Crafts basket

Small things can make world of a difference. I started to make a crocheted basket last year, but I unraveled it because it looked horrible. Then I got a book Virkkuri (only in Finnish, so far) by Molla Mills as a Christmas present. The book has lots and lots of new ideas where and how to use tradional chrocheting techniques. The book has excellent pictures and fresh feel. 

So I got the book and there were two hints about crocheting a basket, the first was instructions on how to make a 90 degree angle turn between the base and the sides of the basket and the second was to use labels. Those two ideas made all the difference. Even though I crocheted with the same yarn and made the same size as the trial before, the basket just ended up much more modern and crisp. I love it.

Crocheted hamburger and other foods

As a part time crafts blogger the Christmas season is a difficult time for blogging. There are so much happening in the craft front but I can't blog about them or then I would ruin the surprice for the ones who are receiving the crafts as Christmas presents. But now I'm showing one craft I did for a present. For A's god daughter I made some crocheted food. A's god daughter is two and a half years old, I highly doubt she is reading this blog.

My mom loaned a book Tasty cute: 25 Amigurumi Gourmet Treats by Annie Obaachan for me, it was really inspiring, I couldn't resist, I just had to start crocheting. At first I did not even know who to make the amigurumi for, but then remembered A's god daughter. I think she is in the age where kitchen play is lot of fun.

I made a hamburger following the book's instructions, I wasn't happy with the salad on the book so I made my own version. Also the hamburger did not have any cheese and I think cheese is vital in a hamburger so I made a slice of cheddar.

Then I made a sunny side up egg. There were no instructions for that in the book, I just made it from the top of my head. After the egg I made a bread, which is topped with cheese, a slice of ham, some cucumber and sliced egg.

I meant to only do the hamburger but once I started it was so difficult to stop, these were so fun to make. These are also excellent projects for scrap yarn, I was able to use up some odd bits of yarn and I also filled them with smaller pieces of scrap yarn.

The plastic frying pan I bought from a trift store. If I'd be two and a half I would love to play with these, I hope A's god daughter likes these.

Minion hat

I saw on the blog Puistolassa crocheted Minion hats and just had to make one for Likka. I made it too big of course, but better too big than too small.

Lots of people have knitted and crocheted similar ones, just check google.

And what is Minion? Check here.

Ripple blanket for the kid

I have crocheted this blanket forever! I started it way over in May. It did not take long because it is very difficult or because it's big, but because doing this sort of static work for long periods of time now that I'm pregnant has been pain. If I sit down for too long the muscles around my chest get really tense and create pain. Also now that I cannot eat painkillers other than paracetamol, which is a useless drug for muscle pain, atleats for me, it's been easier to avoid crocheting and knitting. Now that I'm on maternity leave and do not have to work in the office in front of a computer all day, the muscles don't get that aching so easily and I've been able to crochet a bit more. So the blanket finally got done! Whew. I was even starting to get bored of the whole project, too many months of looking at the same thing.

I got the pattern for the blanket through Ravelry from a blog Attic24. On the blog are excellent pictures and explanations about the pattern. The blanket isn't very big, it should be quite good size for using in the prams or in the terrace cradle. All the yarn is from Hemtex and it is cotton yarn, they happened to have some sort of sale when I bought the yarn.

Positive sides of blogging

It was a good idea to show to everyone all over the blog world my unfinished projects. It was good because that post brought to my attention the projects that I've seen all the time but have not noticed in a long time. Now that I was "forced" to actually see them I began to work on them more actively. So far I've already tied off the threads from the gloves and I did finish the onion bag I almost had desided to unravel. I even made a nice lace edge on it. I'm still not liking it though. But it will do.

Crocheted rag rug

When I was supposed to spring clean the living room I instead started to crochet a rag rug, which is a total opposite of cleaning because it's so messy. Crocheting itself is not that messy but since I did not have weft rags I had to make them and that is so dusty.

You remember the pile of T-shirts we found from A's closet that we placed in the rag pile? I cut out weft rags from those and also from some other shirts we had in the rag pile.

I cut a long strip from the shirts which was about 1,5 to 2 cm (0.6 in about) wide going round the shirt until I either hit a print (like in that shirt on the picture) or the arm pits. I wanted solid coloured weft rags. Each stripe I made is from a different T-shirt.

