Diamond Overlay Dishcloth

I finished crocheting this dishcloth the other day.  Making the diamonds was a new technique for me.  Its always good to learn new techniques.  This pattern came from one of those thin booklets, "Contest Favorites Dishcloths: 17 Best Designs from the Crochet With Heart Dishcloth Contest."  I got it for Christmas from my parents.  I'm currently crocheting a 2nd dishcloth from the book.  Right now I'm concentrating on the single color dishcloths from the book.

Candy Corn Dish Towel

I loved the candy corn dish cloth that I made for the Halloween swap so much that I made one for myself this past week.  I finished it just in time for Halloween.  The free pattern for it is here.

Halloween Hot Pads: Orange

I'm continuing to make Halloween colored hot pads this week.

Right now I'm working on the orange ones.  Each one will have a different colored border.  I am mainly using orange, yellow, and white cotton.  However yesterday I bought some black and violet cotton, and I might add some green as well.

Fall Colors

I got an itch recently to make this hot pad in candy corn colors for Halloween.  I love the way it turned out.

I also made another chrysanthemum hot pad using the more neon yellow from the candy corn colors with the white cotton.  I'm thinking of making a Halloween set, much like the patriotic set that I made earlier this year.

We were at the park yesterday when I saw this tree in all of it's Autumn glory.

And I couldn't resist taking a picture of these rings on the playground.

Floral Hot Pad Set

I finished the hot pad set for my grandma's sister-in-law.  I sent my mom the above picture, and she said that she will love them.  My mom will pick them up later this month and mail them to her.

This is one of my favorite patterns to crochet.

I used Bernat's cotton yarn for all of these hot pads.

Here is the pattern for this wonderful hot pad.

Fanciful Flower Hot Pad

My mom is currently visiting my grandma.  My grandma's brother and his wife came over the other day, and his wife loved the hot pad that I made for my grandma's birthday.  She said that it was the prettiest thing that she ever saw.  My mom asked me to make one for her aunt.  Well I had actually made 2 different ones for my grandma, so I will be making the same 2 for my grandma's sister-in-law.  I finished the first one, shown above.  The pattern for it is here.  You can see the ones that I made for my grandma here.  My mom said that it did not matter what colors that I used, so I used ones that I had a lot of.  I used a size G crochet hook and Bernets cotton yarn.

Christmas Cotton Projects

I started this white cotton Christmas scrubby a week ago.  It is a variation of the red scrubby pattern where I doubled every stitch.

The pattern for it is: 8 sc in loop, dc twice in each st for 2 rounds, sc twice in every st for 1 round, and sc 3 times in every stitch for remainder (about 3 or 4 more rounds). 

If you hold on to the center, it is perfect for scrubbing dishes or for the shower.

It reminds me of brain coral.

I made this little cork elf yesterday, and I plan to make more today.  Irene is coming to us today in the form of a tropical storm.  My little elf is watching it before it gets worse.  I hope that he doesn't get blown away ;)  The pattern for him is here.  He was super easy to make.  I used size 5 dpns and Christmas cotton yarn, but I am going to use size 4 for the next one.  I might glue his hat to him and turn him into an ornament.

Vacation Crafting

We just got back from vacation last week.  I only turned on my computer once during the trip, and that was to make more room on my camera.  I'm going to be making two blog posts, and both will be kind of long so that I can show you everything.  This one will be all crafty goodness, and the other one will be photos from my trip.  I am loving my photos these days, and it feels good that my dad the photographer thinks that they are great.  Now on with the crafty goodness.

I finally finished this Buddha 2 weeks ago before we left on your trip.  He is 15 inches tall sitting and 24 inches tall standing.  He took me a few weeks to make, because I had a lot going at the time.  You can find the pattern here: http://craftingenue.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/littleuns-lotus-buddha.pdf

He's a birthday present for a friend of ours (my husband and myself).  Our friend loved him.  He said that Buddha is in full lotus on his shelf.

I also finished crocheting 3 more Ocean Grove washcloths 2 weeks ago.

I made my 4 year old son this rainbow bunny in time for him to sleep with him on our first night away from home.  He had also brought the other two bunnies that I made him to sleep with.  He picked out the yarn and said that he wanted a rainbow bunny.  The eyes are made from eco-fi felt.  I left off the mouth because no one thought that he needed one.

