Stitch Sampler Afghan for Renee

A couple of years ago, my niece Renee joined the Annie's Attic Crochet Block of the Month Club to make this lovely Stitch Sampler Afghan in the Pearl/Cream colorway.

Renee has been crocheting even longer than I have, but she is in a different life stage than I am, and, a few months into her subscription, she realized that she just didn't have enough time to set aside for herself to enjoy crocheting these blocks.

I'm sure many of us can relate to her dilemma. It becomes an added layer of stress and/or guilt when we're subscribed to something that keeps coming at us, but in the process we end up finding out that we just don't have the time to engage with it.

So after six months, Renee cancelled her subscription and stashed the unused kits in her closet in the hope that she would eventually get around to making them.

Alas, the months kept flying by, and Renee found herself having only finished the first block.

Earlier this summer, she packed all the kits into a tote bag, which included the first six pattern brochures, all of the yarn, and the first block she made, and called me to ask if I would be interested in having them. She wasn't asking me to make the blanket for her; she just wanted the stuff out of her closet, and she assured me that if I took it, I could make whatever I wanted to with the yarn. Of course, I was happy to receive her offering. To me, the yarn and patterns were a gift, yet I also completely understood her need to be rid of them to protect her mental health in this moment. I have been there myself from time to time.

However, I also knew immediately that even if I used some of the yarn to make other things, I would secretly finish making the blanket and gift it back to her. 🩷 I think she will be surprised when I gift it to her but also pleased that she will be able to have this blanket in her home after she thought that would never happen.

In fact, the first thing I did was to crochet an open-mesh cardigan for myself using some of the yarn. 😂 

Then I got busy crocheting the blocks for this blanket. Because each block is different, and because the pattern arranges the blocks in a way that does not follow their numerical order, I printed out little labels (I just printed them on paper and cut them out) to mark the number for each block and attached them with safety pins as I finished each one to help keep things organized as I went along. You can see the pinned-on labels in some of my photos. These were easy to remove once the blanket was fully assembled according to the pattern. Here's a link to download a copy of a PDF for my labels, in case you would like to use them for your blanket project.

I finished making the first 18 blocks from the six pattern brochures in the kits that Renee had purchased. Then I was faced with a decision: Do I find a way to get the rest of the pattern brochures (or a PDF of the pattern) from Annie's, or do I make up my own block designs until I have enough made to finish the blanket?

I did already have an account at Annie's from a pattern purchase I made years and years ago. So I decided to reach out to their customer service and ask if it would be possible for me to purchase the entire Stitch Sampler Blanket pattern as a PDF.

The short answer is no, they don't sell this pattern separately from the kits. (Hint-hint, Annie's; you would probably make a few extra pattern sales if you also sold this pattern separately from the kits!)

I explained my situation and how I was attempting to finish the blanket for my niece, who had purchased half of the kits. The rep who was helping me looked up Renee's account to confirm my story, then she said that she could arrange to have the other half of the kits (including the rest of the yarn and pattern brochures) sent to me all at once if I agreed to purchase them. I mulled this over for a bit and then decided to do it. The rep also added to my account the digital versions of the patterns (all of which include video tutorials) from all the kits Renee had purchased, as well as the digital patterns and videos from all the kits I purchased, which was so nice and very helpful. So I now had the complete pattern, plus all the matching yarn I needed to finish the blanket.

The individual blocks are very quick to make, and most of them were easy for me, but there were a few that I needed to view the videos to understand how to do them. You know how it is; trying to explain the steps in writing can often be waaay more confusing than just to SHOW someone the steps. But even the ones that I needed the video for were fairly easy to crochet once I understood the steps.

I would make a block or three each evening during my break from work. That's how quick and easy most of the blocks were.

