Dragon Doll

Following along with the Mushroom Folk, this pattern is another by Lalylala on Etsy, specifically Dirk the Dragon.

This guy was also made with a 3.75mm hook and used some of the leftover white, red and brown sock yarn from the mushrooms, with the addition of the stunning green, which I kind of splurged on. Since it was going to be so much of the toy, I really wanted a nice yarn and settled on Madeline Tosh Twist Light weight in Jade.

The the body parts were a breeze to make up, especially after the mushrooms. The only part I struggled with was the back spikes since a surface slip stitch is hard for me to do. Still not sure I got it as straight as I would have liked but in the end it turned out great. The spikes on the back, mirror so nicely those ear which might be the cutest I have ever made.

Since this one was going to live in the same house as the white portobello mushroom guy, I decided to make the scarf out of the same brown so they would coordinate a bit more. The scarf is simply three rows of double crochet worked along a long chain, about 23 inches long. With a little fringe at the ends. With the cheek blush he's really something special.

The finished doll stands about 14 inches tall.
Time to complete: 20 hours

Crochet it Forward

And were back!

So just a little reminder, if there is anything I make that you might want one of, please ask and we can talk it over. I'm generally open to taking custom commissions too.

That is exactly what happened in today's post. A friends mom, who has commissioned things in the past, asked I make one of the V for Victory scarves in white for one of her good friends who is doing pushups everyday for Veterans. I can't even do two pushups in a row.

I got a huge skein of Big Twist Rainbow Classic yarn in white which is super duper soft. I also made it a bit longer than the original pattern calls for since I prefer longer scarves myself. These scarves are just so darn quick and easy.

Difficulty: Easy
Time to complete: 3 hours

I used about a third of the skein on the scarf, so I decided to use the rest for another project. Her daughter saw my post about Iorek and his armor, and told me that her mom loves that character and asked if I could make her one. This lovely soft white would make an excellent polar bear. I'm calling this one Iofur, just to keep them straight in my mind.

I decided on this one to make the feet a bit more like real legs since I didn't like on my original one that they kind of got lost inside the body. Other than that I didn't make any changes to the bear.

As for the armor... well I still remembered about how I went about making the first set, but as I had not written it down, I had nothing to follow. That was ok since this bear actually came out a little bit smaller than the first. I had run out of the brown oatmeal yarn that I made the first set of armor in, but I remembered I had about half a skein of Patons Silk Bamboo yarn in a silver color called Stone.

As the yarn was a bit thinner than the brown, I used a smaller hook and I really like the way this armor turned out. His breastplate had more crocodile stitches and I left it unbacked so it felt more like chainmail too. I gave him a full backplate and the spine armor as well as the shoulder pads, all hung off a thinner collar that sits above his shoulders. At this point I was again running out of the yarn but managed to make a helmet anyway. It has a solid top and front nose piece and the back side is made up of interconnected chains so that it also looks a bit like chainmail. I managed to get one final crocodile stitch done and added it to the front of the helmet.

Iorek in the back, Iofur in the front

Difficulty: Bear: Easy, Armor: Intermediate/Custom
Time to Complete: Bear: 6 hours, Armor: 4 hours

Dang do I really like the silver as armor and that new breastplate... I was really happy to be able to get this done for a good friend and her mom. So much thoughtfulness going on here. Good People.

Scarves for a Good Cause

The DFW Fiber Fest, a local yarn/knitter/crocheter convention that was this weekend which I also attended last year, chose Knit Your Bit as their charity program this year to provide scarves to our local veterans groups. It was developed in 2006 by the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, and provides Veterans across the country with scarves. The Museum has sample patterns on its website if you need some ideas, or you can choose any appropriate pattern you like to knit or crochet. Pretty sure they accept them all year round if you feel like making and sending some over.

As the Museum asks you to include your Name, City, State, and care instructions with each scarf so I made up some little tags. I printed mine off on cardstock I had lying around and punched holes and tied them on to the finished scarves. Fiber fest also as some for download if you don't want to make your own tags.

