Month: November 2014

totoro sweater!

Posted on by trish

My very own Totoro sweater! :D

Totoro sweater

 

I made up my own basic raglan sweater pat­tern and then adapt­ed the knit Totoro chart from this beau­ti­ful mit­ten pat­tern. I had to take out a few rows in the chart because the hdc’s are taller than knit stitches.

Of course I had to do a lev­i­tat­ing shoot for this! (If you had­n’t seen the film My Neigh­bour Totoro, you can catch a glimpse of Totoro fly­ing in this love­ly mon­tage)

Photo

 

I’m mak­ing anoth­er one for my sis­ter, so that will give me a chance to write down and test out the pat­tern for the raglan sweater. One can then incor­po­rate any knit, cro­chet or cross stitch chart, like this owl chart.

Have a hap­py Fri­day and week­end! And hap­py thanks­giv­ing! I’m grate­ful for your vis­it today — thank you for jour­ney­ing with me on my crafty adventures!

’tis the season to be cozy

Posted on by trish

I made a pair of mit­tens for a friend :D

cozy 1

They’re con­vert­ible! :D

cozy 2

Great for using the phone while outdoors :)

I’m shar­ing my pat­tern here so you can make a pair too if you like, and so I can return to this pat­tern when I need to make anoth­er pair :P

They’re very quick to make, because the yarn is thick. Each took me a cou­ple of hours in front of the TV.

The pat­tern is for the mit­tens only. The but­ter­fly applique is made fol­low­ing this beau­ti­ful pat­tern. I thought they look nice with­out being too flashy with the sub­tle blue/grey/teal tones. The yarn I used for the but­ter­flies is a dis­con­tin­ued sock yarn by Mary Max­im.

I used:

Bulky weight yarn (I used Bernat Alpaca in “Ebony”, it’s very soft)

6.5 mm and 6 mm hook

Size:

It fits my hand, which has an 8″ cir­cum­fer­ence at the widest part of my palm (includ­ing thumb)

Note:

Mit­ten is cro­cheted in the round, but turn­ing at the end of every round, except when work­ing on the thumb.

Pat­tern is writ­ten for the right mitt. Pat­tern for the left mitt is the same as the right one except for rows 11 and 18, instruc­tion for these rows are in (paren­the­sis).

Pat­tern:

With larg­er hook, ch 23, sl st in first ch to form a ring, being care­ful not to twist the chain.

Row 1: ch 1 (does not count as a st), sc in each ch around, sl st in first sc, ch 1, turn (23 sc).

Row 2 — 10: sc in each sc around, sl st in first sc, ch 1, turn.

Row 11 (thumb open­ing): sc in first sc, ch 4, skip 4 sc, sc in next sc, sc in each sc around, sl st in first sc, ch 1, turn.

(Left mitt, row 11: sc in each sc until there are 5 sc left in the round, ch 4, skip 4 sc, sc in last sc, sl st in first sc, ch 1, turn.)

Row 12: sc in each sc until 4 ch space, sc in each of the 4 ch, sc in last sc, sl st in first sc, ch 1, turn.

Row 13 — 17: sc in each sc around, sl st in first sc, ch 1, turn.

Row 18 (begin mit­ten top): sc in first sc, sc in each of next 9 sc in the back loop only, sc in next sc, ch 12, sl st in first sc, ch 1, turn.

(Left mitt, row 18: sc in first sc, sc in each of the next 9 sc in the front loop only, sc in next sc, ch 12, sl st in first sc, ch 1, turn.)

Row 19: sc in each of the next 12 ch, sc in each sc across, sl st in first sc, ch 1, turn (23 sc).

Row 20 — 26: sc in each sc around, sl st in first sc, ch 1, turn.

Row 27: sc in first sc, 2 sc tog, *sc in next 4 sc, 2 sc tog*, repeat from * to * around until there are few­er than 4 sc left in round, sc in remain­ing stitch­es, sl st in first sc, ch 1, turn.

Row 28: repeat row 20 (work even)

Row 29: sc in first sc, 2 sc tog, *sc in next 3 sc, 2 sc tog*, repeat from * to * around until there are few­er than 3 sc left in round, sc in remain­ing stitch­es, sl st in first sc, ch 1, turn.

Row 30: sc in first sc, 2 sc tog, *sc in next 2 sc, 2 sc tog*, repeat from * to * around, sc in last 2 sc, sl st in first sc, ch 1, turn.

