Things to do before Craftmas Day

• Finish cupcake scarf
• Sew label onto granny square blanket
• finish crocheting little cousin's dog amigurumi (complete with leash in collar)
• start crocheting little cousin's older brother a deer amigurumi
• duct tape right wrist back to hand after intense crocheting session(s)
• Complete the task of wrapping the rest of Christmas and Craftmas presents.

I feel somewhat overwhelmed. Hopefully I will have the time to be productive tomorrow...

Craftmas- Finished : Sushi Scarf

Well, remember when I said I would post progress everyday of Craftmas?

I lied. I'm oh so very lucky if I can get everything I wanted to make people actually DONE before Christmas...
I swear, I had every intention of posting every day. Except finals happened, and so did a dead camera battery...

Anywho, back to Craftmas! I finished the sushi scarf! I really hope my friend will LOVE it as it took me WAY longer than I expected to complete it. There's a lot of individual crocheting and then sewing everything together and hiding ends of yarn in everything...well, let's just say I'm glad I'm done.

PICTURE TIME!

This is the whole thing! I left a few pieces off since I was tired of sewing (and losing maki pieces didn't help either) and I actually got so into the project that I didn't pay attention to how the book said to assemble it, so the fish ones would have looked wonky. I just left off with shrimp, because shrimp is always a good stopping point.

Two closeups of some of the helpings of sushi...

I also got super excited because I purchased some crochet labels to sew on the back of my projects as a label . I hand stitched my name on the label, and I'm really happy with the way it looks. Very close to my actual handwriting if I do say so myself :)

I can't wait to give it to my friend! I know she'll love it and I can't wait to see her wear it around :D

Craftmas - In progress - Sushi Scarf

One of my best friends hated sushi for the longest time. She had a bad experience at a Chinese restaurant when she was younger, and ever since then has stayed away from sushi. Just this year, after much prodding from myself and our other friends, she finally tried REAL (and good!) sushi and is now ADDICTED.

I recently bought Twinkie Chan's Crochet Goodies for Fashion Foodies 
and let my friend look through and pick what she wanted for christmas. She chose the Sushi Scarf!

I'm not done with it yet, but I am inching closer each day! Hopefully I can get it done or near completion by the end of this weekend.
Here's a progress shot of all the Maki I've made (currently at 18 of the 26).

I can't wait to get all of the maki done so I can move onto the pieces of sushi *A*

Craftmas 2010!

November has come and gone, and I've already started new projects!
I meant to make this post yesterday, but it is nearing the end of the semester and I am trying to get last minute work done for my online classes. With that out of the way, I'm here to proudly announce that this December I am officially changing Christmas to CRAFTMAS 2010!

I am taking on the huge project of making most, if not all, of my christmas presents! I'm going to try to post each day with progress pictures of my different projects and hopefully I will get done with everything come December 24/25!

Since I haven't taken any pictures of what I have done yet, I'm going to share a picture of the Granny Square Blanket that I finished just last week that I began as a Christmas gift. It's a lot bigger now than in the picture I'm posting, but I'd hate to make a post with no craft!

Stay tuned for tomorrow!

Crochet: Mohawk Hat

I have been wanting to make a mohawk hat for quite a while, ever since I saw pictures of them surface on the internet. Now, I've been making hats for quite a while on my own, but since I broke my crochet barriers and actually learned how to read patterns, I normally try to find patterns for everything now just because it's nice having something to follow.

Anyways, I am a frequenter of Craftzine's blog, and several months ago they featured a free pattern to a Mohawk hat on Craftster forums. Here is a link to the pattern. ONTO THE PICTURES!

The top of the mohawk is just 4" long strands of 100% wool yarn latched through the crochet stitches. It was my first time ever felting anything but I was quite surprised how easy it was. I took a close up shot of the what the mohawk looks like felted.