V For Victory
I picked out two free patterns to try. First up: V for Victory which I worked up in I Love This Yarn in Dark Olive. First off, of course, I started with a foundation double crochet row of 23 stitches rather than the chain and work into method. Once you have the foundation rows done, you start working the V. The pattern however just assumes you know where and how to skip, as well as where to place the dcs in the center of the V shape in order to end up with the right look across the rows. I can see how a novice would find this very confusing. For example, row 12 should really read: ch 2 (counts as first dc), dc in next, 4dc in chain space, 11dc across, 4dc in chain space, 2dc, which equals 23 dc across.

Then you just work a ton of rows for length, then do the V rows again, but backwards, followed by the end rows and done! I used up about half of the skein for the first, so I made a second with the V only on one end. That second one ended up being a bit short, even for a scarf, so I turned it into a cowl by seaming up the end. Each scarf was totally easy, aside from the assumptions, and took about 3 hours each.

After finishing the Proud to be one, I whipped up one more V for Victory scarf in the rest of the blue skein, as I wasn't sure if they really wanted cowls and I wanted to make sure I donating three scarves. Ya know, after looking at the one in blue I can't help but think that I could make a bunch for our school... for the Vikings!

Proud to Be
As I also had red, white and blue on hand the second pattern I tried was the Proud to Be scarf. I did not have a full skein of white to use, but I figured I had enough to make one of the white blocks with an S on it (from USA). My plan then was to make one set of the letter blocks and then make the rest of the scarf in solid red, since that's what I have the most of.

Since this scarf is worked in sc it takes a lot longer to work up. I got into the 10th row and had maybe 2 inches of scarf done, but the front post double crochet worked into the second row down is a cool way to get dense raised areas. It's like making cables, but without the open area behind that normally occurs; very cool, but super time consuming.

Once I got the three blocks of USA completed, I decided to be done with the letters. I switched over to double crochet and worked a row of white, then blue then finished out the rest of the scarf in red, making it as long as the skein lasted. Time to complete: 8 hours

While doing these projects, I am starting to realize that it is not so much the materials that I am donating, but the time, which is far more valuable and meaningful.

Blue Spider Lattice

A local knitting instructor passed away in December and one of the local yarn stores she taught at, Jennings Street, informed their customers in an email that she would have what amounted to a yarn estate sale. We went the first day mostly out of curiosity, and I ended up leaving with a bunch of new stuff.

Pretty but I actually dislike using them a lot.

I got four rosewood crochet hooks, and two bags of yarn, one with about five skeins of Issac Mizrahi Craft yarn in pink with gold sequins, and another with five skeins of a sparkly blue all for $23! The pink I figure I will use to make something for my sister, as the yarn kind of screamed her name, but the blue I thought I could make into something fun.

The blue yarn is called "Sunshine" by Trendsetter Yarns and is made in France... fancy. It seems to be discontinued and the label has not much info on it. Ravelry to the rescue as they have all the info like weight category and hook size. It says worsted, but it feels thinner than a regular worsted and has this kind of odd metallic crispness to it.

That crisp feeling made me think I would not like it as a scarf, although I did think about it since some of the reviews said this yarn made great fringe. Instead I ended up trying out the Spider Lattice Stole pattern by Cathy Campbell which is free on Ravelry. When starting to work on the initial foundation sc row I think I made the right decision.

The pattern itself is eight repeating rows and once you do them once it is a no brainer to work the rest with no reference to the pattern. I love ones like that. However it is a bit boring, so I was able to listen to an audio book while working it up and that made it go much faster.

The sheen of the fabric it creates is a bit odd to look at. I have to think any smaller stitch or details would get lost in the texture of the yarn, so the large, uncomplicated, open work pattern suited it well.
The shine makes it kind of pretty and a bit more like evening wear or something you might throw over a black dress.

I had a lot of fun making this quick and easy stole.

Difficulty: Easy
Time to complete: 8 hours
Finished size: 12" x 56"

Skull Shawl

This post is about working on a Christmas present, or a birthday present... as those dates are very close for this special person.

I saw this pattern for a skull shawl on Ravelry and knew straight away that I wanted to make one for her. It's a tiny bit gothy, but pretty and lace at the same time. I had originally thought about doing it in a solid black color... but I figured the design might get lost or be a bit boring. On a trip wandering through Joann Fabrics I saw this super cool looking yarn. It is a little shiny and has a lovely ombre in dusty gray, blue, and black. It's called Red Heart Boutique Midnight. If Red Heart keeps making such cool yarns, I might have to change my opinion of their stuff... just stay away from Super Saver.