I finished crocheting the blocks on Aug. 15, and I finished weaving in the ends on Aug. 27. Even though I used a 5.5 mm hook to crochet all of them, I tend to be a tight crocheter, so even after adding a border that's a little more than 2 inches deep, the finished size of the blanket only measures about 46 inches by 52 inches. I'm pretty sure that the blanket will relax and maybe grow a bit after laundering (and certainly after being used for a while), but if I ever make another one of these later, I would probably use at least a 6 mm hook. (P.S. The blanket did grow about 3 inches in width and 4 inches in length after laundering. Yay!)

I deviated from the pattern in a couple of ways. First, I moved the position of Block 1 (the one Renee had made) from the outer-right column to place it more toward the center, because I wanted to "mark" her block with a little crocheted pink heart applique, and thus I figured it would look nicer if her block was placed closer to the "heart" (or center) of the blanket. So I swapped places with Blocks 1 and 29. To join the blocks, I used a technique where I slip-stitched into one block, then chained one, then slip-stitched into the other block, then chained one, and repeated that going back and forth all along the seam. That gives a nice, solid join that has a small bit of zig-zag texture but is subtle and doesn't detract from the prettiness of the actual blocks. I also deviated in the way I worked the border. I did one round of SC followed by one round of DC, followed by one round of SC, followed by one round of DC, followed by one round of SC, followed by one round of twisted SC.

For the little heart applique, I used a small amount of Hobby Lobby I Love This Yarn in the Rosy Cheeks colorway from my stash and a 4.5 mm hook. I followed this video tutorial by ElyseCrochets on YouTube, which makes a lovely little quick and easy heart.

The blanket was finished in time for me to enter it in our local fair, so I'm planning to do that.

Annie's schematic

 

Teacup Chihuahua Costumes Ladybug and Bumblebee

My next-door neighbor, Lori, has two teacup Chihuahuas. Like most little dogs, these tiny boys have oversized attitudes and think they are the guard dogs of the neighborhood. 😂

Anyway, Lori likes to dress her boys up in costume whenever possible, so I thought I would gift them a set of these Ladybug and Bumblebee outfits.

Designer Abbey Jackson wrote the Ladybug pattern to fit her fluffy 10-pound cat, and the Bumblebee pattern was written to fit her other cat, who was a 4-pound kitten at the time. 

Lori's dogs, being the micro teacup variety of Chihuahua, are almost certainly less than 5 pounds each. I didn't actually weigh or measure them before starting this project, so it probably would have been a lot smarter of me to have measured them first! Ha!

I used leftover yarn scraps to crochet these, mostly bits of Red Heart and/or Caron Simply Soft, I'm guessing. Initially, I crocheted one of each of the costumes based on the 10-pound pet size pattern, just to get a sense of the sizes. Then, I followed those up with one of each in a significantly smaller size, which I hope will fit Lori's dogs. Fingers crossed!

I deviated from the written pattern by starting the neckline with a 5.5 mm hook and doing a row of foundation DC. IMO, the foundation stitch lets the neckline stretch more easily than with a row of chains followed by a row of DCs.

After joining to work in the round, I worked a round of alternating FPDC/BPDC, still using the 5.5 mm hook, to give the neckline a ribbed effect. Then I switched to the 5 mm hook to work the next round in FPDC/BPDC, and the following two rows in FPDC/BPDC. I used the 5 mm hook for the rest of the costume.

I worked the body rows/rounds in DC as specified in the pattern, but I deviated from the pattern by making fewer stitches and fewer rows to size the costumes down to fit Lori's boys.

Fingers crossed that they like these! 😊

Update: Lori said that these fit her boys perfectly, but they didn't like her trying to put their front legs through the space between the neckline and the chest strap. So I'm going to fix that problem by making the chest strap open on one end and attaching it with a button. That way, the boys don't have to fret about squeezing their front legs through the small opening. I think that will fix the issue. 🤞

Sweet Sweater and Bonnet for Princess Rosalee

To go with the ruffle dress for Princess Rosalee, I wanted to include a sweet little cardigan and bonnet, which both utilize the same V-stitch of the Baby Dress Raspberry pattern.

