He likes to pinch.

I've been in a crafting rut trying to make a dalek for my hubby for literally three plus months, but stalling out around the head part.  It's not a fun pattern, to be honest. I wanted something fast, simple, and cute.  Since it was going to be for my hubby, I thought of his favorite Honda commercial where a crab goes "I like to pinch" - he uses it as an excuse to pinch people. Sigh.

I went on Pinterest and found a free crab pattern that worked beautifully.  Super easy, relatively fast, and very cute.

The claws!

One issue (and it's not even a big one) - the pattern doesn't tell you to make two claws. I did everything and realized I was missing something... d'oh! Oh well. Easy fix.  

This was a really quick project... which is something that I liked.

The hubby didn't want a mouth on him. He asked for a mustache, but then changed his mind. Hmm.

Look at the legs. So cute.

He took a ride on the Domino...

Since I gave up on his Dalek, I made the crab a beanie out of the unfinished Dalek head. 

It's pretty awesome as a beanie.

Thoughts?

UPDATE: I crocheted a blue crab.... A Maryland blue crab... Tee hee. 

He's so cute. 

The yarn I used was different material, more slick so he turned out to be a smaller gauge than the red one.

Hooray crafting!

Baa Baa Black Sheep

Now, when I look through Pinterest, I find PLENTY of baby oriented crafting ideas/gifts.  I don't have baby fever or anything like that, but I did find an adorable Crocheted Lamb Baby Mobile that I wanted to make. Not the mobile part, just the lambs.  They're so cute!

Crocheting the white part was hard... really hard. I lost count a lot during the body part and it still turned out OK.  The best part was if there was an issue, I gave myself a long enough tail to fix it... and the yarn is so fuzzy you don't see the mistakes in the pattern!

It's adorable! But I wanted this one standing up straight so I stitched the legs on differently than the original pattern.

I don't like how the face turned out. Cute, but no. It makes me think of a dog, not a lamb.

Since I didn't have the eyelets that the pattern mentioned I embroidered a face on it... and I don't like it. So this one is mine and promptly ordered the eyelets for others...

I made one for everyone for Easter =)

The little fuzzy bodies look like snow balls! Here are four lamb waiting to be stitched together. 

Ignore the giant tub of cat nip... I have plans for that.

Four little lambs - two tan, two gray. So cute!!

I think I'm going to make another one for me... Or undo that ugly embroidery on the first one. The eyelets make them look so much cuter!

Hoppy Easter everyone!

ExterminaKNIT

Remember the Christmas crafty post?

Well, I didn't finish all my gifts back in the Fall because I had friends who I wouldn't see for a while (SOME people left the country!) so I had extra time.  They're HUGE into Dr. Who. And you know what's easy to find?  Dr. Who knit patterns! (as if the internet isn't already full of non-knit Dr. Who items).

So when I came across this gem on Ravelry, I had to make it. The instructions are well written, but I highly recommend using the .pdf format and not the .txt. Since it starts with 114 cast on stitches (DANGER - LARGE KNIT TOY ALARM going off) I scraped the knitting idea and found an easier (and smaller!) crocheted Dalek pattern which was a better size.

It started out OK... but I stalled out on Round 9. Sigh.  It took another couple weeks of motivating myself into starting it again... luckily, that's when a snow storm hit! Hooray! Perfect excuse to not go outside and to craft =)

One of the many things I had to look up during this pattern was FPSC and this video helped a ton.  Short, sweet, to the point.  Not sure the purpose of that stitch in this pattern though. Maybe shaping purposes? The top part is where I used the FPSC stitch.

I now have a hand-puppet Dalek. EXTERMINATE!! RAAAAAA!

Once I got to the bobbles, I started making a mistake.  Not really sure how I did it, but I went from 60 stitches to 30.  Ugggggh!! I increased them during a gray round to get it up to 60 again, but it made an obvious mistake... I'm just going to pretend that Daleks are voluptuous and have curves now. OK? Ok. 

