Corner to Corner Crochet - Blanket

I took a small break from crochet. I was up to my eyeballs in yarn there for a while, plus, with our extra hot summer, hanging out with a bunch of thermal yarn in your lap was only going to make me extra warm, which is a big no bueno in my book. It took seeing a cute blanket on Pinterest to completely inspire me. Not only was the pattern intriguing, but the colors were absolutely beautiful. Behold, my first attempt at corner to corner crochet.

Corner to Corner crochet

By the way, you can find the free pattern and tips for making this blanket by Susan Carlson on her blog "Felted Button" here... and the yarn is called "candied" by Red Heart Boutique Unforgettable Yarn, which is pretty much gorgeous, and can be purchased at craft stores like Joann's, and also in multipaks at Amazon. 

Because of the increasing (or decreasing at the end of each row), I would consider this blanket at the intermediate level. Just as a personal tip, I also watched a number of YouTube videos to make sure I had started the pattern of increasing correctly before getting too far into the project.

The thing about crocheting any blanket typically is... it's super boring. Seriously. You get the initial chain stitch down for as wide as the blanket needs to be, and then go back and forth, back and forth, same number of rows and columns, repeating the same crochet pattern over and over until a blanket starts to form. This is great if you are on a plane, or in a waiting room somewhere and don't want to count rows, but for me, after a day or two, the endless back and forth feels more like a drudgery to me than a fun crafty side project.  Enter in corner to corner crochet!

My first attempt at corner to corner.  Hook used is a 5.0 mm (H) Crochet hook

Corner to corner does just that, it starts in the corner.  You need to add a row of increase at the end of every row, which is just enough to keep you interested and your mind sharp.

Corner to corner, this got me really excited when I saw the rows change on their own.

The other awesome thing about corner to corner, is that if you pick a yarn that has a slow color change, you won't need to switch colors all the time (and tie off loose ends, my least favorite part of a complicated blanket). The yarn magically and gradually changes into one beautiful color after the next.  

The most beautiful pile of pastel rainbow yarn ever

You just keep increasing rows as your triangle wedge grows...

It's working, it's really working!

until it gets wider and wider, and you need your tween daughter to hold it up for a picture.

Thanks for helping me Vivi!

I will admit I did get a bit persnickety in the middle of the blanket about not wanting two rows to be the same color. When I saw the pattern might make two rows of the exact same pink shade near the same part of the blanket, I would cut and tie off the yarn at one end, pull a few feet out of the working yarn, and start the new color so it wouldn't sync up later in the pattern.  

Oh and be it noted, no matter how warm it is outside, crochet will attract your kitties, they love to "help" by laying directly on your work.

Haley, the softest kitty in the known universe (aka Fluffy butt) "helping" me crochet

When you get as wide as you think you want to go, now is the time to switch it up, and start decreasing each row.  This keeps you mentally on your toes and helps minimizing boredom. I also went to YouTube to make sure I was doing this correctly. 

Decreasing suddenly makes a square edge appear along the sides - neato!

It's fun to see the rows shrink and shrink until all you have left to do is to put an edge on it, and tie off the loose ends (you'll still have some - just not as many as if you switched rows every color).

Tying off loose ends... it's actually quite the task

Then you can sit back and admire your work.  This was the first time I could lay it out on the floor and take a step back.  It was awesome how the color change of the yarn made the most excellent stripes, and almost gave it an optical illusion effect.

Rainbow stripes o'plenty

Here is it draped over a chair.  I just love how it turned out!

The next day I took it outside to get some shots of the colors "in the wild".

Unicorns would definitely approve of this blanket, so many colors!

Candied yarn - love the color changes!

From sea to shining sea it's color mania.  Oh and the border on this pattern gave it a nice solid edge, and actually made two different variations, depending on which side of the blanket you are looking at.

Flat facing on the front of the blanket, loops on the back side border.

This blanket is warm and soft, but not too heavy.  It's perfect for family movie nights in our new chair. It was immediately claimed by my eldest, as you can see here... she's ready for a bowl of popcorn.

Vivian says this blanket is "hers" now.

This was a really fun, and really beautiful blanket to make. Red Heart Unforgettable yarn is not only super soft, but comes in a bunch of beautiful slow color change patterns. I was thinking about picking a new color scheme and making a second one actually. Feel free to post any projects you are working on, and... Winter is coming... so happy crochet everyone!

