Crafty DOA Version 2.0

 Here's the new Crafty DOA Logo.  I've changed a few of the elements.  There was this wierd thing going on with the previous post about the logo where (for me) droves of people were looking at the dang thing.  Since we all know nobody read this S*&^, if there's some older post picking up speed, something is amiss.

Hmmm the Crafty DOA is hard to see.  Will fix on the next version.

 I've been actively crafting!  I'm doing a pink blanket with the squares bordered in pastel. Pink is my favorite, plus I have, no lie, an entire closet of pink yarn.  I placed them on an old hairpin lace blanket I made years ago for added charm.

 

Also on the hook is more yarn I'm trying to use up, that features a few varieties of Caron Baby Cakes Yarn.  I've got them set so you see how the colors unspool as you go, and I'm using a sea green for the join and borders.

 

 

I've been itching to do some embroidery for awhile, and this is the project I chose to come back to.  I got frustrated because the thread kept getting knotted up and I couldn't work on it at all.  The material is very thin, which doesn't help.  I think they are supposed to be tea towels, but I can't imagine they would dry a thing.  Still, the stitches are simple and I have a love of Mason Jars.  I tried working the letters this morning (b and e) with a short length of thread, pulling carefully, and I think it will be fine.  At least it is a start on the craft.

Crafting 2025: Bib

 There’s nothing like the New Year to inspire ideas for new craft projects and to think dreamy thoughts of finishing works long in progress.

This should be simple, right? I’m doing the bib in green on the package in pink instead, and without the tricky appliqué dog head. Adorable.

I Love Pink Blanket Part 3

I meant to have at least two new squares done for this week, but no luck.  I have started my fourth color : Red Heart With Love Sweet Pink.  You can't tell here just how soft the color is, but it is sweet indeed. Next week more progress!

 

 

When It Takes 10 Tries To Get The Pattern Right

I mark and print out many patterns. Eventually, I try out some with new stitches that are slightly above my pay grade skill wise. Normally I’d give up, if there's too much trouble getting a good start, but sometimes, I like the pattern so much, I just keep trying. 

In the case of Red Heart Yarns I Love Pink Blanket, I was sure I could master the stitch, after watching several YouTube videos demonstrating the Crossed Double Crochet stitch, which the pattern uses. I knew I had yarn colors that would look nice with it. 

As it turned out, all of the videos have you working this stitch into another double crochet stitch. After several tries, I thought I had it right using a test swatch with Red Heart Retro Stripes Yarn.

Oops. Reading the pattern carefully, and writing it out longhand without the pattern abbreviations, I saw the Double Cross Stitch here is worked into a Space, not a stitch.

Try, try again, and in Baby Pink, I now have the pattern down.

The next step was to dig through my massive yarn stash for the required three pink shades plus a border color, which would never have been black as in the original.

Look at all of those pretty pinks!  Red Heart Super Saver Jazzy is a great choice for the border. It incorporates several of the shades I have.  Seeing all of these together, I want to use them all.  If I do two squares of each shade I have, I'm just one skein short of the sixteen squares.  Unless! I dug through a third time and I have a Caron One Pounder in Soft Pink that is absolutely compatible with the Super Saver Yarn.  Now I can do 2 squares of each of eight colors.  So mathematical!

I have more fun than you do, just sayin'.

https://www.yarnspirations.com/red-heart-i-love-pink-blanket/RHC0502-018295M.html

 

 

My Pink Shades:

Red Heart Super Saver

Baby Pink

Perfect Pink

Light Raspberry

Petal Pink

Shocking Pink

Pretty 'N Pink

Red Heart With Love 

Sweet Pink

 

Red Heart Super Saver Ombre 

Jazzy

Caron One Pounder

Soft Pink

Fleece No Sew Blanket, My First

 Over the holidays I finally managed to craft a flannel, no sew blanket.  I've always run to my sister and brother in law to "help" me do these, and I tried again this year, but it just didn't work out for them to help.

I made a few mistakes, mostly in the length of the strips as I cut them, but it turned out really nice, I thought.  Now I can do more.  Look at those tidy ties. This one's not for me, by the way, not my colors. 

Hand Quilting

I have far more crafts and materials going than anyone could ever use up.  I don't need to know another craft, really I don't, and I haven't an inch of space for anymore craft materials of any kind.