The problem is that the original pattern is in some other language and a little hard to follow even in its translation to English. Thank goodness that Julia Marquart on Ravelry was kind enough to make video tutorials on each row of the pattern. She did modify the shawl to have a solid center rather than more skulls, but I kind of like it better.

I started off following the videos exactly, but after getting to the 11th row or so, I realized that I had done two things wrong. My shawl was ending up very large. First, I was using the Boutique yarn, which is a medium weight yarn where as the pattern calls for a sport weight which is much thinner. Second, the pattern calls for a 3.5mm hook, but I had gone up to a 4mm hoping that it would be alright for the larger yarn, but close enough to work.

I guess I could have gotten new yarn, but I really liked the stuff I had, so I decided to pull a Tim Gunn and "Make It Work".  I started over with the second skein to see if the changes I make would result in a smaller result than the first one. This time I used a 3.75mm hook which was the smallest that would still work the yarn right. To combat the large spaces that I did not like, I also reduced the number of chains usually by 2 where ever they came up in the pattern (so if it said chain 6, I did 4, if it said 9 I did 7, etc). To further shrink it down, I also went from 4dc in a "block" to 3dc.

It takes about a hour and a half to get through the first skull motif and of course the rows just get longer and longer from there. The good thing is that at row 13 they start repeating sections of the first couple of rows to get more skulls on either side of the blocks in the center. This section of blocks between motifs just increases by one for each row, so after you get the hang of how the motif is made it is actually pretty easy to figure out the rows after that.

The shawl worked up pretty fast over the course of a week or so. As I got closer to the end of the second skein, I realized I might not have enough to finish off the last motif, but I kept going to see how close I could get, hoping that it would turn out alright. Two rows later I felt sure it was not going to happen so I took several rows back out and filled out the rest of the shawl with blocks instead of starting new motifs. I also thought about getting a third skein, but she's a petite girl and I didn't want this to be a blanket on her.

Done! I can't tell if the skulls are getting lost or not. I also feel like this is much wider than long, and that bothers me a little, but I guess it is a shawl and not a blanket.

Difficulty: Intermediate
Finished size: 50" long along the shoulders, by 32" along an edge to the point.

Black Hooded Cowl

I really liked the look of Repeat Crafter Me's Hooded Cowl when I saw it online. Figured I could save the pattern and add some ears to it and make one for myself sometime. Instead I got to test the pattern out in all black, since my hubby asked for a hooded cowl. Must resist the urge to put black bear ears on it...

Unfortunately, the Joann was all out of the yarn she used, so I went with a close alternative in Bernat Softee Chunky in black. I really like how this feels and it has a nice subtle texture to it. Her pattern calls for an I 5.5 mm hook, but the yarn calls for an L 8.00mm hook. I kind of split the difference and went with J 6.00mm hook. My hubby is kind of a big guy, so using the larger hook would help make his XXL version of this hood.

Instead of 42, as her adult size calls for, I went with 52 starting chains. That would give me 50 hdc fro the first row. That equates to a few extra inches of length to the hood. After the second row I was up to 75 hdc which seemed plenty large. I then did 20 rows of the 75 to get the hood nice and deep for his larger head.

Ending at a corner, I chained two and started working around the base, creating a new row of hdc along the edge. For the "scarf" part I chained out 42 instead of 20 to make sure that it would leave room and wrap nicely. I used the 2 of 42 to turn and hdc 40 back across the chain. Once you complete the chain part, you are back to working around the base of the hood.

Hood part completed. Note the different direction of the scarf part.

NOTE: It is super important to make sure your scarf part is perpendicular to the hood part. I learned that the hard way and had to rip out almost two hours of work on a nearly completed scarf part, which was actually just making the hood deeper as opposed to being a scarf.

Cool buttons.

For this XXL size I ended up using 4 skeins of yarn. The chunky yarn and chain space button holes require some seriously large buttons. I found ones at Joann that I liked by LaMode in black, that were kind of rough and non standard shape (1 3/8th inches, 34 mm); a bit Flintstone-y. They had large eyes as well to make sewing it on easier. I used black worsted weight yarn to sew the buttons in place on the cowl.

