Purple Socks, Finally!

I got this beautiful sock yarn at Building 19 1/2 like two years ago, because it was well-priced and lovely. But unfortunately there are precious few patterns for crocheted socks, so these pretty skeins sat under my bed for quite a while.

To my delight, the latest issue of crochetme.com has a crocheted sock pattern! I was so excited, and within two days I started making the first sock, below, with an E hook. So far it is looking more like a closed tube than a sock, but I'm getting close to the heel part, so I hope it will grow into its sock character soon! I know it's not that practical to start making socks right when the Boston weather is starting to feel like spring (at last!!), but I really couldn't resist. This is also my first experience with stitch markers (I'm using paper clips), and so far it's pretty convenient. I never realized how great it is not to have to physically count your stitches in the round. Wee! I can't wait till one is finished!

More Squares for Afghan

While I have been updating this craft blog only sporadically, my actual crocheting progress has been slow but steady! Check out some of the squares I've made recently for my 63-square afghan. I got a few of them done on our spring break road trip to Cincinnati (14 hours of driving each way!). For some reason, the last few squares came out like diamonds. I think I've been following the same convention as before, but several rows together give a slanty edge. I've been trying to pay more attention to guage for the squares, ever since I read that you can't block with acrylic yarn, and that's exactly what these are made of. My first ~10 squares are all different sizes, but maybe I'll just add wider borders to the smaller ones to even them out. I'm still hoping to make some attempt at blocking if not to just flatten them all out!

I always thought these flowers looked kind of old-lady-ish, but I really like the way this square came out!

Breezy

I am probably the worst seamstress in the entire world, somehow screwing up a simple straight line of a pillow seam. But luckily the required precision of a living-room toss pillow is very hand-wavy, and I sucessfully recovered a pillow! It was previously a forest green pillow, clashing entirely with our current nautically-themed decor. Plus the palm trees of this new fabric can help remind us of more tropical places. :) This simple pillow design was somewhat inspired by Amy Butler's pillows, which are gorgeous and beyond my price range. Being crafty myself, I am less inclined to purchase something that I think I could re-create in my craft room. Of course, that rarely happens in reality, but the thought of my being able to make it always deters me from buying the real thing. Anyway, I like the way this pillow came out!

What This Girl Wants

In my recent disdain for scientific research, I have come upon several amazing and inspiring crafty and artsy websites which I would like to share with the world!

Cotton Monsters: These are the coolest creatures ever. If only I could sew that well.

Jen Stark: I don't know how she makes these creations out of paper, but they are awe-inspiring!

Posie Gets Cozy: This lady seems to share most or all of my crafting interests, namely crochet, sewing, embroidery. I especially love how there is a cat in every picture that includes yarn. :)

Superbuzzy: Hmm, I want everything on this site.

Amy Butler's In Stitches: And I would give my left kidney to have this book! ...On second thought, I guess it's not quite that expensive.

Back In Business

Well I went on a kind of crafting hiatus during the month of January, as I devoted every brain cell to thinking about fluid flow and heat transfer. Happily, I passed my exams, and I am actively working to forget all that info I taught myself during those long hours of studying. And what better way to do that than to craft? I've started working again on my good old 64-square afghan, of which I have completed maybe a third of the required squares. Here are a few of my latest:I'm making more of an effort to pay attention to gauge, as many of my previous squares are varying sizes. But sometimes you don't realize the shrinkiness of your square until you're almost done, and by that time I don't have the patience to rip it all out and start again with a different hook. I'll make it all work in the end...

My latest sewing project was to make a curtain for the kitchen! It turned out pretty well, since I stuck with the tried and true (rectangle), but the lovely fabric brings a needed splash of color to our cold kitchen. I also made a matching potholder, which is a little crooked but still super awesome.

FO! Blanket for Baby Grant

Finally I have finished the baby blanket for Tara's newest son! His name is Grant, and he was born on December 14. That was the spark for me to begin crocheting at a more frantic pace to finish the blanket before I left home so that my bro Andrew could bring it to New York in January and deliver it to Tara and Joe. And woohoo, it's done!

