Category Archives: crochet

Flowery Sachets

It's the time of year when everything has moved indoors and the windows are staying firmly shut against those grey skies. The more time I spend puttering around the house, the more I want everything to smell lovely to help combat those winter blues. I've been making my own chai mix on the stovetop and that tends to do the trick downstairs, but upstairs it's a no-man's land of bunnies and ever damp towels. SO, I decided to make some lavender and cedar sachets to tuck into drawers and hang on doorknobs and hangers in my closet.

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Crochet Crazy!

Ever since Kim and Jenny K taught me to crochet a few weeks ago, I've been on a roll! I've hardly put the hook down. I grabbed some scraps of Brava Bulky in Black, White and Dove Heather and made a few Granny Squares to make a pillow! The squares are all done and ready to be attached - I'll just have to pester Kim again next week to show me how to put them all together. I'll sew a pillow base with some of the beautiful fabric from Connecting Threads...

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Teaching an old dog new tricks

Here at Knit Picks headquarters, there are a lot of talented folks. Between us, Connecting Threads (our quilting division) and Artist's Club (our painting division), there are lots of different skills represented. Recently we started having some lunchtime classes to share these skills, and over the past two weeks I've been learning to crochet! Now, this isn't the first time I've learned to crochet. I believe this is actually the fourth. Each time I try to learn, I inevitably do something really wonky, and give up the failed attempt. But this time, I'm determined to make it stick. I grabbed one of our Harmony Crochet Hooks and some Brava Bulky, and set to making quite a mess of things. But after two lessons and a lot of "no, no, through that loop," and "you're going the wrong way!" from Jenny K and Kim, I managed to make my first granny squares! They're not stellar, but it is the first time I've ever crocheted something that looked like the thing it was supposed to be...

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Flowers in Fall

I've been steadily honing my crochet skills over the past few weeks. I started with some plain, square dishcloths in single crochet, then amped things up when I started and finished a Granny Stripe blanket in two weekends and finally I've tackled my first project "in the round"! I was inspired to pick up one of my smaller hooks when I spotted Yvestown's free crochet Flower Coaster Pattern on Pinterest yesterday.

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Podcast Episode 198: Adorably Spooky Toys for Halloween

This week, we have another bonus episode of the Knit Picks podcast and it is chock-full of adorably scary projects perfect for Halloween! First, Stacey talks with Anna Hrachovec of Mochimochi Land about her newest book Super-Scary Mochimochi. This latest collection of patterns still highlights the cute and clever knitted tiny toys that Anna is known for, but with a scary and creepy twist! Hear all about Anna’s design process for this book, what some of her favorite patterns are, her inspiration for the designs, along with fun behind-the-scenes stories. Next up, Stacey chats with crochet designer Deja Jetmir about her newest eBook Wonderfully Horrific Crochet. In her book, Deja celebrates all of the camp and fun of classic horror themes with 14 patterns for crocheted softies. Hear all about how Deja started designing her own crochet patterns and learn more about the design ...

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Crochet Lion Square

With all the crocheting I've been doing recently, I'm very happy with this week's Freebie Friday! This adorable 8x8" Lion Square is by IDP designer Maggie Menzel.  She originally designed it for the Knit A Square charity & kindly shared it with us!

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Long weekend projects

Last weekend was a long weekend for us - I had all these plans to finish up some works in progress, especially my Graham Scarf, so I can start on some bigger projects. Instead, I ran out of the Stroll Tonal I was using on Friday afternoon (completely my fault, nothing to do with Erica's wonderful pattern.)  Luckily, Jenny is also working on a project in Goldrush & had some leftovers!  But this meant that I wouldn't be able to work on it all weekend.  And none of my other projects just seemed to appeal to me and I just fell into a blah mood. So I decided I needed cute quick projects to make me smile. I got out the brightest Swish colors in my stash and my E hook & had some fun!

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“Demoralizing” is not a word I use lightly; it lives in a secure lockbox and only gets to come out for special occasions. To use in a sentence: Carefully trying to recreate the Gibson Girl hairstyle is demoralizing. Or alternately: Learning to knit, as I’m now openly doing while surrounded by abnormal prodigies in this office, is demoralizing. But pish-posh, I say. You guys have approximately 250% more confidence in my knitting future than I do, which is the OPPOSITE of demoralizing. Now I’m just afraid I’ll let you down! Regardless, I poured over all of your thoughtful comments on my last post and a few major themes emerged: 1.) The internet and its largess of educational wealth is the best thing since sliced bread. 2.) “Girl, it’s just YARN. Use some pretty stuff. Have fun with it! You’ll be fine!” 3.) Practice, practice, practice. 4.) Crocheting creates a different mindset; it’ll take time to rewire your mind for knitting. And there you have it. My biggest mistake thus far is an essential misunderstanding of #4. In setbacks, I’ve been acting as though I’ve failed at “crocheting-with-needles”, as opposed to “knitting”. Yes, all forms of fiber crafting share some similarities and a mutually supportive community, but assuming that a crocheting background would give me an intermediate entrance into knitting is like saying, “I’m fairly adept at volleyball, so I must be decent at water polo”. There’s no gorgeous guarantee that you’ll be able to translate those skills to a different medium, and there’s certainly no way to do so without oceans of practice. In the midst of a challenge, I really like to break momentarily and rest on my laurels. As I knit my first garbled swatch, I repetitively thought: “You can still crochet, you’re okay at crochet, you’re alright at that, you can definitely make nice crocheted scarves, you can make pretty crocheted collars”.

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Decision made!

A few weeks back, I talked about the difficulty in choosing a new sweater pattern to work on. I see so many beautiful patterns, it's hard to make up my mind! But I finally decided to challenge myself and crochet my first sweater: I went with the Fiji Cardi! I enjoy crochet and this was one of the best sweaters I've seen - plus I have some lovely new Chroma to use.

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Custom Crochet Sweaters – and a contest!

update 4/12 - Contest is over! Thank you for your entries - we'll announce the winners later today!   As you can tell from my last few blog posts, I've caught the crochet bug.  I haven't yet attempted a crochet sweater but I've been sorely tempted by a new book - Custom Crochet Sweaters by Dora Ohrenstein

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