New Baby, New Blanket

I'm off to VA again at the end of the month for my cousin's baby shower. I think handmade gifts are some of the most cherished things anyone can give someone else. Yes, of course I'll buy something off her registry, but I'm going to gift her with this blanket made with my own, two hands!

So, I was sort of following a pattern but quickly went off on my own thing. When you chain, do it in multiples of 9 plus 2. So, do 11 across and do the pattern, then measure to see your gauge. Multiply how ever more you need by 9 to get the proper length, and add 2 to that number. If I'm not mistaken, I think I did 182 across.

Once you have your foundation chain, the extra two you added on is a single crochet. On the next stitch over from the hook, do a double crochet, and then another double crochet in the same stitch. Skip 2, do a single crochet, and then 2 double crochet stitches in the same stitch. Skip 2 and repeat this pattern: 1 Single Crochet and then 2 Double Crochets in the same stitch.

When you get to the end, change 2 (the single crochet stitch) turn your work, and then do two more double crochet stitches in the same stitch. Repeat the pattern across until your blanket is as long as you need it to be. The three stitches should be done in the single crochet stitch in the previous row.

I'm not a pattern writer and I don't follow patterns very well at all. It's hard to keep track and I find it hard to turn when I get to the end. I just try to make my work look consistent. If anyone can write this pattern better, feel free to, and I'll post it and give you due credit! =)

I'm up to about two lengths of the first picture and I'm loving how it's coming out. I hope I can finish this blanket within the next two weeks! I don't have much time.

Crochet Mario Bros. Blanket: DONE

No more words. Here is the blanket!!!!

And like I said:

Super Mario Crochet Blanket: Nearly Done

The End is NEAR!!!!!!!

The blanket is still in my possession. I need a full picture of the entire thing with the new border I finished up the other night. I also want a pic of my brother when I give it to him so ONE more post till the end! This is my progress this far on this 2 year journey:

TADA: Borderless blanket. 252 granny squares sewn together. This is the blanket hanging up from my shelf above my bed. Pardon the shoddy camera work.

Close-up, Please:

This is the first border I did. It was a double crochet in each stitch all the way around. It started to ruffle and that wasn't the look I was going for.

So, I frogged it:

I did it over again, following the same pattern as the granny squares. It wasn't the look I originally wanted, but it will have to do.

This is the way I originally attached the label. I didn't have any embroidery thread on hand so I tried using some really thin ribbon. It was awful.

The next day I went out and bought some felt, some embroidery thread, and I spent the better part of last night doing this. It took three attempts before I got to this point, and I was tired. I settled for this:

The "This Took Forever" label is courtesy of Sublime Stitching . They are way awesome and I got the label SUPER fast!

Craptastic Craft Gifts

Just a short little ditty today.

Just because you took the time out to make something special with your own two hands for a friend or family member, don't assume they are going to appreciate your thoughtfulness, your generosity of time, or the fact that you actually MADE something rather than snapping something off a store shelf.

Whenever I finish a gift, I'm often like that school kid, running home to show someone this work of art that I created, wanting their approval.

But, this is the real world and sometimes friends are just ungrateful assholes. Lesson learned: save the craft gifts for the people who will really appreciate it.

With that being said- my Mario Blanket is one night away from completion and I know my brother will be so excited!

The Boobie Beanie!!!!!!

So, I'm going to visit my friend's new baby this Friday and I wanted to bring something no one else has. My crafty netventures have brought up several variations of this boobie beanie. The one woman whom I religiously follow on YouTube actually has a video tutorial and a link to her blog with the written instructions. She did this pattern to promote breast-feeding mothers' rights.My buddy just so happens to be breast feeding her little one.

Luckily, I had the colors on hand and I delved into it last night.

My nipple came out sort of wonky, but the rest of it isn't too bad. I may make another one with a better nipple. And I'll take step by step pictures of my progress.

It's been a long time since I've posted something new. I'm glad I got hit with another bout of insomnia last night. I probably wouldn't have had to time to do this otherwise!

Wonky nipple. =( I should have gone a bit further with the dark pink color.

This is that awesome tutorial I was telling you about, and you can grab her written instructions there.

Granny Square Super Mario Grid

I received a few requests for a clean excel grid for the pattern for my Super Mario Blanket. (Still nearly done....don't judge me....I've had A LOT on my plate.) So, here's a picture without any of my X's in any of the boxes. It's a total of 252 colored squares.

