This time I used thinner yarn and a smaller hook to make an extra-tiny owl. I only have one size of eyes though, so it looks a little funny. My daughter thought this was just the head because the eyes are so huge in relation to the body.
I know a lot of crafters use small glass beads for eyes on really tiny crochet animals, so maybe I’ll try that next time.
Look who I found hanging out by my smelly shoes!
OK I guess I found him there because I put him there after I crocheted him. I got the pattern from Esther here. (Thanks, Esther!) It looks like she made hers from cotton thread, so it’s even tinier than mine. Sweet!
I’m going to try again, this time with teensy yarn to make a teensy owl.
Why? (Because they are small and they use up scraps.)
I had some chunky brown mystery yarn and a leftover bit of something soft and chunky and blue. Even though my feet were sweating buckets, I felt the need to crochet some warm slippers. I know, I’m sick that way.
Then I held a strand of the brown chunky yarn together with some fuzzy stuff and made another pair.
I used an old-fashioned “no pattern” type of pattern. (magic ring, 6 sc for first round, 12 sc for second round, sc around for awhile, then make the opening and keep crocheting until the slipper is a little shorter than my foot. Then sew up the heel. Sorry, that’s as detailed as it gets for me.)
I was able to use up some scraps of yarn, and I’m sure in a few months, I will be very glad for some warn slippers!
My daughter is sooo into Neko Atsume you may not believe it’s even possible. For the uninitiated, let me explain. It’s a game she has on her phone that involves leaving food and toys out for virtual feral cats, and then getting all excited and squealing when the cats come to your house and eat your food and play with your toys and leave you little contributions.
It seems to be some of the fun of cats without the litter box and hairballs. Wait a minute, I’d better check on that. There might be some sort of virtual digestive nuggets and fuzzpukes, but if so, they’re probably really, really cute.
I stumbled across this pattern on Pinterest and dragged out a bit of my “therapy yarn.”
I used a little bit of Bernat Cottontots in Sweet Cream, some Red Heart Bijou in Malted, and some kind of plain black worsted mystery yarn.
I was all ready to get started when I noticed that the pattern told me to make only three legs. SCREEEEECH! (That’s me putting on the brakes.) A discussion ensued.
Yes, yes, I know in the game there are often only three legs showing. We probably should assume the other leg is still there somewhere, but in a two-dimensional drawing on a phone game, we only see three at a time. But when I am making a three-dimensional amigurumi cat, I don’t want to make it with only three legs. Poor little guy!
My daughter and I went back and forth a bit until I caved and (mostly) followed the pattern directions.
I love how it turned out. (Thanks Rachchua, it’s an adorable pattern.) I’ll like it even better once I sew a fourth leg onto the back where no one will see it but me. 🙂
So last night I was crocheting along with high ambitions for a shrug for my daughter. I was really enjoying the artsiness of this novelty yarn:
And then about half way through the skein, it all suddenly turned into this:
What? What? It turned from a nice ball of novelty yarn into a matted, knotted, maddening clump of string and lint. Maybe I should have pulled the yarn from the center instead of unrolling it from the outside of the ball. It quickly disintegrated into 15 minutes of untangling, 1 minute of crocheting, then more untangling. Yikes!
So…now I have finished my scarf! And I have a clump of string and lint available for anyone that wants it…
I picked up a couple of skeins of mystery yarn at Big Lots a couple of years ago. It’s Gala yarn, which seems to be a hodgepodge of (maybe) big name brand yarn that is slightly irregular, or discontinued..or something like that. Sometimes Gala yarn is weird and sometimes it is gross and sometimes it is nice. I’ll classify this as weird. 🙂
It’s a light yellowish color (or maybe a very pale lime green) and it looks like cotton crochet thread with caterpillar-like clumps of sparkly fluff. Does that sound weird? It might be a little weird. The thready part does not feel like cotton. It feels like acrylic to me. The fluffy parts feel like polyester, and I suppose the sparkly bits are nylon.
I’ve played with it a bit and decided to crochet a big double crochet rectangle. Very complex, I know! And then I’ll turn the rectangle into a shrug or something. My daughter is into shrugs right now because her school does not allow tank tops. With a shrug, she can wear her tank top but have herself technically covered. It’s a bit of a dance because we live in North Carolina and it gets hot long before the schools are allowed to turn on the air conditioning. So she needs to stay cool, but covered.
I’ll keep working on this as a just-before-bed project. So far, I’m having trouble deciding if this is fun and artsy, or if it looks like a cat mauled it and then rolled it in lint. Maybe a little of both.
I picked up a skein of Elefant Twist olefin fiber macrame cord (from the 1970s) at the thrift store in a bag of other crafting goodies. It was dirty and it smelled bad.
I knocked together a little crocheted basket in less than an hour. I melted the yarn ends to keep them from unraveling. Then I tossed it in the washing machine. No need to even drip dry – the spin cycle took care of all that. It looks (and smells) nice and clean.
I guess this is why rug makers like olefin so much!
I’m going to try washing the rest of the skein in a mesh bag so that I don’t have to handle it when it’s so dirty.
I had about half a skein of pink variegated embroidery floss left, and I figured if I used it all up, I wouldn’t have to bother putting it away where it belonged. Plus, Porky needed a hat. Sorry about the flash.
See? All done. But now that I’m finished with it, I decided I don’t like it after all. And if anybody tries to put it in my kennel, I’ll just freak the heck out all over the place. Why can’t those humans of mine just leave things the way I liked them? I suppose I’ll get used to it, but for now, I feel the need to assert myself. I guess I’ll just have to dominate everyone who comes outside for a few days. That way they’ll all know I’m still the King of the Back Yard.
Aww, here’s my favorite human. I guess he’s alright.
‘Scuse me, Lucky here. While my human subjects are outside messing around in the kennel, I’m strutting my Man Pants in the house. I got bored, so I hopped up to see what the aged female was doing. Guess what? When she forgets to lock the computer, I don’t need a password. I guess this is my blog now!
What to say, what to say? I guess you might want to know I’ve been to the university (NC State) so they can learn about my magnificence. Everyone there was most impressed with my beauty and majesty, and also the size of my gonads, not that I’m bragging.
They also noticed that I have some parasitic worms in my Contribution, so that’s why my human subjects are out there messing around in my kennel. They’re replacing the nice mud floor with concrete, as if they think that will stop me from eating anything I like.
I don’t like the way this is looking, to be honest here. I like having soft things on my toes. Luckily for me, the aged female human also left some stuff lying around, so I’m going to whip me up a little rug.
I’ll make it easy on my subjects and use some polyester so they can clean it up easily, because I think I’m going to leave some Contributions on it pretty regularly. (Get it? Regularly?)
Pretty good if I say so myself. I’ll finish this rug later, maybe when I figure out a way to rig me up some opposable thumbs. I want to head back out to the yard. But first, I’m going to lock in a new password here and maybe run some corn through the air popper. Catch you later!
