend also makes it taste funny :/

I've crocheted a leafy scarf for Piggen, and a Leprechaun top hat for Iggy.  Pattern for the hat is here, and the leafy scarf pattern will be posted later :)

The hat turned out to be a bit floppy, so I felted it.

The scarf was originally intended for Bollan, but it looked more like hair than a scarf, so I gave it to Piggen instead :) It can also be used as a really big bracelet :p

I have even made cupcakes for this occasion! Like the rest of my baking, they're not pretty, but they are at least tasty :) And green! Pistachio and yoghurt cupcakes with green sugar frosting. Well, almost green.. Almost half a bottle of food coloring and all I got was this horrible minty green :/

The weird shape is because I crammed too many cakes onto one tray, and then I overfilled the cups because I wanted to use all the batter instead of making a second tray... I never pays off to be lazy :/ Anyway, in the oven the batter of course rose over the cups, and when finished they looked like this:

Yay, am I a baker or what...

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...

Felted granny square coasters

Finally done and sent in the mail today :) The original plan for the colors failed, as I ran out of black/gray yarn sooner than expected, so I unraveled the final round of the coaster I'd finished and added a row of white instead.

Although they are not similar, I think they came out OK. My boyfriend agreed, and into the washing machine they went. After felting they turned out to be the perfect size :)

New patterns!

Just wanted to let you know that I have now added the patterns for these two small projects to my pattern blog :)

A knitted Christmas tree cone and a crocheted napkin ring, both felted.

Crocheted spiral coasters

This idea I actually got from a nice lady on Ravelry, who commented on my original spiral thing and said the pattern could work as felted coasters. So thank you for that tip :) I used a little bit thicker yarn and a 5.5mm hook (3.75mm on the original). They didn't come out as big as I'd hoped, so I felted them a bit carefully so they wouldn't become too small. Our washing machine is good at felting stuff :)

Anyway, here they are, before and after felting:

More presents (family, look away!)

The orange scarf is finally finished! It took a while, but I got there in the end :) Unfortunately it felted a lot more than I expected, but I have stretched it a little and I hope it's not too short. I fear it will look more like a bow-tie than a scarf... My boyfriend has tried it on, but I'm not sure how his sister wears her scarves, so I guess we'll have to wait and see.

I have two new projects, both are crocheted and felted coaster sets. Granny squares for my in-laws, hopefully the coasters will shrink a lot, because I think they're too big. It's supposed to be a set of six , but I fear I will run out of gray yarn... Maybe I'll make the other three with opposite colors so I won't have to buy a new ball of yarn. I'm all out of money, so shopping is out of the question.

For my oldest cousin and her boyfriend I plan to make coasters from the spiral shell I posted about earlier, four or six coasters in different shades of brown and white. So far I have made two, I hope come out ok after felting.

On the whole I feel like I've been good at using what I have this year, I haven't bought too much yarn or other craft stuff to make presents or calendar projects. If I can keep it up maybe I can save up some money to go to Egypt and celebrate Christmas next year :)

A very huggable hedgehog :)

Today this adorable little guy showed up at our house:

He really should be hibernating this time of year, but for some reason he decided to visit me instead :) I'm very happy he did, although I don't think I'll have much time to take care of him just yet. Not to worry, though, The Great Boll has promised to look after him while I study for my exams :) I'm sure they will be best friends in no time!

The pattern is from Fiber Trends, designed by Debbie Radtke. It is really easy to knit (garter stitch all the way!), but you need to keep careful track of your rows. I made many mistakes with this one, but the great thing about felting is that it hides all such small mistakes :)

By the way, it takes quite a lot of stuffing for these hedgies, this 225gram bag of fine polyester stuffing was barely touched when I started! I think the next hedgies I make will have to be a lot smaller to save stuffing and money :)

Crocheted scarf and Tunisian crochet purse

Really pleased with myself today, I actually finished two projects without starting a new one in between! I should have read 20 pages about ancient Indian literature, but I will catch up tomorrow instead.. Anyway, two Christmas presents down, a few more to go :) I plan to make a lot of the Christmas presents, as I don't have a lot of money, and this year no one seems to want anything. Home made stuff is always a hit :)

The crocheted scarf I started about five days ago is now hanging to dry and smells really awful. I always forget how bad wet wool smells, it surprises me just as much every time I pull something out of the washing machine... Here is how it turned out:

It is symmetrical, so it's twice as long as this and identical stripes on the other end...

As I might have mentioned earlier when I tried out different techniques in Tunisian crochet, I feared that the 3-color change could be addictive. It was. I picked out some green yarn and started crocheting, not really knowing what I wanted to make. It turned out to be a purse, which I think will work well as a case/purse for my grandmother's glasses. Green is really her color. I'm quite happy with the button I found, it's cute. I think maybe I got it from my grandmother's collection, so now she'll get it back :p I'm worried the case is a little big, though, but we'll just have to wait and see.

Finally I've started a pair of wristwarmers for my youngest cousin, from this pattern by Crochet Kitten, in wool and mohair like the scarf (and they will be felted, even if that's not in the pattern). The one I've started looks like it will be too small, so I'll have to try again tomorrow...