The boy tried to make me feel better about it... "Just stuff it really well up top, then smooth it out." Well, that was a good plan, and did help some, but I think if I just did the stupid pattern correctly, I would have been fine.

When comparing it to the patten it's not *that* bad or different. There wasn't great explaination on how to crochet over or around the bobbles... hence my random pinching in round and losing stitches.  I think.

But I prevailed! And found I don't like crocheting 4 stitches in a round. Ugh.  But the plunger looks OK, the arm isn't great.

Not entirely happy, but not mad either.

The eye entertain mes as well as the dome lights on the top.

The curves aren't too noticable now.

My biggest complaint is how freakin' big he turned out to be. And this was the small pattern!! Ugh. I'm discouraged, so I'm not making a second one for a while, but knowing me, I'm going to revisit this pattern and conquer it properly.  I tend to do multiples of a pattern... never one. Sigh.

Bailey was scared and hid by the couch. Shocking.

Domino wasn't too sure of this thing looking at her... so she got close.

Oh noooo! The Dalek EXTERMAKNITTED Domino!

Thoughts?  I'll most likely make another one in a few months... maybe it'll be red... =)

UPDATE: I made a red one! 

Pre-plungers, etc.  Not a bad shape this time around!

I'm not happy with how droopy his eye is still. The arm and plunger look good though.

Face on he's cute! The eye still annoys me.

The dome lights and gun are fun.

UGGH IT STILL DROOPS

Thoughts?

Tis the season to get crafty, tra la la la la....

Thanksgiving is my favorite time of the year... but Christmas is a close second.  I really like giving people gifts and since I've become crafty I've enjoyed making things for people.  I started making the knit items almost a year in advance as I originally wanted to knit all my friends a scarf.

See? Beautiful green one sided and pink on the other scarf! Way too time consuming.

I eventually scraped that idea as it was too slow, boring, etc.  Eventually, it morphed into making toys that reminded me of certain friends.

I pulled out an older pattern to make for some friends.

As Christmas drew closer, and I ran out of time, I postponed giving people things until their birthdays, etc.  Lazy... I know.

First up - a couple friends of ours thoroughly enjoys Mario Bros and requested I crochet them a Goomba.  However, when they originally asked I didn't know how to crochet but since I acquired a while crochet hook kit back in September I've learned... and surprised them with one.  Again, I found a free pattern on Ravelry.com.  I had to look up a YouTube video on what a Magic Ring was, but that was worth it as it's a really cool skill for crochet.

When making the pattern, I ran into a little problem... I lost count when crocheting one of the feet. So he's a little... lopsided. But it still looks OK (I think) and I did better on the next ones.

Next ones you say? Well, after I made him I realized that some of our other friends would like them too.. so I made a mini army of Goombas...

AAAAHHH RUN AWAAAAAAAY!! I crocheted Domino an army!

Well, the Goombas weren't enough. I asked the hubby what other friends would like a crocheted gift and he asked if there was another Super Mario Bros pattern I could do.  Luckily, Ravelry is FULL of free patterns and I found the 1-Up Mushrooms... which I promptly made several for friends (and us).

They're super cute and easy to make. My phone camera turns the green a funny color.

So I made another one. I still need to work on my crochet skills... all my projects come out different sizes, ugh.

I didn't just crochet two mushrooms... I ended up making about seven of them - either red or green depending on the friend.  Carpal tunnel, anyone?

And once I was SICK of making mushrooms, I moved on to different friend... the one who likes penguins.  For some reason, I couldn't find a decent free pattern for knitting but I did find one in crochet. There were a couple techniques that I used on the star post but were rusty for those one, so YouTube helped with those but overall this was a taxing pattern.  I made some alterations (ex: didn't do the legs portion and didn't make 4 feet as two looked great on the bottom) and then the white part slip was weird.  It worked... but I stitched it on wrong and lost count at one part so it's... off. And I hate googley eyes on crocheted/knit toys so I just did black yarn.