If anyone wants the actual excel file, just shoot me an email and I'll send it over.

Happy Hooking to you all!!

Crochet Mario Blanket: The End Is Near

I'm sorry I haven't posted recently. It's my busy season and my crochet time has been limited, at best. I did not make my Christmas deadline. I made a few mistakes stitching together my squares, and had to frog the fuck out of this blanket several times already. Imagine having to rip out entire rows of squares because the stitches are uneven or mismatched? That's what comes when you stitch together squares when you're half asleep. Anyway, here are some of the pictures I've promised, along with my current progress. I will not say when this blanket will certainly be done because I don't want to jinx myself. Just know that I'm getting close.

So, I had all the horizontal lines done like you see above, but the vertical lines have not been stitched at all yet. This was Xmas Eve.

I started stitching, and this is what it looks like from behind. Not bad, huh? Pretty neat and tidy.

This is what the front looks like. See? Even with the thread color switches, you can't see the color of the thread I'm using to stitch this together, which means I wasted a whole lot of time switching from color to color. Since I started that way, I had to stay consistent. I also discovered another trick. I went out and bought 4 more needles. I have the different colors already assigned to a needle so I'm not changing out thread as needed. Duh!! Why didn't I do that to begin with?

Pardon the shitty image or the amateur special effects, but I took the pic hastily while it was spread out across my very mess bed so I had to try and crop out the laundry and junk all over my bed. But, this is what my blanket looks like right now. I have two vertical rows stitched already with 11 more to go, and maybe a finished crochet border along the outside in the denim color. Ugh. =(

Crochet Mario Bros. Blanket: A Stitch in Time

...will take me forever!!!!

Here is the first 6 rows of my Mario Bros. Blanket stitched together. I only have one picture so far to document my progress. I've added on a couple more rows since. I've had to "frog" this piece a few times already for stitching the wrong side, stitching the wrong direction, or stitching on the wrong color. Frogging, my cousin Lilia tells me, is a crochet/knitting term which refers to ripping out completed rows or stitches because you messed up. "Rip it! Rip it!" Get it? Frogging. Think about it....

Do you see Mario's face coming through?

 Tonight, I'll take another shot of my progress, as well as some close-ups of the back stitches so you can see how I'm putting this all together. I'll also take pictures of the problematic areas so you know the downside of stitching it the way I chose to.

I realized I like reading blogs with more pictures depicting what the heck the blogger is talking about. I'll try and do more of that so you can appreciate where I'm coming from. It's frustrating and slow, but I am happy it's taking shape and I will be super-proud when this is all done.

Oh, and the pic above is just a partial view. So far, this blanket is 14 squares across. He's going to have a pretty substantial blanky when this is all said and done!

Granny Squares Completed

This is what 252 completed granny squares look like. I am so relieved to be done with this. Now, I just have to stitch them back together. Since I have the flu and a four-day weekend, it looks like my blanket will be done by the end of today. I sorta want to do a finishing border stitch all the way around like my cousin Lilia did to her awesome afghan. We'll see if I can manage that today. I'm feeling like a hot mess right now. I have the flu...again. =( I don't know why I've been getting sick so easily the last few years, but maybe it's time to get checked out.

Still, I'm glad I'm nearing the end of this project. Next up is DOLL MAKING!! I think it will be a lot of fun! And my brother is going to love his Xmas present! (This blanket, not the doll.)

WIP: Mario Blanket- Hit RESET

Well, folks. After viewing my options yesterday at my nearest yarn barn, and after discussing it with my very learned Jewish yarn guru / store owner, I decided to put aside all 35 Water Chestnut squares I crocheted in the Patton's Classic and save it for another use. I bought 4 skeins of Blossom in Wool Ease, instead.

That mean's I'll have to re-crochet the 35 I already made plus the remaining 8 that I needed to do. It sets me back a few days, but honestly, even though I love the feel of 100% wool, it will felt and get all fuzzy as time goes by (which is fine) but all the other 200+ squares I made will not. So, Mario's skin will look like it has some disease while the rest of him will look like the wool/acrylic blend that I've been using on the majority of the rest of the blanket.

Blossom is more on the pink side, rather than the peach side. Paton's has the advantage on the color I was trying to go for since NO ONE has peach except Red Heart, and we all know how I feel about Red Heart. (YUCK!) But, Blossom comes pretty close and it will match the texture of the rest of the blanket, which is more important. I hope this works!! Wish me luck, people!

This is Blossom.