This is the thinnest yarn I have ever worked with, but it is not thread; it's a very thin but soft 3-ply spun yarn. The labelless skein was in a bag of yarn that was gifted to me years ago, so I don't know what brand it is or any other information about it, but it makes 20 wpi. After making both the cardigan and bonnet, I had just a small amount of the yarn left over.

The cardigan is finished with 6 white buttons (3/8-inch diameter), which I found on Amazon. The bonnet is trimmed with white grosgrain ribbon (3/8-inch wide), which I also found on Amazon, plus another one of the buttons applied decoratively on each side to cover and also reinforce the stitching that attaches the ribbon to the bonnet.

 

Waylon's blanket

Earlier this year, we learned that my sister-in-law Linda's daughter Brianna was expecting her first child, which was going to be Linda's very first grandchild, and our family was super excited to welcome our newest little addition. It's going to be a boy! 💙

Naturally, this news also meant that Auntie Susan needed to get busy stitching up a keepsake blanket to welcome her newest grandnephew!

Finished with 43 rows of squares, before blocking

I searched for baby blanket ideas for a few days with nothing really jumping out and grabbing me until Red Heart Yarns shared on social media their pattern for this blanket made with Red Heart Bitty Stripes yarn. Instantly I could see in my mind's eye how amazing this design would look made in shades of blue and green, so I ordered the kit with those colors and then anxiously waited for it to arrive. 

This pattern says to use an 11.5 mm hook, even though the yarn is rated as a standard 4 weight. I did purchase the 11.5 mm hook with the Yarnspirations kit (it was less than $2, and I didn't already own a hook that size, so why not?) for the blanket project, but as I started working the foundation chain, it was just soooo loose that it really didn't look right, so I switched to using a 6.5 mm hook, and that seemed to look a lot better to me. A 7 mm hook would probably be ideal, but I don't have one that size (yet).

The free pattern wasn't yet listed in the Ravelry database when I started this project, but it could be downloaded from this page at Yarnspirations.

Measures about 36 inches wide

Since I'm using a smaller hook than the pattern suggested, I also added more chains to the foundation chain to ensure that the blanket wouldn't be too small. Thus, I started with a foundation chain of 153 instead of 113. After working several rows of blocks, the piece measured about 36 inches wide, which is a good size for the width of a baby crib blanket. This blanket is 14 squares wide. I'm aiming to have the finished blanket size be about 36 inches wide by 48 inches long. I figure I will just keep adding rows until the blanket looks more rectangular than square, so I'll let you know how many rows that ends up being after I've finished.

Work in progress...

I'm also fairly new to tunisian crochet techniques, and I wasn't understanding the written instructions for how to get started, so I looked up this Yarnspirations video tutorial (hosted by Mikey!! Yay!! He's such a great teacher) to get me through the blanket setup. Once I was able to understand how the tunisian block pattern works, it became super fun to make this pattern. It only takes about 4 or 5 minutes to complete each block (it takes about an hour (ish) to complete a whole row of blocks), and as the yarns gradually change colors, half of the fun is seeing which color will come next, so I found myself wanting to keep making "one more block" and never wanting to stop. 😊 The beautiful colors of the Bitty Stripes yarn play so well together, too. It's just a gorgeous effect when it's all put together. 

WIP at 27 rows

I'm using the Seaweed (green) colorway as Color A in the pattern and the Horizon (blue) colorway as Color B. 

The first skein of Seaweed ran out after the 15th row. The first skein of Horizon ran out in the middle of the 16th row. The blanket was basically a square at the point where these first skeins ran out, so if you wanted to use this pattern to make a roughly 36-inch square blanket, you might be able to do it with just one skein of each color (plus more yarn for a border, if you wanted to add one). 

In working out the math for the sizing of this blanket, I calculated that 48 inches is approximately 1.33 times 36 inches. And since 14 squares measures about 36 inches, I estimated that I would need to work 18-19 rows of Color A (or 14 times 1.33) to reach my target length of 48 inches long. Notice that that's only counting the Color A rows. Since the pattern is alternating rows of Color A and Color B, the total number of rows would actually be approximately double the number of rows of counting only Color A, which I'm estimating would be around 36-38 rows of squares. 

