Sonic... the Hedgehog!

Shockingly, Pinterest is fueling my knitting love.  I found an awesome knitting pattern for hedgehogs. Hedgehogs seem to be the latest hipster animal.  First came owls, then foxes, and now.... hedgehogs.  But I've always had a thing for hedgehogs.  Sonic the Hedgehog was my favorite video game as a kid.  My first cat was named Sonic and I really wanted to name Bailey Tails originally (but she's not a Tails so it worked out - eventually I'll have a Tails and Knuckles....).

Also, the hubby got me a stuffed Tails!! He brought it home when I started working on this... fate? Yes, of course.

Let me clear: I am a new knitter, a novice at best. So, while I am critiquing the tutorial, I freely acknowledge that the fault might lie with me as I maybe wasn't ready for it.  

With that being said... The tutorial seemed simple enough but I wasn't a big fan about the make 1 right and make 1 left nonsense.  She had a tutorial linked to how to do it but it wasn't good enough for me.  Plus! She didn't explain how to do it in the round.  I had to practice it a couple times before it came out OKish.   Maybe, just maybe, if I had used a non-slick yarn that would have also made it easier.  But why did things the easy way when I can do it the Laura way? *grumble* So I Googled it and found a better visual of m1r and m1l from New Stitch a Day (love that place!)

I'm not going to lie. I started this project, got around 4 rounds into it, and stared at the tutortial for the next week and a half.  I couldn't get the courage up to try and complete it. I even restarted it a couple times to motivate myself to knit Round 5.  No clue why it bugged me so much, but it did.

The tip of the nose is weird. I don't think I did it like the tutorial wanted.

You can see it better here... weird with the m1l, m1r.

But once I got over my m1r, m1l fear it went ok into the belly (which ALSO had those lovely symbols).  Another thing that isn't written clearly is the last round on the belly to make 5 stitches. I misunderstood it and did something else.  I will give the tutorial credit for having detailed pictures to other knitting techinques that I didn't know (p2tog tbl for example).

 Somehow, I screwed up the final 5 stitches on the belly.

It worked out later with the grey body, but it wasn't easy. Had to add random stitches to make it work.

Now, the body. Ugh. I had all the materials for the project, but there isn't a clear way to get the new needles onto the head/body combo in the tutorial.  I ended up taking a break here and tried reading it multiple times until it made sense.

And then.... it did. A lightbulb went off. (I think too much with these tutorials sometimes).

He's super cute.

The nose still looks funny. No amount of stuffing could fix it. Although, I will admit I should have used more.

You can see that I had a hard time in the beginning attaching the grey to the teal.

Soooo... here's Sonic! I'm going to make a couple more for others =)  I loved the teal and grey combo! (For those that know me, this isn't shocking).

Aren't his ears cute? He looks like an ardvark or anteater. Sigh. I'll pretend it's a hedgehog.

Dominio wasn't sure what to make of him.

"He smells funny."

"Meh, I'm more important than that."

Such a cutie.

Thoughts?

Mother Day's

Happy Mother's Day to all you mommies (including you pet mommies)!

I had been knitting a lot lately so I wanted to sew a little for all the mommies in my life.  There was an adorable pattern I found on Pinterest that I had been eyeing and finally bought it off Etsy.  Totally worth it.  The best part? I didn't know anything about paper piecing and the woman who created the pattern had FREE videos on how to do paper piecing. Amazing, right? Super easy to follow as well.

My mom's gift was easy - horses.  Fawn and Jerry are the horses that I grew up with and they're still kicking (literally - they knocked Dad's dog Luca upside the head a couple months ago when he wouldn't leave them be).  

Here's Jerry, the one-eyed wonder.

Fawn's coat isn't looking too hot here, but you get a better view of Jerry's head poking out.

Since the pattern gave me two angle options, I made Jerry one way and Fawn another. Even though Jerry's a gelding, they're in love and it's adorable.  You can't put them in separate pastures or Jerry jumps over the fence to be with her.  So, I had to do two.

I'm finding that I'm not good with paper piecing and doing it the traditional way. I don't stitch to the paper... ever. I should practice but doing it the correct way, but for these pillows I cut out the big chunks and folded the paper and eyeballed the stitching. I bet all you real quilters are cringing at the thought of me doing it that way, but it worked.... sort of.

On Fawn's you can see that it didn't work out with the right eye and ear.  But the rest was pretty good.

The right eye/side is driving me nuts. But she's super cute.

