Quick and easy Halloween decor craft

With Halloween less than a week away, here's a super easy decoration idea that you can use to decorate your front porch or anywhere you need a bit of spooky ambience.

All you need to make these adorable little ghosts is a printer, some paper for the printer, and some scissors. You can even let your littles color a sheet of ghosts for some extra fun.

Click here to download the printable PDF. 

 

Entries for the fair

This year, I entered two knitted items in our state fair's needle arts competition: a gray version of my Shawlcowl Pullover made with acrylic DK yarn and a blue fingering-weight version of the Zuzu's Petals pullover cowl.

The gray Shawlcowl Pullover got some really nice, thoughtful feedback from the judges.

But, amazingly, the blue Zuzu's Petals earned an Honorable Mention ribbon! As well as some lovely judges' feedback.

 

 

 

Naturally, the entry made by the co-owner of our local little yarn shop took best in show! Way to go, Irina!!! 😍

Irina's entry

 I wonder what I should make to enter into the fair for next year?!?!?

Dragonscale Dice Bag for Mika

This is the Dragonscale Dice Bag by Jessie Alameda, a free pattern. It's going to be a belated birthday gift for Mika. I bought 200 iridescent black polycarbonate dragonscales for this project from Michelle's SilverGriffonSkies shop on Etsy. Her scales are so beautiful, durable, and lightweight - they are perfect for this dice bag.

These next two photos are of Mika's two favorite sets of polyhedral dice. The first has holographic lettering, and the second has a geode appearance in the right light. If I do say so myself, these dice are going to look AMAZING with this bag! 😍

Mika's dice with iridescent lettering

Mika's geode dice

My usual supplier for dragonscales is The Ring Lord, but they mainly deal in aluminum/metal scales, and for this dice bag, I wanted something a bit lighter, and I also wanted them to be iridescent. The Ring Lord's scales are wonderful, but I don't think they offer iridescent, so that's why I gave my business to a different vendor this time.

This bag is 52 stitches around, so each scale row required 26 scales. I calculated that I could get a maximum number of 8 scale rows from the 200 scales if I worked 5 rounds of 26 scales and then decreased the bag to be 46 stitches around for 3 more scale rows with 23 scales each. That would have left me with 1 unused scale. But I decided that the bag was already tall enough after working 7 scale rows.

This is the first dice bag that I've actually lined with a sewn-in lining. Even though I'm pretty experienced at sewing, it was still a bit scary to do something new like this. But I'm very pleased with how well it turned out, and I think the finished bag is gorgeous.

With grommet added and lining pinned in place

I bought the dark purple two-tone dress taffeta fabric at Amazon. I think it complements the colors of the dragonscales perfectly. I also bought the black cord and the gunmetal gray cord stopper at Amazon. The yarn is fingering weight Estak Royal Cotton. I used a 3.75 mm crochet hook.

Before adding lining

As you can see in my "grommets test" photo below, I had to experiment with a few different sizes and colors before I figured out which one would look best on this bag. 

Grommets test

 

Shawlcowl Pullover 3.0 is live

I'm very excited to announce that the 10th anniversary updated version of my Shawlcowl Pullover pattern is now live! If you've already purchased the pattern, you should have received a message by email and/or in your Ravelry inbox with a link to the updated version 3.0.

Version 3.0 of the pattern includes instructions to make three beautiful but slightly different variations of the Shawlcowl Pullover, as well as the bonus instructions for how to add length to all of them, should you wish to do so. 

This is the Shawlcowl 3 knitted in Red Heart Super Saver Ombre in the True Blue colorway. It includes the added length, whose steps are explained in the version 3.0 pattern, and also a 2/4 picot bind off (links to picot bind-off instructions also in the pattern).

If you haven't tried my pattern yet, here's a button with a link to where you can purchase it, even if you don't have a Ravelry account:

Thanks so, SO MUCH for your support, everyone! 💜 Words are inadequate to express how grateful I am to each of you for all the beautiful Shawlcowl projects you've made and shared over the past 10 years, as well as all your messages with questions and/or words of encouragement. Here's to another 10 years of this fun pattern!

Celebrating 10 years of Shawlcowl Pullover

I first released my Shawlcowl Pullover pattern in April 2014, and in the years since then, I have had some requests to write up instructions for how to add length to the original pattern, and I will admit that this was something I had been thinking about doing even before anyone asked me about it.

Challenge accepted!

Although I totally overlooked (oops!!) the opportunity I had earlier this year to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the release of Shawlcowl Pullover, I decided that it’s never too late to release an updated version of the pattern that includes these bonus, optional instructions for how to add length to the design.

Version 3.0 of the pattern will include instructions to make three beautiful but slightly different variations of the Shawlcowl Pullover, as well as the bonus instructions for how to add length to all of them, should you wish to do so.

The updated pattern will be released soon on Ravelry. So if you already own a previously released version of the pattern, keep your eyes out for Version 3.0 to land in your pattern library. And if you haven't already purchased the pattern, head on over to Ravelry and grab your copy now — you'll also receive the Version 3.0 update in your pattern library as soon as it's available!

Thanks so, SO MUCH for your support, everyone! 💜 Words are inadequate to express how grateful I am to each of you for all the beautiful Shawlcowl projects you've made and shared over the past 10 years, as well as all your messages with questions and/or words of encouragement. Here's to another 10 years of this fun pattern!