holiday makes

‘Tis the time of year for the hol­i­day craft­ing post, after all the gifts are gift­ed :D But I always lose track of what I made… here are some highlights!

The plant above is for a dear friend who said she can’t keep plants alive. But wait for it…

It’s a hid­den Odd­ish!! Yes, she is also a big Poke­mon fan :D

Here’s Odd­ish chill­ing on the couch.

I’m real­ly hap­py with how Odd­ish turned out. There are a few good Odd­ish pat­terns out there but I end­ed up mak­ing it up as I cro­cheted because of the size of the plant pot. I also got a pair of red­dish brown safe­ty eyes as part of a free gift one time from a cro­chet mag­a­zine sub­scrip­tion :D They worked per­fect­ly on Oddish.

And then there’s this cozy pair of cro­chet mit­tens, for a friend who recent­ly relo­cat­ed to cold­er cli­mates. But wait…

It has fin­ger open­ings for tex­ting and tak­ing pic­tures! :D I made them from this love­ly pat­tern.

This one took me quite a while…

But well worth the time! Look how hap­py my dad is! :D And it fits per­fect­ly! Always tricky mak­ing gar­ments for my par­ents, nev­er know if it’s going to fit and I can’t get Mike to test try it because he’s much taller… but it worked out this time :D The cable pat­tern is actu­al­ly tak­en from this sweater pat­tern

This is my mom doing a dance with the cro­chet shawl, prob­a­bly to the music on TV (my sis­ter sent me the pho­to :D).

I thought it would be good for when she stud­ies and writes in her office at home, which she spends quite a bit of time doing. It’s mod­i­fied from this gor­geous pat­tern, because I was using a much heav­ier yarn. I skipped over quite a bit of the granny stitch sec­tions. It’s a fun pat­tern to make with var­ie­gat­ed yarn with long colour changes.

This is the warmest neck­warmer I’ve nev­er made, prob­a­bly Lap­land-ready! :D Loom knit­ted (on a 41-peg round loom) a very long tube (about 20″) with two strands of worsted weight yarn held togeth­er, then the ends of tube are sewn togeth­er to make a dou­ble-thick tube! I took a pho­to before wrap­ping it for my mother-in-law :)

And now, things oth­ers made that I can’t make…

Isn’t it mag­nif­i­cent? :D Very grate­ful heart and stomach.

And for a year of more making…

Mike got me a long loom, a stitch counter, and the per­fect yarn-craft­ing snack! :D :D :D

Here’s to a year of new ideas and more crafting!

 

shine on

 

In these dark and uncer­tain times, there can be great val­ue in imag­in­ing a bit of star in each human soul. Not just that it gives some hope for human­i­ty at a time when man’s inhu­man­i­ty to man seems ever on the increase; but also because it points to an inner bright­ness that can light the way in dark times. 

― Michael Meade, The Genius Myth

 

May each of us shine on with hope, peace, love, and craft­ing hands into 2018!

Much grat­i­tude for every­one who jour­neyed with gen­uine mud­pie over the past year. Look­ing for­ward to shar­ing more crafty good­ness in the next! May your Christ­mas and new year be mer­ry, and may you be sur­round­ed by warmth, love, new inspi­ra­tions, and many bless­ings in 2018.

All my best wishes,
Trish

 

tutorials, tutorials, tutorials

Remem­ber saku­ra mochi? :D

He’s the first ever post­ed pat­tern on this blog!! Feels like ages ago. It is ages ago. It was in March 2010 that I start­ed this blog, and today it is home to over 40 tiny plush pat­terns, almost 20 wear­able pat­terns, and over 30 oth­er craft tutorials.

When I came up with the num­bers I was quite blown away myself! Actu­al­ly I was more blown away by the fact that I nev­er count­ed or took stock of what has been cre­at­ed on this blog until now. Real­ly because I have two days off, with noth­ing planned, but only had to use up the vaca­tion hours that would oth­er­wise be lost by the end of the year. 

So I did a tuto­r­i­al over­haul! :D

I real­ized that even when I was scrolling through my own tuto­ri­als it was tedious to have to scroll for­ev­er back and forth to find what I need. So I cat­e­go­rized them! 