I used the biggest crocheting hook I have which is size 6,5 mm (here is a hook comparison chart, since US, England and Canada seem to use different size specification). A bigger one could have been even better. I made a nice lenght of starting chain and then crocheted the whole rug with double crochet (ok, I'm a bit baffled, the translation table I found says that in Britain the term double crochet is used and in US a term single crochet. How difficult is that! How about the rest of the English speaking world? Anyway here are pictures how to make it).

When the rug was done I popped it in the washing machine and washed all the dust away. The corners of the rug curled easily so while the rug was drying I tamed the corners down using some food containers and rocks.

Once the rug was dry, which took almost two days since the rug is so thick, I placed it in front of the terrace door. I put an anti-slip membrane under the rug since it would not stay put without it.

Here is by the way the rug we used to have there. In a way it was a good rug, it was made of coconut fibers I think and dirt did not show on it. But it was falling apart, the glue on the back side of the rug was crumbling away.

I know I will need to wash this new rug from time to time, but I like it a lot more than the old one. Maybe it is only because I made it myself or because it's more colourfull. I'm also real happy I got some use for most of the old T-shirts.

If you want to make a rag rug which is an excellent use for worn out clothing or any fabric, I really suggest making the weft rags on summer and OUTSIDE. The cutting created so much dust and mess. I cut the weft rags with scissors, since the fabric was tricot jersey knit, but when using regular linen you can rip the fabric into strips.

Crocheted blanket

I started to crochet granny squares on January. I wanted to do some crafts which I hadn't done in a long time and I wanted to use up scrap yarn that had accumulated in the crafts cabinet. It started out with good intentions. I crocheted many squares with the left over yarn and then realized that in order to make the squares somehow uniform I needed to make the last round to all of the squares with same colour. I decided that colour would be white. So I bought two coils of white wool yarn. And that's when the whole thing went out of hand.

I looked at the squares I had made and noticed how dull they were, the colours were not happy. I had lots of scrap yarn in broken colours and in dark colours. So I bought new yarn, yellow, orange and turquoise coils. Then I had to buy more white yarn because the two I had bought run out. In the end I ended up buying eight new coils. So I kind of lost the point I originally had, but I got nicer squares and used at least some scrap yarn.

Once I had done about hundred of those squares I laid them all on the floor and measured how much space they take. I calculated that on average one square was about 10 cm times 10 cm  ( 4 in times 4 in). Then I measured one wool blanket we already have. That was around 150 cm (4.9 feet) long  and 100 cm (3.3 feet) wide. After some simple math calculations I knew I had to make 150 squares. I made from all colours equal amount of squares, which was then 25 pieces each.

Lets talk math a bit more. On two occasions I checked from the clock that how long it takes me to make one square. It took 20 minutes, give or take a few minutes. So to make 150 squares 3000 minutes is spent, which is 50 hours. 50! If I would work for 8 hours straight each day it would take me one whole week to make those squares. Now I started the project in the middle of January and finished the squares on the middle of March. The 50 hours divided by 60 days is almost one hour a day. I knew I had spent lot of time making those squares but I never thought it was that much. And that is not even taking in count the amount of planning and arranging of the squares and then actually combining them into a blanket.

It was time well spent though.

When I had all squares ready I laid them on the floor and arranged them into a pattern. When I had done that I noticed that the pattern I wanted to create required not equal amount of squares per colour, but two squares were always left with the wrong colour. I hadn't thought of that. But I made two new squares from the right colours. When I was happy with the pattern, I piled the squares in that order and then started to combine the squares.

I combined the squares first into long bunting, then I combined the buntings with other buntings until I had them all connected on each other. Then I attached them from the other direction too. Then I crocheted around all the squares to create a nicer edge. I love the blanket and I love all the colours.

I used Novita's directions (in Finnish) on how to make the blanket.

Happy to do nothing

The start of this year has been really busy for me, because I started a new job and I needed to get a car and for some reason I've had lot of things on the evenings too. I'm not used to being busy, I normally have lots of free time and have time to do what ever I feel like. But now on the weekend I finally had nothing planned, so I pretty much did nothing, which was great. I went cross country skiing and watched a few movies and started to crochet granny squares. Maybe I'll make a blanket from them someday.