Puppy Ear Flap Hat - Crochet

Just a quick post. I wanted to show you my newest ear flap hat.  A puppy!  How cute is this face and floppy ears?

A sweet little puppy ear flap hat

It's seems that many of my friends are having babies this season.  Most have been girls, so I've done quite a few baby birds and giraffes, but I was invited to a baby shower for a baby boy and besides foxes, I soon realized I didn't have many boy ear flap hats in my arsenal.  I went in search of inspiration and found it in this picture by Ruth McColm (you can buy her full pattern over on etsy):

As always I used my own favorite ear flap hat pattern (link no longer available) but you can find a number of ear flap hat patterns for free on Pinterest.  For some parts such as the ears, I pieced together things I liked from different patterns to get the look I wanted.  I used the pattern for the ears from this pattern and I modified it a bit by reducing stitches near the top to narrow the ears so they would be wide and floppy at the bottom and smaller, easier to attach at the top

Puppy ear flap hat - how can you not love this face?

Here's all the parts before assembling. Ear flap hat, circle "patch" for the eye, two ears, a small nose, two buttons for the eyes and matching thread. 

After you have all the parts ready, I laid them out on the hat to find the best spacing for the puppy face.

It's always good to lay things out how they will look before hand so you can get the face placement correct

Then I attached each part with embroidery thread.  I like to sew these so that nothing shows on the inside of the hat.  I take shallow stitches that do not go all the way to the back and at the same time securing each part very snugly.  Especially the buttons, as you would not want those to come off for safety reasons.

After that my little puppy hat was completed, and I was almost sad to give him away the next day, as I usually like to keep one as a template for future hats.

  
Just so I could see how it would fit on a regular head, I had my 9-year-old try the hat on for size.  This was made at a 9-12 month size (the baby is born this spring and it will be ready to wear next winter), but since yarn is somewhat stretchy, it did fit on her head and would probably go up to a 2 or 3 year old toddler if the mom wanted it to.

By the way, the baby shower was fabulous, in case you want a sneak peek.  They did a very Pacific Northwest outdoors theme, with grey and white chevrons, with hints of black and woodsy elements.  Here were the center pieces, little tents on a slab of wood and mason jars filled with pens (for the games) and chocolate dipped pretzels.

Cute and woodsy

This play tent was set up over by the gift table, and will make a lovely play area for baby Duke as he grows up.

For favors, they had a "make your own trail mix" bar with little baggies and tin buckets with the different snacks of nuts, chocolate chips, and cranberries

The food was fabulous as well. My eldest daughter really loved this fruit ups served in waffle cups.

Love the waffle bowls use for serving the fruit cups

Last but not least were the woodland creatures for dessert.  These were little foxes and maybe skunks or badgers all displayed on a big slab of tree trunk.  So cute. 

Had I know this was the theme, I probably would have made my little fox ear flap hat instead, 

Little Jaxon here in one of my fox hat creations

 but I really like the way the puppy hat turned out. After Duke is born and grows up enough to wear the hat, I will post an update.

Crochet Swim Suit for 18-inch Journey Girl Doll

When you have a name like clever, crafty, cookin' mama... you really should live up to your name.  I realized the other day that I had been posting a little bit of "clever", a little bit of "cookin", but not a lot whole of "crafty".  This is not to say that I haven't been crafty, I've actually been cranking out a ton of crafts, I've just had not a ton of time to post about them.  I thought I would give you a sneak peek of something I whipped up two days ago.  Two out of my three girls now have Journey Dolls (from Toys-R-Us), which is the thrifty, economical (and might I add pretty adorable) solution to the much more over pricey American Girl Dolls.  With a full week of blue sky and sunshine around here, my daughter's thoughts have suddenly turned to darting through sprinklers and plummeting down slip n' slides.  Of course their dolls need some swimwear as well, to watch all the festivities in, right?

Journey Girl crochet swimsuit

So I went looking for some free swim suit patterns, only most of them were for the 18-inch American Girl doll size.  The only trouble with that was, the America Girl's are built like defensive linebackers in the neck and shoulder area.  The Journey girls, on the other hand, are pretty slender throughout their frame.  I decided to create a pattern specifically for this type of doll.  That's right. No pattern, just flying by the seat of my pants.  This aqua blue suit above was my first attempt!  Not too shabby, eh?  Last night I went ahead and tried to recreate the same pattern for my second daughter, who thought her doll needed a green suit.