Finished, with pen for size comparison.

The thickness of this yarn makes for a really warm cowl and hood. I am debating adding another button farther back and up a bit, to allow for a warmer and tighter fit of the scarf across the face. For now, I know that I have "measurably improved the quality of my [husbands] life". (- his words)

Time to complete: 6-8 hours
Difficulty: Intermediate in construction, Easy in stitches.

Saranya Cowl

Got my hair cut and re-dyed. My hairdresser loves me because I always show up every few months and want something new and different. Always blue color now-a-days, but as my hair gets longer I have the itch to cut it off... both literally and figuratively.

This time we buzzed the bottom half of my head all the way around, just about to the top of my ears. We left all the length on top, but trimmed the dead ends of course. So now I've got this mop on the top that I can style left or right, or part down the center to look like a short pixie, swoop back for a pompadour or swoop front for some crazy bangs action. Super fun.

Unfortunately, I got this haircut right as it was super cold in February in Texas for once. Not wanting to cover my new do with a hat, I whipped up a cowl real quick to pull up over my ears. In Michael's I found a fantastic super chunky yarn called Opus by Loops & Threads. The color was also right up my alley, "Bermuda" has shades of blue and teal, a little green, brown and dark blue. At $3.99 a skein with only 42 yards, I couldn't go crazy with a big cowl, but I found a pattern that would work great.

The Saranya Cowl by Amy Lou Stein can be found for free on Ravelry or her blog. It had all the qualities I was looking for: under 100 yards, super chunky yarn, close fitting to the neck and head, pretty looking.

Finished!

Turns out this pattern is also a gem to work up. Took about 2.5 hours to complete this project. Perfect for a beginner or last minute gift it is thick and warm and stretchy. I actually used an unmarked hook that I suspect is 12mm. That meant that my stitches were going to be much smaller than hers so I did 35 chains for 35 stitches around in each row. I also did one extra row in the center.

The final project came out at 9 inches tall by 10 inches wide. It has a good amount of stretch to it and can be scrunched up under my chin or pulled up tall over my ears. I can also kind of wear it as a slouch hat, but that might be a little strange.

Warm and comfy.

In any case it is perfect for keeping my neck warm without being too bulky or hard to wear with coats. And the colors are radiant and match my hair, which is important.

Difficulty: Easy
Time to complete: 2.5 hours

Pineapple Doily Shawl

I mentioned last week that I ripped out my tunisian cowl that I had been working on. I did this for several reasons, but the main reason was that with such a compact fabric I was losing a lot of the beautiful variegated colors of the Mandala Tosh DK to the inside of the stitches or where it would not be seen.

I wanted to do something pretty, and the pattern could not be a subtle one, or it would not show through the color changes. I really like the look of intricate leaf pattern knit shawls, but crochet seems to have no patterns for things like that.

The closest I could think to come up with would be a doily type lace shawl so I set about finding a pattern for it. I've worked a pineapple doily before so when I saw the Pineapple Doily Shawl by Laura Garsten on Ravelry, I knew I could make it with no problems. When I saw how it looked on a person I loved that the large pineapples made it look kind of like large hanging feathers. Pretty. Bonus: The pattern is free!

I knew though that I would most likely need a third skein of this yarn to complete the pattern... but that's ok. I figured I could get as far as I could and if I liked it, then I could get the third skein and complete it. If not, well I could rip out another project... Fancy yarn = I better love it.

I got to row 6 which I knew from reading other project notes had a small error in it. You need to have the repeat include the skipping 2 stitches or the foundation for your pineapples wont be spaced out properly. The row is also a bit confusing to read and I feel like this could be achieved easier if she had used the "sh" and "SH" terms she defined at the beginning of the pattern to write the instructions out.

Row 6 is the outside edge. Points are at the SH, sh is the center between to points.

We know sh is a small shell, or V stitch as I've seen in the past: a dc, chain 1, dc in the same stitch.
The SH is a large shell, or bulked up V stitch: two dc in one, chain 2, two dc in the next.
In between each shell you do a chain one and skip two dc.
So, our rewritten Row 6: ch 3 (counts as first dc) dc in first dc, ch 2, 2dc in next
dc (making a starting large shell SH), ch1, sk 2dc, sh, ch1, *sk2, SH, ch 1, sk 2dc, sh, ch1* 
repeat from * to * across ending on a SH. This will make the foundations for your next row of shells.
That seems less confusing to me anyway.