One thing I learned was not to trust the "no dye lot" designation of the yarn. I used Bernat Softee Baby, and although it says "no dye lot" on the label, there are actually dates printed on the labels, and different dates are not the same! I didn't realize this until the blanket was half finished and it was way too late to remove the different yarn. What's even worse is that the yarn used in the middle section is actually a lighter weight, so the whole blanket width becomes narrower in the middle, and then widens out again at the next skein! That was super annoying, but I think overall the blanket still looks pretty sweet. The yarn for the blue border is my favorite. :)

Mr. Gobble-Gobble

Happy Turkey Day! I made this super awesome turkey (he looks cuter in person) at the request of my mom, from a pattern I found on BitterSweet, and it came out great! I hope he finds a comfy place to sit amongst my mom's holiday decor in San Diego. As for me, well, James and I are off to Connecticut for a 2-day thanksgiving partay with almost all of my Sri Lankan cousins! Yay!

The Days of Chivalry

Hark! Behold Sir Brave Knight who rides his white horse to befriend the fire-breathing dragon, in order to rescue the princess that the dragon holds captive due to his teenage crush on the lovely lady. Oh, these finger puppets were so much fun to make! I got the patterns from an old issue of CrochetMe. So far I haven't given them eyes, and the colors are a bit customized, but I think they turned out really well! Now I can branch out a bit and create some new characters to join these four. I'm hoping to give them to my cousins' little kids, who are between the ages of 2 and 5, whom I will see on Thanksgiving at the big Sri Lankan gathering at my aunt's house in Connecticut. Thanksgiving there is always guaranteed to be at least a couple days of madness, silly games, piles of food, tykes running around, and probably some loud singing and goofing. Can't wait!

WIP: Tara's Baby Afghan

My cousin Tara is due to have her second baby in December, and so I'm making a baby afghan for him/her! Tara doesn't know if it will be a boy or girl, so I settled on white for the blanket. I picked a sweet, lacey pattern which would work up rather quickly and still allow for some pretty stitching. It's great to have a repeating, easy pattern like this that I can crochet somewhat mindlessly at the end of a stressful day. :)


 

Festive Embossing

Today it was finally time to try out my newest paper-crafting toy, the embossing heat gun (given to me by James's lovely mom). I found some adorable stamps on sale at Michael's with a little turkey, pilgrim, and native american on them, and I absolutely had to make some Thanksgiving cards!! Plus I was due to make a few birthday cards, so my selection of cocktail stamps came in handy. Let me just say I am completely thrilled with the whole embossing technique - it is so much fun to watch the little powders melt and brighten! I am definitely raiding the embossing powder section of the next craft store I wander into. Oh, I can just see the entire house filling up with new crafty supplies... pretty soon James and I won't even fit inside the place, and we'll have to sleep out on the front steps...

A Rose for Alice

Well it seems that I've caught the crochet bug again! I began by crocheting this lovely ring for my lovely friend Alice on the occasion of her 24th birthday. I still haven't sent it to her in NY, but hopefully I will get around to it this week! It was pretty easy to make, and next time I might try adding a little second color of trim or a bead in the middle. 

scrapbooking - Europe 2006

Okay, so I haven't crocheted in a while, but I have been travelling! James and I took a whirlwind tour of several countries in Europe, following my stay in Biarritz, France, for a lithium battery conference. We took a ton of great pictures and of course I couldn't resist putting them into a scrapbook! Actually I've never made a scrapbook before, so I was a bit nervous to get started. Then I began, using some spray adhesive (which is a little smelly) and a 12"x12" black-paged notebook, and woohoo! Here's the start of it! After the first few pages, I realized I needed some colored pens that would write on black paper, and the metallic ones I got are also great for doodling and drawing borders. I am also a big fan of those letter stickers, which make great titles for each page. My other favorite scheme is using the city and country maps I saved from the trip as backgrounds, and drawing little arrows to the places we visited. It's so much fun, but it's taking me hours and hours! Anyway, here's a little sampler:




 

Hiatus

Oh man, I haven't been crafting very much lately! I don't think I've crocheted anything in the past month!! This is terrible and horrible, but honestly, I've had to devote all my time to a different kind of artwork... my master's thesis!! It is due on Tuesday, and it's about 98% of the way there, but I still need to add just one more figure. I can't believe it really takes one month (or more) to write a thesis. But it is true.