Thanks for reading! :)

Crochet: Yellow Cowl

I suscribe to Crochet Today because they have super awesome patterns that are easy enough for me to understand. In their special issue of "Must-Have Gifts", it includes patterns and projects that would be perfect as christmas gifts. On the cover there was something that caught my eye...

The gorgeous snowfall cowl!

I had some yarn that I accidently bought thinking it was wool (it totally wasn't) in a bright yellow color that was thick enough so it wouldn't be too holey. I grabbed the semi largest needle(the pattern called for a size 'M' and the needle I used was huge but had no size on it) I had and got to work! Here are the results!

I had some small colorful buttons that I sewed on. I don't think they're big enough though, but they'll work for now until I can find some equally colorful ones to take their place.

This is what it looks like on (pardon my derp face)! It's so warm and I absolutely love the bright yellow. It will be great when I'm going shopping and my mom needs to pick me out of a crowd!

Crochet: Cable pattern scarf

First, let me introduce this scarf's backstory before I just wam-bam you with pictures.

Every year my family has a themed Christmas.Apparently just giving someone something they asked for isn't any fun, and we've been doing this as long as I can remember. Since my family is so gigantic in size, we draw names as well. I'm honestly surprised we don't have a Christmas newsletter!

Anyways, this year is "Mystery Christmas" which I am pretty excited about. It's not really a mystery as in Murder She Wrote, more of a, "holy-crap-I-don't-have-the-slightest-idea-what-I'm-going-to-get" sort of mystery. The Fam all agreed that it would be more fun if we didn't know which present came from who, so the general consensus was that everyone is to wrap their presents in the Sunday Comics of the newspaper. No labels, nothing. Your name is drawn, you get to pick your present.

It's kinda like dirty santa except I think we agreed no "official" trading.

So for my gift, which has to be gender neutral (there goes that zebra print snuggie idea!), I decided to crochet a scarf. My friend Jonathan over at Knitting With Balls is working on a scarf for his brother, which he is knitting using a cable stitch. I loved the design and scoured the internet for a pattern that offered something similar using crochet. I found this free pattern on Ravelry, and here is the link for those who don't have an account on Ravelry.

Onto the picture!

I'd say it's about 80% done. :D Hope you enjoy!
PS- You will probably see more pictures of this when it is finished because I plan to pimp it out.

Crochet Project: Granny Square blanket

While I haven't updated much, I swear to you I have been crafty! I feel empowered in my crochet endeavors and I have begun tackling what I consider "big projects". I've been quite busy lately so I haven't had as much time as I've wanted to do crafts, but since my last update about granny squares I've gotten quite proficient at them! After I completed the two squares that I flaunted in my last post, I wanted to do different squares, thus I put my librarian search skills to work!

 When I searched the book, it boasted of new granny squares but I failed to notice the rather old copyright date (1989..two years after I was born). While the book is straight out of the 80's, it does have some interesting squares. This one particularly caught my eye.

It's called "whirligig" and to me, I saw it as a sun, and quite possibly, an octopus. : D The first two rounds consist of triple crochet and the bordering rows are just double crochet. I was rather excited about picking my colors and getting to work. Below is my product!

I figured this would be a great way to get rid of a lot of the extra yarn I have, so I just kept making them determined to have a granny square blanket of my own. The one square slowly turned into 10!

I've finished the first row of my blanket and already have four more squares finished for the second row. I am trying to make this the most god awful brightly colored blanket that no one would ever admit to owning (well, except for me, but no one else can handle the double rainbow intensity that my eyeballs can). Here's a peek at the second row!

I can't wait until I have enough squares to attach the second row. I AM PUMPED YOU GUYS.

Crochet: Granny Square

Ever since I was little I always admired blankets made entirely from granny squares. The cool design that looks like a bursting flower, and the normally bright colors just made me fall in love.

Since becoming what I would call, an Intermediate crocheter, I've wanted to learn how to do a granny square. I've had countless people try and teach me how, read several tutorials and patterns and never understood the instructions.