Moving on. By Row 11 I was out of my first ball of yarn. In the picture below, you can also see something weird happening on the edges of my shawl. They are getting little nobbies at the end of each row. That's because I was doing something wrong; namely that instead of slip stitching into the first dc in each row, I went into the second and then into the first space. I did that wrong without knowing for the first couple of rows, then decided I liked the way it looked and kept doing it rather than going back and ripping it out.

Through row 11.

Happy accidents in crochet aside... I got all the way to row 17 and was out of my second skein of yarn. Bummer since I only had the two, so I went down to MadTosh Crafts in the hope that they would still have the yarn in stock. Unfortunately they did not have the ToshDK in my color, but they did have the color in ToshDK Twist... since there was very little difference visibly that I could tell I got two skeins so that I could complete this project.

I got back home and back into the groove when I realized something... One pineapple was smaller than the rest. Turns out way back on row 10, instead of 13 treble crochets, I had done 11, and just on this one pineapple. I knew it would make the whole thing hang oddly and bother me to no end, so I had to rip it all out down to that base. So note to people: Make sure you count obsessively on row 10 to make sure you don't mess up like I did. Restarting from row 10 back up to about row 15 took somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 hours. So you can see that this piece can be made pretty fast, if you do it right the first time.

On Row 22 I decided to make a change. By this row you have finished the small pineapples and the pattern creates a large chain space hole at the tip of the pineapple. I didn't like that so instead of chaining three over the top of it, I chained one, treble crocheted into that tip chain space, chained one again and then moved on with the pattern. That meant that I added another bar from the tip and I think it helped to pull the pineapple into shape as well as prevent a large hole space.
Changed Row 22: slst in first dc, slst into ch2 sp, ch3. (dc, ch2, 2dc) in ch2 space. *ch3, sc in each ch1 sp across 12 times, ch3, Sh in next Sh, ch1, tr crochet into chain 3 space of tip of pineapple, ch 1, Sh in next Sh* repeat from * to * across. Turn.

I circled the added treble crochet, without it this is a large hole here.

Once that last row is done, you work each larger pineapple individually. You can do the first one without cutting your yarn though. It's pretty easy to work and you get all the way to the end tip of the pineapple with the notation for rows 23-32 and I did not bother to count my rows since you are done when you have no more chain 3 sc decreases to make. The last rows 33-35 make the end look nice. 

Large Pineapple

I got two of the large pineapples done with my third skein and still had 8 large pineapples to go with the last skein, which I figured would be more than enough. The pattern calls for about 840 yards to make this. Total yardage I used: 2 skeins Tosh DK at 255 yards and 2 skeins Tosh DK Twist at 250 yards for a total of 1,010, so of course I had about 125 yards left over.

Finished but not blocked.

Love the petal like pattern shapes.

Close up of one of those fantastic pineapples.

I think this came out super pretty. I love that you can see all the colors and that the shape of the cowl is lovely and just adds to it. This is going to be a great little shawl for over black dresses in the spring/summer/fall season in Texas. It is plenty long enough to act like a scarf in the winter, too. This yarn looks different in every light, but it all coordinates with my hair. :)

Difficulty: Intermediate

Time to complete: 12 hours without mess ups, for me more like 16 hours.

Beginning Tunisian Crochet

As we have previously established, the waistcoat stitch is an excellent way to replicate the look of knitting with a crochet hook, but creates a superdense, non-stretching material that tends to be very stiff. It's pretty cool for gloves and hats, but is not a good option for anything that needs to be made in flat pieces, like say, clothes or scarves.

Aside from this stitch, there is another commonly used technique for creating a knit look in crochet... Tunisian Crochet. Besides being impossible to pronounce correctly, tunisian is something that has been daunting to me for a long time. I recently had a coupon and got a Clover H 5.00 mm tunisian hook from Joann's. I also had a pattern in my Evernote that I thought would be a good place to start:
Tunisian Crochet Cowl by Rescued Paw.