If you go to the Tuto­ri­als page now, you’ll see a list of cat­e­gories, from tiny plush to non-yarn crafts! 

I don’t know how to do this just yet but in the future I hope to lay­out the tuto­ri­als in a grid rather than a list, like I see on oth­er nice mod­ern look­ing blogs :) But I hope at least the cat­e­gories make things eas­i­er to find.

In the begin­ning this blog was more for me as a way to feel moti­vat­ed to cre­ate, and record pat­terns and how-to’s that I come up with so I can go back to them lat­er if I need to remake some­thing. I real­ly only expect­ed about a dozen peo­ple read­ing it, most­ly my fam­i­ly and friends. It’s nev­er intend­ed to make prof­it. I wel­come yarn and relat­ed prod­ucts and pro­mote yarn-relat­ed busi­ness­es by writ­ing review posts, but I always turn down offers for ads. I have not yet writ­ten a pat­tern for sale. I’m lazy about the blog’s appear­ance (hence the long over­due tuto­r­i­al over­haul and the ear­ly 2000’s look, kind of like my every­day appear­ance :S). But it’s a com­fort­able place that I always go back to, a vir­tu­al home, updat­ing and writ­ing posts even when I’m swamped, even when I don’t feel like it, even when I thought it’s not amount­ing to any­thing, even when Word­Press tells me that my read­er­ship is dwin­dling. Some­how, I want to keep it alive.

Since then I’ve met many great peo­ple through this blog, shar­ing such kind com­ments and craft­ing along, let­ting me know that they’re try­ing out my pat­terns, exchang­ing notes so we can fig­ure out mod­i­fi­ca­tions togeth­er, com­mu­ni­cat­ing in dif­fer­ent lan­guages across the con­ti­nents (me using Google Trans­late), actu­al­ly exchang­ing snail mail and hop­ing to one day meet in per­son… I’m so grate­ful for the con­nec­tions and for the kind­ness you’ve shown me and gen­uine mud­pie. Per­haps it is not real­ly the blog that I want to keep alive, but the con­nec­tions and cre­ativ­i­ty that sus­tain this blog.

So cheers to you! Let’s craft for­ward! :D

 

loom knit a plum pudding!

It’s my lat­est craze! I can’t seem to get back to the nee­dles at the moment… I’m sure I will, but right now I’m just look­ing for all kinds of things to loom knit. I saw some real­ly cute cro­cheted and knit­ted tea cozies in the shape of plum pud­ding late­ly, and I thought I could prob­a­bly loom knit one! So here it is :D

I’ve actu­al­ly nev­er had plum pud­ding, but always thought it’s the cutest-look­ing Christ­mas-relat­ed thing! The light­ing in my apart­ment is quite poor espe­cial­ly in the evening, but here’s a bet­ter look at the tea cozy.

I thought I’d share what I did here, in case you’re a loom knit­ter and want to give it a try, or if you also want to try your hands on loom knit­ting (it’s so much fun!), and for myself to remem­ber when I need to make one or a few more next year :D 

I used this 31-peg loom, it came in a set of 4 by Loops and Threads at Michaels. I bought it because it’s afford­able, espe­cial­ly with the week­ly Michaels coupon, for my first try with loom knit­ting. I’m not sure why this par­tic­u­lar loom has an odd num­ber of pegs, because I thought all round looms have even num­ber of pegs… but it worked anyway.

I used:

Worsted weight yarn in brown and white, with 2 strands held togeth­er throughout

A bit of worsted weight yarn in green and red

3.5 mm cro­chet hook

Yarn nee­dle

How to:

To begin, cast on using chain cast on (I learned using this video) with brown.

Then, using e‑wraps (here’s a tuto­r­i­al), work 8 rows around. The tea cozy uses e‑wraps throughout.

We now sep­a­rate front and back pieces.

Front:

Work 16 stitch­es back and forth (to cre­ate a flat pan­el) for 7 rows (video on how to make a flat pan­el here).

Then, incor­po­rate white using this chart.

