The Quirky Crafter

Decided to dust off my crochet hook and put together a blanket for one of my coworkers. She is expecting a girl at the end of October but is starting her mat leave next week. Even though I began this project in June, thinking to myself "oh I have plenty of time" I waited until the LAST POSSIBLE SECOND to finish this thing! This is why my pictures are so so so bad, I finished it the night before I had to give it to her and so had no natural light. I had wanted to go to the park during a nice, sunny fall day for a photo op but hey, plans change! Was extremely hard to capture the true colour of the yarn but this picture got it pretty spot on:

The edging of the blanket, along with ribbon bow and trim The rest of the pictures I have are admittedly craptastic BUT I am pretty damn proud of this thing so I am posting them anyway. Added bunny for extra creepiness cuteness Also that is a giant birdcage in the background of that bunny pic, in case you were wondering. The pattern I used for this blanket was free and available on Bernat's site. I found the pattern to be a little difficult to read as someone who has never attempted the crocodile stitch before, so I went off to YouTube to search some tutorials. Once you get going you don't even have to look at the pattern, it's easy but very time consuming (especially when you are a procrastinator). I have a project I need to finish for a friend's birthday that is FAST APPROACHING (beginning of October) that I began and then put down when I realized "oh crap, I need to make a baby blanket". It's a double knit scarf, I was motoring along pretty well with it but now I've completely forgotten what the hell I was doing so please pray for me while I sit here cursing and trying to remember how to knit a double sided garment. UNTIL NEXT TIME (and yes there will be one, I keep forgetting I have a blog but I wil make it a point to post projects here in the future!) Happy Crafting! PS: you should really friend me on Ravelry because why not? Also Blogger has decided I don't need any spacing between my paragraphs and I can't figure out how to fix that, excuse my internet noobness.

I don't even know how long it's been since I posted! I used to bounce a lot from craft to craft but lately I have been really into crochet. Most of my gifts this Christmas I ended up making: leg warmers for my Nana, a scarf and wristlets for my Mom, and a pteradactyl for my boyfriend. Now I'm trying to get into knitting, which I find much more challenging than crochet. It's so far really awkward, I'm getting used to using two needles instead of one hook and holding the yarn in a different way. I've knitted before, my Nana actually taught me when I was very young, so I know the basics such as casting on/off and how to knit/purl. I'm starting out with a shawl I saw when surfing around on Ravelry. I have this thing for anything linked to Paris, so when I saw the shawl was named "Dinner at the Eiffel Tower" I pretty much had to make it.

Above is a picture of the shawl, the pattern is written by a Raveler named Jessie Dodington and is available for free on the site. I had to do a little guessing on which yarn to use, the yarn listed on the pattern is one I had never heard of but it was said to be a light worsted weight yarn. I popped over to the store today and picked up some Paton's Silk Bamboo in Stone, which is a lovely dove gray colour, and I hope it will work. It's such a soft yarn, I've wanted to use it for a while but had never had a reason to. Right now I'm working on my gauge, the first part of the shawl is supposed to have eyelets but I think I'm holding the yarn a little too tight as they are not very visible like they are in the picture. I'm going to play around with it for a bit and get the feel of the needles again. I'm learning as I go, and searching anything I don't know on Youtube. That site has been invaluable to me, there are some great little tutorials on there! Anyways, thought I would update and maybe try to keep this blog going! I'll see if I can make any headway on this shawl and maybe post some progress photos. I received a beautiful camera for Christmas that takes stunning pictures, I need an excuse to use it! Happy Crafting~

Work is still killing me, I'm really trying not to be a lazy bugger with my crafting/blogging. I'm so stressed and, really, crafting is a great release and something I need to make a point to make time for.

Last weekend I got started on a little project of mine. I brought out the toaster oven my Nana bought me for Christmas and decided to bake some clay. This is the first time I've used a toaster oven, I normally use a large kitchen oven to bake my clay but I hate wasting so much energy to bake such tiny things. One my first attempt, I burned the crap out of my little clay offerings :(



Let me preface this by saying the clay I used was WHITE. Yup, burned the crap out of them.. I was pretty upset and unsure if I could salvage it all. But I foresaw something like this happening so when I went out to buy paint I bought a big ass bottle of white acrylic and I primed those babies back to life.