However, in the back of my mind is the desire to make one, just one! Patchwork quilt. I love the idea of using squares of cloth from clothes that just don't work anymore, just a nice reminder via some pretty scrap of material.

As we know, the sewing machine and I are not on friendly terms.  There are books stacked in front of it.  Not so convenient.  Here is the most beautiful quilt I've ever seen, made by our children's librarian for me to take to chemo back in the day.  Machine sewn by someone who is a fine seamstress.  Note the edge, and all the flowers playing to my love of the garden.

I want to put my own quilt together by hand.  I love hand sewing.

If you search for Hand Quilting, you'll get a bunch of sites telling you how to stitch your squares together by machine.  Bonk!

Recently, I was looking for something else and came across the term Hand Piecing.  Good lord, a ton of places telling you how to, from the very beginning, cut your squares and sew them together by hand.   

How is the common ordinary non-sewing fool supposed to think to look up hand piecing instead of hand quilting?   By the way, Hand Quilting appears to solely refer to those bumpy little patterns you can make by outlining shapes on your quilt.

I sort of hoped to have cut some squares for this post, but it has been a busy month and I've been head over heels for crochet.  Writing this has made me want to give that patchwork a try.

I have this cute shirt which doesn't fit that I thought would make charming squares.

Something possesses me every once in awhile to buy those little packs of fabric.  I told myself they'd be good to practice my machine sewing skills on, but I can't bring myself to ruin them.

Something's got to give, right?

Here are some wonderful places to learn the basics of Hand Piecing (secretly to you and I Hand Quilting, because we would be making a quilt by hand, doh.)


https://www.cloverandviolet.com/2013/07/erin-why-not-sew-quilts-season-by-hand-hand-piecing-traditional-quilt-blocks.html


http://www.charmaboutyou.com/2016/01/hand-piecing-quilt.html


https://www.jinnybeyer.com/quilting-with-jinny/tips-lessons/sub-cat.cfm?category=Hand%20Piecing


http://blog.patsloan.com/2013/07/pat-sloan-hand-piecing-made-simple.html


https://www.roserushbrooke.com/how-to-hand-piece-1.html

Crafting Season

I've decided it's crafting season, officially. I work on my craft projects much more in fall and winter, once gardening season is over and it becomes less beautiful outside.  I made a To Do List for my crafting this morning.  Here it is.

A Decade In The Making Afghan Notes (Cue Zarathustra Music)

I'm on the second row of the edging on my decade long afghan effort.  It really is pretty.  I'm pleased that the edging turned out to be simple.  I'm doing the edging while I watch tv in the evening.  There are eleven rows of edge in the pattern!  We'll see how long my balls of black yarn hold out, it could be fewer rows if I run out as we go.

It's really nice and warm on my lap as I work, so I know it will be a nice light snuggly afghan as winter closes in.

Crafting Goals

Here's the sort of thing that is in my ever present notebook, that I'm going to mercilessly copy here to get to that goal of 100 posts.

Reorganize yarn and inventory it. 

The old inventory list I used is on a site which seems to be gone, so make a list like this for yourself, and away you go.

Hmm, maybe I should add Source.  You get the idea.


Do the Clothespin Thing

Sounds wierd, I know, but if you read the Attic 24 craft blog (on my sidebar) she wraps a little yarn around a clothespin then writes the type and color.  These she cleverly uses to decide color designs for her afghans.

Dept of Yarn Lust Is Real

My latest yarn desires are Red Heart Dreamy

And Red Heart Collage

As with Caron Cakes Yarns, they're hard to find, (and are often Sold Out on the Red Heart site, with no restock date ever offered) and they're expensive, for me.  Still, I can go to the site and click through the color variations if I'm stressed, and I think sooooo pretty...


Scrapbooking

We traveled Route 66 in September, and not only have I not posted on it, all my nice paper memorabilia has not been put in the lovely scrapbook I bought before we left.


Christmas Granny

Oops, what happened there? on like row 17 of 32 then la la la.

On the list.


Complete Willow Square

Remain frozen contemplating Row 4!  Weenie!

Make And Send A Few Halloween Cards


I only do the Christmas, and since I never got any feedback, I thought people didn't appreciate my childish efforts.  It turns out, they LIKE them.  So, I've got the materials up the yahoolie, and I'll make them for more occasions.

