Crochet on!

This, my friends, I am happy to say, is my first garment made with my own crochet hooks. After all these tiny ornaments, doilies and such, I finally took a deep breath and made myself a short sleeved pullover. I love it very much, although I wish it was somewhat longer. I used a different yarn than recommended, it is a wool from Drops Design, so the measurements are not what I expected, but I am still happy with the outcome. I chose this yarn because I fell in love with the colour, and it matches my hair dye, which is a nice touch. I even bought a lipstick in this shade, because girls just wanna have colour coordinated fun. And now on to the next project.

O Tannenbaum

I just remembered! I have shown you the wonderful crochet snowflakes I made last year for my holiday decorations, but I was too busy to share photos of my Christmas tree. So better late than never, here are some photos of my usual (plastic) tree with the new ornaments. 

Lights off - sets the mood

Lights on - behold my magnificent crafting skills!

Snowflakes

This is what the first batch of my crochet blizzard looks like after getting soaked in fabric stiffener (if that's what it's called), pinned and dried.

Big project

Hey, I started something big and I am a bit stuck. I am working on a crochet blanket made of snowflake granny squares. I can't make my mind up about assembly though. I need input! Leave a comment about which pattern you suggest: diagonal, paralell or random?

Hats off my hook

I thought that now I practised crochet long enough to go and make something useful. Not just one doily after another, but articles of clothing. I started small with accessories. These are the hats I made in the past weeks. From the bottom: the crocodile stitch hooded cowl is a pattern I bought from Bonita Patterns through Craftsy. The purple-green psychedelic hat is a free chart I found online. Probably on Ravelry, I am not sure. The blue slouchy hat was in a magazine I bought last year. That one is my favourite, I will make a matching scarf later this week.

Rarity hat

One of the first patterns I bought on Craftsy and the very first I finished is this unicorn hat by BriAbby Designs. I have changed the colours because my daughter wanted it to look like her favourite (at the time) pony from the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic cartoons, and that's Rarity. I have searched high and low for the right yarn and I found this beautiful and soft yarn called Relax at the Barkafonal shop. 

I used one skein of the white and the light purple but I had to buy a second of the dark purple yarn because the mane needs way more than it looks. The horn, the eyes and the pink in the ears were made with leftovers. I stuffed the horn and the ears too. Here is my girl wearing the finished product happily and some progress pictures.

Getting Craftsy

Earlier this year I have signed up for a Craftsy account. Originally I just wanted to browse a bit. When you're as broke as I am, and I have been really broke for most of my life, so being frugal is second nature, you learn to pick up things whichever way you can. 

For example, if you can't afford buying elaborate crochet patterns, you download freebies, practise them and then look at advanced crochet on Pinterest e.g., and try to figure out how to use the little knowledge you have to make something amazing. It is hard and time consuming, but it is also a creative process I usually enjoy. And that is how I taught myself English, with a pocket dictionary and a huge dose of intuition. "Forgot, that sounds a lot like forget, could it be past tense? Yeah, definitely past tense."

This spring I got sort of fed up with always learning the hard way and I signed up for a few online courses on Craftsy. I was very sceptical, but I hit a block on the road of self improvement, and I rebelled. I wasn't gonna spend hours of digging on the net or asking for favours from people I don't particularly like. My first class was about joining crochet motifs and make a granny square blanket in the progress. I enjoyed it tremendously and learned way more than I thought I would. I honestly recommend it to anyone! 

As much as I love working on these panels, I have not finished the project. Not because of lack of enthusiasm, quite to the contrary. I got so involved with Craftsy and crochet that a number of other projects have hijacked my attention. I will elaborate on those during my verbose November. Hopefully.

Summer doily

During the summer I spent a lot of time practising crochet. It was a nice change. I have reached a point where cross stitching seemed tedious, and that is never a good sign. Crochet was new enough to intrigue me but familiar enough to seem easy and relaxing. Here are a few minor projects I managed to finish. I still have a bigger one in progress and a large white piece I gave my mum before snapping a picture.

Crochet blizzard

I bought a book of one hundred crocheted snowflakes back in September. The plan was to make one snowflake a day, maybe, and hang them on the Xmas tree. But as you may know by now, I'm not very good with plans. Or schedules. So some days I make a dozen, and some weeks I make none. Anyway, I made over 50 by now and set up an album on Facebook. Feel free to browse!

See my complete list of crochet snowflakes here.

Hooked

Hello, doily!

In these few months since I've been sacked, I spent some time practising crochet. I taught myself the basics, and later a friend showed me some tips and tricks. Now that I have some time on my hands and my stitchy mojo in not at all like it used to be, I decided to give this craft another go. Below you can see how I am doing so far.

Start and progress

I have finally recovered my ballerina chart so I could work on more colours. There is a lot of floss blending and I really enjoy the effect. I made great progress! Soon she will outgrow my scanner.

In the meantime I have started yet another SAL. We're doing a Christmas project. Most of the members are Hungarian but everyone is still welcome if you are interested. There may still be time to buy the chart and start stitching! I am warning you though, it is much more floss consuming than it looks! I am almost at the end of my first skein, and now I must find a way to get some from abroad as the store that stocked The Gentle Art Sampler Threads is closed by now. Damn you, economy!
To see the projects check out the blog, you can find the image and link on my sidebar. You can find my posts under the label Jade.

I am doing several smaller pieces I cannot reveal just yet. In a shock, I realised that I am at the deadline of mailing my PIF gifts. Who knew a year can pass so fast? I had no idea. I may be late with some of them, I apologize in advance.

I have dusted off some of my older crafting tools. I have finished knitting a small poncho I started working on years ago and then put it aside. I also tried crocheting again, and I remembered why I quit in the first place. I just cannot seem to be able to make the edges straight. Does anyone have any piece of advice on that? I have no idea what I'm doing wrong, but this is what my practice pieces look like: