octopus’s garden :D

The corals are grow­ing slow­ly. I’m run­ning out of cro­chet pat­terns of corals to make from the book, so I’m try­ing to make up new ones.

You can click on the pho­tos to see a larg­er image of it, with all its details! :D

 

Octo­pus and young krak­en joined in the fun :D

 

And this is where I must share with you the lyrics of Octo­pus’s Gar­den by Ringo Starr.

I’d like to be under the sea
In an octo­pus’ gar­den in the shade
He’d let us in, knows where we’ve been
In his octo­pus’ gar­den in the shade

I’d ask my friends to come and see
An octo­pus’ gar­den with me
I’d like to be under the sea
In an octo­pus’ gar­den in the shade.

We would be warm below the storm
In our lit­tle hide­away beneath the waves
Rest­ing our head on the sea bed
In an octo­pus’ gar­den near a cave

We would sing and dance around
Because we know we can’t be found
I’d like to be under the sea
In an octo­pus’ gar­den in the shade

We would shout and swim about
The coral that lies beneath the waves
(Lies beneath the ocean waves)
Oh what joy for every girl and boy
Know­ing they’re hap­py and they’re safe
(Hap­py and they’re safe)

We would be so hap­py you and me
No one there to tell us what to do
I’d like to be under the sea
In an octo­pus’ gar­den with you.

 

(When I found out that Ringo was the con­duc­tor in Shin­ing Time Sta­tion I was quite shocked. I did­n’t real­ize that until I was an adult. My sis­ter and I used to watch that show a lot when we first moved to Canada.)

 

Have a hap­py Thurs­day! :D

 

 

sherbert, the yeti

 

Meet Sher­bert, the yeti :D

Sher­bert lives on our couch with Fil­bert the Choco­cat and Her­bert the tiny ele­phant (Mike found him wan­der­ing about at a trade show and invit­ed him home).

Any­hoo, here’s how I made Sher­bert the yeti. He’s actu­al­ly made based on the ground­hog pat­tern, just with a more elon­gat­ed body and legs, and dif­fer­ent arms. And because of the kind of yarn and size of hook used, he turned out quite a bit big­ger than ground­hog (Sher­bert is 4″ tall, while ground­hog is 3″), but still tiny, for a yeti.

 

I used:

A fuzzy kind of yarn in white, like this one.

Worsted weight yarn in light blue

5.5mm and 3mm hook

Sewing nee­dle and white thread

Tapes­try needle

Small piece of  felt in light blue

Embroi­dery thread in brown, pink, and white

Stuff­ing (I used yarn scraps)

 

Head and Body:

With white yarn and 5.5mm hook:

Row 1: ch 3, 5 sc in 3rd ch from hook, sl st. in top of begin­ning 2 ch.

Row 2: ch 2, [2sc in next sc, sc in next sc] 3 times, sc in top of begin­ning ch.

Row 3 and on: sc around until piece mea­sures 1.5 inch­es from the begin­ning,  take hook off loop, don’t fas­ten off.

Cut an oval out of the light blue felt about 1″ wide and 3/4″ tall. Embroi­der eyes, mouth, teeth, and oth­er facial fea­tures as desired. Sew face to head (the piece you just cro­cheted) with sewing nee­dle and thread.

Put hook back in loop where you left off. Con­tin­ue with sc in each sc until piece mea­sures 2.5″ from the begin­ning. End with last st in cen­tre front (I just eye­balled it, but one could count the stitch­es to make sure it’s cen­tered if desired), don’t fas­ten off, con­tin­ue onto legs.

Legs:

ch 2, bring the ch across the open­ing of the body and sc in a st in cen­tre back (I just eye­balled it, but one could count the stitch­es to make sure it’s cen­tered if desired — the ground­hog pat­tern has process pho­tos that explains this step). 

Then, sc in each sc until the ch 2 in the mid­dle, sc in each ch, then sc in each sc for 3 more rounds, sl st. in each of next 2 sc, fas­ten off.

For the oth­er leg, attach yarn to the same st in cen­tre front at the base of the oth­er leg, ch 1, sc in next sc, sc in each sc until the st in cen­tre back at the base of the oth­er leg, sc in the st in cen­tre back, sc in each ch of the ch 2 in the mid­dle (one would have to cro­chet in the back loops of the chain), sc in the begin­ning ch 1 of this leg, sc in each sc for 2 more rounds, sl st in each of next 2 sc, fas­ten off.

Now would be a good time to stuff the ground­hog through the open­ings at the bot­tom of the legs. After stuff­ing, close the bot­tom of the legs by weav­ing through the inner loops of the open­ing with yarn and tapes­try nee­dle. Weave in ends.

Arms (make 2):

ch 5, sl st in 2nd ch from hook, sl st in each of next 2 ch, ch 1, fas­ten off.

This makes a thick chain with kind of a forked end, like this…

Weave ends into the thick chain.

