Author: trish

knitting is caring

Posted on by trish

knit knit knit…

I made a pair of Totoro baby mitts for a friend who just had a baby :) Fol­low­ing the charts from this Rav­el­ry pat­tern. For the small Totoro, I used this Totoro hex­ipuff chart. 

Over Jan­u­ary I was busy get­ting as much knit­ting done as pos­si­ble for the Hand Knit Hope ini­tia­tive for eat­ing dis­or­der aware­ness. This project deliv­ers hand­made scarves, hats, head­bands, etc. to treat­ment cen­tres across Cana­da as gifts of encour­age­ment, and the hand­made goods are also used to raise funds for oth­er ini­tia­tives aimed to increase sup­port for peo­ple liv­ing with eating/body image issues or eat­ing dis­or­ders. (you can read more about the project, and how you can help out too, on their Face­book page. If you scroll down a bit you’ll also see a brochure I made, and you might rec­og­nize a cou­ple of pat­terns on it :D)

So I made 3 head­bands, all on the knit­ting loom, with either two strands of worsted held togeth­er or one strand of super bulky weight yarn.

They were all made on the 36-peg round loom. The far left one is just a long tube of e‑wrap stitch­es until it was about 8 inch­es long, then the top and bot­tom edges are sewn togeth­er so it’s dou­ble thick.

For the mid­dle one, I fol­lowed this video tuto­r­i­al. 

The one on the right is made with garter stitch, which is basi­cal­ly alter­nat­ing one round of e‑wraps and one round of purl stitch.

I also made a cowl, which was inspired by the Purl Soho Garter Gaiter cowl, using alter­nat­ing colours for the e‑wrap and purl stitch rounds. It was made on the 41-peg loom.

On the top­ic of knit­ting for a good cause, the Warm­ing Toron­to Knit­ting Day is back again at the end of Feb­ru­ary! Mike and I are plan­ning to be there :D If you’re in the neigh­bour­hood we’d love for you to pop by! You can find all the details here on Face­book.

Hap­py Feb­ru­ary everyone!

 

may the porg be with you

Posted on by trish

I made a tiny porg!

Fan opin­ions about them seem to polar­ize. I hap­pen to love them like I love all fuzzy round-shaped crea­tures. Its shape is so amigu­ru­mi-ready, and it remind­ed me of my pen­guin tots. I could­n’t help but had to make one. 

If you’ve made the pen­guin tots before, the porg is not dif­fer­ent struc­tural­ly but a bit more com­pli­cat­ed with the colour changes.

It’s very car­ry-able and rides well in pock­et, so it can always be with you :)

The upturned mouth of the actu­al porg makes my tiny ver­sion look sad, so I opt­ed for a reg­u­lar mouth instead. 

Here it is con­tem­plat­ing life, or decid­ing what to eat for lunch, by the jade plant.

To make your own tiny porg, you’ll need:

Small amount of mus­tard, white, brown and orange yarn in worsted weight

3.5 mm hook 

2.5 mm hook (for feet and weav­ing in ends)

2 black safe­ty eyes (3mm), or round black beads

Black thread and sewing needle

Yarn nee­dle

Yarn ends (for stuff­ing), or poly­ester stuffing

Pat­tern:

Body:

Note: begin­ning ch 1 does not count as a stitch throughout.

Round 1: With brown, ch 4, 2 sc in 2nd ch from hook, sc in next ch, 3 sc in last ch, sc in the remain­ing loop of the next ch (the ch that has only 1 sc in it), sc in the next ch (the ch with the begin­ning 2 sc in it), sl st in first sc of round.

Round 2: ch 1, 2 sc in first sc, sc in next 3 sc, 3 sc in next sc, sc in next 3 sc, sc in next sc (the sc with the begin­ning 2 sc in it), sl st in first sc of round.

In the next round we begin to incor­po­rate oth­er colours. Here’s a tuto­r­i­al on how to change colours seam­less­ly, in case it’s helpful.