Summer is almost here, and I hope to think of some summer crafting projects that don't involve having my sweaty hands stick to yarn. I still need to work on my blue pinwheel shawl - kind of summery, right? Check out my progress below... (kind of pathetic, yes). And I have just a couple more finishing touches on my new iPod cover - pink monster! More to come...

Six Wagon Wheels

Hello! It's been a while since I've posted, since I accidentally mailed off Rani's red headband without taking a picture of it... but here's my new work in progress! It's a spoke-wheel motif shawl, from a pattern in my Vogue scarves book. I got the yarn super cheap from Buliding 19, the super-cheap store exclusive to Massachusetts. Man, that is a crazy place. All the yarn was at least 50% off, and I couldn't resist getting some of this Patons Grace cotton yarn (I also got several skeins in royal blue), and some beautiful Patons Kroy sock yarn in Vista Sea (kind of a deep purple with blue and green). I love it! But now my yarn stash is almost unbearably large!! I just can't help it - it's a curse! Anyway, it might take me a while to crochet all 65 motifs for this shawl, but I think it will be perfect for summer! That is, if summer (or even spring) ever comes to Boston! 

lovey days

Here's a random selection of some Valentine's cards I made for my dearest buddies here in Boston. Note the awesome touch added by the letter stamps that Kim gave me for my b-day. Woohoo! It took me forever to make these cards (like maybe 5 hours, while watching the Olympics) because I always want to make each one unique. So different from Xmas, where I made myself into a one-woman snowman-making assembly line, cutting out 10 circles at a time. But unique cards are more fun, I think. :)
Soon to come: the headband I crocheted for Rani! All I have to do is tuck in tails! I'm so lazy!!
 

New Yarn!

My sister Kim sent me this wonderful stash of yarn for my 24th birthday (along with some way cool alphabet stamps and patterned paper), and now I'm scheming for ways to crochet it all into cool things. I recently bought a Vogue crocheted scarves book on major sale at Micheal's, and I'm dying to make one of those scarves with some of this yarn. The light pink yarn is a super soft cashmere, and the blue is a nylon/acrylic that feels like a bunny's tummy. Perfect scarf material! But the orange yarn intrigues me the most - it's a warm earthy color with a unique texture; it will be more challenging to find a project for this one.

BarryToon!

I made this for my friend Barry, who is a super crazy and talented artist/musician/toy-designer/mythbuster, since he made fobtoons (fob = friends of barry) for probably everyone he knows. Including me! When he asked everyone for their Barrytoons, I just couldn't resist making this guy. ...I'd say the hardest part was making all his hair! But at least it's accurate, haha...

Mom's Flower Tote

Ohh, I forgot about this one! I made this bag for my mom last year for Mother's Day. Sheesh, all these posts seem to be related to my mom... Anyway, I found the idea for the bag online, although the basic pattern was just to make a giant rectangle and sew it together. Then I made up my own flowers to sew on, and I embroidered the stems. Voila!

Earrings for Sungyon!

I made these for her birthday back in the fall, and then as luck would have it, one of them fell out of her ear on the very first day she wore them. So I just finally crocheted up another one (in like 20 minutes). I made up the design myself; it took me a few prototypes before it looked right. They're a nice dark red color, if you can't tell. I think I need to work on my photography skillz...

Chic Pillows

My mom and I made these two pillows for my living room here in Cambridge. Actually, all I did was fix up the ribbons for the gold pillow, and Mom sewed them together. Mom is really the greatest crafter ever, and no wonder I get so much done when I'm home visiting her. :)