Felted Bowls – Part 2 of 3

This bowl is the only one that didn’t felt nearly as much as I wanted. I can still see the stitches pretty well, but it has definitely shrunk a fair amount.

I put this bowl through the wash two more times than the rest before I decided that was as good as it was going to get. I’m guessing that it was because of the single crochet stitches versus the doubles from the first set of bowls along with the soy blend. However, this bowl is also the sturdiest of the bunch.

While I do like the bowl, I’m pretty sure I won’t do this pattern again as the bottom is way too rounded for my taste. I’m not sure what I’ll used it for yet, but since it’s sturdy I can put just about anything in it, as long as it’s not too big for the bowl.

You can find my original notes on my progress here and the original pattern here.

Felted Bowls – Part 1 of 3

I finally got around to felting all the bowls to my satisfaction. I initially tried felting the bowls in my washing machine, but they didn’t seem to want to felt. I was worried that they wouldn’t come out since the yarn was a blend of soy and wool. So, I also tried felting them by hand, which produced better results, but they still didn’t seem to be felting as much as I was hoping for.

Since I had made a total of six different bowls, hand felting was getting a bit tedious, so I left them to sit for a while. I decided to try felting them in the washing machine one more time. After two rounds they finally looked decently felted.

After searching through my stash for yarn for another project I did come across some more of the soy yarn I used here in two different colors, both solid. I’m not sure that I’ll try felting with them considering the amount of time it took to felt these. But, since I did come across another felted bowl pattern, I may just give it a try.

To see my original notes on the three bowls pictured, you can check out my original post on my progress here. And the original pattern can be found here.

 

Work in Progress Wednesday – Bath Mat

Due to some rather unfortunate incident I no longer have a bath mat. At the moment I’m using some towels on the floor, so when I came across a pattern in One Skein for a bath mat and I eyed the six skeins of Sugar & Cream in Cream sitting on my shelf, I couldn’t help but grab a hook and start on my way.

I’m not entirely convinced this will make the greatest bathmat in the world considering all the holes, but it is at least cotton and will absorb water readily. It’ll also be super easy to clean and I’m hoping to have this finished quickly.

You can find the pattern in One Skein by Leigh Radford. There are a lot of great projects in there, including some felted bowls I’m considering trying out, especially since I finally finished felting up all the bowls I made previously. And I would say that not all of the patterns will necessarily only use one skein, as can be evidenced by the pattern for the bath mat, that is unless you happen to buy a giant 840 yard skein of cotton yarn.

The Colorful Christmas Tree

I finished my Christmas Tree a few days before Christmas. You can see it here in it’s undecorated glory. I ended up taking it apart a second time when I realized I was adding too many rows in between the branch rows past the first three, which I also noticed after I started taking apart the last two branch rows when I noticed I forgot a row on the branches so it was a bit shorter than the others.

After fixing everything, I was much happier with the result, however, I think if I make another one I will add back in that extra row I had between branches. It gave it a lot more height and gave more room for adding decorations.

Because the rows were really close together I decided to forgo adding beads as ornaments and instead just made a star and garland to put around the tree. You might recognize the colors of the garland from my Jasmin Headband.

The star was made using some scrap sock yarn. I was really hoping that I could get three stars out of it and give it more dimension, but I only squeaked out three and just enough extra yarn to sew the pieces together. You can find the pattern I used for the star here. I didn’t block the stars, but I do plan on doing that at some point before Christmas next year.

And I may also add beads next year for more color to the tree, or I may just leave it as is, but I will probably also make a second taller tree. But I’ve got almost a whole year before I need to start thinking about those things. Until then, I’ll be removing the star and the garland and storing them away while the tree will adorn the top of my dresser.

 

Autumn Multi Fuctional Cowl – Skirt – Hood

Since finishing this project I have worn it once as a skirt and twice as cowl. I’m liking it very much in both areas. Though I think I like it just a bit more as a cowl. Unfortunately, not even adding a second color got the cowl to be long enough to also work as a hood.

I finished the pattern as originally called out, which surprised me a little, though I do have a tendency to crochet a bit tight. I still had some of the flax colored yarn left, so I added a few extra single crochet rows after realizing that I didn’t have enough to add a full row of star stitches.

I sewed up the side and tried it on and, as I suspected, it was not long enough for me to comfortably wear as a skirt. I looked through my color options and chose Patons Silk Bamboo in Sapphire. I had two skeins of this particular yarn and I thought I could probably add a three more rows of star stitches. Not to mention it was shiny like the flax colored yarn.

Unfortunately, I had a bit of trouble getting the star stitches to work since I was trying to do them in the round instead of going side to side and I was working from the starting edge. I probably could have crochet a set and then stitched it to my finished piece, but ended up just doing single crochet stitches instead to give a smoother finish for the part that would likely end up covered by a shirt anyway. The bamboo yarn was also slightly thinner than the Bernat Soy Natural Blends, which also contributed to my deciding to just do single crochet.

I added two rows to the starting edge for accent. Then I flipped to the other end and added 7 rows of single followed by a row of double crochets done with four double crochets followed by a chain 1 and skipping the next stitch to create a space. I then finished it off by adding one more row of single crochets and ran a ribbon through the spaces.

I’m pretty proud of the result and I love the vibrancy of the sapphire against the flax. It’s also nice to have a cowl in a different color palette than my pink and black one so I can always have something warm around my neck without clashing too horribly.

And as noted in my WIP from last week, the original pattern can be found here.