Round 3: ch 1, in back loop only, sc in next 7 sc. When com­plet­ing the 7th sc, attach and change to white. Car­ry­ing the brown yarn (i.e. wrap it in your stitch) as you cro­chet with white, sc in the next 4 sc. When com­plet­ing the 4th sc, change back to brown, sc in last sc, sl st in first sc.

Round 4: With brown, ch 1, sc in next 7 sc, change to white, car­ry­ing the brown as you go, sc in next 4 sc, change to brown, sc in last sc, sl st in first sc.

Round 5: Repeat round 4.

Round 6: With brown, ch 1, sc in next 6 sc. Change to yel­low and car­ry­ing brown as you go, sc in next 2 sc, change to white and car­ry the brown and yel­low as you go, sc in next 2 sc, change to yel­low and car­ry the brown as you go, sc in next 2 sc, change to brown, sl st in first sc.

Round 7: Repeat around 6.

After round 7, install safe­ty eyes (or sew on beads for eyes) in between the 2 yel­low stitch­es between rounds 6 and 7. Sew on mouth. Stuff with yarn ends or stuffing.

Round 8: With brown, ch 1, 2 sc tog three times, change to yel­low and fas­ten off brown, 2 sc tog with yel­low, change to white and car­ry the yel­low as you go, 2 sc tog with white, change to yel­low and fas­ten off white, 2 sc tog with yel­low, sl st in first sc of round, fas­ten off, leave a long tail. Weave the tail in the remain­ing stitch­es around and cinch the open­ing close, secure and fas­ten off, weave in ends.

Wings (make 2): With brown, ch 2, 5 sc in 2nd ch from hook, ch 2, sl st in 2nd ch from hook (form­ing a point), sc in ch with the 5 sc in it, sl st in first sc of round, leave a tail for sewing, fas­ten off. (I only leave a tail for sewing on one wing, not both.

Sew on wings: Posi­tion the wing with the yarn tail for sewing on the side of the body, thread the yarn nee­dle in the yarn tail, insert nee­dle where you want the first wing, pull the nee­dle through the body so the nee­dle comes out on the oth­er side where you want the oth­er wing to be. Thread the oth­er wing through the nee­dle, and sew back and forth through the body to secure both wings at the same time. Fas­ten off, weave in ends.

Feet:

Feet are made linked togeth­er with a few ch in between.

With orange, *ch 3, sl st in 2nd ch from hook, sl st in next ch, ch 2, sl st in 2nd ch from hook, sl st in very first ch made, ch 3, sl st in 2nd ch from hook, sl st in next ch, sl st in very first ch made*, ch 2 (link between feet), then repeat from * to * once more. Fas­ten off and leave a long tail for sewing.

Posi­tion feet under body and sew on with yarn tail, fas­ten off and weave in ends.

The porg is ready for adventures!

Tiny porg wish­es every­one an awe­some week!

 

this week’s awesome finds

Posted on by trish

Just because the hol­i­days are over does­n’t mean the home can’t smell fes­tive! Easy to make wax sachets from Hel­lo Glow.

 

This cozy cardi­gan was made with a round knit­ting loom! Must try. From Good Knit Kiss­es.

 

Good night’s sleep and relax­ation in a bot­tle makes a great home­made gift :) Pil­low mist from Let’s Min­gle.

 

 

Oh my good­ness, a gor­geous cable sweater and it’s free! Cro­chet pat­tern by Sewrel­la.

 

Lion Brand Yarn has come up with some designs that I real­ly like late­ly, such as this sim­ple, relaxed-look­ing cardigan.

 

And this nice cowl — per­fect for prac­tic­ing cables and I like it’s clever construction.

 

These felt­ed cats! Made using a cook­ie cut­ter! Bril­liant! Tuto­r­i­al from Cat at Roof.

 

One of my favourite things from the Last Jedi :D Pat­tern by The Geeky Hook­er on Rav­el­ry.

 

I think I’ve prob­a­bly post­ed this before but it’s so awe­some, no one would mind if I post it again! Cord tacos as easy to make as real tacos :D From Local Adven­tur­er. 