Start with the bot­tom row. Work two stitch­es of brown. Make a slip knot with white and put on next peg, and work this stitch. When wrap­ping the next peg with white, make sure that the brown work­ing yarn is lay­ing on top of the white work­ing yarn, thus car­ry­ing the brown yarn along. Con­tin­ue fol­low­ing the chart, car­ry­ing the brown when wrap­ping with the white, and vice versa.

After fin­ish­ing the chart, work 10 rows back and forth in white. (My teapot is a bit on the tall side stand­ing at 6.5″ includ­ing lid, so if your teapot is small­er, you can prob­a­bly omit a few rows.) Cut yarn.

Back:

Attach brown to the first unworked peg at row 8. Wrap and knit the remain­ing 15 unworked stitch­es for 7 rows. 

Fol­low the chart for the next 3 rows. If you have the same loom as me you would need to omit either the far left or far right col­umn of the chart.

Work 10 rows in white (or the same num­ber of rows on the oth­er side). 

Work 5 rows in the round. Tie and secure the yarn tail when you get to the peg where the yarn was cut at the end of the front piece.

Leav­ing a long tail, cut yarn. Thread yarn tail in nee­dle, weave nee­dle through each stitch while tak­ing the stitch off the peg, gath­er and cinch the stitch­es togeth­er, turn piece inside out, weave the nee­dle through the gath­ered stitch­es a few more times and tie off. Weave in all the ends. Turn piece right side out. 

Here’s close up of the com­plet­ed icing chart…

Hol­ly:

Leaves (make 3): Leav­ing a long tail for sewing, ch 10, sl st in 2nd ch from hook, through back loop only, *sc in next ch, dc in next ch, ch 2, sl st in 2nd ch from hook, dc in next ch, sc in next ch, dc in next ch, ch 2, sl st in 2nd ch from hook, dc in next ch, sc in next ch*, sl st in next ch. Now work­ing on the oth­er side of the foun­da­tion chain, repeat from * to *, sl st in last ch, fas­ten off, weave in this end.

Berries (make 3): Leav­ing a long tail for sewing, 6 sc in mag­ic ring, don’t join in the round, 1 sc in each sc for 2 rounds (or just work 12 sc’s), fas­ten off. Stuff tail end into berry. Thread begin­ning tail in nee­dle, pull on tail to ensure mag­ic ring is closed as tight­ly as pos­si­ble, pass nee­dle through the mag­ic ring and the berry and pre­pare to sew on the pudding.

Assem­bly:

Sew leaves and berries onto the top of the plum pud­ding with the yarn tails, like so…

Put teapot in cozy, and we’re done! Pret­ty quick and easy. Makes a great gift for tea lovers :)

Have a cozy, hap­py week­end, everyone!

 

 

adventures in loom-knitting

For my birth­day I got myself a set of knit­ting looms. It also serves well as a birth­day crown :D

I’ve dis­cov­ered that loom-knit­ting is super quick for mak­ing hats! I found it quite relax­ing and it’s a great for tv-watch­ing. I lit­er­al­ly made 5 hats in a week. Some were small­er child-size ones of course, but def­i­nite­ly quick­er than knit­ting. And thick and cozy with the dou­bled brim and super bulky yarn. I’ve had great results using Caron Tea Cakes. One roll makes about 2.5 hats, and it’s just about the right thick­ness for the loom. 

So I made a cou­ple with the Earl Grey colour­way for friends. The looms I got came with an instruc­tion book so I just fol­lowed that. There are also tons of tuto­ri­als for mak­ing dou­ble-rimmed loom-knit­ted hats with sim­ple e‑wrap stitches.

Then I remade my pink hat.

And then made a cou­ple of kids’ ones using Sprin­kle Cakes :D This was one of them. The brim was 2 strands of worsted weight yarn held togeth­er. The oth­er has a pur­ple brim and yel­low pom pom but I gift-wrapped it before tak­ing a picture :(

This one I made with two strands of worsted weight yarn held togeth­er throughout. 

And this was a cus­tom order, with a mod­i­fied Alber­tosaurus on it :)

Have you tried loom-knit­ting? What else have you made? I’d love to hear about oth­er possibilities!

Have a good week every­one! :D