Swimsuits for Journey Girl dolls

I was able to tweak a couple elements of where the center ruffle was, and smoothed out some of the between the leg area.  I think this turned out rather nice.  I didn't really see the need to add straps to the shoulder area, as this would make it a lot harder for the girls to put the suits on their dolls.  I am busy testing this pattern for a third time tonight, then I am thinking about sharing it or selling a pdf file of it for any of those of you who are interested.  Just thought I'd give you a little sneak peak.  

Super cute doll suit!

No worries, more crafts are coming soon!  Stay tuned...

Last Minute Homemade Gift

This week I wanted to do something extra nice for some people that work in an office.  There are six gals that work there, and they did something so nice for our family that I wanted to show my appreciation.  I asked them to tell me each what their favorite color was to wear (in hopes I could whip up some quick decorative scarves) and deliver them in time for Christmas.  I finished them up just last night and in the process, revisited an easy crochet pattern from last year and put a little twist on it I thought I'd share with you.

Fluffy waffle scarves in a variety of colors

Last year I had called this the "Quick 2-hour fluffy scarf", because it literally takes under two hours to make one.  The reason these work up so quick is because you use Thick and Quick chunky yarn and a huge over sized "N" hook. Here is a link to the post on it, and here is a picture of the scarf.

This thick and chunky yarn made for a super soft, warm scarf.  This time around I wanted to still use a soft and fluffy yarn, but much thinner, so the scarf would be more decorative. I stuck with lion brand but this time used their "Homespun" yarn.

This stuff is SOOO soft!  I often comment that it feels like "I'm crocheting a muppet".  It is a lot thinner than the original thick and chunky stuff, and it works up more fine and airy.  The trick is I was using pretty loose stitches and still using my trusty "N" crochet hook.  Man I love this "N" hook.  I found one with a smooth bamboo handle and it makes things move quickly.

I wanted to make this scarf long enough so that it could be doubled up in half and pulled through, so it could look more like a cowl if the owner wanted.  My link to the original scarf is the same pattern I used here, but to make it longer, I loosely chained 130 stitches.  Chain 4 at the end, then skipping the first chain, DC in the next chain.  Chain one, skip one chain and DC.  It's a pattern you do across the whole scarf to get that waffle effect.

This yarn is so light and fluffy that when you actually put it on, it collapses on itself and looks like a much more complicated pattern than it actually was.

I love that out of 6 women, they each picked their own individual colors

I am very happy how these turned out! Some days I actually made two of these in a row to try and get finished by their Christmas party today.  So by keeping the same pattern and large hook, but using a thinner, softer yarn, you can change if you are making the scarf for warmth or more decorative. Here is the link one more time on the how to to make a scarf like this.  Here is also a link to the original pattern I followed.  Now off to deliver my Christmas cheer...

The weirdest Christmas gift request

Wanna hear about possibly the weirdest Christmas gift request I have ever received?

Well then first I have to tell you about my nephew.  He's 9, has got the biggest brown eyes you ever saw, and freckles and dimples that go on for miles.  He is the middle child of three, and much like my middle child, is a very deep thinker.  We are talking DEEP.  He is completely filled to the brim with facts.  At any given moment he might rattle off to you some of these trivial tidbits that make you stop, cock your head to the side and say, "wow, I did not know that, Jacob, thank-you so very much".

When this picture was taken I am 99.98% sure he was telling me facts about turkeys

He's a funny thing too.  The other day, I am told that his mom was asking all three kids what they wanted to be when they grew up.  Gabe, the oldest and lover of legos, wanted to be a train conductor like his daddy.  Mackenzie, the only girl and baby of the family wanted what every girl wants: A mani/pedi chair and servants (Nice, I think she got that love from her mama).  Jacob was asked the same question and he says, "I want to work where you have those gray walls".  His mom wonders, gray walls??  He goes on, "You know, where you pop your head up over the top and look around?" 

 She stares blankly for a minute... 

"YOU MEAN A CUBICLE?!".  Yes, he says firmly. 

Just typing this story makes me laugh so hard. You've got to love him.  He is totally an out of the box thinker, or wait, I take that back, is he a way "IN" the box thinker, as in WAY INSIDE a cubicle box. What kid says when I grow up I want to be an office cog just so I can imitate a prairie dog?

THIS KID!

Fast forward onto Christmas gifts.  Now I crochet.  Once I started crocheting I went way past blankets and hats, I started doing amigurumi, which is a Japanese term where you make three dimensional, stuffed objects that have a lot of realistic detail.  I got pretty good at it, heck I even made some amazing character dolls such as Mario, Luigi, the whole Mario brothers gang actually. 