Now, I'm back to 43 squares away from completion! Hey, it's been nearly 2 years! I can live with that!

Mario Blanket Hold-Up

So close.....and yet so far. I have 8 flesh colored squares left to crochet before the mise-en-place portion of my blanket is completed!!!

 And I ran out of my Paton's Water Chestnet pale pink yarn. I took it for granted that I could find almost any yarn at the Fabric store across the street from my job, but upon further inspection, my yarn color was not in stock. Further to my dismay, I found a similar color in the Lion Brand Worsted Weight Wool that I've been using on the rest of the blanket!! The color was Blossom.

I'm so friggin' aggravated! I just wanted to have this blanket done sooner rather than later so that I could move on with my craft projects. It looks like I'll have to order it online.

=(
Bummer.

Nearly Finished Granny Square Mario Blanket

Hey, you guys!!!!!!

I am just 24 flesh colored squares away from completion!! Well, then comes to the daunting task of joining them all up, but my Mario Blanket is nearly finished!

WIP: Crochet Mario Bros. Blanket - We Have a Problem!

Hey, happy hookers!

On my last Mario Bros Blanket update, I mentioned that I had issues finding the correct color yarn for his peachy/pink skin in the Lion Brand Wool Ease blend that I've been using for the rest of the blanket. I finally consented and bought Red Heart Classic yarn in light peach.

That was scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to yarn. It's cheap, it's acrylic, and it sort of burns my fingers when I'm crocheting quickly. In desperation, I bought 6 skeins of it. After completing the last of the chocolate brown squares, I pulled out one of these skeins and immediately felt the difference in texture and weight. I did one granny square and realized this wasn't going to work. LOOK:

My flash sort of messed up the shot, but you can see the size difference of a square crocheted from the same pattern with the two different yarns. The Red Heart brand is bigger, and less pleasing to the touch. This won't work if they're all going to be joined up to form one huge blanket.

I need to crochet 43 of these little peach squares, and I'm not going to do it with the wrong yarn only to find out at the end that none of those squares will work out. It will take me about 3 days to do it; three days I'll never get back if I go one using the wrong material.

Back to the drawing board, I'm afraid. I'm going back to the craft stores to search again for something in the Wool Ease brand that may do or even Vanna's Choice. I'm not going to let my 2 year-long project go to shit because of ONE color!

WIP: Crochet Mario Bros. Blanket

This poor bastard of a project has been a work in progress for nearly a year. It consists of 252 crochet granny-squares. The breakdown is as follows:

Blue:108
Brown: 54
Red: 45
Yellow: 2
Flesh: 43

This is what's done as of right now:

Yellow: 2
Red: 45
Brown: 22

Which means I have an ass-ton more to go! Ugh. This is my Excel grid of what's done. I'm hoping to finish within a month or two. I'm still in search for the elusive Flesh-toned color. It's been hard to find in a worsted weight wool blend. I'll find it, though!

Crochet Basket

This basket was supposed to be a blanket. I had not picked up a crochet hook in over two years and was eager to get back into it. I bought two skeins of purple soft-touch yarn and went to town, chaining about 200 and then doing some weird double crochet stitch on every other one. I don't know what I was doing, but it started to ruffle. Everyone who saw it laughed and said my blanket would be uneven and weird looking, not to mention the enormous holes that my wonky pattern was creating. When my two skeins were done, I had a long 6 inch wide strips of "netting". What was I going to do with that? I wound it around and around in a spiral, crocheting it all together and creating this basket. I chained up a rope and made a tie to keep the top cinched. I use it to hold my hats and winter gloves now. =)

When life hands you a wonky, ill-prepared "blanket", make a fucking basket and throw your odds and ends in there!

Ta-DA!

It would have been a very holey blanket anyway.

This is my basket cinched up at the top.

I use it as a hat holder now.

This is my basket on top of my pillow to give you an idea how big it is. It's pretty substantial.

 Supplies / Sources:

Soft Touch Yarn in Amethyst: Michaels

Crochet Flowers

My cousins and I started our own informal Stitch and Bitch. (I think we've met up a total of three times...) Oh, well. Such is life. I'm a pretty good crochet'er but I'm a little slow and I have a hard time following patterns. Even still, I find that my flowers look pretty damn kick ass, don't you think? =)

Materials:
Paton's Classic Wool- One Ball Petal Pink
                                  One Ball Black
(I obviously didn't use a whole ball of yarn for these two little flowers.)

Source:
Jo-Ann Stores