On Jerry's I made a lot more cuts on the chunks before stitching them together to make sure it was even angles, etc.  It worked better.

Jerry only has one eye so it's supposed to look like this on him. But his is SO much batter!

Looking back on the horse pattern I should have added a tail. But ehhhh. I still LOVE this pattern. I might make another set for others.

Super cute. Love this pattern!

Mom in law was a bit different.  She doesn't have a specific animal that she goes "EEEEE" over (maybe cats... but not like me, obviously I'm the Queen of Crazy Cat Lady Town) but I wanted to have pillows for her that would make Dad in law happy too.  So I looked back at the sewing machine cover I made and made a pillow version of it.  The hubby seemed to think that would be the best option for them and their home.

On the left pillow I stitched Orion, minus his bow.  On the right are the dippers.

Big and Little Dipper.

Orion looks better here.

My Grandmother loves quilting items. All times.  She used to go to Lancaster, PA and buy the prettiest quilts and hang them on her wall, put them on all her beds, and give them to us.  I blame her for my original interest in quilts and mom in law for my love of attempting to make them.  When I was looking through the Etsy shop for the Peeping Horse, there was a Peeping Duck pattern. Sold - I knew she'd like them.

I made four ducks total.  One was a practice set and I took them for our couch and the better ones I gave to her.  I did the first one as the male mallard, but I wanted the second one to be different.  After Googling a couple pictures, I finally decided that I could use a cheetah type fabric to mimic the feather pattern of the female mallard.

This is my practice duck. The nostril is killing me. She's hooked on quack. =D

I love how the female mallard is taller than the male.  These were the better two. Sigh. Need to practice more with paper piecing!

Thoughts? Hope your Mother's Day is a great one!

Ya ain't nothing but Houndstooth...

Since I've gotten Nina, I've been drooling over different projects on Pinterest that I could do.  Watching YouTube and Craftsy videos didn't help my desire (but will help with my technique and final products eventually).  I've decided that I'm going to make a throw quilt a month (or try to) to either give away to friends or to sell on Etsy (given the pattern I use allows me too).

Anyhow, one of my friend's bought their second home (check out her blog about it!) so I wanted to make them something to celebrate.  My friend is rather modern in her decor and I tend to mock her for it as I prefer comfort.  However, when I found a free Houndstooth pattern online I knew I found something that I could make her and she would like. It was rather easy pattern to follow.

My one complaint is that when cutting the 21 2.5" stripes into triangles, the pattern recommended making my own 6.25" triangle pattern to make my life easier when cutting.  In theory, that worked on some of the stripes.  I recognize that it was probably due to my own undercutting (I prefer to have too much fabric rather than the exact amount) that created my issues but I was able to fix it.

As is the blanket is as big as my pool table. If I had added the other rows it would be bigger.

Also, I didn't make it as big as it claimed it should be (otherwise it would be a HUGE throw).  But I noticed that the template had me making an excess of squares... even with the correct dimensions   So I have a bunch left over.  Maybe I'll make matching pillows eventually... who knows.

As for the colors, my friend has two dogs, two cats, and I forget how many chickens.  I didn't think white fabric was the best choice for her house.  I went with black and a medium grey as they're more forgiving with pet hair/stains.  The grey fabric has a design on it because I can't will myself to buy solids. I know solids are a quilter's friend but... arrrggh sooooo boring.

Love the orange stripe with paw prints.

The fleece on the back is a darker grey than the front color and the stripe of orange with paw prints gives it a little flare that I think looks rather nice.  I know her tastes in favorite colors changes regularly, so I was going for a blanket that would stand the test of time (or at least match a season!). Originally, I was going to use an  orange binding to tie in the stripe.... but I remembered her mentioning something about neon colors/zebra print and decided to use pre-cut strips from a jelly roll the mom in law sent me. It made it so much easier.

I used a fancy stitch on the binding to help prevent it from ripping apart too easily. Still a real possibility though.

I used four different zebra/cheetah prints.  I think it adds a nice BOOOM to it.  Quilting it might have been too much with the houndstooth pattern.

Also, I didn't do any quilting on it.  I had found a couple tutorials on how to add straight diagonal lines on this pattern, but it just seemed too busy for me (I would have used black or white thread).  So I opted to not stitch it together and to use a fancy stitch on the binding for strength.  I purposely used a different thread color to stand out.

Klaus approves.

Thoughts?

"Did you ever see an Elephant fly?"