Standard hook = crowded

I went through phases of using three different 6.5 mm crochet hooks while stitching this project. I started off with my regular blue-handled Boye hook (this set is one of my overall all-time favorites to work with). Because the squares in this pattern are fairly small and only require a maximum of 7 loops to fit onto the shaft of the hook, it is possible to manage that with most standard crochet hooks, even if 7 loops gets to be a bit crowded. 

A Furls hook helps

I looked around at the options available and thought that the long shaft of the Furls style hooks might work better for this project than my Boye hook, so I ordered a pretty 6.5 mm Furls hook from Amazon. 

All the hooks I went through

When the Furls hook arrived, it was noticeably easier to fit all the loops onto its shaft. But the problem with the Furls design is that the shaft gradually tapers into the larger grip area, and that larger part of the shaft was making the loops on that end of each row bigger than the other loops. It wasn't a huge issue, so I worked quite a few rows with the Furls hook. 

A tunisian hook is ideal

But eventually I decided to finally bite the bullet and buy some type of actual tunisian hook, in the hope that it would make it easier for me to keep the loop sizes more consistent across the entire row. I settled on this double-ended tunisian hook by Red Heart. 

The only reason why it took me so long to finish this blanket was because I struggled somewhat with finding the energy to keep working in the middle of the project (health struggles, sigh), so even though I knew that I really wanted to have it ready to be a gift for Baby's first Christmas, I put it in time out for a few months to let myself rest. But as December rolled around, I found the burst of energy I needed to pick it up again. 

After finishing the 43rd row, I measured the length of the blanket and found that it was just about exactly 48 inches long and celebrated finally reaching my goal.

I had ordered a skein of baby blue Red Heart yarn that looked online like it would coordinate well with the blanket's colors and make a good solid color for the edging rounds. But it was evident as soon as I saw the yarns in person that this edging color was not going to work. Happily, I still had a lot of leftover Red Heart in the Denim colorway, which complements the blanket colors nicely in the border rounds.

For the border, I worked two rounds of SC (turning to work the second round in the opposite direction to help prevent curling) followed by one round of twsted SC, which gives a simple but lovely, texture-y, rope-like edging that I have used to finish many blanket projects. Twisted SC looks exactly like RSC, but twisted SC is a LOT easier to work, IMO. 

Floral arrangement for Rose's birthday

My grown-up bonus daughter Rose loves the colors orange and black. This year for her birthday, I decided to make her a pretty silk floral arrangement. Roses for Rose!! 🌹

The florals all came from my local Michaels store. I started with this 18-inch Orange Ranunculus Deluxe Bush by Ashland. Flower arranging is easy when you start with something like this that provides a lovely base for the bouquet, and I loved that it had lots of orange roses and greenery. Then I added five of these Black Open Rose Stem by Ashland. The stems on the black roses were longer than the stems on the orange ranunculus bush, so I used my wire-cutters to trim about 4 to 5 inches off the end of each black rose stem so the flowers had a balanced appearance.

The vase is the Beautiful Amber Glass Flower Vase for Fresh or Artificial Flowers by Drew Barrymore, which I found online at Walmart. To hide the bottoms of the stems, I filled the vase with one box of these 6mm acrylic beads from Amazon, but by themselves, they didn't fill the vase quite enough, so I mixed them with most of one tube of Clear Colorfill Diamonds by Ashland from Michaels.

The finishing touch is the adorably goth 9" Black & White Cat Skeleton Pick by Ashland from Michaels. Isn't she just the cuuuuutest?!?!? 😍

 

 

 

 

UGA bead football earrings

When my niece Renee announced that she would be hosting a party to celebrate the kickoff of Georgia's new football season, I hit the aisles at Michael's and online at Etsy to source the beads and findings I needed to make these earrings - an essential accessory for every Lady Bulldog fan to wear on game day. GOOOOOO Dawgs! Sic 'em! Woof! Woof! Woof! Woof! Woof! 🏈

French hook style

This was a fun little jewelry-making project that gave me an excuse to break out my tools and findings to create a pair of earrings for myself (to wear dangling from my huggie hoops) and a french hook pair as a hostess gift for Renee. So quick and fun to make!

