Spiffy purse

This is the felted crochet purse I made my mom for her birthday. At first I wasn't sure about it because it turned out pretty round... then my sister said "it needs a snap." By jove, she was right. Two giant snaps later and the round purse was more of an oval clutch purse kind of shape. Then I decorated it with funky buttons. It is crocheted with two strands of Knit Picks Decadence held together - Chocolate and... shoot. I forget what the dark blue is called. Not tide, that's the lighter blue. They don't have the dark blue right now so I can't look it up. Anyway, dark blue Decadence. The pattern was me messing around with a felted hat pattern and a felted bowl pattern and kind of combining them and adding straps. Unfortunately I didn't exactly write down what I did so I'm not sure if the one I'm working on now will turn out the same or not.

edited to fix an annoying spelling error

Mother's Day Secrets, shh!

A bowl before felting

For this year's Mother's Day presents I'm working on crocheted felted bowls for my mom and mother in law. The original pattern was in Felted Crochet by Jane Davis but I wanted it bigger so I increased the pattern repeats. After the 7th row I added (working in the pattern repeat) a row of 6 dc, a row of dc, and a row of 8 dc. Then I worked even for 4 rows instead of 3.

The yarn I'm using is Decadence (100% Superfine Alpaca) from Knit Picks, it is a little smaller guage than what the pattern calls for but worked fine. It is a bigger skein than the pattern calls for and would be enough for one bowl if you followed the pattern. With my increases one skein is just a smidge not enough. I solved this by doing the last "work even" row and the final row of sc in a contrasting color. I was hoping to get one of the larger bowls from a skein but it didn't work out.

note: I haven't felted the first bowl yet, so this is the other color I made, not a drastic change in color during felting. ;-)

After felting I couldn't come up with a bowl the right shape and size to dry it over* so I dried it on a kitchen towel with tightly wadded paper towel stuffed inside to the shape I wanted. That worked really well. The mother's day gift will be a bowl, on a cardboard cake round for stability, filled with goodies (blank book, lotion, candle, hand soap, cat shaped pencil sharpeners, etc.) and wrapped up in cellophane.

The other design plan is to make some all in one color and then embroider on them.

* You should have seen me trying all my bowls on my head when I made the first felted hat. ;-) One turned out to be quite perfect.

The GD Shaker Rug

Back in January I got the Lion yarn catalog and pattern guide-thing. I saw this great Shaker-Inspired Rug and decided it would be a great wedding gift for my sister's wedding in April. I even paid for the pattern, which I usually try to avoid doing (well, it was only $4). (Speaking of buying patterns, Lion has a nifty thing where when you buy one of their patterns online you can choose to have it shipped to you (shipping charge) or to immediately receive it by pdf. That's great! I love instant gratification.)

Anyway, I got the pattern and went shopping for the yarn. The pattern (of course) called for Lion Cotton and Cotton Ease. Local stores only had them in a few colors, not the many needed for the pattern so I used mostly Lily Sugar 'n Cream with a few Lion Cotton and Cottons Eases - whatever it took to get the closest colors to the pattern. (bonus - Sugar 'n Cream is a lot cheaper)

I really wasn't thinking this through when I picked the pattern - do you see all those color changes? Yeah, you change colors every 3, 5, or 8 rows throughout the pattern. That translates to roughly 4 million color changes. Which is annoying enough when you are working it, but then when you are done? That's right, 4 million ends to weave in. Plus it was all double crochet (I think, I don't have the pattern in front of me. It was all one stitch whichever it was) so it was pretty boring. Actually, as annoying as the color changes were, they were the only thing to break the monotony. It took me a few months to do the crocheting since I could only force myself to do a certain number of repeats each night. When I finally got the crocheting done, I wove in all 4 million ends.

Then I looked at the pattern. Then I tried to form it into the circle. I realized the pattern didn't tell you to weave in the ends until after you sewed the circle together. I'm not positive if that's why it was incredibly hard to get it to form into a circle, or if that's just the way the pattern was. But, I spent a few nights trying to get it to go which ended in tears with me thinking the months of work were for naught. A co-worker who is a long time knitter suggested wetting it down to sort of block it into shape while forming it and sewing it. Thank the FSM that worked. I wet the whole thing down in the sink then kept spraying it with the BadKitty spray bottle while I worked. I thought I had it done and left it to dry overnight (pinned to a towel). Nope. The next day the center spiral (the hardest part to spiral) was all bumpy. I had to cut the thread holding that part together and try resewing it. After that, it came out pretty good and I just stopped looking at it. I knew I would be the harshest critic and it looked as good as it was going to get. So there it is! I do really like it and would like one for myself but won't be subjecting myself to it anytime soon.

Oh, one more pattern change - the outer edge you crochet after it is sewn together was supposed to be done in pattern with the color changes. Unt uh. I was done with the color changes so I did the whole trim in black.