Being fancy is hard work; or, how to go from determination to despair in 16 easy steps

1. Decide you are going to learn to knit. For real this time. No, really for real.
2. Solicit opinions on Ravelry. Choose Hitchhiker as your first real knitting pattern.
3. Buy the pattern, buy the needles.
4. Stare at it for awhile.
5. Decide that the best way to convince yourself to learn to knit is to bribe yourself with really pretty hand-dyed yarn.
6. Buy some. Realize you can't knit with it (not very well plied, too splitty), but can probably crochet with it.
7. Buy some more. It is gorgeous, a fingering-weight silk-linen blend in shades of sand and aqua.
8. Begin mentally preparing yourself to actually learn to knit. For real this time. No, really. This will probably take at least a week of staring at your pretty yarn and your scary circular needles. That's okay. You have time.
9. Congratulations! You've psyched yourself up. Grab the pretty yarn, the scary circular needles, and the pattern.
10. By this time, your skein has been untwisted from the nice hank it arrived in and is now just a very large loop. This is your fault, because you couldn't stop touching it and also maybe you wanted to drape it around your neck like a very pretty silk/linen necklace. It doesn't matter. No one's judging you. (Are they?) The point is, you can't knit from that. You don't have a swift , a ball winder, a nostepinne, or really anything except a very large knitting needle. This internet assures you that this is okay.
11. This is not okay.
12. Drape your big loop of yarn around the back of the chair, which the internet assures you is an acceptable substitute for a swift.
13. This is not an acceptable substitute for a swift. Tangles may result.
14. Tangles do result.
15. Cast up a silent prayer of thanksgiving that it's the cats' naptime and all four of them are totally unaware that there are Yarn Things happening.
16. Blog about it. Or cry. Or both?

A Month of Craft Photos: Days 2 - 7

You can find Day 1 in its own post here.

Day 2: My favorite drink. That's home-brewed blood orange hefeweizen in that thrift-store mug. Oh yes.

Day 3: Something new--a knitting loom.

Day 4: Inspiration. I love raw materials, notions, and supplies. Too often I get so overwhelmed by what they could be that they never actually become anything. But I'm working on that.

Day 5: Craft envy. 'Nuff said.

Day 6: My feet. I wish the argyle socks were hand-knit, but no...they

're from Target.

Day 7: Traditional. A thread crochet bedspread made by my grandmother. It's huge (covers a full-sized bed) and beautiful.

Month of Craft Photos: Day 1, a WIP

I first saw the "Month of Craft Photos" challenge at Untangling Knots last month, but by then the month was nearly over and I thought I'd lost my chance. Luckily, it's happening again--there's a Flickr group and everything, so it must be official!

In celebration of my newly cleaned-off, far more photogenic workspace, and in an effort to take better photos and post more, I'm jumping in.

Here's day 1, a work in progress:

A white and aqua potholder? NO WAY.

 After today, I'll post these in a once-weekly "digest" rather than one by one each day, but I wanted to kick things off on the right note. (Also, I think I'm already a day behind, but the once-a-week schedule will fix that too. Onward!)

"Home is where you are"

This is the pattern that first led me to Urban Threads, now one of my favorite sources for embroidery patterns. I just loved the swooping, retro-cool type, and of the course the message went straight to my secretly-sappy heart. I stitched it up in my new favorite color combo of teal, purple, and gray, and only realized after I finished that it goes perfectly with my granny square afghan.

I made this last January, and it was my first really ambitious embroidery project, or at least my biggest, with the most colors. I'm generally pleased with the way it turned out, although I'm sure I could do it better now. Still, I'm happy to hang it in our dining room, across from a display of family wedding photos (soon to include one of our wedding photos!).

And, of course, it was a nice little ego boost when Urban Threads described my rendition of the pattern as "heartmelty" on their Facebook page. :)

Afghans on the brain

1 down, 27 to go...

I don't know why, but I've been on an afghan kick lately. Maybe it's the season (winter demands an afghan on every chair and at the end of every bed), maybe it's because I haven't made one in a year and boy, are there some good patterns out there. Unfortunately, because afghans take so long, being on an afghan "kick" really just means I'm daydreaming about a dozen and praying that I have the stamina to finish just one.

I'm making this rose throw from the March/April 2010 Crochet Today. It's my first "pieced" afghan, made up of individual blocks that have to be sewn together. This method is a lot more time consuming than an afghan worked in one piece, but also easier to work on in the interim (more portable), and with way more design possibilities. Right now I have all of the center rosettes done, and 9 of the 28 blocks fully stitched. I imagine it'll be another month or so, at least, before the whole thing is complete and festooning the back of my couch.

