Time Machine, Pt 2 (Magic Yarn Swap)

This is something I am sooo excited about.  I have been wanting to do a magic yarn swap ever since I first heard about them, and we finally did one over on GCM.  If you aren't familiar with what a magic yarn swap is, it's super fun.  The basic idea is that you send your partner a skein of yarn that has all sorts of little goodies or treasures wound inside the yarn, so she uncovers them as she uses the yarn.  It's like Christmas, only so much better, because it's YARN!  In fact, when I received mine, I couldn't wait to use the yarn and unwrapped all my treasures right away, and I told Jimi he should feel free to wrap all my presents in yarn from now on.  LOL.  Anyway, for this swap, we needed to send a pattern, yarn that worked with the pattern, and at least 6 treasures.  Here's what I sent to my partner:

The Pattern:  Quinn Cabled Bag

All the goodies!

Made this bag and there's a deck of cards inside

Made this bag, too, and the gingerbread spice candles were something I'd made previously and had on hand

Double ended stitch markers for knitting or crocheting

Everything wrapped up and boxed up

I had such a hard time choosing the yarn and pattern for this package.  We each filled out a questionnaire about our interests and favorite colors, yarns, etc. but we were supposed to keep it a secret whose name we had, so that it was a surprise when we received our yarn.  I never thought it would be so hard to pick out a pattern and yarn for another person!  She really liked it, though, and said she'd actually been needing a new handbag, so it worked out great.  This was also the swap I did the needle roll for, and she hadn't had anything to keep her needles in before that, so she loved that too.  Phew!

And of course, I have to share what I received.  : )  I'm only going to share 1 shot of everything once I had it all unwrapped, because I don't have any really good shots.  I couldn't find the camera when I was unwrapping the  yarn, and didn't have the patience to look for it, so I just used my cell phone.  The pattern is a lariat necklace / scarf using crochet thread, but I'll share more about that when I finish making it.

There's 3 different colors of crochet thread which will be wonderful for making jewelry; a bath fizzy; a spring meadow scented candle (which I keep going back to, it's just loverly, ahhhh); some beads; a pink charm that says "love hard"; a package of stitch markers; a package of really pretty pink swirly magnets; an assortment of tea; and a couple drawstring bags.  Those bags especially are going to be super useful, I'm always looking for little bags like that to keep things organized in my project bag.  And I'm so excited to use the thread, beads, and charm to make some really pretty jewelry!

Time Machine, Pt 1

You may have noticed I haven't posted in a while... like all month... *blush*  I have been taking photos, though, so we're just going to pretend I'm posting these on time, all right?  You good with that?  Oh good, I knew you would be.  : )  I'm also going to try to write up a few posts now while I have time, and schedule them to post later in the week.  A little experiment!  We'll see if that works out.  ; )

So for this post, I just wanted to share a couple quick projects that I'm rather proud of.  This was a knitting needle roll that I sewed to send to someone in a magic yarn swap (more about that later this week!)  I'm really proud of it because I do not sew.  This was pretty easy, though, it came together in just a few hours and was relatively painless.  There's 3 layers of pockets with different sized slots for needles and notions.   It was easy enough, I even made a few changes to the tutorial and made a crochet hook case for another gift!  The link for the tutorial I used is here.

The other project I wanted to share is this mix and match bracelet.  It's actually 3 bracelets, with lobster clasps at each end.  The lobster clasps clip onto the rings of the magnetic clasp, so you can take them on and off easily to choose which bracelets you want to wear together - 1, 2, or all 3!  I really love magnetic clasps for bracelets, since they're easy to put it on yourself.  This was for another swap, but I really like it, so I think I'll be making another one for myself.

Fishy Fishy

Would you believe that picture is the inside of a table?  It is!  Here, I'll zoom out a little and show you the edges -

 

The edge of the picture is covered in gold foil, and then there's shells all around that.  You can see the lights from the window reflected in the table top, too.  Obviously, this isn't an actual aquarium.  It's more a light box - you have to push a button and it lights up from the bottom, everything is translucent so the light shines through it, and some of the fish move, scrolling across from left to right.  I was actually surprised how well these photos turned out, especially considering I didn't have my camera with me so these are from my phone. 

Oh, I suppose you'd like to know what type of place has tables like this?  It's Ella's Deli, of course.  My sis came for a visit last wee and took Mom, me, and the little one there for a snack of fried pickles and ice cream sundaes (two separate dishes!).  And no, she is not pregnant.  She just was wanting fried pickles, and you can't go to Ella's without getting ice cream.  *giggle*  You can see more photos from Ella's in this post.  I can't wait for it to warm up enough for them to open up the carousel!