I also got to use my Beadsmith wire looper for the first time on this project. I bought the wire looper to be able to make myself a DIY chain knitting counter, based on the project that Marly Bird designed. The looper tool was so handy to use for this earring beading project as well.

Huggie hoop style

 

A Chicken for Suzanne

My dear friend Suzanne is a self-proclaimed "chicken gal" and suburbanite-of-necessity who longs to return to her farmgirl days living in the country with a yard full of chickens.

What better way to celebrate her upcoming birthday than sending an Emotional Support Chicken for her to hug and hold while she dreams her sweet farmgirl dreams?

The Emotional Support Chicken by Annette Corsino is just a downright fun pattern to knit, and I think it looks best when executed in tweedy-ish yarn colorways that are reminiscent of the feathers of real chickens. When I saw the lovely marled colorways of KnitPal Cotton to the Core, I just knew they would produce some lovely chickens well worth adding to any metaphorical flock. For this hen, I'm using Caramel Brown as color A and Fresh Peach as color B.

This yarn is on the lighter side for being labeled as a worsted weight - definitely much lighter than the stuff that Red Heart labels as worsted weight. In my opinion, it's closer to being DK weight. I'm still using the needle size specified in the pattern, though, so we'll see how big this hen ends up being compared to the other ones I've knitted with Red Heart. 😅 

I hope Suzanne loves her new chicken, and if she gives it a name, I will update this post to let all y'all know what it is! 💜🐔💜

I'm pretty sure that Suzanne's chicken is the first one of these that I've managed to sew together according to the way the pattern designer intended. Yay!

Pen Pocket for my Doc

At my recent checkup, my doctor, who is an active duty officer in the Air Force, was complaining that she didn't have anywhere to carry her pen in her Class B uniform blouse. (The Air Force women's Class B uniform blouse doesn't have any pockets.)

My husband mentioned to her that when he's wearing a shirt without a pocket (which almost never happens anymore), he would clip his pen so that it was sticking out between the buttons in the front button placket. My doc thanked him for the suggestion but pointed out that wearing a pen that way would not only technically make her be "out of uniform," but that it also wouldn't sit as well on a woman (breasts, obvs). I included a random photo from the internet, below, to show (more or less) the way my husband was suggesting she could wear her pen, except that this picture doesn't show the pen's clip holding onto the front of the button placket the way my husband was describing.

My doc was wearing an ID lanyard, however, so the idea that popped into my head was to sew a pen pocket for her that could be attached to her lanyard and was made from a similar-color fabric as the light, almost baby blue of her uniform blouse (in the hope that the color would make it less conspicuous). The only way I would ever be able to exactly match the fabric color is if I were to buy a woman's Class B uniform blouse at the AAFES clothing sales and cut it up to use the fabric to sew the pen pocket. So I'm hoping that the fabric I used will be a close-enough match.

I asked her if adding a pen pocket like that to her lanyard would make her be considered to be "out of uniform," and she didn't think that it would, so we agreed that a pen pocket on her lanyard could maybe work for her.

I told her I would sew one for her and bring it to my next appointment (whenever that is! LOL! I don't actually see her very often).

After searching around online, I settled on this tutorial by Ashley Hough for how to sew an elastic bookmark, because the pen/pencil pouch portion of the tutorial was a close match to what I had in mind to give to my doctor. The only real difference with mine is that instead of sewing the pouch to the long loop of elastic, I added a button hole to the top flap for the lanyard's plastic loop to fit through. (This was the first time I'd ever used the button hole function on my new sewing machine, so that was exciting, too. I think it turned out pretty well and was a lot easier than the way I used to have to sew button holes.)

