this week’s awesome finds

This beau­ti­ful cardi­gan from One Dog Woof! Of course I need anoth­er cardigan.

Very cute giant pret­zel pil­low from Whis­tle & Ivy.

This is bril­liant! :D From Tri­fles & Trea­sures.

Beau­ti­ful series of suc­cu­lent pat­terns from Com­mon Thread. I made a cou­ple of these for my dinosaur planter :)

The old­er I get the more I like geo­met­ric designs, not quite sure why. Also the pom pom edg­ings are very cute. From Grow Cre­ative.

Anoth­er rug, this time a bee­hive :) I think indi­vid­ual bee­hive motifs also make real­ly nice coast­ers. From Moo­gly.

Sweet­est lla­mas ever. Pat­tern for sale by Julie Chen on Rav­el­ry.

This is a real­ly pret­ty stitch. I think it would make a nice scarf. Tuto­r­i­al for jas­mine stitch from Love Cro­chet.

A nice car coat tran­si­tion­ing into fall — it’s nev­er too ear­ly in the sum­mer to start stitch­ing for cold weath­er :D From Bren­da Grob­ler on Rav­el­ry.

Have a good week­end everybody!

project faux dino

You might recall that a while ago I tried mak­ing a dinosaur planter. I plant­ed in it the small­est suc­cu­lent I could find, in hopes that it won’t out grow the planter, but it turned out that the dinosaur real­ly isn’t enough space for the suc­cu­lent to grow, and the suc­cu­lent died :(

Oth­ers sug­gest­ed air plants. Well, I killed an air plant too! I real­ly don’t know how, but the one I had did­n’t live very long :’(

Not want­i­ng to give up on the dino planter, but also not want­i­ng to kill anoth­er plant, I thought I’d cro­chet some suc­cu­lents. Found this beau­ti­ful series of pat­terns by Com­mon Thread and fol­lowed them loosely.

Dino’s got its plants again :D

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In the pat­tern the Bur­ro’s tail suc­cu­lent is made of I‑cords, but I found the result to be too thick, so I just made chains and slip stitch into the chains.

Faux dino + faux sea glass + faux succulent

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Quick week­end projects make me hap­py. Hope every­one is hav­ing a good week­end :D

 

 

treasures from the beach

I don’t swim, or play beach vol­ley, nor do I enjoy sun-tan­ning, and read­ing in the sun hurts my eyes, but I do enjoy going to the beach, comb­ing for beach glass! :D

We’ve vis­it­ed a cou­ple of local beach­es this sum­mer and found some real­ly inter­est­ing beach glass pieces. This piece has some loopy mark­ing on it (super macro pic­ture tak­en with the handy Pho­to­jo­jo macro band :D)

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And the oth­er day I made it into a neck­lace. I was quite pleased with how it turned out :)

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This can­dle hold­er idea from Love­ly Greens has been on my to-make list for a while. Final­ly I got all the mate­r­i­al to put it togeth­er. I used drink­ing glass­es from the dol­lar store, the small­est votive hold­ers I could find, which hap­pened to be at the Muji store, but I think oth­er places like Michaels or Ikea might have them too, and some dol­lar store sea shells for the base, because the votive hold­ers are much short­er than the glasses.

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It’s such a great way to show of the unique pieces of glass. Like this one that seems to come from a screw top bottle.

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Mike took some real­ly nice pic­tures of them with his cam­era :D

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Have a bright and hap­py week, everyone!

 

hey maryjane

Cro­chet­ing these san­dals made me want to fur­ther inves­ti­gate whether home­made shoes are a viable solu­tion for my odd­ly shaped, high arch, achy feet. So I thought I’d make anoth­er pair in a dif­fer­ent style :D pos­si­bly some­thing for dai­ly casu­al wear.

I came across this pat­tern from Hook Can­dy on Rav­el­ry and real­ly liked how shoe-like they are. I did­n’t want some­thing that would make it look like I’m wear­ing slip­pers out on the street.

I just used the same yarn as the san­dals because I had a lot of the yarn left over. Used the left over jute as well for the soles and treat­ed it as per the instruc­tions from Wild­flow­ers and Sage’s pat­tern to make them out­doors ready. And the insoles were made with some left­over Bernat cot­ton from anoth­er project.

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I’m quite hap­py with them! :D I did­n’t have to mod­i­fy the pat­tern at all to make them accom­mo­date the width of my feet. I did have to add an extra round of sin­gle cro­chet stitch­es to increase the height of the sides and heels so they don’t feel like they’re falling off my feet, and used dou­ble strand of yarn for the entire shoe to make it feel a bit stur­dier. They were very com­fort­able when I walked around with them at home.

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The oth­er day I took them out for a test run and wore them to work.

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After walk­ing on them for a while the tex­ture of the cot­ton insoles start­ed to both­er my feet. It was quite lumpy, and there was a knot in the jute sole that I did­n’t hide and flat­ten very well, and at the end of the day it was dig­ging into my foot and became a bit painful… (man I sound like the princess in princess and the pea…) and the lack of arch sup­port was a prob­lem as well. So when I got home I put in a pair of foam insoles and tried them on again, they felt much bet­ter. I’ll take them out again anoth­er day. It would be so nice if I could just make my own shoes from now on and do away shoe shop­ping forever!

Hap­py Wednes­day, everybody!

 

this week’s awesome finds

Tiny rab­bit :) free pat­tern from G Store Gallery.

Per­fect pat­tern for tran­sit-knit­ting, from Toron­to’s LYS, The Knit Cafe :)

The sym­bol of friend­ship is easy to make :D from Per­sia Lou.

Cute cac­ti that nev­er die, and dou­ble as pin­cush­ions! From A Beau­ti­ful Mess.

Gor­geous sum­mer tunic, and shared gen­er­ous­ly by Right Brain Cro­chet on Rav­el­ry.

Have you seen Find­ing Dory yet? :D My favourite (besides Dory, of course) is Des­tiny the whale shark! This pat­tern is designed as a phone hold­er but it works just as well as a plush :D it looks kind of com­pli­cat­ed but it’s knit­ted flat so I think I will be able to man­age… and did I men­tion it’s a free down­load? :D By Reuben Briskie on Rav­el­ry.

Have a won­der­ful rest of the week, everyone!

there is no try

“Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try.” — Yoda

origami yoda

So I did! Fold­ed this origa­mi Yoda on a leisure­ly Sun­day after­noon ^_^

I’ve nev­er got­ten into Star Wars as a kid, but recent­ly bor­rowed episode 7 from our friends, and then decid­ed to watch all of the oth­er episodes to under­stand the sto­ry line. And now Angry Birds Star Wars makes a lot more sense! :D and I devel­oped a new appre­ci­a­tion for the immense­ly wise Yoda.

The dia­gram is designed by Fumi­a­ki Kawa­ha­ta, and it’s linked here. I found parts of it quite dif­fi­cult to under­stand, and it’s kind of a com­pli­cat­ed mod­el, so I watched this YouTube video and fold­ed along. My folds aren’t very neat, maybe I will fold it again some­day. I’m still quite proud of it.

An excel­lent week, may you have :)