A Quick Peek

It still needs lining, actually, both of these still need lining, so quite a full ta-dah post yet, but the crochet is finished, all the ends sewn in, and all the pieces sewn on.  I finished off the top of the 3Rs bag by turning the 3rd round of the pink into a straight edge following some advice from one of the lovely ladies on the We Love Lucy Ravelry group.  And oh I can't believe I didn't somehow make note of the blog post where she explained how she turned the edge of her ripple into straight - of course hers was the ripple blanket, but we were both using Lucy's neat ripple pattern, and it worked perfectly on my bag.  Anyway, then I topped that off with the yellow shell edging, added a couple flowers and the straps, and that's it!  That smaller bag in the corner, with the straight stripes, that is a makeup case, which you can find the pattern for it here.  That'll be my hook/notions case, as the 3Rs bag is going to be a project bag.

And now it's bedtime for a certain little boy, well past it actually - I'll have to come back and edit in the links for the patterns later after he's asleep.  TTFN - ta ta for now!

PS - I'm so much happier with this photo than with the yucky no light ones from last week.  And I actually made an attempt at composition!  Go me!

PPS - Took me til this morning, but the links are in now.  Enjoy!

Oops

I almost missed posting a photo from last week - well I almost missed taking a photo last week too.  I thought I only managed to get 1, but when I went to get it off my phone, I did discover 2 more that I had forgotten about.  They hardly count though, just quick shots of my mother trying on new glasses.  Sad.  Only 1 photo and it's taken with my phone.  *Shakes head*  I will really have to do better this week.

Still, the photo's not all bad.  Doesn't that pie look just delicious?  It totally was.  Strawberry truffle, mmmm-mm.  *Licks lips*  Jimi and I shared it for dessert after our lunch date on Valentine's Day.  I could have eaten it all myself, though, soooo yummy.  But sharing is nice too.  : )

I did realize at some point last week that I have been somewhat failing on the photo front all along.  I mean, the point of taking so many photographs is kind of to improve your photography skills, something I have made absolutely no attempt at so far.  Doh.  It's true that doing this Project 52 has helped push me to take more photos and to post more regularly, so that's something.  And in my defense, natural light around here is something of a myth, something I used to know about but couldn't begin to guess where to actually find it these days... ok, maybe that's exaggerating a bit, but really, February in Wisconsin is quite gray and dreary and not at all nice for taking bright colorful well-lit pictures.  : P  But regardless, I shall begin to put more effort into taking better photos and not just snapping something at the last minute so I can say I did it.  *blush*

And on the crochet front... well it feels like I've got a million projects on the go, all of them right at that stage where they are close enough to done that all that's left is the fiddly bits and no actual hooking.  : (  That's a little exaggerated, too, I guess.  I've got a few projects done and just needing photos and care labels.  My hook case for my 3R's bag just needs lining sewn in - the lining is cut out, but there is some question as to if we got it sized appropriately and it is frustrating me no end.  The bag itself is agonizingly close to being done and yet feels so far yet - actually, it just needs the straps and flowers and leaves sewn on.  Got one strap sewn on last night and then discovered it was twisted, so I have to cut free one end of it and redo that.  Doh.  And make 2 more flowers and all the leaves.  I'm hoping to get most if not all of that finished up today, certainly by the end of the week.  Won't be 100% this week though, as I don't expect to get the lining in it.  And then on top of all that, I've got 2 jewelry projects I need to be working on, one about halfway done and the other not even started.  And that's just the "priority" stuff - I've got at least 4 or 5 more projects lined up that I'm waiting to start on until most/all of these current ones are finished.  Whew!

R2 and R3

I do apologize for the awful photo.  I once again left it for the last minute, which meant I was taking it last night, well after dark.  I'm only sharing 1 today despite taking several because they are all just so blech.  But anyway... here is the bag part of my 3R's bag and you can see that R2 and R3 are Ripples and Ridges.  Sorry to keep you waiting so long for this little mini reveal!  I have to say, the concept for the ridges came from an ad in the back of a crochet magazine which was for a pattern book of Bavarian crochet offered by Annie's Attic.  I fell totally in love with the designs and hurried to look up Bavarian crochet online... well, it's basically just a Catherine wheel pattern with back post stitches to give the ridged effect.  To which I said, oh, post stitches, well I can do that, and adapted the idea to this ripple... Um, I think I like the diamond-y pattern it creates on the Catherine wheel better.  I do like this, it's very unique, but... the bag has turned out rather larger than I anticipated (I'm not bad at math, but I still managed to mess it up.  Fixable, but the bag is HUGE) and I am starting to get rather over it at this point.  Ah well.  I am forced to a bit of a break as I've run out of the yellow yarn and the store that carries it is closed on Sundays.  But I'm almost to the end of the 2nd row of yellow, then 1 more round of yellow, 3 rounds of pink, and I'll be ready for Finishing Touches - an edge (how do you edge a ripple?), straps, and lovely little flowers.  Those ought to go quite quickly, I would think, so with some luck, I'll have a full ta-dah!  post next weekend.