Work in Progress Wednesday – Autumn Multi Functional Cowl – Skirt – Hood

© Naiyaru

This particular piece is something I pinned ages ago, nearly one of the first crocheted things I pinned. I really liked the look of the star stitch and to be quite honest, I’ve always wanted to make a skirt and this seemed like a good project to try just in case I decided that I didn’t like how it looked as a skirt (since I’m not exactly a small girl and can be quite self conscious).
You can find a rough pattern by Naiyaru here. I’m pretty sure that I won’t have enough yarn to make it as long as Naiyaru calls out the pattern since I’m having to make it a fair bit wider so that I can wear it as a skirt, but I think I have a few other colors I can add to the skirt if I want to give it a bit more punch and give it the length I’d be comfortable wearing it at. I also highly recommend watching the first few rows in the tutorial video on the page Naiyaru links to for the star stitch since the initial row for the star stitch in the video is for starting from the foundation chain.

The yarn I’m using is Bernat Soy Natural Blends in Flax. Which, as per most of my yarn hoard, is a discontinued style. It is a 50% soya and 50% acrylic combo. The yarn is very soft and has a bit of a shine too it. As it stands in the picture I’m a bit over halfway through my yarn and it definitely doesn’t seem like it’s going to be nearly long enough to cover my behind.

I did try and initially crochet this in the round, but my foundation chain kept twisting, so I will have to sew up the side when I’m finished. It is coming out nice and thick since the yarn is held double. I’m thinking it’ll be a great winter accessory for here in Texas on the coldest days and a fantastic skirt.

Work in Progress Wednesday – Christmas Tree

I’m not a big fan of fake trees. If given a choice, I much prefer to get a nice pine tree. However, I don’t have the funds to purchase a tree, nor do I really have a whole lot of ornaments to even decorate a tree this year. So, I plumbed through the depths of my yarn stash trying to find a nice green yarn to crochet a mini tree.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have any solid green yarn.

Instead I ended up picking out a yarn that I thought was fun and sort of Christmas-y since it had red and green as two of the main colors in the yarn. So here is my still in progress colorful Christmas Tree.

I will say that the green is much more vibrant in real life than in the picture. I plan on adding some beads around the tree as ornaments and I’m going to also pick out another yarn to make a chain with for a garland. And I haven’t decided if I want to make a beaded star for the top or if I’m going to crochet one.

I wish I knew what brand this yarn was, but the tag was not stuck in the middle of the cake. All I can really tell is that it’s a worsted weight yarn that I believe is cotton that has a rough bits that weren’t completely combed out. It is also a pretty sizeable skein. If you happen to recognize this, I’d love to know what it is! This was of course, one of many skeins given to me by my mother and she certainly doesn’t remember anything about it.

I also didn’t really follow much of a pattern. What I could find online usually involved making a cone and then making a row of branches and cutting the yarn each time you went to make a new row. It felt like an awful waste of such a fun yarn, so I tried to muddle through a poor translation. In then end I just ended up making sure that each time I was adding branches that I made that row a multiple of three. You can find the pattern I’m loosely following here.

Work in Progress Wednesday – Dragon Scale Cape Continued…

I’m still plugging away at my Dragon Scale Cape. I haven’t been feeling all that great over the last week so I didn’t end up working much on it before the weekend hit. But for a little comparison here is the photo from last week followed by the current state of the cape.

I added about a full skein which contains approximately 200 yards. And I believe I have three more skeins to add to the length and then another skein and a half to do the trim.

Even though I didn’t get to use it this Halloween, it’ll still be good for next year and might come in handy over the winter. Although this is South Central Texas so…

Work In Progress Wednesday – Dragon Scale Cape

So, I started out making the Crocodile Stitch Shawl, then I changed my mind, so now it’s going to be more of a triangle I can wear in my hair to keep it out of my face, like a handkerchief permanently folded in half. I will probably eventually try making the shawl again, but I realized that I needed to use a much lighter yarn, something more towards lace weight or fingering.

Instead, I’m jumping off the end of the dock and trying out my own thing. I’ve started at the bottom of the cape and I’ve set aside one and a half skeins to do a dragon scale trim along the edge once I finish the actual bulk of the cape.

I originally wanted to do the scales all the way up the whole cape, but realized that it was going to be way shorter than I wanted if I did that, so I followed the general pattern from the cowl and hood. So, as you can see I have some of the crocodile stitch along the bottom (7 rows total) and then several rows of straight double crochet done through the backloops after the initial row.

I’m not sure I’ll finish it in time for Halloween since I only have a few days left, but I’m going to try. It’s definitely not going to be a full length cape.  I’m hoping that it’ll come close to my waist at least, so it’ll be more of a capelet.

Dragon Scale Hood (aka Crocodile Stitch Hood)

I’m still working on felting my bowls. I’ve done one round of felting by hand, but they still haven’t felted enough. I’ll probably try a round in my washing machine to see how they come out. But over the weekend I started a new project and managed to finish it.

And thus we have my Dragon Scale Hood (aka Crocodile Stitch Hood). It was a lot of fun to make and I decided to use a variegated yarn so that no two scales would look the same. The yarn I used is Lorna’s Laces in Black Purl.

This is a 100% superwash wool and it feels great. I just wish Texas was a little colder so that I could have more excuses to wear it. But I will be wearing it along with a shawl/cape that I’m making in the same stitch pattern for Halloween.

Both the Hood and the Shawl can be found in Crocodile Stitch Fashions. If you take a look at the pattern you may notice that I did two extra rows of scales on the hood portion and I added two extra rows (which isn’t very visible) to the back of the hood so that it would line up better with the cowl, which had more to do with my gauge coming out slightly smaller than what was called for on the rows.

Now I just need to find a staff to complete the outfit (and of course finish the cape).