October 2024 Handwork

Completed Projects: 

Groovy Gert

for Homeless Blanket Project

Finished afghan:  

129 sts. per row/ 53 stripes in length

.

Marigold Blanket with Larksfoot Crochet Stitch

 Marigold Blanket - I Like Crochet

Looks like a great pattern to try for my next Homeless Blanket!

I've saved the printed pattern on my home computer under "Patterns."

Homeless Afghan/Blanket #11 - The Kandinsky

I was "on the road" and only had bits of yarn and some light gray.  So I started crocheting 2-rounds of light gray, adding small balls (to use them up) of colors, 2 rows, then 2 more rows,

Decided I didn't want to finish with gray, I'd replace with putty, which I think I like a bit better.  The rest of the squares will have putty centers.  Oh well, won't be very noticeable, I'm thinking....

Michael's Putty

Amigurumi Octopus

Well...I have three buddies who are all learning to crochet.  All are super animal lovers and want to learn how to crochet little animals.  So I told them I'd teach them!

On Ravelry, I looked for a simple pattern that wouldn't frustrate anyone, and found this adorable octopus pattern by Sarah Hearn, found free on her blog!  Her blog is Esshaych.com and the pattern is found there. 

It calls for double knit, or light worsted weight yarn and a size E hook.  Easy peasy!  Our lesson/get-together will be a week from Tuesday, and hopefully I'll have some photos to show afterwards!  All I need to find are the buttons for eyes.

37. Hot as Puck by Lili Valente

listened to audio on Chirp
narrated by Tyler Donne & Summer Roberts
Unabridged audio (6:39)
2017 Self-taught Ninja
330 pgs.
Adult Steamy Romance
Finished 2/25/2020
Goodreads rating:  4.04 - 4722 ratings
My rating:  4
Setting: Contemporary Portland,Oregon

First line/s:  "This is it, the night I'll look back on in fifty or sixty years and stab a finger at as the moment my life changed forever."

My comments:  This book was just plain fun.  A compassionate kindergarten teacher and a crocheting pro hockey hunk who have grown up next door to each other finally get together.  Lots of story and lots of super steam, a really cute book.  It's certainly not an Amish tale!!!  Would never be considered great literature, but it gets a five for entertainment value...and ooh la la, the cover!

Goodreads synopsis: The NHL's biggest bad boy is about to fall for the virgin next door...
          I am the world's biggest dating failure. We're talking my last date went home with our waitress kind of failure.
          But I have an ace in the back pocket of my mom jeans--my sexy-as-sin best friend, NHL superstar forward, Justin Cruise.
          Justin owes me favors dating back to seventh grade, long before he became a hotshot with a world famous...stick. So in return for my undying platonic loyalty, all I want is an easy-peasy crash course on how to be a sex goddess.
          How hard can it be?
    ***
          I have never been so hard in my life.
          The things I want to do to my sweet, kindergarten-teaching, mitten-crocheting best friend Libby Collins are ten different kinds of wrong. Maybe twenty.
          But I'm a firm believer in teaching by example, and by the end of our first lesson, we've graduated to a hands on approach to her education: my hands all over her, her hands all over me, and her hot mouth melting beneath mine as I prove to her there isn't a damned thing wrong with the way she kisses.
          Give me a month, and I'll transform Libby from wall flower to wall banger, and ensure she's confident enough to seduce any guy she wants.
          Problem is... the only guy I want her seducing is me.
          Hot as Puck is a sexy, flirty, friends-to-lovers Standalone romantic comedy from USA Today Bestseller Lili Valente.

Projects - Using Up Leftover Yarns

     I'm trying to greatly reduce my yarn collection - it takes up one complete wall in my junk room.  I filled one huge garbage back with stuff that I knew I'd never use and gave it to Tucscon Yarn Shop during their  Dollar a Pound in March.  But I still had lots and lots of great  yarn left; single balls, big and little, of all sorts of yarn - specialty yarn, fuzzy yarn, thin yarn, fat yarn.  What should I do with it all?
     I came up with a brainstorm that has really worked for me, and for my fourth graders who love love love to work with their hands. So many kids try to learn to crochet, but their fine motor skills and low frustration levels keep them from persevering until they've learned it.  However, I've discovered through the years that the kids can learn to chain.  And chain.  And chain some more.  But I've never come up with a decent way of USING those miles of chains.  Until this year.
   