 

Hope every­one’s hav­ing an awe­some week­end! Stay crafty :D

 

 

happy scrappy sweater

Posted on by trish

Start the new year right! Use up those scrap yarn to make room for new ones! :D

And get some knit­ting looms! So you can make this hap­py scrap­py loom-knit­ting sweater! :D

*Dis­claimer: I have not received com­pen­sa­tions for any knit­ting loom man­u­fac­tur­ers* (but maybe I should…)

I just… love the sim­plic­i­ty, the rus­tic fish­er­man look, the dou­ble thick, super warm fabric.

So! If you have a knit­ting loom, or if you’d like to get one and try your hands on loom knit­ting, here’s how this raglan sweater was made. 

(Haven’t tried loom knit­ting much but want to tack­le a sweater project? No fear! I’ll have video tuto­ri­als through­out to show you dif­fer­ent stitch­es. I did start with mak­ing hats and head­bands first but the sweater real­ly isn’t much harder.)

I used:

A 41-peg round loom (the largest in the set). I got mine in a set by Loops & Threads at Michaels (for medi­um to bulky yarn). It was about $20 and I had a 55% off coupon so it end­ed up being quite affordable.

Worsted weight yarn. I knit­ted with 2 strands of yarn held togeth­er through­out. I had a large ball of over 1000 yards of for­est green (I can’t remem­ber what brand and lost the label) that I used through­out, then just added dif­fer­ent colours of scrap yarn as I went. 

6 mm cro­chet hook for cast­ing on. Small­er hook for weav­ing in ends.

Yarn nee­dle (that came with the loom set).

Siz­ing:

The size I made was 33″ around. I would have liked it larg­er. Giv­en that I’m on the small scale of humans, I’m going to write the pat­tern for 37″ so it might work for more peo­ple. 37″ is the largest size the loom can make, for this pat­tern. Below are the approx­i­mate mea­sure­ments, with 2 stitch­es = 1″ and 3 rows = 1″. The actu­al mea­sure­ments for your sweater may vary depend­ing on the kind of yarn you use.

Pat­tern:

Notes: 

Knit with 2 strands of yarn held togeth­er through­out. I used one colour con­sis­tent­ly and just added dif­fer­ent colours of scrap yarn. To change colour, I sim­ply cut the work­ing yarn and tie on a dif­fer­ent colour. Very high-tech ;)

The pat­tern con­sists of 4 pieces: front, back, 2 sleeves. They’re sewn togeth­er in the 4 diag­o­nal seams from under arm to col­lar, then sleeves are sewn togeth­er under the arm, and the sides are sewn together. 

Wher­ev­er “knit” or “k” is indi­cat­ed in the pat­tern, it means the e‑wrap stitch.

Front/Back (make 2):

Cast on all the pegs around the loom using this chain cast on method with a cro­chet hook, but don’t join in the round. I tend to cast on quite tight­ly so that the edges are as neat as pos­si­ble (41 sts.)

Work k1 p1 rib for 6 rows. (video tuto­r­i­al for k1 p1 rib here)

Con­tin­ue knit­ting using the e‑wrap stitch (e‑wrap video here) until piece reach 13″. 

Now we begin decreas­ing towards the col­lar (yoke).

Yoke row 1: In the next row, decrease 1 by mov­ing the loop on the last peg to the one next to it, e‑wrap and knit off the 2 bot­tom loops on peg. Con­tin­ue knit­ting until 2 stitch­es remain. Move the loop on the last peg to the sec­ond last peg, e‑wrap and knit off the 2 bot­tom loops on peg. Decrease done! Sim­ple, right? (Here’s a decrease video to sum­ma­rize the action)

Yoke rows 2–3: Knit 2 rows even.

Repeat yoke rows 1–3 eight more times, then work yoke row 1 (decrease row) once more. 28 rows in yoke alto­geth­er, 21 stitch­es remain.

Work k1 p1 rib for 5 rows. 

Bind off (bind off video here).

Sleeves (make 2):

Chain cast on (same as front/back) 19 sts. 