My progress shot of my mini masterpieces! One could never tell I almost set off all the fire alarms in my house baking these. I've hit a stand-still since I needed Sharpie paint pens and the ones I have dried out. I ran out of money this pay when a nail decided to puncture the tire of my car while my mom was out grocery shopping with it.. soooo a good $180 later my spending money was long gone. But I do get paid this Thursday so I can pick the colours I need up and put some faces on those apples and green popcorns. I'm also going to pick up some beads and beading wire to recreate a headband I saw for sale. Man, Michaels is going to love me this week.. I think I should buy stock there :S

That's it for now! Happy Crafting~

Ok so it's like I've been in a coma for several months, I know. I started my [not so new now] job in June and since I'm full time I have no time for anything. I'm exhausted when I get home and just want to sit on my butt.. well or I get home at like 10 pm and only have time to eat before I go to bed for my 9:30 am shift. I haven't really crafted anything, but I made something for Halloween!

I bought my boyfriend this cute Beanie Baby bat and decided to make it a little kraft paper trick-or-treat bag, but I had to think about what to put in it. Then one night the week before Halloween, I was over at his house and he was playing with his cat Fidget and he randomly said "I wonder what Fidget would look like dressed as a pumpkin" and so, my Cat O'Lantern was born.

Cat O'Lantern

His cat is orange so it worked out quite well! Also can I just say how much I freaking LOVE Decoart's Triple Thick glaze? That is with ONE coat, it's flawless! All this time I've been using spray glazes thinking it was easier and the finish would be better than any brush on, I was totally wrong! This is now my go-to glaze, I will never ever touch a spray again.

I also used an extra fine Sharpie Paint Pen to draw on the eyes and whiskers. Those pens are fantastic, very easy to use and dry instantly so no need to worry about smudging! Always a good thing when you're clumsy like me ;) I DID mess up one side of the whiskers, it was driving me mad [I have a bit o' the OCD] but my boyfriend didn't seem to notice.

And now I'll end my post with how excited I am about my Paperclay. I've heard such great things about it, so I went out and bought a pack after work today. I love using Sculpey but I feel like it's such a waste of electricity to use a standard sized oven to bake a few small things. If the Paperclay works out, I will just switch over to it. There's two downsides though, Paperclay is white so I will have to paint what I make and then of course that takes extra time. Strangely though, I like doing intricate things most people find annoying, I can see myself enjoying the painting of tiny charms aspect. I can also put my old jewelry rack to good use, I'm going to hang my charms off of it to dry.

And now I'm off to play with my clay! I'll let you know how it all turns out ;)

Happy Crafting~

I'm trying to finish the shell border on the baby blanket and I've run into a GIGANTIC knot in my yarn ball. I usually re-wrap the yarn by hand to prevent this from happening before I begin, but I was taking advice from another knitter who said if you just use the string from the middle of the ball you have no problems. Apparently this isn't true.. or I did something wrong.

I had to take out the entire 3 sides of completed border and cut pieces of knot out.. now I'm trying to untangle the rest slowly. It's very frustrating.. also I want to get this done because I bought a pattern off of Etsy tonight. I'll be putting up a blog post on that seller within the next few days so look for that!

Alright, I was just taking a quick breather from my frustration to type this haha, I need to get back to the epic knot :( HOPEFULLY, I can finish this sucker by tomorrow!


Happy Crafting~

So things have been just insane.. things at work went down hill real fast. I can't talk about it publicly, even though there are a lot of very negative opinions I could express, but what it's come down to is that I have quit my sales associate position with Michaels BUT I will be staying on as a Bead Academy Instructor. I did get a full time job, with benefits, elsewhere [actually at a company I've worked for previously, which really is a fabulous place to be] so that is a good thing, but I will truly miss the Michaels staff. Most of the ones at my store have also resigned though, so it would not have been the same if I had decided to stay on.

Anyways! Enough of that!

I have an early shift tomorrow but I've got a bit of a Tudor's obsession and I'm rewatching the series, on Season 2 right now ;) I'm going to watch an episode and finish up the extremely late baby blanket I owe my friend [sorry it's taking so long, Jan :(]. Ok maybe not finish it completely, I'll need to do the edging on it tomorrow after work but I can finish up with the blue!