Here are all 3 of his bunnies in the bed that he slept in at his grandparents' house.  He picked out the colors for all 3 of them.  Blue bunny, Rainbow bunny, and Cookie.  

I started crocheting the orange amigurumi monster from Lily's Sugar'n Cream's Bright Ideas book last Friday.  It was hard to work on it during our trip, because I had to keep count of the rows.  Thats hard to do when people are talking to you, lol.  Its going to be a Christmas present for my 4 year old.  I want to make him all four monsters from the book.  It is one of those mini paper back books that you see next to the yarn.

While at my mom's house I saw this really cool looking scrubby in her sink that looked like brain coral.  She just made up the pattern.  Mine is tighter than hers, but then she didn't really give me much in the way of a pattern.  She just said to double every stitch.  Her center was much more open than mine.  I used the sparkly red Christmas cotton yarn and an I hook.  I single crochet 8 times into the center loop, then I doubled every stitch until I achieved the size that I wanted.  This could be used in the kitchen or in the shower.  I finished crocheting it yesterday as we were driving through New York.  I want to make another one using the white Christmas cotton yarn, but using either a hdc or dc instead of sc.

With the left over rainbow bunny yarn, I started making a large granny square blanket for my 4 year old. He fell in love with the one that I made for my mother-in-law 10 years ago.  He asked for a rainbow one.  Right now everything has to be either rainbow or blue with him, so I'm going to use both of those in this blanket.  This is how far I got last Sunday before I ran out of yarn.  I bought more yarn today, and have started using aqua yarn.

I'm starting to feel the Christmas crafting bug coming on.

Ocean Grove Round Washcloth

I started crocheting this washcloth Sunday night while having a special dinner at my yoga teacher's house.  I finished it yesterday.  I'm thinking about giving it to my yoga teacher as a thank you for hosting the dinner party (it was part of a weight loss & yoga combo class that I've been taking for a few weeks).  The washcloth was very easy to make, and it would be very easy to make it larger.  The pattern was free on Lion Brand's website: Ocean Grove Round Washcloth.

Set of 9 Patriotic Chrysanthemum Hot Pads

Between yesterday and today I have finished my Patriotic set of 9 Chrysanthemum hot pads.  It was fun seeing how the 4 different balls of yarn looked when combined with one another.  I've been getting a lot of compliments from different family members over the set that I made for my grandma in May.  I see myself making more of these in the future for gifts.  After making so many of them in a row, I now have the pattern memorized.

Blossom Dishcloth

The other day I needed to pick up some supplies for my class from Michaels.  On an end cap was my favorite yarn, Lily's Sugar'n Cream.  It might seem strange that that is my favorite yarn, but I really love cotton yarn.  Anyway, hanging up in front of the yarn was one of those free patterns.  I knew that this was one pattern that would be made/used within a week.  So last night I went through my Lily's Sugar'n Cream stash and followed the free pattern.  I finished it today.  I love it.  It doesn't look like a dishcloth to me, and I don't plan on using it as one.  I'm thinking hot pad.  I plan on making a few more starting tonight.

When I showed my husband the finished product he said, "Wow!  It doesn't look like a wreck anymore."  He saw the beginning stages of this project and it did look like a weird mess.  I can't wait to make more.

Pinwheels & Oven Pad

It took a few days to make, but I made 5 of the 4th pinwheel block this week.  It looks like a simple pattern, but there was a lot of work in making 5 of them.  There are 20 half square triangles in each block, multiply that by 5 and you have 100 half square triangles that needed to be cut, marked, sewn, ironed, recut/squared, sewn, ironed, sewn, ironed, and squared, etc.  I'm really happy that I finished it weeks before I need to turn it in to get the pattern for the 5th block.

I pieced four of them together like I did with the previous pinwheel blocks.  Its not perfect, but that is ok.  

I've been following a blog on making things out of fabric salvages.  So I've started saving my salvages separately from my other fabric scraps.  After saving 4 salvaged pieces, I made this oven pad / hot pad.  The two pictures show the front and the back of it.  I used some pink girlie skull ribbon for the hanger.  It seemed to fit with the color scheme.  Now I want to make another black and white quilt but with pink as my 3rd color.  The binding is far from perfect, however I am fine with that.