Work k1 p1 rib for 5 rows.

Sleeve row 1–7: Knit 7 rows even.

Sleeve row 8 (increase): knit 2, make 1 (m1), knit until 2 stitch­es remain, m1, knit 2. (make 1 video here — the per­son in the video uses a dif­fer­ent knit stitch method but you can con­tin­ue using the e‑wrap for this)

Repeat sleeve rows 1–8 sev­en more times — 64 rows alto­geth­er, increased to 35 sts.

Now we decrease for shoul­der.

Shoul­der row 1: knit 1 row even.

Shoul­der row 2: decrease 1, knit till 2 stitch­es remain, decrease (see yoke row 1 above).

Repeat shoul­der rows 1–2 thir­teen more times, 28 rows alto­geth­er in shoul­der, 7 stitch­es remain.

Work k1 p1 rib for 5 rows. Bind off.

Assem­bly:

With wrong side fac­ing, and using one strand of yarn only (to reduce bulk), sew raglan seams togeth­er con­nect­ing sleeve pieces to front and back pieces. Sew sleeve togeth­er under the arm and con­tin­ue sewing togeth­er the sides. Repeat with oth­er sleeve/side.

Voilà!

And! I got this incred­i­ble t‑rex wood­en sculp­ture from a dear friend :D Isn’t it the most awe­some thing?

If you do give it a try do drop me a line! Cheers to a fan­tas­tic roar­ing year! 

  

 

holiday makes

Posted on by trish

‘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

Posted on by trish

 

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

Posted on by trish

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!

Posted on by trish

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

Posted on by trish

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

 

make a bath otter!

Posted on by trish

When we went to Van­cou­ver a cou­ple of months ago one of the most mem­o­rable things was see­ing the adorable sea otters.

*heart eyes x1000*

So when the nice folks at Yarn Cana­da sent me some Red Heart Scrub­by Cot­ton to try out and write a blog post about (they even sent can­dy and a nice note, aren’t they awe­some?), I knew exact­ly what to make :)

A bath otter, float­ing on its back, hold­ing your soap! XD

Actu­al­ly, our test shows that the otter sinks after the hold­ing the soap for a while… but still, it’s fun to see it float­ing on its back.

It makes a great bath toy, and a soap saver. If you have a tiny bit of soap left just stick it in it’s back pock­et and scrub away :D

This cot­ton yarn is super absorbent and soft­er than reg­u­lar poly­ester scrub­by yarn, so it makes a great wash cloth. 

 

One skein of scrub­by makes 2 otters with plen­ty left­over for a knit wash cloth, which is quite eco­nom­i­cal for hol­i­day gift-making. 

If you make it with reg­u­lar wool or acrylic, the pat­tern would also make a cute hand pup­pet! :D

I used:

One skein each of Red Heart Scrub­by Cot­ton in tan and loofa

A bit of brown acrylic yarn for embroi­der­ing facial features

5.5 mm hook

Tapes­try needle

Note:

The otter is worked from top down in the round in the top part, then worked back and forth in the low­er part and seamed at the sides in order to cre­ate an open­ing in the back. Then arms and legs are cro­cheted sep­a­rate­ly and sewn on. Ears are cro­cheted direct­ly onto the head. The tex­ture of the yarn makes it a bit chal­leng­ing to see the stitch­es, and it is some­times a bit dif­fi­cult to undo stitch­es, but it’s great for blend­ing in yarn ends and sewn seams. This pat­tern is writ­ten with this in mind and the struc­ture is made as sim­ple as possible. 

This pat­tern requires know­ing how to do colour change in mid row. If you’re not famil­iar, please check out this handy tuto­r­i­al by Moo­gly :) 

Pat­tern:

Head & upper body:

Round 1: with tan, 10 sc in mag­ic ring, don’t join in the round.

Round 2: 2 sc in each sc (20 sc).

Round 3: [1 sc in next sc, 2 sc in next sc] around (30 sc).

Round 4: 1 sc in each sc around.

Repeat round 4 until piece is 3.5″ tall.