Row 31: sc in first sc, 2 sc tog around, sl st in first sc. Press mit­ten top flat so that the work­ing loop is in the top right cor­ner. Cro­chet­ing through both lay­ers of work, sl st across the last row of mit­ten top. Fas­ten off.

Reat­tach yarn to the stitch next to the begin­ning ch for mit­ten top.

Next row: ch 1, 2 sc tog, sc in each sc until stitch just before the begin­ning ch for the mit­ten top, 2 sc tog, sc in the remain­ing loop of each sc (the oth­er loop of each sc in this part is attached to the mit­ten top) to end, sl st in first 2 sc tog, ch 1, turn (21 sc).

Next 6 rows: repeat row 20 (work even for 6 rows). (In ret­ro­spect I thought maybe I made this part a bit too tall. Maybe 5 rows are enough.)

Fas­ten off.

Thumb

Attach yarn to a stitch in thumb opening.

Row 1: ch 1, sc in each sc. When you come across the side of the row on either side of the thumb open­ing, insert hook into the side of the row, draw up a loop, insert hook into next sc, draw up a loop, yo and pull through all loops on hook. There are 8 sc around the thumb. ch 1, do not turn.

Row 2–6: work even for 5 rows.

Row 7: 2 sc tog 4 times. Press thumb flat so that the work­ing loop on hook is on the top right cor­ner of thumb. Work­ing through both lay­ers of thumb, sl st in next 2 sc, fas­ten off.

Cuff

Attach yarn at the bot­tom of the mitt.

With small­er hook, ch 3, dc in next st, dc in each st around, sl st in top of begin­ning ch 3, fas­ten off.

Weave in all ends.

Ta-da!

cozy 3

I hope the pat­tern is clear! If there’s any­thing unclear please feel free to post a com­ment, your question(s) will prob­a­bly be help­ful to oth­ers too!

Bye for now :) Stay cozy!

 

12 Days of Woodland Creatures gallery!

Posted on by trish

I’ve final­ly put up all the pic­tures that fel­low cro­cheters have shared for the 12 Days of Wood­land Crea­tures project! :D

You can see every­one’s delight­ful crea­tures here :D It’s under the “craft-along gallery” tap at the top of this blog.

Thank you so much every­one for cro­chet­ing along! It’s made the whole project a lot more fun. Real­ly appre­ci­ate you shar­ing pho­tos of your love­ly crea­tures too! I’m look­ing for­ward to host­ing more CALs in the future!

You can still find all of the crea­ture pat­terns in the “tuto­ri­als” tap at the top of this blog.

Have a hap­py Fri­day and week­end, every­one! And to every­one who’s expe­ri­enc­ing win­ter (to the extreme in some areas), send­ing you all my best wish­es for warmth and safety!

IMG_2385

 

 

analogue

Posted on by trish

A while ago a dear friend gave me Diana Mini as a gift (yes, lucky me! :D) for tak­ing pic­tures at her wed­ding. I haven’t used a film cam­era in ages, maybe since I was 16. I thought I would get impa­tient or even frus­trat­ed with not being able to see­ing results imme­di­ate­ly like with dig­i­tal cam­eras, but it was actu­al­ly a lot of fun! I cur­rent­ly have a roll in the cam­era that I start­ed on the night of Nuit Blanche, which was in ear­ly Octo­ber, and I’m still wait­ing to fin­ish it, but it almost feel joy­ful to wait to see the results. It makes the pic­tures and the moments they cap­ture feel more special.

Also! The Diana was actu­al­ly first made in Hong Kong in the 60s, which was where I was born (but not in the 60s :P) and makes me love it more :D I had some trou­ble with load­ing and wind­ing the film in the begin­ning (actu­al­ly, I still have some trou­ble load­ing, it’s not made of very stur­dy plas­tic and I’m always wor­ried that I would snap some­thing if I press too hard on any part). Parts of my first roll was ripped maybe because it was­n’t loaded prop­er­ly, but some­how it’s work­ing better.

