momo

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Momo means peach in Japan­ese. Per­haps this tawashi looks more like a pump­kin than a peach, but momo is a cuter name :)

I’m going to show you how to make one with tulle, using the pat­tern from Pier­rot (link via Rav­el­ry, with slight mod­i­fi­ca­tions explained below). Tulle makes for a scrub­bier tawashi than acrylic or cot­ton yarn, I think.

A roll of this dec­o­ra­tive tulle from Michaels makes 2 tawashi’s! It’s 6 inch­es wide by 20 yards. Here’s how we trans­form the roll of tulle into balls of yarn :D

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  1. Roll of Tulle.
  2. Pop off the plas­tic caps on both ends of the roll, then remove the inner paper tube.
  3. Using fab­ric scis­sors, cut roll in half through all lay­ers (it would be a bit tough to cut through but just keep nudg­ing forward)
  4. Roll half of the roll into a ball. Repeat with the oth­er half. 

Now we have 2 balls of tulle yarn!

For the tawashi, I also used 5mm and 3.5mm cro­chet hooks, tapes­try nee­dle, and a small amount of green yarn.

I fol­lowed the pdf pat­tern from Pier­rot (it’s chart­ed, but very easy to under­stand), but with the fol­low­ing stitch counts: 

  1. Using 5mm hook, ch 16.
  2. Row 1: sc in 2nd ch from hook, sc in each ch across (15 sc).
  3. Start­ing at row 2, work in pat­tern for 18 rows, it’ll be close to the end of the ball of yarn. Fas­ten off, don’t cut off the yarn, and there should be a long tail enough to do all the sewing described below.

To fin­ish:

  1. Sew the two short edges togeth­er with the long tail, don’t fas­ten off.
  2. Thread the tail through the stitch­es at one edge around, cinch.
  3. Then thread the yarn tail to the oth­er edge, and thread the tail through the stitch­es around. Cinch, and tie off to secure.
  4. Using green yarn and 3.5mm hook, tie yarn to the mid­dle of the tawashi through all lay­ers, ch 15, sl st to where the yarn was attached in the mid­dle of the tawashi, fas­ten off, weave in ends (I hid the ends inside the tawashi).

And there we have it, quick home­made gifts one can make a hand­ful in a cou­ple of evenings!

Hap­py autumn! 

 

this week’s awesome finds

Cute glow­ing ghosts! Easy pat­tern from Red Heart, link via Rav­el­ry.

 

How awe­some is this rain cloud cos­tume? :D From Make It & Love It.

 

And pur­ple rain for awe­some grown-ups. From Cur­bly.

 

And the most scared jew­el­ry — pet­ri­fied wood! Learn how to wire-wrap them on Doo­dle­craft.

 

These cute tri­an­gu­lar bean bag chick­ens :D from Petals to Picots.

 

These hedge­hog mitts are super adorable and oh they’re knit­ted flat!! From mom.me.

 

Make a toasty waf­fle blan­ket! Maybe the stitch will work for a sweater too… From Lu North, Strong and Free.

 

Ele­gant sweater, reminds me of falling leaves, from Nur­tur­ing Fibres.

Have a love­ly rest of the week, everyone!

 

lately

It’s been a very busy fall so far, haven’t had a lot of time to update here. But here are some fun local adven­tures from the start of the fall :)

We vis­it­ed a new cat cafe in the city one week­end, apt­ly named Meow Cat Cafe. All the cats live with the own­er of the cafe. photo-2016-09-24-12-29-09-pm

When we got there a very fluffy cat made sure that we were read­ing the rules.

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They’ve got very cute cup sleeves :D

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It was a warm, sun­ny afternoon. The cats were quite relaxed. Look at that paw~

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*heart eyes x1000*

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The shop own­ers are very friend­ly, looks like they have a few locals vis­it­ing reg­u­lar­ly with the cats, which makes for a very homey envi­ron­ment. Though I start­ed sneez­ing quite a lot while I was there and had to leave (reluc­tant­ly).

One might ask why I like vis­it­ing cat cafes if I were aller­gic. The answers being: 1) I’m aller­gic to some cats but not oth­ers. I’ve vis­it­ed oth­er cat cafes but haven’t had aller­gic reac­tions that was severe enough that made me need to leave, so hav­ing aller­gies does­n’t stop me from being with cats; 2) I love cats, but I don’t have the time or space or expe­ri­ence to make me feel com­fort­able about com­mit­ting to car­ing for a cat.

But some­times I do won­der about vis­it­ing cat cafes. I won­der whether I was intrud­ing on the cats’ space, dis­turb­ing them when they just want to relax or sleep. And I don’t know how to play with cats, because I’ve nev­er had pets (aside from my office beta fish, who died an unex­plained death and made me vow to nev­er have beta fish pets again, but I digress), but some­times feel weird about sit­ting and just look­ing at the cats when oth­er peo­ple are enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly try­ing to get the cats to play.