I made these for my daughter's Super Mario Brothers birthday party a few years back

All of my nephews loved my work.  So I asked little 9-year-old Jacob about what he might like for Christmas, totally expecting he would list one of my Mario guys.  Not even close.  Not even REMOTELY close.  Without even pausing, without even looking up to the ceiling and pondering.  It's like he had this object on his mind already and I had just happened to ask him the correct time.  He simply said, 

"Can you make me a giant macaroni noodle out of yarn?"

Me:  Stunned silence.

Me: Um, macaroni... noodle??

Jacob: Yes.  A big one.

Me: Blinking

Then he walks off. 

Me: Hmmmmmm.

Okay.  How can you disappoint a face like this??:

This boy loves his pasta apparently!

So I went a searching the interwebs high and low for a 3-D noodle pattern.  Guess what people.  Almost impossible to find.  Turns out crocheting a circular curved tube that keeps it's dimensions throughout is plum near impossible.  Let me just break out my M.I.T. degree in advanced engineering and summon all the powers of physics for this one tiny Christmas crochet project.  Goodness!  Literally it was bugging me for weeks.  No matter where I searched for tips or patterns, I couldn't find one that might actually work.  I thought about enlarging a flattened rainbow arch pattern, but I really wanted that curved noodle look.  Finally, I was walking through a store when I stopped dead in my tracks.  There, in front of me, with a heavenly light shining down all around it, was a soft stuffed travel neck pillow.  Curved.  Tube.  I didn't have to figure out as much how to make and stuff a crocheted tube curve correctly, as I had to figure out how to cover an already existing shape! Christmas wishes from a 9-year-old are saved!!

First thing I did was take the cover off the neck pillow.  It was a nice, soft, zippable one.  Hey I realized, this is not only going to be fulfilling the macaroni dreams of a kid, it was at the very least going to be a FUNCTIONAL neck pillow!

I did not have a pattern, I just started a crochet circle with some extra thick, extra yellow, lion heart brand hometown USA yarn.   I kept eye-balling it around until it was wide enough to fit over the bottom of the pillow "leg".

To get the yard to turn 90º I single crocheted in the back loops only for two rows.

 
Once the yarn was turning "up" I started single crocheting again through both loops, which created a "bowl" that the bottom of the noodle could rest in

After that I slipped it off the noodle, kept doing single crochet around, then pausing so often to try and slip it over the leg of the noodle to see if it would fit.

Then I would slip it back off and work more rounds.

Soon I was at the top of the arch... and it was getting harder to pull the tube on the pillow.  From now on I would have to do the remaining stitches ON the pillow form.  This got a bit tricky and cumbersome at times, but I just kept working at it.

Now, in hindsight, I should have started the process over on the other leg and sewed them together at the top of the "noodle".  However, I was getting some bunches in the first "leg" near the curve and thought I could try and eliminate those. Also I did not want a seam in the middle of my noodle.  So now here is where I tried to get creative. Trying to make a "wedge" shape I stopped stitching in the round and went back and forth just on the top 3/4 of the noodle, turned and came back the other way.  Because it was curved, I could join the circle back up after a few rows.

It took a bit of trial an error, remember I had never done anything like this before.  But as I came to the end, I reversed what I had done on the first leg of the noodle, to give it that finished look.

You can see my wedge shape going over the right hand arch is not perfect, but it did not turn out half bad for a first try.  To a 9-year-old boy I am hoping and praying it looks like a giant cheesy macaroni noodle to him.  My girls, who have never had a neck pillow around until now, have been walking around with this thing around their neck at all times of the day.  So I am thinking that if Jacob doesn't like his miraculous noodle, the girls will adopt it back.

Needless to say, this little request is right up there with one of the STRANGEST, weirdest, most challenging things I have ever been asked to make out of yarn.  This tricky little curved, tubed, arched, stuffed, three-dimensional shape was quite the bear to pull off.  I'm just hoping he LOVES it.  Like I'm his favorite auntie of all time LOVES it. Like years from now, when he grows up and is working in his grey office cubicle, he thinks of me. I hope that when he pops his head up like an over-sized prairie dog and gazes at the other gray people, in their tiny, drab squares, he will still be wearing this bright yellow macaroni noodle, and it might just bring a little ray of comfort and sunshine to the whole office!

I will keep you posted on his reaction on Christmas day and post pictures here.  Stay tuned...