Hands (make 2):

With light blue yarn and 3mm hook:

ch 4, sl st in 2nd ch from hook, sl st in each of next 2 ch, *ch 2, sl st in 2nd ch from hook, sl st in very first ch*, repeat from * to * once more, ch 4, sl st in 2nd ch from hook, sl st in each of next 2 ch, sl st in very first ch, fas­ten off. 

The hand looks like this…

Assem­bly:

Sand­wich the top half of the hand between the forked ends of the arm, hid­ing the yarn ends of the hand. Sew in place with sewing nee­dle and white thread (the fuzzy yarn is real­ly good with hid­ing sewing stitches).

Repeat for the oth­er arm and hand.

With sewing nee­dle and white thread, sew arms to body.

The arm and hand look like this…

 

And yeti is ready to take on the world! :D

 

Even chal­leng­ing the dif­fi­cult and dan­ger­ous mount of yarn, fac­ing the great risk of a yarn avalanche!

 

But at the end of an adven­tur­ous day, Sher­bert the yeti is back on the couch, enjoy­ing a cup of cocoa with his friends, and wish­ing every­one an awe­some week filled with won­der­ful, excit­ing things.

 

P.s. if you spot errors or any­thing unclear about the pat­tern feel free to drop me a note! 

 

 

 

the finished sky sweater

It’s done! :D

Actu­al­ly, it’s been done a while ago, just haven’t had time to post about it. It took about a month alto­geth­er. You can see the first post here, and updates here, here, and here :D)

Here’s the back of it…

And I like the dif­fer­ent stripe pat­terns where the side seams meet :D

I fin­ished all of the edges with a row of hdc.

It’s just one big rec­tan­gle with a neck opening. Per­haps when I have more time I can share how I made it. 

I think my love of mak­ing square tops and vests come from my mom. She used to cro­chet and knit a lot of vests too, from beau­ti­ful Japan­ese pat­terns (She’s expert at read­ing the charts; none of us in the fam­i­ly actu­al­ly know how to read Japanese).

And final­ly, an awe­some illus­tra­tion that I think is quite fit­ting for this post…

via swiss miss

 

I will cer­tain­ly be enjoy­ing my new striped sweater very much :D

Have a great week­end, everyone!

 

 

craft-along gallery posted! :D

All the awe­some pho­tos and sto­ries you’ve sent are final­ly post­ed! You can find them by click­ing the “craft-along gallery” tap above. A huge thank-you hug to Mike who added the nifty gallery view­er :D

image
A tiny Yeti hug :D

The craft-along was a lot of fun! And I’ve been oooh-ing and ahh-ing over the pho­tos every­one’s sent me. I will total­ly be up for hav­ing anoth­er par­ty some­times in the future. Maybe next time we can have a themed party!

Thank you so much for join­ing me! So inspired by your cre­ativ­i­ty. I hope you’ve had a good time craft­ing, and I hope you enjoy look­ing at every­one’s projects!

Have a great week, everyone!

you are so awesome!

For the past few days I have been receiv­ing pic­tures from the craft-along week­end and sto­ries to go with them. Thank you so much! :D your cre­ativ­i­ty is awe­some and inspir­ing! I thought I would also share with you what I made with the white fuzzy yarn while watch­ing Juras­sic Park on the weekend…

image

Yes! A Yeti! I will have to take bet­ter pho­tos of him with props and every­thing, and I plan on shar­ing the pat­tern, but there’s been a fam­i­ly emer­gency this week and I’m a bit fraz­zled. So I hope to post the pat­tern lat­er next week. But I’m still aim­ing to post all of your awe­some pho­tos this weekend :)

Thank you so much for craft­ing along with me! Have an awe­some rest of the week!

partying along…

Had some school work to catch up on today but hap­py to be set­ting aside some time for craft­ing in the evening :D Mak­ing some­thing white and fuzzy while watch­ing the Juras­sic Park 3 DVD I bor­rowed from my friend :D I saw the first two when I was a kid but did­n’t even know that there was a third one. I heard there’s a fourth one com­ing out in 2014… whoa.

It is now storm­ing and pour­ing rain out­side, just like one of the scenes in the movie. And the thun­der kind of sounds like the dinosaurs roar­ing. Roarrr.

Still not too late to join the par­ty if you haven’t heard about it ear­li­er! :D

Can’t wait to show you what I’ve made (will post about that mid-week) and to see the awe­some projects you’ve worked on! :D

Have a fan­tas­tic Sunday! 

 

corals, and more party ideas

An update of the corals. Have been fol­low­ing pat­terns in the book, but also start­ed to make up free-form ones, like the orange ones on the far right.

And now, anoth­er round of ideas for the craft-along par­ty (par­ty starts tomor­row! inter­est­ed in join­ing? See this post for more details).

Pol­ka dot sweater (or, I would call it the toad stool sweater :D) from Kit­ten­hood.

 

Super quick pom pom book­marks from Design Mom.