I liked him even with all my changes. But I felt he was missing something...

....So I decided to crochet him a Santa Hat.  I didn't use a pattern for that - getting better!

But enough toys! Remember the Moebius Scarf I made? Well, I made another one for someone else for Christmas and then I made a tiny one for my bro in law since he likes math (I didn't think he'd wear a scarf). It's just small enough to be a desk ornament.

I tried to use the colors of the school. See how tiny it is? It was really hard to do on Size 3 circular needles with only 10in cables. Talk about painful.

But I think it looks pretty cool for a little desk topper. 

I didn't do a lot of sewing this year and I regret that.  Maybe I'll make a table runner next year for friends/family.  Or I'll do something with clay... or Baileys. Oh the choices!

Happy Holidays! I hope you enjoyed my review of patterns =)

Key Covers

As some of you may know, I recently changed jobs (YAY!).  Aside from being much happier, I have had a little bit of frustration... mostly dealing with the amount of keys I received.  They all look the same and I keep mixing them up when I need to use them. So I found this really cool fish key cover crochet pattern on Pinterest, but it was only a picture and not a pattern (hate that!!).  I did a Ravelry search and came across a few that worked and decided on this one.  I  purposely picked crochet as I need to work on those skills for other projects in the upcoming months I wish to do... =)

For a good video invisible decrease go here...

Here's the finished products!

Maybe I'll eventually figure out how to make it look like a fish. But I'm happy in the meantime.

Thoughts?

Hookers Unite!

For my birthday, a good friend of mine bought me a complete set of crochet hooks and his lovely girlfriend (who crochets) proceeded to give me loads of yarn!  Here's to another hobby with yarn!  So excited!! Many of the items I wanted to knit I couldn't because they weren't knit... they were crocheted.  NO LONGER AN ISSUE! Yesss! Bring on the crafting season!

Since I had some time to kill I learned to crochet this week and did a granny square (in Philly Eagles colors, of course) and made a star.  Those videos were super helpful and great.

Rather proud of this... first try!

The star isn't as good... one point wasn't done correctly. Oh well! I'll make another soon... =)

Thoughts?

Jessie's B-Day!

For those of you that know me, I've had a wonderful person attached to my hip since Winter of 2006. She is an amazing person and I am lucky to have her in my life.

With that mushy crap out of the way, I can show you what I got to make her for her birthday (yesterday).  Now, I sew and knit, but she does crocheting.  She made me this AWESOME pincushion holder for my birthday, so I wanted to make her something equally useful and awesome.

Isn't he adorable?!

I found this awesome crochet/knitting supply bag holder on Pinterest, but, like most links on that damn website, it didn't show me how to make the bag. It was just bragging about. Grumble.  So I used my knowledge of bags (since I've made two already) and bugged my hubby for ideas how to properly make the bag.  He suggested for the circular bottom to use a pie pan (9") and then from there I measured the circumference for the tube shape of the bag.  

The straps have fusible batting on the inside as does the tube-like part. 

See the pockets? This is reversible too, I just gave it to her with them on the inside.

As for the height, I winged it. I wanted it to be tall enough to hold a bunch of yarn (I was pretty sure she was just stuffing her supplies into a box... I know I was shoving mine into a plastic bag).  The pockets were the part I was hesitant on. I had one crochet hook, so I was able to use it as a gauge to see how big each pocket should be.  From there, I pinned the hell out of the solid fabric to the tube one (which I didn't stitch together until AFTER I stitched on the pockets). Then took FOREVER stitching those stupid pockets down.  For the crowning touch, I went to a fancy yarn store nearby and bought her two skeins of gorgeous yarn which I made sure she understood was to be used on a project for her... not anyone else.  

She loves hers. I loved hers. So... I may have to make myself one....