Remember how a couple posts ago I was making Flying Pigs left and right?  Well, I am still making them (because they're awesome) but I wanted to do something a little different for Dad.

Did I mention I have his sense of humor?

Looks good in blue.

My dad is pretty awesome and I wanted to give him a yellow pig (yellow is his favorite color).  But the more I thought about it, the more I didn't want to give him a pig, but something a little more personal. DUMBO!

You can kind of see how big it is.

When I got my first car, it was originally my dad's who just gave it to me. He used this opportunity to buy himself a new Ford truck.  It's huge. I forget all the fancy dimensions, but it's a great farm-ish-use truck.  But here's the best part - the rear-view mirrors stick out so much from the side that he nicknamed it Dumbo (get it? Big  grey truck with big ol' ears?).

So, in honor of his beloved Dumbo, I modified the following tutorial to make Dumbo... the flying elephant.  I skipped on the wings part because it wasn't true to the Disney version of the animal.  I did have to make a small little yellow hat to match.  And, I agree, the ears aren't quite big enough to be considered Dumbo but it's close enough for me.

I still think he's cute.

The only modifications to the tutorial that I did were on the snout and the ears.

Snout modifications

- Round 11 - Don't purl.  Instead, knit until you've got a 1" or 1.25" tube.  Then decrease your stitches to 3 per needle (prior to this step you had 4 per needle!).
- Knit with these 3 stitches per needle for another 1" - 1.25" (depends on how long you want the trunk"
- Once you've reached your desired length, purl one round
- SSK, Knit to the end (you will end up with 2 stitches on each needle or 6 total).
- Then continue as it states in the tutorial for the last step: Cut the yarn and place the end on a yarn needle. Pull through the remaining stitches and pull up tight to close the hole. Secure with a couple of stitches. Pull the end to the inside and trim.

Ears/Inside of the ears

Cast on 4 stitches as it instructs
- k1, m1, k2, m1, k1
- Purl
- k1, m1, k3, m1, k1
- Purl
- k1, m1, k2end
- Purl

Once I reached the max. width of the ears that I liked, I then started k2gether at the beginning of each row and p2gether at the end of each row (it helped create a rapid drop look).

His legs make it look even more lopsided.

Any suggestions on how to make the ears better, I'd love to "hear" it (ha, ha..).  I know one of mine is lopsided. But ah well! At least he flies (thanks to the bouncy ball inside..).

Dumbo's Signature Yellow Hat

- Treat it exactly as one of the legs in the tutorial until you get to round 3. Knit 3 more rounds (total of 6).
- Round 7 - k1, m1, k2
- Round 8 + 9 knit
- Round 10 - k1, m1, k3
- Knit until you're happy (total height = 2" for mine).
- Bind off then fold up the just finished end to make it look like a beanie. Whip stitch the original end together to it's a hat!

I think he's SUPER cute with the hat. I had to hide him from the hubby (as noted in the other post,  he tends to steal gifts not intended for him....).

Front view. I love the hat!

 His tail has embroidery thread tied on it to make it look more like an elephant's tail.

Here you can see the ears being off. Argh.

But he's still SUPER cute! I hope Dad likes him!

Picture this.

Last weekend, the hubby went out of town on a boy's weekend trip.  Jessie's boy went along with him. So what did we do? Why, hang out and take some awesome pictures of DC Monuments!

I know the lighting isn't great on a lot of these, but I'm still trying to figure out my fancypants camera.  Luckily, Jessie's trying to start her own photography business so she's super knowledgeable about this stuff and gave me some tips (ex: use the RAW setting so I can adjust exposure on my computer afterward... SO HELPFUL!).

The tree grew around the headstone. Really neat looking.

She's too short! So cute.

Looks like the tree of life.

The shadows are really cool.

The Air Force Memorial over the hill.

I love that you can see the Washington Monument through the trees.

This says "his wives" - I found it interesting they share a place.

So crowded! The headstones are 5" from the wall.

Walked off base and went to the Iwo Jima Memorial

Love this image with the Washington Monument in the distance.

"Let Freedom Ring" - Gift from the Netherlands after WWII. Beautiful.

Jessie being artsy and taking pictures.

I loooooovvvveee tulips. And, shockingly, there are tulips planted in front of the Netherlands bell tower.

See the pyramid? Not sure why there is one.

Air Force  Memorial.

Pentagon from a distance.

So, those are the good ones.  Feedback welcome!