lately

Late­ly, I’ve been work­ing on this nice knit­ted lace top (it’s a free Rav­el­ry down­load! :D).

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I got this yarn last year to make the Con­ver­gence top. I was using a bit of a heav­ier yarn than called for, so I increased the hook size to 4mm instead of 3.75mm, expect­ing that the entire top will turn out a bit larg­er, which would be fine for me, because I like loose fit­ting tops in the sum­mer, and the mea­sure­ments for size small real­ly looks rather small even for me… but for some rea­sons it turned out nar­row­er than the giv­en mea­sure­ments, and wayyy longer. So I took it apart. And I’m now work­ing on this knit­ted top. I think the lace pan­els go well with the var­ie­gat­ed yarn :) Will def­i­nite­ly show you when I’m done!

Late­ly I have also been enjoy­ing some kon­bu cha in the evening :D

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Not to be con­fused with kom­bucha, which is the sweet­ened fer­ment­ed tea. Kon­bu cha is kelp tea. My friend, who is Japan­ese, gift­ed it to me last week when we ran into each oth­er at a work­shop :D It tastes like sea­weed sal­ad in a cup, and to me it tastes more like broth than tea, but I love it! I love kelp. I will have to get more of it at Asian gro­cery stores.

Late­ly I have also been work­ing on a cou­ple of Etsy orders, one of which is the tiny yeti pin. Here he is, all ready for his jour­ney to a good home :D

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Hope you are hav­ing a good week!

 

find me on instagram! :D

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Did you know that gen­uine mud­pie is on Insta­gram? :D

Late­ly I’m find­ing myself post­ing more work-in-progress and oth­er pho­tos (like this one here from my out­ing to the Toron­to Botan­i­cal Gar­den) on Insta­gram. I’ve talked about how I’ve been post­ing a bit less on this blog because of lack of time. Insta­gram is real­ly a much quick­er way of shar­ing. Pic­tures that I would post here a cou­ple years ago (like exper­i­ments with smooth­ies and short rows, or almost-week­ly origa­mi chal­lenge with my niece and nephews), I now post on Instagram.

But I also want to say that Insta­gram posts will not replace this blog. I can’t see myself post­ing a pat­tern on Insta­gram, for exam­ple. I also know that not every­one has Insta­gram, so notic­ing my increased Insta­gram activ­i­ty and decreased blog activ­i­ty is also moti­vat­ing me to work on post­ing here more regularly.

(If only Insta­gram and Word­Press will sync! *shakes fist*)

But if you are on Insta­gram please come by to say hel­lo! :D

Hap­py Sunday!

 

let’s make tiny donuts! :D

And the tiny donut par­ty con­tin­ues! *throws glitter*Photo 2015-04-04, 11 47 19 AM
Before dig­ging our hands into yarn and mak­ing more donuts, we need to pick a win­ner for the giveaway!I used this sim­ple ran­dom name-pick­er tool. And the win­ner is…

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DARLENE!!! Con­grat­u­la­tions!!! :D *throws more glitter*

(Now we all got­ta imag­ine our­selves all glit­tery from head to toe, ’tis how a vir­tu­al par­ty works, except we’re not real­ly cov­ered in glit­ter and we don’t have to spend hours wash­ing it out of our hair only to find more glit­ter on us weeks lat­er — ’tis the beau­ty of vir­tu­al par­ty :D and if you’re receiv­ing this post by email you might want to click on to the actu­al blog so you can get more of the glit­ter expe­ri­ence ;) any­way, I digress)

Dar­lene please send me an email at genuinemudpie(at)gmail(dot)com, let­ting me know which 3 donuts you want and your mail­ing address :)

Thank you every­one for par­tic­i­pat­ing, and leav­ing all the won­der­ful com­ments about this blog (and donuts!)! It means the world to me that you’re enjoy­ing read­ing about my crafty adven­tures! I look for­ward to shar­ing more crafti­ness with you! :D

And now, we make more tiny donuts! :D

This is actu­al­ly more like a recipe than a pat­tern. My donut turns out to be just shy of an inch across. You can make it small­er or larg­er by using a lighter (fin­ger­ing, embroi­der thread?) or heav­ier (worsted) yarn, and chang­ing hook size accord­ing­ly (2mm for fin­er yarn and 3.5mm for worsted, for exam­ple). You can also make a larg­er donut by increas­ing the num­ber of begin­ning ch by mul­ti­ples of 2, and repeat­ing row 3 a cou­ple of times (more about that in the recipe below). I would­n’t start with few­er stitch­es than what the “recipe” calls for though, it can be real­ly tricky to man­age such small num­ber of stitches.

I ini­tial­ly devel­oped this recipe to make donut ear­rings for my shop. It took a few attempts to get the size right and the icing look­ing the way I want­ed. I think I’ve per­fect­ed the recipe now :) AND!! The entire donut is only made of 5 rows! You can make an army of them in an evening :D

I used:

Small amount of sport weight yarn in donut and icing colours (tan, brown, pink, yel­low, white, etc.)

