Craft round up!

  

2011 has been a very busy year for me, full of lots of things, and lots of crafts I haven't posted!
I thought I'd be a good girl and try to keep my blog up to date because it's nice to be able to have a place where all my crafts are, just in case I want to show people :)

So enjoy the crafts I have made from the last post (january of this year! OMG!) to my current finished product. They are in chronological order...to best my knowledge.

Rainbow Mohawk baby hat for my god-daughter Isabelle, made sometime in Feb when the weather was still cold.

A bear amigurumi I made for a "craft" trade with a friend. She loves Adventure Time, so I named him Finn Bear and gave him a Finn hat and backpack.

A cute dessert cake made out of felt.

A mini birthday cake amigurumi for my friend Jasmine. I embroidered "Happy B-day Jaz! 2011" on the underside. Just in case she forgot who gave it to her.

A croceted nesting doll bookmark made for a bookmark swap on swap-bot.

And the roundup is ended with a Boston Red Sox baby hat commissioned by a friend! There are probably some crafts I'm missing, but I"ll get to them eventually! I'm lucky that I remember to take pictures of everything! Tune in next time and thanks for reading.

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

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. ^_^