Made Marian: Oozing Crafty Goodness

Another two of these hats, slightly different look this time.  The first one is done in Debbie Bliss Pure cotton in various colours.  The second one uses some of the same yarn but I’ve also used some other types of yarn including Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran and Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece.  Hats like this are a great way to make the best use of any small balls of yarn you might have left over from other projects, the different textures of yarn worked really well together so don’t be afraid to try mixing them for small things like this.

I promise that after Christmas I’ll try to do a pattern that’s not from The Bible, but in the meantime here’s another one.  This is the Self Fringing scarf and it’s so simple to do (pretty much just all single crochets).  The best thing about it is that there is no tidying up to do at the end, I hate weaving in the ends of the yarn so this is the perfect scarf if you’re like me. I’ve actually done three of these so they’ll be appearing under a number of trees in the extended Made Marian family this year.

The only problem with the Debbie Stoller book is that much of the yarn is not widely available in Ireland, luckily I have always had excellent advice on substitutes from Lisa at This is Knit. But on this occasion, I loved the look of the scarf in the pattern so much that I sourced the yarn from Paradise Fibres in the States.  It turned out lovely if I may say so myself.

I picked up this Rowan Country Wool in Lena’s in Limerick a while back not entirely sure what I was going to do with it.  As it turns out it’s now a scarf for someone’s Christmas stocking. I love the colours and the thickness of the wool, it makes me wish I could wear wool

I started off by chaining 17.

Row 1) Double Crochet (DC) into the 3rd chain from the hook and DC across (14 DC)

Row 2) - ? Chain 3, turn and DC across

Basically keep going until the scarf is long enough or you run out of yarn.

I really need to buy another crochet pattern book, before I have to rename my blog “The Debbie Stoller Appreciation Blog”.  Anyway, in the meantime, here’s another one from the Bible. This time it’s the Boy Beanie. The yarn for the first one was donated from Lou’s stash a while back and I, er, forgot to return it!  The yarn for the second one is a Tivoli acrylic. The pattern was for a grown-up hat and I earmarked this pattern for some smaller people.  I made some huge mistake when I was trying to size it down I know that the smallest one is way too small for any of the smallies in my life, but I’m pretty sure that the grey one will fit one of them.

These were very quick and easy to do, I did them in one evening each, so if you’re looking for a possible christmas present for someone this is a great option.

My latest commission was this snake scarf.  It was “inspired by” this one. The scarf is for Lette and/or Keith.  I started of by chaining 5 and continued as follows:

Row 1)  SC (single crochet) into the second chain from the hook and the SC across (4 SC)

Row 2) Increase by 2 stitches by doing 2 SC into the first stitch and the last (6 SC)

Row 3) Chain 1, turn, 1 SC into each stitch (6 SC)

Row 4) Same as Row 2 (8 SC)

Row 5) Same as Row 3 (8 SC)

Row 6 - 17 Repeat pattern above until you have 20 stitches across

Row 18 - 20) Chain 1, turn, SC across (20 SC)

Row 21) Chain 1, turn, decrease by SC2tog at the start and SC2tog at the end (18 SC)

Row 22) Chain 1, turn, SC across (18 SC)

Row 23 - 24) repeat row 21 and 22 (16 SC)

Row 25 - ?  Chain 1, turn, SC across (16 SC)

Basically keep going until the scarf is long enough then start to decrease again in the same way as Row 21 and 22 until you have to cast off.

The tongue was added on after - I joined the red yarn by Slip Stitching into the 4 original stitches in Row 1, so I had 4 red stitches, then chain 1 and turn, SC2tog, SC2tog so that there are only two stitches left, then SC2tog those two so that you are only left with 1 stitch, then I chained a few until the tongue was long enough.  Cast off and leave a tail of about 1 inch.  Separate the strands of the yarn so that the tongue looks as of it was two prongs.

The eyes are just buttons sewed on. I used 4 buttons as I wanted to have eyes on both sides.

If anyone tries this, can you please let me know how you get on, my pattern writing skills are extremely basic as you can see.

Given that the weather has taken a turn for the worse this is a very appropriate time to post about my new hat!  This hat is adapted from a pattern in the Bible.  The flower on the side is a hand made brooch, same pattern as this one, but I added a pretty yellow button in the centre.  I hadn’t intended it to be for the hat but when I saw it finished I new it would look good on it.

I have a new found respct for wardrobe bloggers as I only just discovered how hard it is to take pictures of your own head!

I’m in the middle of my “between jobs weekend” so I’m making the best possible use of my time…….by making more brooches.

You might recognise the centers of some of them.   I picked up a pack of badges at the Lisa Hannigan gig in UL the other night and in the spirit of the album cover I decided to craft them up a bit.  As for the rest of the weekend, I have my recently acquired copy of the SATC movie is in the DVD player and I’m off to Podcamp tomorrow. Fun times.

If you assumed all baby blankets had to be pink or blue or maybe pale yellow, you were wrong.  I’ve recently finished a sports themed blanket for a friend of a friend.  It was done in the colours of this team, but I did joke that if my commission fell through I’d surely be able to find someone from Tipperary in the market for a baby blanket.

This pattern was “inspired by” a pattern in my Bible.   I changed the size though to make the blanket a square, it’s basically just two rows of navy double crochets and two rows of yellow DC all the way up.  Then I did a row of single crochets down the two sides to give it a better finish.  The navy looks very dark in some lighting, so dark that I could probably pawn it off on someone from Kilkenny should the need arise.  But I looked again at the teams colours and their navy is quite dark too, so it should be ok.

I’ve posted about flower pins before and many of my readers have some of those.  But this one here is a little bit fancier than those as it has two layers of petals.   The pattern is again from Debbie Stoller’s Happy Hooker, this time from the pattern Spring in Winter.  I made this one to wear with a pink bolero and a black dress.

I’m thinking of making these ones to order so if anyone would like one, or if anyone would like to give them as a gift to someone get in contact through the link at the side.   I’d be looking at charging about €8 - €10 each for them as I’d be using good quality yarn and they take about an hour to make

I was asked a while back to make crochet lapel pins for some of the VIP’s to wear at Podcamp and once Bernie had ok’d my prototype I got to work on them.  Just a simple white crochet circle and then I sewed/embroidered on the logo in green.  Here’s the logo.

And here’s my interpretation. The yarn is “greener” than it looks in the photos.