 

And for any­one who’s get­ting ready for Christ­mas — plum pud­ding orna­ment! :D From Plan­et June.

 

Wish­ing you a week­end of hap­py cre­ative­ness! :D Excit­ed to see what every­one makes! 

 

 

 

sky sweater update and party idea

Sky sweater is three-quar­ter of the way done. First sliv­er of blue sky in over a week. Just hop­ing that elec­tric­i­ty and heat will come back on for the parts of the world that’s been affect­ed by the hur­ri­cane, and that every­one will be warm and safe.

And a fab­u­lous small cro­chet project I came across recent­ly — minia­ture cro­cheted desserts! Thought it might be an idea for the upcom­ing craft-along par­ty :D The pat­tern is in Dutch, but the writer has gen­er­ous­ly pro­vid­ed a link to an Eng­lish ver­sion. If you scroll down to the bot­tom of the post you will find oth­er kinds of dessert pat­terns too! All very cute.

Bye for now, more par­ty ideas com­ing soon! 

Take care!

 

 

 

you’re invited :D

 (Image from I’m Invit­ed to a Par­ty by Mo Willems — high­ly recommended!)

 

To a craft-along par­ty this week­end! :D

The idea for a craft-along par­ty was inspired by the com­ments from the weav­ing post. Over the years I’ve got­ten to know many of you through this blog — so grate­ful for your craft­ing tips, ideas, and encour­age­ment! I would so love to have a craft­ing par­ty togeth­er with all of you, but we live so far apart! So I thought, why not have a vir­tu­al craft-along par­ty? Where we craft togeth­er in spir­it :D

I fig­ure every­one’s sched­ule is dif­fer­ent, and I’m kind of con­fused about time zones… so instead of set­ting a 24-hour peri­od (as I ini­tial­ly sug­gest­ed in my last post), I thought the par­ty can be extend­ed to the whole week­end :D

So! The details!

 

When: Sat­ur­day & Sun­day, Novem­ber 10 & 11 — your local time :D

What:
You’re invit­ed to set aside some time over this week­end to craft along with every­one who’s join­ing the par­ty. Can be an hour, sev­er­al hours, the whole day… What­ev­er you wish in terms of the time and what to make ‑ maybe a craft that you’ve been want­i­ng to try for a while, maybe con­tin­u­ing on a project that has been hiber­nat­ing, maybe just set­ting aside an hour to be spon­ta­neous and make some­thing unplanned and free-formed, maybe bak­ing a cake for the sake of bak­ing a cake… Or maybe gath­er some friends and have an actu­al craft­ing par­ty, that would be super awesome! 

Share your awesomeness: 
If you wish, send me a pho­to of what you’ve made, per­haps also a description/story about it, and I will post them right here on the good ol’ blog. It will be like a mini gallery exhi­bi­tion and cel­e­bra­tion! :D

Send­ing pho­to:
Please send pho­tos of your craft-along par­ty project by Wednes­day,
Novem­ber 14 to genuinemudpie[at]gmail[dot]com 

 

Every­one’s wel­come to join, the more the mer­ri­er, so feel free to spread the word!

Peo­ple are wel­come to join spon­ta­neous­ly, but if you can leave a com­ment below to let every­one know that you’re plan­ning on join­ing that would be real­ly excit­ing! :D   

 

Have an awe­some start to the week, everyone!

 

 

this week’s awesome finds

 It’s been a while since my last awe­some finds post! Per­haps some ideas for the craft-along par­ty? (details about that com­ing soon, stay tuned! :D) 

 

Beau­ti­ful cray­on rub­bing with leafs as water­colour resist. From Make and Takes.

 

Fab­u­lous door­knob cov­ers, pat­tern on Roman Sock.

 

Easy microwave wreath forms — it’s high time for mak­ing some fall/winter wonderland/Christmas wreaths! From Michele Made Me.

 

Or what about a paper bag sun for a wreath? Also from Michele Made Me. (As you can see, I’ve got wreaths on my mind. I’m look­ing to replace the spring flower wreath on my door to a more sea­son­al one. The paper sun might be it!)

 

This is so hip­ster-look­ing, I would so make one if I know how to knit in the round. Ban­dana cowl from the Purl Bee.

 

Mend­ing moth holes with moths. Such love­ly idea. From nini makes.

 

I love this yarn (nev­er used it, have just been mar­veling at pho­tos of it), and the sim­ple shape of this dress. From Lion Brand Yarn (reg­is­tra­tion required to access pat­tern, but it’s free :D).

 

What love­ly blouse! And a sewing pat­tern to down­load on Make.

 

Tea par­ty print­able, with a place to add a tea bag! Makes an entic­ing invi­ta­tion, I think! From Mr. Print­a­bles.

 

A very pret­ty trans­for­ma­tion of a reg­u­lar boxy plaid shirt! From C & C.

 

Bril­liant cake flow­ers made with fruit leather! From Wed­ding Chicks.

 

Have a love­ly rest of the weekend!

 

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