My favourite cat cafe was one we vis­it­ed in Mon­tre­al. The cats were just wan­der­ing about as peo­ple chat­ted. Peo­ple would pet them if they hap­pened to walk by under the table, or if they were sit­ting still some­where. It was like sit­ting at a cafe that hap­pened to have a few cats in it, rather than vis­i­tors chas­ing the cats to coax the cats to play. Much more relaxed.

Any­way, maybe one day we’ll meet a cat that wants to live with us.

We decid­ed not to go to Nuit Blanche (annu­al overnight art event in Toron­to) this year because the past cou­ple of years have been dis­ap­point­ing. There were just so many peo­ple and many of the instal­la­tions took hours of line­up to see. But we vis­it­ed a cou­ple of exhibits at Toron­to City Hall, which stayed up for a week or so after the event. This one was called Death of the Sun by Direc­tor X.

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The sculp­ture changed as it goes into dif­fer­ent phas­es. Here it looks like a giant lantern (or pearl onion, I kept thinking).

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And even­tu­al­ly it turned dark.

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Which reminds me that noth­ing is for­ev­er. Not our impres­sive build­ings, not our earth­ly achieve­ments, not even our sun.

Across the square there was a video pro­ject­ed onto the water foun­tain, called Pneu­ma by Flo­ria Sigis­mon­di. My favourite part was when the owl emerged.

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Because it reminds me of the mag­i­cal Hed­wig.

Hop­ing to have more time to spend here now that my busiest week is over. Wish­ing you an awe­some start to the week!

 

more sparkles sparkles sparkles

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I have a weak­ness for spark­ly things. A cou­ple of years ago I shared a tuto­r­i­al for mak­ing spark­ly ear­rings with but­tons. After being inspired by these ear­rings by Hap­pi­ness is Cre­at­ing, AND final­ly buy­ing myself a bot­tle of Mod Podge Dimen­sion­al Mag­ic (with a Michaels 50% off one reg­u­lar item coupon), I found a new and improved way of mak­ing spark­ly ear­rings :D

I used:

1 clean kitchen sponge

4mm ear­ring posts with backings

spark­ly nail pol­ish (I got a Sal­ly Hansen “Ice Queen” and a “Big Teal” from the dol­lar store)

Mod Podge Dimen­sion­al Magic

a dash of patience

1. Stick the ear­ring posts into the sponge so it stands upright

2. Apply a coat of spark­ly nail pol­ish to the posts (I put the teal one on first). Let dry for half hour (this is where the patience comes in… there’re lots of small steps with long stretch of wait­ing in between)

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3. Repeat step 2 a cou­ple more times.

4. When the nail pol­ish is com­plete­ly dried (I sug­gest dry­ing overnight after final coat, because the nail pol­ish does build up to a bit of a dome on its own, and while the top lay­er has hard­en, the lay­ers under­neath may remain soft and take a while to dry), apply dimen­sion­al mag­ic, wait a cou­ple of hours, apply sec­ond coat to cre­ate as full of a dome shape as pos­si­ble with­out the glaze run­ning over.

5. Let dry overnight, and it’s done! :D

Here’s a super macro pic­ture of them…

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I’m not sure if Mod Podge is water­proof so I would avoid wear­ing them in the show­er. But I’m quite hap­py with how they turned out :) I like that they’re a lot small­er than my oth­er spark­ly ear­rings tutorial.

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Have a bright and beau­ti­ful weekend!

 

this week’s awesome finds

gift-mak­ing sea­son (aka Christ­mas elf­ing sea­son) is here! :D :D :D

Real­ly like this cardi­gan from Lion Brand Yarn. It’s loose-fit­ting so the mea­sure­ments don’t need to be super exact, which makes it a nice gift to crochet :)

 

Sweet origa­mi brooches from Lana Red Stu­dio.

 

A bit steam­punk and very fes­tive, must give this a try. Ear­rings made from hex nuts from Cafe Craftea.

 

More hex nut good­ness from Hel­lo Glow. A trip to the hard­ware store is in order.

 

These are the sweet­est. From Petit Bout de Chou.

 

Stum­bled upon some­thing sim­i­lar on a Japan­ese Insta­gram account. Could not for the life of me find that account again, but found a resin tuto­r­i­al that looks very sim­i­lar. Aren’t these gor­geous? From Nunn Design.

 

A beau­ti­ful pine cone pat­tern using cor­ner to cor­ner cro­chet — some­thing I have yet to try! Would make a love­ly pil­low. From Make & Do Crew.

 

Also from Make & Do Crew, this styl­ist hexa­gon shelf! Made using the hum­ble pop­si­cle sticks!

 

Made from prints found in mag­a­zines. One could also use news­pa­per, fab­ric, washi tape, origa­mi paper, pressed and dried leaves… the pos­si­bil­i­ty is end­less! From Hap­pi­ness is Cre­at­ing.

 

Say “I love you” in ASL and shrink plas­tic :D From Green­bean’s Crafte­role.