While lingering around on the internet yesterday night, I found this article on CraftStylish. I think the only reason I happened on it was when I googled 'granny square beginner' it was linked on a craft blog where someone had said "I never understood how to do a granny square until this pattern." It's honestly the truth though! The instructions along with pictures were VERY VERY HELPFUL. So last night, I attempted one!

I thought it was pretty good, at least it looked somewhat like a granny square to me. Even though I wasn't 100% happy with the results, I was proud nonetheless. It looked like gold compared to my poop results before I found the tutorial. Well, tonight I attempted the pattern again (with my whole wits about me, I was pretty tired the night before) and had much better results!

I really like these squares! I'd really like to make a blanket just using the red orange yarn and the colored yarn that I have, but I should probably mix them up a bit and use a lot more of my scrap yarn and clean out my yarn container a bit. ^_^

Ribbon: Braided ribbon headband

While doing my normal web surfing, I stumbled across Craftzine's blog. I spent a good while just looking through what different kind of crafts they had, when I saw this craft from the website Skiptomylou. I really liked the way the ribbon looked after it had been braided, and the instructions were really simple so I thought I'd give it a go (it totally had nothing to do with the HUGE container of ribbon that I just happen to have lying around).

Let me just say, that after a stressful day, braiding the ribbon was actually quite relieving once I got the hang of the process. Now to the finished product!

I really like the way it turned out, and I'm even wearing blue today just so I can wear my new headband. I hope everyone else who has a ton of ribbon like I do tries out this craft!

Sewing: Elephant Pouch

Since I am a librarian, I have this wonderful luxury of seeing all the new and wonderful craft books that come in and out through our library. One day while searching our catalog, I found this great book.

It had a lot of great projects by various crafty bloggers, some projects more enticing than others to me, especially this certain project...

I squee'd with girlish delight and knew I had to check out the book so I could make this one item. Well, I had the book for quite a while before the other night I decided, "I NEED THAT ELEPHANT POUCH, ASAP." Off to Grandmother's I went to sew! Digging through my fabric bin, I chose these two fabric colors for my pouch.

I liked the dark blue, and even though it had a pattern, it looked very elephant skin like to me. I picked the ribbon fabric for the lining because a) it's cute and b) it's colorful without burning my retinas. I started it a couple of nights ago, and by starting I mean doing all the boring things like tracing the pattern from the book onto tracing paper and cutting out all the pieces. I later realized that I cut out the trunk pieces wrong, so I had to go back and re-cut those.

Anyways, here's my finished product after about 2 hours tonight!

Mine looks sorta, um, "special" compared to the book version, mostly because instead of adding that quaint charm I made a pact with my brain that we would just use the sewing machine for everything! I hand stitched the white of the eyes onto the face and the lines on the trunk. The black part of the eyes are glued on with tacky glue (Liiiiiifesaver!) and the rest of the elephant was crudely sewn with my machine.

Inside shots below.

All in all, it was a nice sewing experience. The instructions in the book were VERY EASY to follow, and the pieces were small enough that you didn't have to blow up the pattern to make the item. I really appreciated that. It was also a quick craft! I don't know if it's because I did all the lame stuff before I sewed, but I definitely had fun sewing this little guy. Now my purse has one more item that it didn't need before :)

Hallo and welcome!

Hi there all! I'm Madison and I'm currently 22 years old and an avid crafter!
I inherited this wonderful crafting trait from my Grandmother, who has the tendency to meddle in one craft long enough to learn it before moving to a new one. I'm pretty much the same, which leaves me a TON of craft supplies that are untouched...UNTIL NOW.

That's right. I'm unleashing my crafting through this blog to motivate me to actually begin and finish crafts, so maybe I can clear out some room in my yarn bin, my sewing bin, my ribbon bin...well, you get the idea.

So sit back in your chair as my crafty little tentacles get to flying!