     Rugs.  We make rugs.  We've completed four rugs - bathroom rugs - for Ronald McDonald House.  First I tie pieces of yarn together - pieces that range in length from 12 inches to 12 yards.  I tie them with a triple knot, leaving about a 1-inch end.  We don't do anything with those ends, they stick out and look just fine (thank goodness).  If the yarn is thinner than worsted, I add something to it.....another skinny yarn, crochet cotton, even thick threads.  It doesn't really matter, that's the great thing about these rugs.
     Then the kids take the balls of yarn I've wound and chain using an H hook.  Some of them chain really (REALLY) tightly.  Some chain very loosely.  Some learn to chain to gauge!  It doesn't matter, it all works!
     And what's the final step?  It's fast and easy, and the perfect thing for me to do during recess duty or staff meetings.  I knit the rugs using the crocheted chain and a size 19 circular knitting needle.  The knit up fast.  They are ultra-soft and pretty darn cool to look at.  We've even had requests to sell them!
     Some are totally multi-colored, some are cut bits and pieces from just three or four skeins. Some are all done in a coordinating colorway.  I'm currently knitting my 10th rug and am getting low on yarn (I never thought that would happen!)  But parents are so happy to see their kids crocheting, that they've been happily donating more yarn.
     I'll take some photos on Monday of some of the kids crocheting and add them to this blog.  Yee ha, what fun!

65. Yarn Bombing - Mandy Moore & Leanne Prain

The Art of Crochet and Knit Graffiti
Arsenal Pulp Press, Vancouver, 2009
paper, $19.95
(TPPL 746.43 M7851y)
230 pages

I stumbled across this book last Sunday as I wandered through the Valdez/Main Library in downtown Tucson. I don't go there much, you have to park underneath in this huge echoing parking garage. But I do love, on an occasional Sunday, to drive up and down the uncrowded-Sunday-downtown-Tucson streets, not worrying if you make a wrong turn, and watching the oneway signs with a little more ease since it's not as busy as other times.

That being said, this book fit perfectly with my mood. And I've taken all week to read through it and check it out. This is all new to me. And newS to me. I want to see this myself! How could I possible have been missing it? I KNOW I would notice knit or crocheted pieces decorating a lamp pole, or car antenna, or chain-link fence. And sure, I've never been to Sweden (where it appears a lot of this takes place), but I have been all over the U.S., where it looks like it's been happening, too. I think it's time for me to begin a Tucson trend.....

What is yarn bombing? What is crochet and knit graffiti? Just what it sounds like! The easiest way to explain is to quote directly from the book:

On city street corners all over the world, yarn graffiti artists snake their work around telephone poles, wrap it through barbed wire, and flip cozies onto car antennas. Originally started in Houston, Texas by a crew named Knitta Please (a.k.a. Knitta), there is now an international guerrilla knitting movement embraced by artists of all ages and nationalities. Knit and crochet graffiti has been seen in countries from Canada to Chile to China. This book has been written to inspire you to take up the needles (or hooks) and join us in world yarn domination!

Merging the disciplines of installation art, needlework, and street art, yarn bombing takes many forms. It generally involves the act of attaching a handmade item to a street fixture or leaving it in the landscape; however, this varies from artist to artist. Yarn graffiti can be aw complex as a sweater that has been created to cover a statue or as simple as a crocheted rectangle wrapped around a lamp post. Some artists tag items as tiny as door handles, others create works large enough to cover a public monument.

Yarn Bombing blog (written by the authors of this book).
An austratlian fiber artists "bombs" a VW bug!
The Knitted Mile - installed in Dallas, Texas this very weekend, 9/25 & 26, I think....