1909 Gearhart knitting loom and 1870 Loom

Today at work they asked me to finish dressing this loom.  It is going to be a long process, because there are a lot of thin threads in the warp.  I look at it as a meditation.  It needs love and patience to finish. 

Also at work they have me learning how to use this 1909 Gearhart machine knitting loom.  I hand knitted the starter cap last week (the orange part), and put it on the loom yesterday.  I am now using sock yarn on it.  I could not get the ribber to work, because I couldn't find the right needles for it.  They have asked me to learn how to make a sock on it.  I'm just skipping the ribbing and going straight to turning the heel.

Easter Round Up

Here are just a few of the items that I have made for Easter within the last few years.

Chick / Duck Egg Cozy - 2013

Another duck egg cozy - 2013

Easter bunny and Spring Chick magnet - 2013

More chick magnets - 2013

Easter eggs - 2013

Crocheted Easter Eggs (ombre) - 2013
There is a plastic egg inside of it, so I put dried beans in it so that it rattles.

 Marshmallow Bunny Peep Magnets - 2013

More bunny peep magnets, this time stuffed. - 2013

Bunny Magnets - 2012

Best Bunnies - 2011

Two more best bunnies, for baby showers. - 2011

Raving Rabbit

Bella the Bunny

Ducky Momo - 2012

Easter Egg ornaments - 2012

Egg Coasters - 2013

Easter Egg Hot Pads

I put jelly bean stickers on a 5" x 7" magnet sheet, and then cut around them to create 27 magnets.
 2013

Sashay Scarf in Easter colors - 2013

Plarn Easter baskets:

With an I hook

• 8 sc in stitch to form a circle
• increase each row until you have 40 sts around
• sc in each st for 3 rows
• 2 sc in one st, skip stitch, repeat until desired length
• sc 3 stitches, ch 1, and turn
• work these 3 stitches for the basket handle.
• crochet into other side of basket
• weave in the ends

I spun the plarn and plied it with novelty yarn.  The base started with 6 stitches, and ended with 48 stitches.  The handle is 5 sc wide.

Egg Coasters and Triquetra Knot

Last night to take a break from bigger projects I made these egg coasters.  The pattern calls for stripes, but this yarn really didn't need stripes added to it.  Here is the free pattern.

The other day I crochet this triquetra knot using this free pattern.  To be honest I had issues with reading the pattern.  The chain amount didn't equal the stitch amount, so I just changed it to equal the stitch amount.  I think that next time I will loosely base what I do on the pattern.  I'm thinking of making a dpn case and sewing this to the cover. 

Chick / Duck Egg Cozy

In one of the ravelry groups that I am in, we are going to have an egg cozy CAL next week.  So that we have examples, I made this cute little chick egg cozy (which looks like a duck to me).  Here is the free pattern for it.  It is a really easy pattern, and it has 4 different hat options.  I did not sew on the hat, so I can change the hat when the mood strikes.  I used Caron Simple Soft Yarn for everything but the feet and beak.  For those I used Red Heart yarn.  

Flaunt Scarf

It took 3 skeins of this novelty yarn to make this fun scarf for my mom.  The yarn was ok to work with, but it was a real pain when I dropped a stitch.  I had to frog several rows before I was able to recover from it.  Another negative about the yarn is that when you join another skein to it, it is best to tie a knot so that there is no hole in it (it is not easy to weave in ends).  Although this scarf turned out nice, I don't want to work with this yarn again.  

Easter Sashay Scarf

This is my 4th Sashay scarf so far.  This one is a birthday present for my mom.  The colorway had Easter in the name, which is perfect for this time of year (if the snow will ever melt).

Round Ups

I will be slowly putting together blog round ups due to many of my blog posts disappearing.  Why are they disappearing?  Its because I used my instagram photos on my blog, and now that I don't agree with instagram's policies, I am deleting my photos from their sight.  As a result photos are disappearing from my sight.  I'm trying to replace a few of them with ones from my ravelry page.  However I can only replace the knit, crochet, spun, and woven projects.  I jumped the gun on deleting posts in January before realizing that ravelry renames the photos when they are uploaded onto their site (so I could have just replaced those photos with the ravelry ones).

