Really finished crochet bag

I went to see when I posted the finished crochet for a small bag and was slightly shocked that it was way back in 2014!  At the time it was just the outside, but since it had no lining it wasn't terribly usable.

Well I finally sat down with some fabric and tried to fix it.  I used some light blue/purple silk I picked up at a craft show years ago for the inside and some cream cotton for the outside and lining of the pocket.  It took a bit of puzzling and 'um, if I want the seam there to be inside but that seam to be opposite... ?' but I got there in the end.  Even got the pocket in properly and sewn in such that it is big but not going to lose things in the lining.

Sewing on a few small D rings and adding a chain (as I couldn't find something that would work for a strap and internet says that metal chain handles are in anyway) and it's finished.  There are a few little things that I can see that I did wrong but since I'm not an expert sewer or designer, I can live with them.  I might throw a few hidden stitches in to hold the crochet in place a little better but I suspect that it's one of those things that only I see.

A few bits and bots

I've finished the crochet bag!  Horray!  The final bit joining the flowers to form a base was fiddly, but it turns out if you go back and read the instructions rather than making things up works well *sigh*  And of course, by finished, I mean 'up to the point where I have to sew a lining, attach to the crochet, work out a suitable handle and source all materials needed to do these things.

But I hated the baby blue thread.  Sadly, there wasn't a lot of choice when buying the thread since it was that, pink (double blech), cream or white.  So I've pulled out the dye stocks and had a go.

Here's before, in the original, baby blue thread.

And here is after I tried dying it in a mix of turquoise (blue), periwinkle (purple) and a hint of black.  The end result is a darkish, forget-me-not blue.

I have not decided what I'm going to line it with.  At the moment  I quite like the cream- a bit of spare calico- that I've used to show the pattern a bit clearer, but I'll have a think about it.

Finally, here's some jewellery that I've made.  The earrings because I found the kit when sorting out my beading stuff, and the bracelet that was something I had put into my beading stuff to be fixed and never got around to.

And this post is the last of my holiday posts.  It's closing to the end of the third week of school and sadly the large pile of marking, planning etc has sucked up all my time (free or otherwise!).  So expect irregular posts for a few months.

Works in progress or just finished

No tutorial for this post, just a few things I've knocked together at the half way point of my holidays.  Since I was already in the process of working on something for my car, I tried making a rubbish bin to pop in the card using a great tutorial on Crafster.  While the original tutorial included both a inner, removable bag and an outer fabric liner, I elected to just make a single plastic bag with a tag.  It won't be terribly obvious where I keep my bin anyway.

This was a great, cheap project as the material is from my ill fated sashing for the quilt top shown here.  After making the sashing, laying it out next to the quilt my first thought was.... 'yuck, that doesn't work'.  The trick is going to be working out what to do with the rest of it now! The plastic is a recycling job using the plastic from a set of sheets I bought a while ago.  You can also buy it by the meter at Spotlight or similar but don't bother if you only need a bit like I did!  Although this bin won't be water tight, it will be easily cleanable if a few drops leak out of an empty coffee cup or the like and who puts full drinks into the bin in their car anyway?

I've also been working on a crochet bag on and off as it fits nicely in my day to day bag as a travel project.  I'm about 3/4 of the way through the crochet side of things, then I have to work out if I want to try and dye the motifs (I couldn't find cotton that was a colour I liked so the pale blue is not my first choice) and finding the necessary other bits and pieces.  I probably won't finish the crochet before the end of the holidays but I'll see if I get motivated!

Happy Easter everyone!

Happy Easter everyone!  This is another post I've had to sit on until Easter because I wanted to keep it a surprise from my family (particularly my Mum, who is one of the few readers of this blog- hi Mum!).

I finally got myself organised at the end of the first week of holidays to get my Easter eggs bought.  I went with a few little assorted eggs, partly because the large packs you can find are often very expensive for very little chocolate, and partly because the chocolate inside is often rather boring, as printing on cardboard is cheaper to make than making fancy eggs.

But how to hold these eggs?  There are cute little baskets around but they are often very expensive for something that is used only long enough to hold the chocolate and then disposed of.  So, since I am currently on a bit of a crochet kick, and since crochet is a fast craft (at least compared to knitting), I googled for crochet baskets to see what I could come up with.

I ended up making my baskets based on this pattern, that I found on Crochet Spot.  Scrounging through my wool pile, I found the left over balls of acrylic yarn I had from making Noel the Gnome.  Changing colours every other row or so means that they kind of sort of have the look of half Easter eggs.  That's the logic I'm going with, anyway.  By the fourth basket I had run out of a few colours, but I am happy enough with the results.

I've been able to fill them with a nice amount of chocolate (with a bit of quality testing as I worked- I can't give my family bad chocolate, after all!). If I was feeling more energetic or evil, a fun idea would be to then crochet up further to A) make an egg shape and B) make it really hard to get the eggs out.  But that would be mean.  Besides, I ran out of yarn. :P

Happy Easter!

Holiday scarf update

School holidays again so I've been working on some old project including this crochet scarf.