To be honest, I am still confused as to why this Clover hook has two ends... I have read somewhere, I thought, that it is to make tunisian in the round with, but I cannot figure how. Leaving that aside, this hook is almost too short to make this cowl pattern with. The number of stitches just barely fits and I have trouble keeping it scrunched up to fit, while working. I am considering ordering a set of hooks online, the longer 12" ones with little nobs on the end to stop your work escaping. I feel like these would be a good investment if I decided to really try to make a full sweater from this technique.

In any case, I managed to work several rows of this technique with this hook mainly because I watched this How To video by Happy Berry Crochet. I guess I had assumed that tunisian was a single kind of stitch and that it made knit look stitches. Wrong. The simple tunisian stitch does not look anything like knit, that is in fact another stitch... called the knit tunisian stitch. Luckily, the video does a great job of explaining both and how they are different, which is to say, not very.

In any case, I decided to make the cowl in some super pretty Madeline Tosh DK in Mandala. It is just a little stretchy which helps a lot with making this stitch. I used the color changing technique by Rescued Paw to alternate between two skeins of the same color, to break up the color patterning that I feel tends to happen with variegated yarns. However, since I wanted to practice the knit look, I used the knit stitch, instead of the simple tunisian stitch as her pattern called for.

Tunisian Knit Stitch

After about 8 inches of work, I was really getting annoyed with the double ended hook. The other end kept biting into the outside of my palm as I worked. So I just went to the store and got a new longer hook. With that I was able to work with less pain and less scrunching. At this point I was pretty bored with the knit stitch and felt comfortable with it.

Even though this colorway is amazingly pretty, I felt I might be doing a disservice to it with such a plain application. So once I figured I had about half done, I decided to work in five row chunks, alternating between knit and simple stitch, to get a kind of striped texture that might be more visually interesting.

K for Knit tunisian stitch, S for simple tunisian stitch. But hard to tell right?

I did a few "stripes" of the texture/stitch switching, but the variegated color made it pretty hard to see. This piece was also doing some massive amount of curling. Obviously it would need to be blocked before it could even be remotely wearable. I found out that I was working way too tightly which caused the curl.

I started this cowl in December, but stopped working on it and did a lot of orders for people in the mean time. Like I said I was bored and new orders were more fun to do. By the time I got a lull in orders again, I had put this project down so long that I was hesitant to pick it up again. So, I ripped it out and decided to use the two skeins of yarn for something prettier than a cowl.

Getting that far into the cowl, I now understand how to do these stitches at least. The fabric created by the knit stitch is really dense, but seems to have good stretch to it. The simple stitch creates a slightly thinner fabric that might hang better on the body but doesn't have that knit look. I do think both would make a good sweater, as is my goal, but this project has served it's purpose.

Difficulty learning Tunisian: Not hard at all if you know basic crochet.

Houndstooth Scarf

Was contacted to make a complimentary piece to a friend's favorite sweater. The sweater in question is a black and white fair isle sweater with red accents and she asked for a houndstooth black and white scarf to go with the outfit.

I spent a little time looking through patterns online and found one I really liked. I shared it with her and she agreed that it would be perfect. The pattern is by Kathy Lashley of ELK Studio and free through Ravelry or her blog.

This is a super basic pattern and might be an excellent one for a beginner. It uses a basic chain start, and alternates between sc and dc to get the houndstooth look. Most patterns online use this technique and although it isn't a true houndstooth shape, it really gets the job done and looks nice. It did take me quite a few rows into the scarf before I could really see how it would look when done.

For me this pattern was such a no brainer, that I watched a lot of Crash Course while getting it done. Figured I could relearn some stuff while working.

Finished!

I like long scarves, and the one in the pattern is 5'6"! I was working on these from leftover skeins and decided to let the white one run out and see how long that made it. I got close to the end of the skein and it started tangling really bad, so I decided to stop and measure it as it was. Turns out it was 80 inches long. That's 6'8"... LONG! So I decided to stop and let it be. The width is 7 inches. This is one heck of a giant scarf, but since she lives up north maybe it will actually be warm enough. It could easily be folded in half hotdog-style and wrapped double thick. Or folded hamburger style and pulled through the loop. It should look nice with a number of winter coats so I am really happy with how it turned out, especially how the pattern looks a bit reversible.

Difficulty: Easy
Time to complete: 5-6 hours