WIP Wednesday: Christmas Cards

It's time to start making those charming handcrafted cards that everyone loves, loves LOVES to get in the mail.

Nobody could have more fun things to use on their cards than I do, because I have an eye for Christmas magic and all things ho ho ho.

This year I'm using cream colored cards rather than the usual red and green, simply because I ran out of them and haven't seen any others.  I also think a lighter background might show off some of my rubber stamps and sparkly things just a bit more.   Speak of magic, Michaels had some really cool foil accented cards they mean to be used as picture frames.  I think they will also frame some of my clipart and other little scenes I can create inside the frames.

I found some fun things in the Target Dollar Bins --which are now mostly Three Dollar Bins--but the price is still pretty nice.

Target has been offering all sorts of decorated clothespins, tapping into some deep well of clothespin love I didn't even know I had.  I can't resist any of them.  

The paper stripes in the package are supposed to be used to make paper chains.  Ha ha ha!  You might be able to get a couple of chains out of a pack.  These are much better for card making or scrapbooking. 

The little wooden Christmas trees, so cute.  Nice in and of themselves, but a fiend could also decorate the teeny things.  I bought a glue gun this fall that I haven't used yet but attaching wood to paper seems like a good job for it, right?  Or are we talking three alarm fire?  Oops.

Ah, really nice packs of green and red paper from Michaels, and an adorable little Christmas paper pad from Martha Stewart.

Happiness is...Christmas Crafts :)

Your card is in the mail, or will be soon....

Skulduggery Doily With DOA Pink Skellies

Tis the season to really snuggle in and work on crafts.  My garden is 99.99% put to bed so my creative impulses (and that's mostly all they are) must go somewhere else.

Red Heart Yarn, who makes the Aunt Lydia cotton crochet thread has this charming skellie pattern out:

http://www.redheart.com/free-patterns/skulduggery-doily


Most people would either do this coloring, because skulls are sort of ivory colored, and some might do it in Halloween Orange and Black or, in what looks like a variegated thread (I haven't seen the Lydia's in any variegated colors so where this clever person got this, I don't know, but very cool!)

I thought to use up some of my cotton thread stash from mom along with a bit of pink I'd gotten, though it was Aunt Lydia's 10.

I started with the pink, because what if I never got past the center bit, was I going to just work with boring white? Nooo.

Between the teeny crochet hook (I found a C hook that did not say it was size 2.75 but it seemed close) and the incredibly slippery cotton thread, I could barely chain five then make a circle, let alone start 15 double crochets in the circle.

Yow.  I really wanted to make this project so soon after Michael's opened this morning, I was in the door looking for some pink and white number 3 thread.   Michael's has a nice selection of Aunt Lydia's size 10 and size 3, it's the place to go.

I liked the softer pink of the size 10 thread, but the rose colored size 3 is pretty enough combined with some cream colored thread.  It is not all slippery, and I was able to immediately get a start.  I did also find a hook of the certain proper size for the pattern, a 2.75.   As mom would say, when in doubt, read the directions.

In case I never get far on this particular project (it happens) you have those nice inspirational pictures above and you may want to make your own adorable skellie doily, in colors not so Halloweenish, because skellie decorations are timeless and look appealing year round, do they not?

Update:  I have redone the tiny center bit five times, and it looks nothing like the picture!  Eek!  Then I boldly tried row 2 and again ended up pulling the entire thing apart.  Progress! Yanking from the second row :)

Round 2:

Ch 1, sc in same dc as join,

*sc in next dc, (sc, ch 3, sc) in next dc;

repeat from * to last dc, sc in last dc, sc

again in same dc as join; join with ch

1, hdc in first sc (join ch 1, hdc count as

ch-3 sp)—24 sc and 8 ch-3 spaces.

I am noting that the pattern rating is Intermediate.

10/23/16


Fuzzy, but I think I'm on Row 2!!!!

Ha!  It appears I need to yank out my tender pink center after all.  I want the skulls to be pink, and the route to that appears to be a white center, then all skull rows pink, with a white edge.  So what if it took me ten tries to get that weasly bit done?  I bet I can now do it in my sleep.

Here, from FB (note you can see Facebook public pages without having a FB account, you just search for the page
itself.   Here is a spectacular black and orange skulduggery doily, mine will (wink) look like this only in pink and white.  Tis to dream.   10/26/16