Mid-sec­tion area:

6 sc, attach loofa (white), 3 sc in white, switch back to tan.

sc in each sc around using tan, until the sc before the first white stitch in the row below, switch to white, sc in the next 5 sc using white, wrap the white strand and the work­ing tan yarn in the stitch­es as you go, like so…

Switch back to tan and 1 sc in each sc using tan, until the stitch before the first white stitch in the row below, switch to white, sc in next 7 sc using white, switch back to tan.

Con­tin­ue cro­chet­ing in the round, using tan in tan stitch­es and white in white stitch­es until there are 4 more rows with white stitches.

Then, sc in each sc around using tan until the first white stitch in the row below, sc with tan in first white stitch, switch to white, sc with white in next 5 sc, switch back to tan.

sc in each sc around around using tan until first white stitch in the row below, sc with tan in the first white stitch, switch to white, sc with white in the next 3 sc, switch back to tan, fas­ten off white. sc in next 6 sc using tan, turn, leave remain­ing stitch­es unworked.

Low­er body:

Low­er body is worked back and forth in rows over 15 stitches.

Row 1: ch 1 (does not count as sc), sc in next 15 sc, turn.

Rows 2–8: repeat row 1, leave a long tail for sewing, fas­ten off.

With right side fac­ing, fold low­er body piece up in half, sew side seams together.

Turn low­er body piece right side out. At the back open­ing, sew togeth­er the top and bot­tom stitch­es clos­est to the seam on each side, like the pic­ture below. To sew the oth­er stitch­es clos­est to the oth­er seam, I did­n’t fas­ten off, I just wove the work­ing yarn through the top edge of the bot­tom part of the open­ing, and actu­al­ly cinched / gath­ered the stitch­es a bit to make the open­ing more sturdy.

Fas­ten off and weave in ends. The back would look like this…

Arms (make 2):

Row 1: Using tan, ch 6, sc in 2nd ch from hook, sc in next 4 ch, turn.

Row 2: ch 1 (does not count as sc), sc in next 5 sc, turn.

Rows 3–5: repeat row 2, leav­ing a long tail for sewing, fas­ten off.

Fold arm in half so the first row meets the last row, using the yarn tail, sew along side and top of arm using whip stitch, then sew arm to body along the side, also using whip stitch.

Legs (make 2):

Row 1: Using tan, ch 6, sc in 2nd ch from hook, sc in next 4 ch, turn.

Row 2: ch 1 (does not count as sc), sc in next 5 sc, turn.

Rows 3–7: repeat row 2, leav­ing a long tail for sewing, fas­ten off.

Fold leg in half so the first row meets the last row, using the yarn tail, sew along side and top of arm using whip stitch, then sew arm to body along the bot­tom of body, also using whip stitch.

Tail:

Row 1: ch 12, hdc in 3rd ch from hook, hdc in next 2 ch, sc to end of row, turn.

Row 2: ch 1 (does not count as sc), sc in each sc, hdc in each hdc, turn.

Row 3: ch 2 (counts as hdc), hdc in next 2 hdc, sc in each sc, leav­ing a tail for sewing, fas­ten off.

Sew tail to edge of bot­tom park of open­ing on back using whip stitch, like so.

Ears:

Insert hook through a stitch on the side of the head.

Pull up a loop of yarn and secure yarn.

Insert hook in a stitch to the left.

Pull up a loop, then yo and pull through both loops on hook, thus mak­ing an sc. Make 4 more sc in the same stitch, then sl st in a stitch to the left in head.

Repeat for the oth­er ear on the oth­er side of head.

Embroi­der eyes, nose and mouth with acrylic yarn. Fas­ten off and weave in ends.

Ta-da!

As usu­al, let me know if you have any ques­tions about the pattern! 

Spe­cial thanks to the nice peo­ple at Yarn Cana­da for think­ing of me and send­ing the yarn :) Please do check out their web­site if you live in Cana­da, free ship­ping for orders over $45, or flat rate of $5!

Hap­py crafting!