Crochet Pink Dress:
The work on the pink dress continues. I am really just starting my crochet journey. So far, it hasn’t been much different than my knitting projects in that I have to start, re-start, & re-start again before making any real progress. For this project I am working in cotton. It has little stretch and is a stiff to work with.
In learning this skill I had read that the stitches of the second row should go under both loops of the previous stitch of previous row. I had heard another crocheter say that she always works into the back loop of the previous row. This was A LOT easier to work this was. I was off to a running start, making quick progress. This was creating “ridges” or “lines” every other row that I wasn’t sure I liked. Referring back to the picture, there were no ridges. In knitting, when all the stitches are pulled out to start over it is called “frogging”. Is it the same for crochet or is there an equivalent term?
Attempting to logic it out, I decided to try crocheting into the front loop on one row and the back loop of the next row. Sadly there wasn’t much difference between the two results. Do you see any difference between the two samples being compared? I didn’t.
I ended up frogging all the way back to the beginning. My crocheting is not perfect, but I think it looks better without the addition of all those ridges. What do you think?
Hobby Horse:
Oh My Goodness! This is sooooo cute! Grand daughter has her second birthday coming up… Oh yes, this is just the ticket. Stacey Gerbman’s pattern originally published in Interweave knits, Fall 2012. I purchased the pattern online. At first I was going to use yarn that I spun. It would have been fine but I really wanted the cute color variation like in the picture. Off I went to my “sewing” room.
Yarn Selection
Although the room is as messy as ever, at least like is grouped with like. I went through my stash of yarn. YEAH, I was able to source all the yarn for this project from my leftover yarn from other projects.
The white, yellow, & green yarns are Shine Sport Weight 60% Pima Cotton, 40% Modal from Knit Picks. Those were left over from the 3 “Bees” dresses that I did. The black, purple, & red were also Shine Sport Weight 60% Pima Cotton, 40% Modal from Knit Picks. These were left over from a long ago Mrs. Weasly sweater that I knit for DIL. That pattern came from the book “Charmed Knits: Project for Fans of Harry Potter”. The orange yarn was gifted to me by Daisy of La Tejedora Crafts. It came from one of her dear husband’s unraveled sweaters. The turquoise yarn is Lily’s Sugar’n Cream 100% cotton and noticeably thicker than all of the other yarns.
I wasn’t too worried about the wash-ability compatibility of the different yarns because I don’t imagine that the hobby horse will get much machine washing. To compensate for the visual size difference of the yarns, I worked two strands of all the yarns except the blue.
This was super quick to knit up, even with so many color changes. I remembered to not pull the traveling yarns too tight. I have done that in past projects and it distorts the fabric & design on the front of the fabric.
Even the inside looks like a party of happiness. 🙂
Baby Blocks:
I think this is a fun story! I made several gifts for the baby shower celebrating the birth of grand daughter (who is now almost 2. See hobby horse project above). Games were not desired by the parents, so I came up with activities instead.
One of the activities was decorating blocks. I had non toxic paint pens, stencils, glue sticks, & scrapbook paper that was pre-cut into squares. The plan was that guests would decorated the pre-lettered &/or blank blocks. Then I would finish them with a sealer coat of matte Mod-Podge. Then they would be a very fun and personalized gift. Not many of invited guests were able to come. Those that did decorated blocks, including her brothers to be. This left a lot of blocks to be finished by me. Decorating the blocks didn’t take all that long but then they were set aside, in the sewing room, to be finished later…
In my quest to finish projects that have been languishing before starting any shiny new projects, I re-discovered the blocks. It took only a short time to paint one coat of Mod Podge on 3 of the sides of each block leaving them to dry before painting the other 3 sides the next day. As they dried, some of the MP had run down and made rough edges. These edges needed to be sanded off. Guess what came next… YUP, they got set aside to finish later. :-/ Eventually “Later” finally got here and the the I finished the blocks. Grand daughter enjoys playing with them and the G.Sons like to check out their handiwork from 2 years ago.
Foxy Baby blanket:
I received the cutest invite for a friend’s baby shower. This was especially fun being that I had altered her wedding dress for her in 2020. Not having much time that wasn’t already spoken for, I decided to make a simple blanket. I didn’t have a pattern, but I did look up a pattern to find out how many stitches I should cast on. From there the plan was a seed stitch border and stockinette body. This was for a summer baby and really didn’t need to be super warm, just cozy. 🙂
I used my yarn needle and yarn needle threader to assist in the “working-in” of the yarn ends. Still not finished because I wanted to add a cute little fox.
Using this napkin and my light box, I traced the outlines of the fox onto grid paper.
With the grid paper I started to create the fox using duplicate stitch. My plan was to start with the white chest with the cute pink heart, then build the body around this. At first it was going super well.
But it was soon apparent that this was NOT going to be a success. I found a different image of just the cute little fox’s face.
Foxy Baby sun hat:
I wanted to make a hat to go with the blanket. Being he will be a summer baby, I thought a sun hat would be far more useful than any other kind of baby hat. Using duplicate stitch to add the cute little fox.
That’s all for now. See you next week!
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