Monday, January 28, 2013

A Chicken Walks Into a Bar...

The other day my neighbor friend called and suggested we leave the children with our spouses and go out for an evening of margaritas and drunken clearance shoe shopping at Von Maur.  Obviously, I was all over that plan.  We had a fabulous time not only trying on shoes, but also sampling ridiculously-priced perfumes and later stalking the clearance end-caps of Target.  What can I say...we are who we are.

She also took me to her her favorite little vintage resale shop, where I found the most fabulous treasure.

At $5.99, who could resist?

I had never seen such a thing, but it was love at first sight.  No idea why.  Up until that day I would have told you chickens are not my thing.  But one look into his beady little black eyes and I was a goner.

I brought him home and gave him a little chicken-makeover, and now he is perched happily on my desk.

Meet Crochet Chicken!
He makes a fabulous crochet caddy.  My most favorite hook sizes fit perfectly in the tail slots, along with some fun scissors   The front pouch is just right for stitch markers.  We were meant to be together.

A quick internet search tells me these kitchen chickens were all the rage in the 1950's, and the little pocket in front is a ring holder!   So clever.  I have no idea why the measuring spoons he came with are classic 1970's-era.  I wonder if he originally had a set of spoons, or if these were sold for you to add your own.  Not that it matters because he's much cuter this way anyhow.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Gettin' in on the Sweater Action

Recently my dear sweet son, while patiently following me up and down the aisle at Jo Ann's while I petted all the yarns, tossed out this little gem.

"When are you going to make ME a sweater mom?"

Ruh-Roh Shaggy.

My youngest offspring has realized the crochet imbalance that exists in our household.

I tried to explain that crochet stitches, by nature, look girly and lacy.  No 7-year-old boy wants to wear a girl sweater to school. right? What if I spent hours and hours on this thing and he was ridiculed on the playground?

"Nope!  That won't happen", he calmly said.  His friends were good friends, he assured me, and they would think it was neat that his mom made him a sweater.

Really?  I doubted the authenticity of that.  But if my boy wanted his Momma to make him a sweater, I was gonna go forth and crochet it.  It was like I'd been double-dog dared.

My son selected a shade of blue, super-soft baby yarn, and tossed it into my basket.

Once I arrived at home, though, reality set in.  Nearly every crochet sweater pattern out there is for a girl.  Out of the hundreds and hundreds I studied, only four weren't ridiculously feminine.  A bigger problem ensued when my son didn't like any of them.  He wanted something simple, with vertical stripes.  "And the edges should be orange!" he proudly declared.

Well, ok.  The Raglan Boys Pullover was born this past weekend during a weekend marathon of watching the Transformers Trilogy.  Good thing those movies are long.



 I didn't really write this pattern down, but I did take cryptic notes.  Attempt at your own risk.  :-)

Boy's Raglan Pullover

I measured a raglan-style shirt from his closet to get the piece shapes and dimensions in the photo.
Next, I crocheted the pieces vertically, alternating each row with hdc blo and hdc flo, working increases and decreases as necessary to make the shape work.
On the slanted edges, I added 3 rows of sl st for a bit of style.
Whipstitch the seams together.
Work sc evenly around neck edge, sleeve edges, and bottom band.
With alternate color, work ribbing in hdc blo, connecting with 3 sl st at each pass. Neck and sleeve ribbing is 6 sc tall; bottom band is 12 sc tall.






Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Oh-so-cozy Sweaters!

Just before Christmas I finished a couple of sweaters.  This one is my new favorite - the fit is perfect and the yarn is fabulous.  It's 50% cotton and 50% acrylic, which makes it machine washable yet cottony soft.



This is the Tall Latte pattern by Doris Chan, from her Everyday Crochet book.  I believe it's been said before, but just in case you missed it:  Best Pattern Book Ever.  Order one.  

My dear husband gave me hot pink bamboo yarn for Christmas.  He's so perfect.  I love this pattern so much that I slammed out another one using the new pink yarn.  But when I washed it the first time, three of the joins released and resulted in holes!  Curse you, Magic Joining Method!  Curse you!  I suppose some of the blame lies with me, since bamboo yarn is really slippery stuff.  I should have anticipated the join wouldn't hold.  But I didn't.  And it didn't.  And I had to unravel the whole darn thing.  *sigh*  I will remake it.

I also made a black bamboo cardigan in December.  This one is my Office Sweater.  My home office is in the basement and I swear it's 20 degrees colder down there than the rest of the house.  



The front edges are even in real life.
Just change my name to Ilene because I never stand straight!
 
This is a free pattern, called the Chevron Lace Cardi.  If you can do a double crochet stitch, you can make this cardi.  It's very easy and ideal for a beginner to tackle as their first sweater.  Modifications I made include additional length and a larger edging around the neck and down the fronts.  I'm thinking of using the leftover yarn to make a simple belt.  

My son wants a sweater now.  Blue, with orange cuffs and ribbing.  Do you know how hard it is to find a pattern for a boy's sweater?  Ridiculous!  Just about everything in crochet is girly, probably because the stitches are open and lacy by nature.  Since I can't send him off to school in a girl sweater and have him get beat up, I started designing again.  This pattern will be simple with masculine, straight stitches.  Raglan sleeves with exposed, rustic seams.   I just might even publish it!  :-)

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Squooshy Baby Love

Over the Holiday break the kids and I took a short road trip and visited my childhood BFF.  She has a brand new sweet baby girl.  I got lots of baby snoogles in!

A few days before the visit I was gazing at the yarn stash, which seems to grow and not shrink with little assistance on my part.  Lightbulb!  Super-fast stashbusting project: Baby Sweater.

This is the first baby sweater I've ever done, because my kids were already past this stage when I started crocheting.  Because it's so tiny, it only took a few hours to put together.  And it used up the last of the pink and white glitter sparkle yarn.

Seriously....why haven't they added a Rotate Photo option to Blogger yet?  Grrrr.
It fits!
It looks like a vintage design because it IS a vintage design.  Some wonderful person on Ravelry took the sweater her great-grandmother had crocheted eons ago, and wrote down the pattern to share with the world.  This design is probably circa 1930-ish.  Maybe more, maybe less.

Awwwww

Remember the baby afghan I blogged about in November?  Meet it's new owner.  :-)


Wednesday, January 2, 2013

He likes it! He Really Likes it!

It took several days, but Duck finally deemed the Kitty Couch worthy of catnaps.

"I don't want anything to do with this."

"ok, maybe it's not horrible..."

"I just might sit here, if you keep it in front of my favorite window like this."

Best.  Gift.  Ever.