In the meantime, I'm dreaming of other afghans. I have two weddings coming up for which I'd like to make afghans, so I've been browsing and bookmarking other patterns. For your stitching pleasure, here are a few I've collected, all free:

• Blackberry Salad striped baby blanket from Moogly. I LOVE the bobbles and the bright colors. I've never been a huge fan of pastels, even for babies, and the colors she chose are just so pretty and fun. And of course the color and striping possibilities are endless.
• The Lazy Hobbyhopper combines two of my favorite things by demonstrating how to crochet a granny ripple. I don't think I've ever seen that done before, but I love the effect. I can't wait to try it out on a project of my own.
• This isn't quite an afghan tutorial on its own, but Eggbird's springtime hexagon pattern would make a stunning pieced afghan.
• Lion Brand's website has a ton of free patterns, including dozens (hundreds?) of afghans and throws. I've had this sampler throw bookmarked for quite awhile. In the bright colors they use, it's cheerful and modern; in a more subdued palette (perhaps all one color), it becomes an elegant heirloom piece (like this sampler throw). My parents actually have a similar afghan crocheted by one of my grandmothers. It's a nicely worked sampler piece; unfortunately, it was made entirely in shades of orange. Ahh, the seventies...
• Speaking of heirloom pieces, what about this stunning Magnolia afghan? That center panel is just beautiful. Normally I'm not a big fan of variegated yarn, but I think it works nicely here.

I haven't even began to browse Ravelry's afghan patterns; I'm afraid if I do that, I'll spend the rest of my life stitching blankets and nothing else.

What have you been making lately? Anybody else out there with afghan fever?

Crocheted rag rug: Part 2

About 2/3 of the way through.

Last time I posted, I wrote the first part of a semi-tutorial about crocheting a rag rug out of old t-shirts. The rug's now complete, so I thought I'd post pictures of the finished product and share a few more tips.

I crocheted the entire thing over the course of a weekend, and it's a great project to do while you watch a movie, since it doesn't require that much concentration or counting once you get going.

I used this basic tutorial for crocheting an oval, but of course you can do any shape you like--round, oval, square or rectangle (in the round or in rows). If you're doing a circle or an oval, once you get past the first few rows, don't sweat too much making sure you're doing the "correct" number of increases around the curve. Keeping the rug flat is more important, and since your "yarn" isn't going to be perfectly uniform in width, you might have to add or subtract increases to keep things even. No big deal! Just trust your instincts and adapt as you work.

Hobbes-approved, so you know it's good.

Overall, this rug took ten t-shirts (size adult small through extra large) and its final size is around 17 x 30." If I'd had more t-shirts, I might have kept going, but I think it's big enough. I used a Lion Brand P-15/11.5mm hook, but if I do this again I might use a bigger one. I tend to crochet pretty tightly, and by the time I was finished, my hands were aching a little.

Right now it's in the laundry room being used as a place mat for the cats--a glamorous use for a very glamorous piece of DIY home decor.

If you're looking for more rag rug inspiration, or more detailed instruction, there's a great rag rug Flickr group (of course there is!). Some of the tutorials I looked at include:

• This Vintage Chica's rag rug tutorial 
• Little House in the Suburbs's no-sew rag rug (it's braided, not crocheted, but it's still pretty cool) 
• Mia's Boys rag rug tutorial
• CraftStylish, how to crochet a rug out of t-shirts 
• Craft Passion demonstrates a slightly different method for converting t-shirts to yarn.
• Bonus link: DIY Life shows how to make a market tote out of an old t-shirt.

Plus, there about a zillion more links and videos to be found with a quick Google search. Happy crafting!

New project: crocheted rag rug (part 1)

T-shirt yarn!

Raise your hand if this situation is familiar: you graduated from college in the past few years, and you are absolutely drowning in slightly over-sized, no longer wearable souvenir t-shirts from every high school and college event or activity you ever participated in. I've got sports t-shirts from high school, service project t-shirts from high school and college, club t-shirts, you name it. I even have a t-shirt that my Brownie troop made in elementary school. And I don't--or at least shouldn't--wear them anymore. I've already turned half of them into housecleaning rags,* but there are still a bunch left.

What's a crafty girl who hates throwing things away to do? Turn them into a rag rug, of course!

To that end, I've spent the past several evenings cutting a pile of t-shirts into long strips and rolling them into balls. Luckily nearly all the shirts are part of the same gray/white/blue/navy color family, so the finished product will look nicely unified.

To cut the t-shirts into strips, I started at the bottom hem and cut the body of the shirt into a long, continuous spiral all the way up to the armpits, rolling the strips into a ball as I went. I tried to keep the strips about the same 1" thickness, but didn't really sweat it. Perfectly even strips of material aren't necessary, but try to keep them all between 1/2" and 1" in width. Wider than that and it'll get harder to catch with your hook, but going much narrower might make your "yarn" too weak. Now that I've started crocheting, I would also recommend cutting off and discarding the bottom hem entirely, and starting your cut just above it. The double thickness of the fabric is really hard to stitch with and makes the final product lumpy.

A little bit of printing on the shirt is okay, but it does make the fabric a little stiffer, so avoid shirts with very large overall designs, or anything that feels stiff in your hands. Since the fabric tends to roll in on itself as you crochet, printed designs won't make the final product look weird.

For the first few t-shirts, I also cut the sleeves into strips as well, but now that I've started crocheting, I don't think it's worth the effort--it doesn't make a very long length of material, and all that joining really slows the speed of my crochet. But if you don't have that many shirts to start with, it might be worth it for you.

If you don't have t-shirts, old bed sheets, or pretty much any other scrap fabric, will also work. It is a rag rug, after all! 

*Pro tip: old t-shirts make great cleaning rags. They're soft, absorbent, tough, and if they've been washed enough times, almost totally lint-free.