Circle Hot Pad pattern - totally giftable

I consider myself a tight crocheter, but I did have to go down two hook sizes to match the designer's gauge on this Circle Hot Pad by Esther Thompson. As she said, gauge isn't very important for this potholder/trivet, but you do want to have a nice firm fabric to protect surfaces or your hands from the heat. This was very quick to make and is so cute and totally giftable. The Hobby Lobby Crafter's Secret Cotton in the Desert Gold colorway looks modern and chic. There is a free version of this pattern on the designer's website.

I added a hanging loop by chaining 10 at the end of the last round, slip stitching the chain to the trivet next to where I started chaining, then turning and working 20 SC's back over the chain. A 1-inch wooden or metal ring sewn to the trivet would also look nice as a hanging loop. 

There was also just enough of the main color (Desert Gold) left to make a coordinating 4-inch-diameter coaster in 6 rounds. I made it double-layered like the trivet, but for the coaster I slip stitched it together with the ivory yarn for a bit of contrast on the colorful side. 

The multicolored balls of this Crafter's Secret cotton are 57 grams, whereas the solid color balls are 71 grams. So, using the solid color as the contrast color for this project, you have enough of the solid color to make two trivets (if you don't use any to make a coaster, the way I did).

I gifted the colorful trivet set to my niece Renee, and I made another set to give to my sister Juanita in the Hobby Lobby Crafter's Secret Cotton in the more neutral-looking colorway called The City.

Winter in the South - new free pattern

Hello, everyone! I just published a new free pattern at Ravelry for my Winter in the South hat, so click on this link to head on over to Ravelry and download your free copy. I sincerely hope you enjoy this comfy, wearable design, and if you're inclined to give it a heart or make a project page where we can all see the lovely hat you made, that would just make my day. 😊

 Winter in the South is a top-down, seamless, slouchy ponytail/messy bun beanie made in an airy double-crochet mesh that’s perfect for winter conditions that are chilly but less-than frigid. I used Hobby Lobby I Love This Yarn for the sample in the photos, but most any worsted/aran weight size 4 yarn should be suitable. My sample hat used slightly less than half of the skein of ILTY.

This is a copyrighted, free crochet pattern offered by Yarncraft by Susan in adult/one size only. Written with standard U.S. crochet terms.

Quick and easy CPAP hose cozy

Knitting machines with 22 needles are the perfect size to knit cozies to cover a CPAP air hose. 

I didn't precisely count the rows on this project on the Sentro 22, but it's pretty close to 390 rows of knitting (about 72 inches) with a few rounds of SC (5.5mm hook) on each end for stability.

Red Heart Super Saver Neon Stripes colorway

I'll probably also add two straps with ends secured by small buttons at one end of the cozy so the straps can hold the wearer's mask end of the hose up close to the mask to keep the cozy from slipping down during use.

It only took about an hour to machine knit this piece. Attempting to knit the same thing by hand would have taken me weeks (and probably at least 12 hours) of work. So having a knitting machine available is a huge help to me for projects like this. I do love to hand knit (and there are lovely stitches you can hand knit that a machine like this will never be able to replicate), but I have chronic pain issues that severely limit how much hand knitting I can do.

**UPDATE**

I knitted another one of these using the Red Heart Super Saver Jumbo Stripes in the Bright Stripe colorway on my Addi 22, which has a row counter on it (hallelujah!!). On the Addi, I was getting about 5 rows per inch. At that gauge, it takes 360 rows to make a 72-inch-long tube, so that's how many rows I made the Bright Stripe cozy, plus leaving extra yarn at each end to crochet the edging and straps. (I forgot that I usually prefer to make the tubes more like 74 inches long to better fit the CPAP air hose ... so in that case the knitted tube should have been 370 rows. Mental note for next time!!)

Making a tube this long works best if you can mount your knitting machine on a table where the work can hang free down the middle, such as my Workmate table shown in the photos. Even at that height, I still had to tuck in the end of the tube for about the last 100 rows to keep it from dragging on the floor.

The mask-end straps are each 16 chains long, then slip stitch back across the chain to reinforce.

The colors are pretty similar between the Neon Stripes and the Bright Stripe colorways, but I think I like the Bright Stripe better because it doesn't have a black band in between every other color stripe. I guess whichever one would be better just depends on what you want your project to look like. They are both fun and funky colorways.

Sparkle Pumpkin

The Taylor Lynn YouTube tutorial at this link suggests 45 rows for pumpkins made on the Sentro 40, but I made this one 52 rows tall because that was how many rows it took to use up the small hank of this yarn I had on hand. I mean, after all, real pumpkins come in all shapes and sizes, so why not add a few extra rows to this one? 😉

I wasn't sure how this metallic yarn would work in my machine (wasn't sure if the metallic filament would get separated/tangled in the needles, etc.), but the yarn ran through perfectly smoothly. In fact, I'm used to having to constantly monitor the stitches on my machine to make sure none has dropped (because my machine ALWAYS drops at least one stitch during every project), but this yarn ran through without one single stitch dropping. Amazing!

Finished it off with half of a cinnamon stick for a stem. I think the green color will make a nice contrast to more traditional color pumpkins in my fall display.

Update 10/20/2022: Two years later and I'm still tinkering with this pumpkin. 😊 I decided to crochet a stem to replace the cinnamon stick, figuring that the crocheted stem would fit the scale of the pumpkin better and also be child-friendly. The stem is made with a small amount of Big Twist yarn in the Taupe colorway. And then I went on and added some curly vines, one in Taupe, one in Red Heart Super Saver in Saffron, and one in a double strand of Fixler Brothers Quick Knit Sport in 018 (yellow). How you like me NOW?!? 😂

Proud Santa Hats

I started this project right after last Christmas after seeing a photo of something similar online, but for whatever reason I didn't make a project page on Ravelry at that time. So I actually mostly finished making the hats months ago, but they sat on the table in my sewing room waiting for me to weave in the ends and add the pompoms, which I finally did today. 

I made the tail on one hat a little longer and on the other hat a little shorter just for some differentiation between the two. Fiber Spider has a good tutorial on YouTube for how to crochet a seamless, top-down stocking cap. I modeled these caps after most of his instructions and then added the rainbow stripes using HDC in the 3rd loop before finishing with the ribbing in white.

But since I did most of the work on these nearly a year ago, I can't remember anymore what size hook I used or what colorways the yarns are, etc.! Oh well. I'm still excited to get these in the mail to Mika and Emmy so they can wear them this coming holiday season. I hope they like the hats!