The finished dimensions are about 6.5 inches long by about 1.75 inches wide. It has two pockets, so it can hold two pens or one pen and one pencil. It was a quick and easy project and only required just a small amount of fabric. I also added featherweight fusible interfacing to the back of both pieces of fabric to help them hold their shape. 

I hope my doctor finds this little accessory helpful while she's on the job!

Tooth Fairy Pillow pocket lovey

This tooth fairy pillow is going to be a gift for my wonderful dental hygienist, Carra.

In recent years, I've developed awful sensitivity in my teeth from enamel damage incurred from grinding my teeth and/or clenching my jaw during sleep. I started wearing a mouth guard at night, but not until after the damage was already done.

Ever since my teeth were damaged, having dental cleanings done has been terribly painful, to the point where I even considered not going to the dentist at all anymore (yeah, of course, I know that skipping dental visits wouldn't have made my situation any better, obviously, but ugh). I even felt that I had to change dental practices because my previous dentist didn't seem to be sufficiently sympathetic to my pain and wasn't really working with me to follow a plan to manage it.

My new hygienist, Carra (and, really, the entire team at Dr. Shelton's), has been nothing short of AMAZING. Carra has been very sympathetic and gentle with me at every visit and always gives me and my teeth the most wonderful care.

I always try to profusely thank Carra each time I see her, to let her know how much I appreciate her wonderful "bedside manner," as it were, but in addition to saying thank you, I wanted to give her a small, tangible token to express my gratitude, and thus I went searching for a crochet tooth pattern that was both super adorable and also sort of representative of who she is in her career. To me, Carra is my personal tooth fairy angel! 👼

This free Tooth Fairy Pillow pattern by Heather Corinne Smith is just right in every way. (She also has a video tutorial you can follow.) The design makes a tooth softie/lovey of a nice size (mine is about 6 inches tall, not including the hanging loop, by 6 inches wide), and the kawaii embroidered facial features are just so cute. The pocket on the back (about 3.75 inches wide by 2.5 inches tall) is the perfect size for holding a Dutch Bros gift card and sticker to add an extra touch of sweetness to the gift. I finished mine by adding a bow made of a small scrap of hot pink ribbon (it was only about 8 inches long to start with, so it was barely long enough, but it worked!!) that I had in my stash and followed this quick tutorial on YouTube to tie it, then I carefully sewed it to the tooth using a needle and thread.

Back with pocket

This turned out so cute, and I think Carra is going to love it. So if you love your dental hygienist as much as I love mine, maybe you should make one of these for your hygienist, too!

Memorial Christmas ornament idea

I saw this idea online for a Christmas tree ornament that's made using canning lids and rings, rustic twine, perhaps some small beads or other seasonally decorative pieces (like the holly and berries in the photos below), some foam board or cardboard for backing, a hot glue gun, and small pieces of fabric, such as from a loved one's shirt.

 

These look like they would be fairly quick and easy to make. And they would also make meaningful gifts if the fabric comes from someone who's close to the person you're making the ornament for.

Beaded Fidget Hedgehog

This is a great pattern for using up scrap yarn from your stash. Each hedgehog requires only a small amount of yarn (plus a pair of 8 mm safety eyes, about 68 pony beads, and the other supplies). 

For my first two hedgehogs, I used glitter pony beads that I've had in my crafting stash for at least 27 years. I originally purchased the beads to adorn some Pocahontas costumes for Halloween/dress-up playtime that I sewed for my daughters back in the 1990s. 

My daughters on Halloween in the 1990s wearing the beaded costumes.

Now, all these years later, I can give them each an adorable hedgehog made with the same beads along with a printed photo of them wearing the Pocahontas costumes when they were little. That's a nifty full-circle moment in my book! 😁

So tiny and cute!

Little hedgehog feet.

Little hedgehog bum.

The pattern also has a link to an Etsy listing where you can opt to purchase a printable "carrier" for gifting your hedgehogs, which gives them a cute finishing touch.