So keep on a look out for the round ups.  I am currently putting together an Easter one, and I will be putting together a St. Patrick's one soon.  I have a lot of floral hot pads that I have made over the years, so I would love to showcase all of them.

Easter Bunny and Spring Chick

For the last 2 days I have been working on this Easter bunny.  I used this free pattern.  I used an E hook and Caron Simply Soft white yarn.  The nose is with the same brand of yarn, and the black is puff pant.  I glued a piece of felt on for the teeth.

I also quickly made this Spring chick magnet yesterday.  The black is puff paint, and I used Caron Simply Soft yarn for the body.  Here is the free pattern for it.

Right now I'm alternating between working on a zig zag afghan, a knitted log cabin afghan, and a hidden Mickey shawl.  Actually I'm a tester for the hidden Mickey shawl, and my first go at it isn't good.  The designer just sent me an updated version of the pattern, so I'm going to try it again but with thicker yarn (just to make sure that there are no mistakes).

Easter Eggs

These eggs are super easy to make.  Here is the free pattern for them.  I was playing around with some color theory for the 3 bigger ones (analogous, complimentary, and split complimentary color-ways).  I used some Kool Aid dyed yarn to make the multi-colored smaller egg, and I also used it to sew the stripes on the white egg.  

Blue Plarn Craft Bag

Do you remember the plarn that I spun and plied with blue yarn recently?  Well I used it to make this bag.  I followed this pattern to make the front and back squares. I made 2 of the afghan squares, stopping when the in between hdc sts equaled 20 sts. I then ch 15, and worked 14 st rows of sc for the length of a square x 3 (the rectangle). Next I sc the 3 pieces together, then sc 5, ch 40, sc around to the beginning of the other square, and repeated this. Then I sc for 3 rounds.  When it was finished, I sewed a lining for it and hand sewed it into the bag.  

I love my new craft bag.  The lining really helps keep my tools from getting lost or from poking through the stitches.  It measures 11" x 11" x 5".  

Agent P iPod cozy

I made a 2nd Perry the Platypus phone cozy, but this time for an iPod.   This one was a commission piece.  I was able to test out my pattern to make sure I wrote it right.  It is slightly shorter, because the iPod is shorter than my phone.

February Doll Fashion Show

I made these 4 Monster High outfits out of a very small pair of socks.

I was really happy to get the skull in the center of the 2 skirts.

Two of the black tops were triangles that were tied bandana style.

These 3 outfits were made from a single long sock.  Belle has matched her new camouflage top with a black skirt that a friend had made.

Merida looks great in her new camouflage dress.

This Monster High doll has a bandana to match her dress.

Lately I've been discovering holes in my socks.  After washing them, I turned them into doll clothes.  This sock is a little frayed, but it still made a nice evening dress with a matching purse.

One sock became 2 outfits: a dress and a top.

This is one of several photos here that were taken by my husband.

You can see how thread bare this sock became (from the skirt on the right).  I was able to get a dress, a top, and a skirt out of this single sock.

I had some leftover silver novelty yarn, so I made this doll rug out of it.

I loved that I could use up novelty yarn this way, so I made another doll rug.

Then I wanted to try the same thing but with much larger needles (really really large needles), and so I made this doll blanket.

I crochet this Red Riding Hood cape and basket using this pattern, and then made a matching sock dress.

I made the room using scrapbook paper, ribbon, wood contact paper, and foam-core.

This was suppose to be a dress, but it looked better as a skirt.  Here is the pattern for it.

Using the wool yarn that I Kool Aid dyed in January, I knitted this doll hat.  The pattern came from a book that I had checked out from the library.

I really love this pattern.  I used yarn that had sequins in it to make this dress.  

I made this stool using a glue gun, fabric, a bottle cap, and coffee stirrers. 

I also made another doll room.  This time instead of wood contact paper for the floor, I used real floor tiles.  I found the self adhesive kind.  It was easy to cut with scissors to.

I love watching videos from MyFroggyStuff.  A recent one was how to make a doll cake using foam and puff paint.  I couldn't wait to make one, so here is my first doll rainbow cake.

It was so much fun that I made lots more: rainbow cake, yellow cake, chocolate cake, and red velvet cake.

Dolls need storage, so I made an tiny origami box out of an Andes chocolate wrapper.

I made a bigger one, but still doll sized, out of leftover scrapbook paper from the doll room.