I've also just gotten a new phone so this post is a double experiment - posting via the android blogger ap and using my phone to take and upload photos.

Sunset on the beach from my trip down to Inverloch

Edited to add on computer:  Well the photos are OK for quick shots but I'm not so sure about the app- there was no where to arrange the photos within the text.  Never mind the pain-in-the-neck factor of typing onto a phone.  Oh well.  Perhaps it can work for those times if I'm feeling particularly guilty for not updating the blog for a while! Or if I see something interesting out and about.

Anyone know of any other options to use with blogger?

Julliette update

I spent much of today working on my Julliette scarf.  It is basically made of lots of little granny squares of different sizes made from DMC Perle Coton that are then sewn together.  I made quite a few more squares and I also spent some time sewing some of those squares together- you can see from the picture below that leaving all the sewing to last would not be a fun idea.

Besides, this way I can see how the progress is going and can see and appreciate all the pretty colours.  If I make the scarf to the original pattern size, it is currently about 20% complete. Looks like I have a lot more squares to crochet!

Mutant squares- aka flowers!

As a beginner to crochet, there are many many things I am still learning.  I'm still at the stage where I need to go look up what a stitch is.  And there I hit my first problem- not everyone speaks the same language when it comes to crochet.  Specifically, there is a difference in terms between those from the UK and those from the US.  Below is a table that compares the terms (from about.com's very useful page)

British vs American English Crochet Patterns
British English	USA - American English
double crochet (dc)	single crochet (sc)
half treble (htr)	half double crochet (hdc)
treble (tr)	double crochet (dc)
double treble (dtr)	treble (tr)
triple treble (trtr)	double treble (dtr)
miss	skip
tension	gauge
yarn over hook (yoh)	yarn over (yo)

See the problem?  If your pattern asks for trebles and double crochet's like mine, what stitch should you do?  Now if your pattern is known to have come from one of these lovely places, no worries.  But I'm not sure if the rule holds if your pattern comes from Australia (and possibly Canadians have the same problem).  Here in Australia we have a bit of a mixture when it comes to influences.  Being a former colony of the UK, there is a strong UK influence in our spelling for instance (colour, optimise, aluminium are just a few examples).  But a significant proportion of books, tv shows and movies come from the US.

So when I first started the Juliette scarf I took a guess as to what to do- and I choose poorly.  Instead of little squares I ended up with this:


This should not be taken as a slur on the pattern- even with my confusion about terminology I had to make a major mix up to get what I got.  But on the plus side, the small ones look like pretty flowers, don't they?  Once I realised what was wrong I frogged some of these to recycle the thread (that DMC Perle cotton is lovely but not the cheapest stuff in the world).  But two I didn't have the heart to so I gave them to Mum for card embellishments (they would also look pretty as decoration on a garment or perhaps a hair clip).

So here are my instructions for making mutant squares- also know as little crochet flowers.  I am going to use UK stitch terminology.

Make a chain of four and join the ends together to form a loop.
Round 1
Make a chain of three (this counts as one treble) and then stitch 12 trebles into the loop you made.  Join with a slip stitch into the third chain of three to make a circle of crochet.
Break off yarn and change colour for next round
Round 2
Make a chain of four. * Into the next treble of the previous round make two trebles and a double crochet, into the next treble make one double crochets and two trebles.  Make on treble in the next treble**  Repeat from * to **  twice.  In the second last treble make two trebles and one double crochet.  In the last stitch make one double crochet and two trebles and join to third chain of three to make a round.

Sew the ends in and you have your flower.  Hope this makes sense- since I am a near beginner at crochet I apologise in advance if the pattern is confusing.  Feel free to email me or leave a comment if you would like anything explained.

Julliette crochet scarf beginings...

With my owls now finished it's time to find a new project.  What with me being me, there are about five actively in the queue with many more that are sort of sidling in and hoping no one makes a fuss.

This project is one that I bought in 2010 at the Melbourne Craft fair but I can't find it available anywhere online.  It is a crochet project, a craft I'm only just getting into, and is basically lots of granny squares of different sizes made from DMC Perle Coton that are then sewn (or crocheted- have not decided yet) together to make a scarf.  Below is the kit and the squares that I have done so far.  I love the colours.  Not in your face bright but not all pale pastels either.


The only downside is that crochet is not a task I can do without looking the way that knitting is (especially plain knitting). So while I can knit and read at the same time, I can't crochet and read. I can crochet and watch TV though so this will become my 'sit and watch TV project' while I will still need a 'sit and read' project. And then there are sit and just do craft projects... Me, addicted? 

Anyway, this is going to be a project that takes some time.  The advantage of making lots of squares is that it will be a good project to pick up and put down without risk of loosing track of where I am.  The only other think I need to worry about is how to join my squares and when to start- on one hand having all the squares done will mean I can optimise the colour placement.  But on the other hand, that will make a BIG slog when it comes to putting it together.  I think I'll make sections at a time- I've got about enough squares to start so I'd better go and work out my joining technique.