Also in the works is a necklace I'm making as a gift for a co-op student who has been working at Michaels for the past few months. Really she gets no love from management and she does such a great job, also she's a sweet heart and hugs me every time she's in! She deserves something nice as a thank you for all her hard work I think. That will have to be done before Monday since that is her last day. I asked her what her favourite colour was and she told me purple, so I picked out some nice, sparkly beads in three coordinating colours [a smokey lilac, a darker purple, and a dusty rose] and a nice delicate silver chain. I wanted something feminine and pretty, not too over the top so that it would be wearable on any occasion. I really hope she likes it!

That's what's going on in my crafting universe right now. Still looking into that new camera and also contemplating a makeup blog, haven't thought of a name yet though. I need the new camera to properly show off my pretties though, the one I have now just doesn't do them justice.

Well, better not keep Jonathan Rhys Meyers waiting any longer ;)

*drool*

Happy Crafting~

Whew, it's been a crazy couple weeks I tell you. The store I work at offers different crafting classes.. cake decorating, crocheting/knitting, and scrapbooking but we have not been able to find a bead instructor. Because of that, I've been the one running the bead demos and helping customers in the bead section with general inquiries. My manager approached me last week asking me if I'd like to be the instructor, the woman in my store who runs the classroom activities recommended me to the position. I said yes and I'm on my way to certification!

Tonight I received the email that told me where to sign up and how to get started, I completed a basics exam and passed, then submitted pictures of two projects with explanations and those passed as well! I finished all the preliminaries and now I'm onto the beginning of the certification course.. problem is you have to print out a guide before started annnnnd my printer ink cartridge is literally empty. I was SO excited, I wanted to start tonight! I have to wait until tomorrow though when I can replace the cartridge.

This is probably a good thing though, I'm dead tired from an early morning shift so I probably wouldn't absorb much. I can't wait to get home tomorrow to get cracking though!

I've also been keeping myself busy by crocheting a baby blanket for my best friend's new baby cousin. Normally you're asked to make these things BEFORE the birth but she didn't think to until after. The baby is about 3 weeks old, so definitely not too old for a snuggly blanket. Now, I haven't crocheted in YEARS but I've wanted to get back into it. I do knit on occasion but a co-worker of mine told me that crocheting is just much faster, and time is not on my side so I decided to pick up the hook again.

I originally learned to crochet from my great aunt. She was a MASTER, she would sit with this metal bowl in her lap that contained her crochet thread and crochet the most intricate doilies and table runners you've ever seen. She did it at lightning speed without even glancing at her work as she went, and she NEVER made a mistake. I was always fascinated watching her do it as a child and my nana had already taught me to knit so she decided to teach my to crochet. Unfortunately, my great aunt suffered a dibilitating stroke 5 years back and has never fully recovered. She lost a lot of movement in the right side of her body and can no longer crochet but I'm absolutely determined to teach myself how to make those beautiful doilies. Although I'm certain I'll never be able to produce them as quickly as her.. and without looking.

Anyways, I went around online searching up a simple pattern, and then decided I would just knit a giant granny square and then add a shell border to it. I found the following video extremely helpful in showing me how to start the square:



I totally suggest checking out this lady's other tutorials as well, especially if you're a beginner.. her videos are super helpful! Once I saw her do a couple rounds I just went out on my own and kept going round and round the square. I am on my third ball of wool, this will be the last before I start my shell border. I'm using Bernat Softee Baby in Baby Denim Marl for the majority of the blanket. It's actually a much softer baby blue than what's shown in the thumb nail on the site. I'm thinking of using antique white to create the shell border rather than continuing on with the blue colour. I'll have to get some opinions on that at work I think though.

Anyways, I hope to be done this blanket by the end of the weekend.. I also have to throw together a birthday card for my nana either tomorrow or Thursday night. My mom is going to London to visit her on her birthday and is going to take the card with her for me :)

My week is looking busy craft-wise but I'm totally not complaining! Once I complete the baby blanket I will post the results!

Happy Crafting~