So, any­way, here are a few that I think are par­tic­u­lar­ly cool :D

analogue1Pic­ture of Mike tak­ing a pic­ture. Actu­al­ly, when I’m walk­ing around with the Diana I find that I often get asked by strangers to take a pic­ture of me tak­ing a pic­ture, it’s kind of funny.

cnI think I had the cam­era on “bulb” mode or long expo­sure by mis­take. Kind of a dizzy­ing dream world, with the CN Tow­er in the back­ground! :D The biggest part of the fun with a “toy” cam­era like the Diana is the sur­prise I think, the hap­py accidents.

analogue2This was actu­al­ly tak­en on a kind of film for slides, which I did­n’t know at the time. The friend­ly staff at the pho­tog­ra­phy shop said it required “cross pro­cess­ing” to devel­op, and the results were AMAZING. I wish I can show you more pic­tures of it, but then it would be a total pho­to over­load and you would prob­a­bly get bored. So here’s one that I real­ly like, a cor­ner in a very quaint cafe.

dance floorThis one was prob­a­bly my favourite of all the Diana pic­tures I have tak­en so far. One very neat thing one can do with the cam­era is mul­ti­ple exposures!

And now these ones are tak­en by Mike with a Minol­ta that he’s inher­it­ed from his uncle. It was a beau­ti­ful fall day at a near­by trail — look at the tree-lined path! I love the pic­tures that the Diana takes, but this is clear­ly a cam­era of a much bet­ter qual­i­ty. I real­ly like how they turned out :)

fall

diana

 

So, Mike had this bril­liant idea of one day tak­ing a trip in which we only take ana­logue pho­tos, with­out con­stant­ly tak­ing pic­tures with our phones and post­ing them on Insta­gram and such. Can­not wait until that hap­pens! :D

Will share more pic­tures when my cur­rent roll in the cam­era is devel­oped! Have a hap­py Thurs­day, everyone!

 

 

space

Posted on by trish

10251915

Oh my, it’s been 10 days since I last wrote >_< I must say, it’s been very busy since the begin­ning of Novem­ber. I start­ed a new job, and then our apart­ment build­ing start­ed under­go­ing some ren­o­va­tions, which required us to pack away and seal every­thing in plas­tic sheets and tape so that they don’t get cov­ered in ren­o­va­tion dust. So then we thought, we might as well rearrange our apartment!

I like rear­rang­ing the apart­ment once in a while, it’s like mov­ing into a new apart­ment! It’s just a lot of work that has to be done over sev­er­al weeks because we’ve got jobs to go to dur­ing the day (or night) and oth­er things to do and peo­ple to see…

But look! We were able to carve out a new work space for me over the week­end! I love the shelves above it. And I get to dis­play one of the hand paint­ed signs from Hon­est Ed’s (for 99 cents “Hol­i­day Marsh­mal­low Bis­cuits”), which com­mem­o­rates not only the icon­ic Toron­to land­mark but also the day in which my dear friend and I lined up for 7 hours to buy these signs (I also have an “Acrylic Ladies Sweater” one and an “Instant Noo­dles” one, but I don’t have frames for them yet. I think my friend got “Fleece Shorts” and “Ankle Weights”). It was prob­a­bly the most ridicu­lous thing I’ve done (and the whole time we were like, “oh, it looks like it’s just anoth­er hour of wait, we’ve been here for 3 (or 4, or 5) hours already, what’s anoth­er hour, we’ve spent too much time on this to turn back emp­ty hand­ed…” and poor Mike was wait­ing for us out­side Hon­est Ed’s to go to din­ner), but now we have “a piece of his­to­ry of Toron­to” dis­played on our shelves and great sto­ries to tell :P

And all my yarn colour-sort­ed and neat­ly tucked away in bins! For the past few years I’ve had the yarn just sit­ting in the shelv­ing unit like in a yarn store (see this post about the “wall of yarn” and my ini­tial excite­ment). It was nice to look at for the first month or so, but before long I had yarn spilling all over the place from the front AND the back of the shelves. So, now we don’t get to see the pret­ty colours of the yarn on the shelves, but they are much eas­i­er to manage.

In the mean­while, I’m work­ing on a sweater project that I can’t wait to fin­ish and show you, and new items for my shop :D Stay tuned! I’ve been feel­ing a bit slug­gish over the sum­mer and into the fall, so I’m grate­ful for the ener­gy that Novem­ber brings.

Have a fab­u­lous, ener­gized week, everyone!

 

p.s. And if you have crea­ture pho­tos for the 12 Days of Wood­land Crea­tures project, please feel free to send them my way before Wednes­day, Nov. 12! I will put togeth­er a cel­e­bra­tion post with every­one’s pho­tos short­ly after that :D

all together now :D

Posted on by trish

All togeth­er now, plus bonus pattern!

A mosa­ic of the 12 Days of Wood­land Crea­tures (and Their Favourite Things) project :D

mosaic2801f409d21bbbac7e2df2662857552e912b8a98

 

Don’t they look so fes­tive together?