Embroi­dery thread in sprin­kle colours

3mm hook, 2.5mm hook or small­er (for pulling in ends)

Nee­dles for sewing and embroidering

Recipe:

Round 1: With donut colour (i.e. tan), ch 8, join with first ch to form ring.

NOTE: The side that is fac­ing you (i.e. the front of the work) is the INSIDE of the donut. For the first 3 rounds you’re work­ing with the inside of the donut fac­ing you. So the back of the work is the out­side of the donut.

Here I have fin­ished the first 3 rounds of the donut, cro­chet­ing with the inside fac­ing me.

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Here is what the out­side of the donut looks like after the first 3 rounds.

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Round 2: ch 1 (does not count as a stitch), sc in first ch, 2 sc in next ch, [sc in next ch, 2 sc in next ch] around, sl st in first sc to join (12 sc).

Round 3: ch 1, sc in each sc around, sl st in first sc to join (12 sc).

NOTE: If you’re­mak­ing a larg­er donut and start­ed with a few more begin­ning ch’s, you can repeat round 3 one or two more times.

Round 4: Attach icing colour, fas­ten off donut colour. TURN (now you’re work­ing with the out­side of the donut fac­ing you), ch 1, sl st in each sc around in the front loop only, sl st in first sl st to join (12 sl st). (Be care­ful not to pull too tight while mak­ing the sl st in this round, oth­er­wise the next row would be difficult.)

Here I’m work­ing on found 4, insert­ing my hook in the front loop of a stitch.

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NOTE: If you’re­mak­ing a larg­er donut and start­ed with more begin­ning ch’s, you can repeat round 3 one or two more times with icing colour before start­ing round 5.

Round 5: ch 1, TURN (now you’re work­ing with the inside of the donut fac­ing you again), work­ing in the front loop only, sc in first st, 2 sc tog over next 2 st, [sc in next st, 2 sc tog over next 2 st] around, sl st in first sc to join (8 sc), leav­ing a long tail for sewing, fas­ten off.

Sew the final icing round to the first donut round using whip stitch, match­ing the stitches.

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I find it real­ly dif­fi­cult to sew the donut togeth­er with stuff­ing inside, and because the donut is so tiny I don’t feel it needs stuff­ing. I just pull all the yarn ends into the donut with a cro­chet hook after it’s sewn together.

Embroi­der sprin­kles to your heart’s content :)

Pull all yarn ends and thread ends into the inside of the donut with a small cro­chet hook.

And here we have it, a tiny donut! :D

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If you’re mak­ing these donuts, let me know what flavours you’re mak­ing, I’d love to see them! :D

Hope you have a won­der­ful­ly sparkling week­end! :D *throws glitter*

 

one more day!

Donuts

One more day to leave a com­ment before I draw a name for the tiny donut give-away tomor­row (Fri­day) night at 11pm EST!

The win­ner gets to choose 3 of the tiny donuts shown in this post, and I will attach a tiny safe­ty pin to each one too so they can be worn as brooches :)

To enter you just need to leave a com­ment on this post or the pre­vi­ous post. If you sub­scribe to this blog (thank you!) and receive blog posts by email, please com­ment on the actu­al blog post (rather than send­ing a reply email) so I can include your name in the draw :D

Will be announc­ing the win­ner AND post­ing the donut pat­tern on Sat­ur­day! :D Stay tuned! Until then, have a hap­py Friday!

 

tiny donut party (a giveaway!)

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Guess what? It’s the gen­uine mud­pie blog’s 5th anniver­sary! :D

Can’t believe I’ve been writ­ing and doing crafts on this blog for 5 years already. I’ve def­i­nite­ly slowed down a lit­tle with the blog­ging (but not with the craft­ing!), espe­cial­ly recent­ly, because of school and work. But I’ve always found it so com­fort­ing to return to this space and share what brings me joy. Thank you so much for sup­port­ing gen­uine mud­pie by vis­it­ing, leav­ing com­ments and jour­ney­ing with me on var­i­ous crafty adven­tures! :D

So! To cel­e­brate, I’m doing a give­away of tiny donuts! Sim­ply leave a com­ment on this post by next Fri­day April 8th, and I will ran­dom­ly draw a name from the com­ments. I will announce the win­ner here on Sat­ur­day April 9th. The win­ner can choose any 3 of the donuts shown here. I will attach a safe­ty pin to the back of each donut — so you can wear one proud­ly and share the rest with your friends (or not :P). And yes, I ship worldwide :)

Each donut is a lit­tle shy of 1″ across.

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And here are some of the flavours :D We have clas­sic pink frosting…

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Car­rot cake!

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Mint choco­late.

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Spe­cial spark­ly lavender.

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And more :)

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They’re actu­al­ly a lot of fun to make and very quick too, so I will also be shar­ing the pat­tern next Sat­ur­day so every­one can make them :) But if you’d like the chance of receiv­ing cheer­ful tiny donut pins in the mail, please leave a com­ment below! :D

Hap­py Saturday!