Catching Up

*Sigh*  Once again, it is Sunday morning and I am only just now finding the time/peace/quiet to get a post written.  This is I think the 3rd week in a row, so it's starting to turn into a pattern.  I really wanted to post several different things this week, but just haven't had a chance to sit down and type it all out.  So this is actually going to cover about 3-4 different posts of things I wanted to share this week.  Oh well, better than never posting at all, I suppose, and at least this week I managed to get photos taken during the week so I wasn't scrambling to do that yesterday afternoon.

So anyway, first things first - isn't my little guy up there just adorable?  That's his very own yarn and crochet hook, by the way.  The idea being that if he has his own to play with, he will stay out of mine.  It even kind of works, sometimes.  LOL.  I joke that it's easy to tell what his parent's hobbies are, just by looking at what his favorite toys are.  Guitars are definitely number 1, he loves to play Rock Band with Daddy.  He has his own little toy guitar of course, but he also plays the RB controllers, a little 3 inch Christmas ornament guitar, and if none of those are around, he'll happily substitute anything vaguely guitar shaped, such as the baby monitor - which is guitar shaped only in that it has a larger "body" and a long "neck" (the antenna).  LOL.  Anyway, yarn is also pretty high on his list of fabulous toys.  I have to be careful taking him to a store, as he wants to squish and dig his fingers into every single skein.  And it's kind of a relief to have him so focused on guitars now, because for a long time there was absolutely no way I could crochet at all if he was around and awake.  Unless I wanted to stop after every other stitch to chase him out of my yarn or untangle him, or take away the scissors... you get the idea.  ; )

So, on to the Lucy bag.  I was going to share with you R2 and R3, but I realized that I didn't actually take those photos.  Oops.  Well, you can see that I got the base done, and it's not so round as I might like, but... oh well, it's going to be full of yarn when it's finished, so whatever.  It does make me a little anxious how the lining is going to work out, though.  I've made quite a bit of progress since this photo, I just started the first yellow stripe last night.  I've made a couple little variations on the original Lucy bag, which I'll reveal this week with the last 2 R's and will explain why I'm calling it my 3Rs bag, but it means that each color stripe is 3 rounds instead of 1.  I think it's turning out quite well, I'm excited to see it taking place.  The fabric there on the right is going to be the lining, and it's flannel, so it's soft and sturdy.  I do love flannel.  The pink fat quarter is going to be for pockets, because I have to have pockets, and to line a little bag I made from this makeup case pattern.  The zipper is for the little bag, which I just realized I need to get pictures of that too.  Doh.  I guess I know my assignment for this week!

Another little thing making me happy - besides that pretty pretty flannel - I got this book this week for 30% off!  I've flipped through it before, and dithered about buying it, (buy it?  or just get it from the library as needed?  hmmm... ) but just couldn't afford it at the time - then when I had the money and decided I did want to go ahead and actually buy it to have it on hand because there are just so many FABULOUS flower patterns in it... well by then, I couldn't find it anywhere!  :(  So it was a very nice surprise to see it in the pattern racks at JoAnns this week and during a rare sale on books and patterns AND I happened to have the money to spare for it.... Oh happy!  I've been so involved in the bag project, I haven't actually even looked through it again yet, but I'm happy just to know that it's in my drawer with my other patterns and books, waiting patiently for me to need whatever sort of flowers I can imagine.  Which will be soon - I am really wanting some new hair clips, and I'm sure there will be the perfect flower(s) here just waiting for me to steal a few minutes to make them.  Happy sigh.  : )

And to wrap things up... I promised to reveal the finished project of those little flowers and leaves once it had been delivered to the person I made it for.  I'm quite pleased with how it turned out.  The card with the writing on it is slipped into clear photo corners rather than fastened down, so the text can be rotated to face any direction and the whole thing can hang vertical or horizontal.  It took me AGES to decide what to make for this friend - I  had the quote and a color palette and a concept of flowers to work with and pretty much free reign beyond that - but once I saw Alice's patterns for the flowers and leaves, I knew they were exactly what I needed, and everything fell into place pretty quickly after that.  I was extremely pleased to have it finished and mailed off, since it had been on the list to do for over a year.  And my friend tells me she loves it too, so that's quite a relief!  I don't think it's likely I'll be making much in the way of more wall art any time soon, the painting is too time/space intensive, but I'm happy with how this turned out to know that crocheting small bits is a good/fast alternative to the painting, and certainly unique, not something you see every day.  It's something to keep in the back of my head for an option for projects, you know?


All right, loveys, I need to wrap up, I've got another trip to JoAnns planned for this morning (glee!) and work this afternoon and Jimi has stuff he needs to take care of... the weekends are never long enough.  I will try to post again before next week, but if I don't manage it... have a good week!