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!