Actu­al­ly, I’d like to fea­ture your cre­ations on this blog! Much like the pho­to gallery we cre­at­ed before with the week­end craft-along par­ty. Feel free to send me pic­tures of every­thing you made from this project or just your favourites :) If you just found out about this project and want your pic­ture to be fea­tured, no wor­ries about mak­ing the whole series — make your favourite crea­ture and send me a pic­ture :D

Many of us have shared pic­tures in the Rav­el­ry group, but if you’re not on Rav­el­ry or in the group you can also send me a link to pic­tures of your cre­ations (if it’s post­ed online) in the com­ments below, or email pic­tures to me at genuinemudpie[at]gmail[dot]com. I will link your pic­ture to your web­site or blog as well if you send me the URLs to them.

Please send links or pic­tures to me by Novem­ber 12 :)

And I thought it would be fun to show you the “behind the scene” of all the writ­ten pat­terns ‑ jum­bled dia­grams and notes on scrap pieces of paper on the cof­fee table. Not sure why I nev­er use a prop­er piece of paper or a note­book. I always jot down ideas and stitch pat­terns on ran­dom pieces of paper I find around the house. So, shar­ing pat­tern here is also ben­e­fi­cial for me, because these scrap pieces of paper get thrown out. I just go back to my own blog posts to fol­low the pat­terns if I need to remake something.

Photo 2014-10-23, 4 29 38 PM

And final­ly, bonus pat­tern — a new and improved squir­rel pattern :)

The white squir­rel was one of the first crea­tures I made for this project, and since then I’ve devel­oped a slight­ly dif­fer­ent way to make ani­mals, which makes the ani­mal looks a bit more plump. And of course, the tail with loop stitch!

Photo 2014-10-29, 4 44 20 PM

I used:

Worsted weight yarn in grey and brown

Small black beads for eyes

Nee­dle and thread for sewing and embroidering

3.5 mm hook

Pat­tern:

Head

Round 1: 5 sc in mag­ic ring, sl st in first sc to join.

Round 2: ch 1, *sc in next sc, 2 sc in next sc*, repeat from * to * once more, 2 sc in next sc, sl st in first sc to join (8 sc).

Round 3–4: ch 1, 1 sc in each sc around, sl st in first sc to join (8 sc).

Row 5 (ears): press head flat, with stitch on hook at the right top cor­ner, cro­chet through both lay­ers of head. ch 1, sc in same sc, ch 1, sl st in same sc, sl st in next 3 sc, ch 1, sc in same sc where last sl st was made, ch 1, sl st in same sc, fas­ten off, weave in ends.

Body

Round 1: 4 sc in mag­ic ring, don’t join.

Round 2: 2 sc in each sc around, don’t join (8 sc).

1 sc in each sc around until piece is 3/4″ inch­es tall.

Decrease round: *sc in next sc, 2 sc tog in next sc* repeat from * to * two more times

1 sc in each sc around (6 sc), fas­ten off, leav­ing a tail for sewing.

Tail

The tail has quite a bit of shap­ing using increas­es (2 loop stitch­es in one stitch) and decreas­es (2 loop stitch­es togeth­er over 2 stitches).

This is what I mean by 2 loop stitch togeter (2 lp st tog): insert hook in next st, draw up a loop, insert hook in fol­low­ing stitch, make loop stitch as usu­al, and pull through all loops on the hook as you fin­ish off the loop stitch.

Row 1: leav­ing a long tail for sewing, ch 2, 2 sc in sec­ond ch from hook, turn.

Row 2: ch 1, sk first sc, 2 lp st (loop stitch) in next sc, turn.

Row 3: ch 1, 2 lp st in first st, lp st in next st, turn.

Row 4: ch 1, 2 lp st in each of next 2 st, turn.

Row 5: ch 1, 2 lp in first st, lp st in next st, 2 lp st tog in next st, turn.

Row 6: ch 1, 2 lp st tog over next 2 st, lp st in 2nd st in the 2 lp st tog just made, 2 lp st tog over next 2 st, turn.

Row 7: ch 1, 2 lp st tog over next 2 st, 2 lp st in next st, turn.

Row 8: ch 1, lp st in first st, 2 lp st tog over next 2 st, turn.

Row 9: ch 1, 2 lp st tog over next 2 st, fas­ten off, weave in end.

Assem­bly

Sew on eyes and embroi­der nose with brown yarn. Sew head to body. Sew tail to body.

 

Wish­ing you a hap­py week­end! Look­ing for­ward to see­ing crea­ture pics from you! :D