 

Hap­py craft­ing! :D

 

 

friendship and hospitality

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I was think­ing of mak­ing some prac­ti­cal Christ­mas gifts for fam­i­ly. I thought of mak­ing wash cloths. Because every­one can use more wash cloths. And I made a cou­ple using this excel­lent pat­tern from Haku­cho. It’s a lot of fun to knit using var­ie­gat­ed yarn!

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And then I thought I could mod­i­fy the stitch pat­tern a bit and make some hand-dry­ing tow­els. I know that the spe­cif­ic gift recip­i­ents I’m think­ing of are always invit­ing peo­ple over and host­ing gath­er­ings for fam­i­ly and friends. And the hexa­gon pat­tern lends itself eas­i­ly to the mak­ing of a pineap­ple, and pineap­ple is a sym­bol of warm wel­come, friend­ship and hos­pi­tal­i­ty (read more here if you’re inter­est­ed!). So the pineap­ple hand-dry­ing tow­el pat­tern was cre­at­ed. And since it is a sym­bol of friend­ship, it must be shared ^_^

I used Bernat Hand­i­crafter Cot­ton in “Lemon Swirl” and “Sage Green”. I wish I could find a brighter yel­low and a lighter green, but there weren’t any oth­er kind of worsted cot­ton at the Michaels I vis­it­ed. But I think over­all it still looks like a pineapple.

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This pat­tern uses both knit­ting and cro­chet. Cro­chet is only used in the top (green, hang­ing) part. It’s not com­pli­cat­ed, just involves mak­ing chains, sin­gle cro­chet and slip stitch.

I used two 4.5 mm straight nee­dles and a 3.5 mm cro­chet hook. Also used tapes­try nee­dle for sewing and a 1‑inch button.

Knit — pineap­ple body:

First, down­load the free Cir­cle Cloth pat­tern from Haku­cho. (I know it’s a bit annoy­ing to go back and forth between two pat­terns, but the knit­ting pat­tern isn’t mine so I don’t want to repro­duce it here — so please bear with me >_<)

With green, CO 14.

Row 1: p all stitches.

Row 2: kfb all stitch­es (28 st).

Rows 3–8: Attach yel­low, work pat­tern rows 3–8 in Cir­cle Cloth pattern.

Row 9: Switch to green, work pat­tern row 9 in Cir­cle Cloth pattern.

Row 10: k2, *k1fb, k1*, repeat from * to * across until last 3 st, k3 (40 st).

Rows 11–12: Work pat­tern rows 11–12 in Cir­cle Cloth pattern.

Rows 13–18: Switch to yel­low, work pat­tern rows 3–8 in Cir­cle Cloth pattern.

Rows 19–22: Switch to green, work pat­tern rows 9–12 in Cir­cle Cloth pattern.

Rows 23–28: With yel­low, work pat­tern rows 13–18 in Cir­cle Cloth pattern.

Rows 29–32: With green, work pat­tern rows 19–22 in Cir­cle Cloth pattern.

Now there should be 3 sec­tions of yel­low completed.

Repeat pat­tern rows 3–22 in Cir­cle Cloth pat­tern 3 more times. Then repeat pat­tern rows 3–8 once more. There should be 10 sec­tions of yel­low alto­geth­er. Fas­ten off yellow.

Pineap­ple top row 1: With green, work pat­tern row 9 in Cir­cle Cloth pattern.

Row 2: k1, k2tog to last st, k1.

Row 3: p1, p2tog to last st, p1. (11 st.)

Row 4: k all st.

Row 5: p all st.

BO all st, don’t fas­ten off. Insert cro­chet hook in last remain­ing loop.

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Cro­chet — pineap­ple top:

The pineap­ple top is cro­cheted in loops. We’ll first make 2 loops attached to the pineap­ple top, then make 3 longer loops going from the pineap­ple top and attached togeth­er at the top cre­at­ing a but­ton­hole tap, and end with 2 loops attached to the pineap­ple top, like so…

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Loop 1: From where we left off in the knit­ting part, ch 25, sc in same st at begin­ning of ch. When cro­chet­ing into the knit part, be sure to insert hook through both loops in the BO stitches.

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Loop 2: ch 25, sc in next BO st.

Loop 3: sc in next BO st, ch 42, sc in 2nd ch from hook, sc in next 5 ch, ch 35, sc in next BO st at pineap­ple top.

Loop 4: sc in next BO st, ch 35, sc in each sc in the 6‑sc row that was made in loop 3, ch 1, turn (turn­ing ch does not count as a st), sc in first sc, ch 3, skip 3 sc, sc in next 2 sc, ch 35, sc in next BO st.

Loop 5: sc in next BO st, ch 35, sc in next 2 sc at top of loop 4, 3 sc in next ch 3 sp, sc in last sc, ch 1, turn, sc in next 6 sc, ch 35, sc in next BO st.

Loop 6: sc in next BO st, ch 25, sc in next BO st.

Loop 7: ch 25, sl st in same st at begin­ning of ch, fas­ten off. Weave in ends.

Sew but­ton to the knit part of the pineap­ple top. And we’re done! :D

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Hope you like the project and have fun if you do give it a try. Have a fab­u­lous first week of Octo­ber! :D