[Pea]

I am in high school, and at my school the week before homecoming is spirit week and each day has a theme. One of the themes was twin day. My friend and I decorated shirts with two peas in a pod on the front.

When we went online to look up a picture of two peas in a pod to base the shirt on, we came across some pictures of crocheted peas in a pod, and my friend said that she wanted me to make her one. I don't think she was serious but she is getting two crocheted peas in a pod for her birthday regardless of whether or not she really wanted them!  

But then when I went back to look at the patterns, there weren't any that were exactly what I was looking for so I just made up my own pattern. It's my first pattern make from scratch and although it was really simple I'm still proud of myself! It is about 5" long, 2" wide, and 1 1/2" tall.

The peas have buttons attached to the back, so that they are removable.
 

and here's a picture of the empty pod.


and closer up of one of the button holes.


Thanks for looking!

11/11/08

I have never written a pattern before, so it may not be very good. If you have any questions feel free to ask and if you use my pattern please post pictures!

Pea (make two) worked in rounds with out slip stiches
1. ch 2, sc 2 in 2nd ch (4)
2. sc 2 in each st around (
3. *sc, inc once* repeat around (12)
4. *sc 2, inc once* repeat around (16)
5-6. sc around (16)
7. *sc 2, dec once* repeat around (12)
8. *sc, dec once* repeat around (
    -Now would be a good time to stuff your pea
9. dec around (4)
    -Cut yarn and finish off, closing up the hole. If desired you can sew a button onto one side and paint or embroider a face onto the other side.

Pod worked in rows
1. ch 2, sc 2 in 2nd ch (2)
2. ch 1, inc twice (4)
3. ch 1, sc, inc twice, sc (6)
4. ch 1, sc, inc four times, sc (10)
5. ch 1, sc 3, inc four times, sc 3 (14)
6-10. ch 1, sc across (14)
11. (optional button hole) ch 1, sc 6, ch 2, skip next 2 sc, sc 6 (14)
12-16. ch 1, sc across (14)
17. repeat row 11
18-22. ch 1, sc across (14)
23. ch 1, sc 3, dec four times, sc 3 (10)
24. ch 1, sc, dec four times, sc (6)
25. ch 1, sc, dec twice, sc (4)
26. ch 1, dec twice (2)
    -Cut string and pull though loop. Put hook though both sides of pod at one of the corners of the pod. Sc the sides of the pod together for about 2 cm or 4 sts. Then sc across one edge of pod until you are about 2cm away from the pod's other corner and then sc the two sides togethr until you rech the corner. Cut yarn and finish off. Sc along the remaining unfinished edge. Cut yarn and pull through loop. sew in all loose ends.

This past Wednesday I had my sweet 16th birthday party with one of my best friends. Because we both love to bake we decided that we wanted to make our own cake, and this is what we came up with. This is our second multi-tired, fondant covered cake. The bottom tier is a 2 layer 10-inch classic yellow cake with buttercream icing, the middle tier is a 2 layer 9-inch chocolate cake with chocolate icing, and the top tier is a 2 layer 6-inch strawberry cake with some weird french vanilla icing which sounded really good when you read the recipe but really didn't turn out to great. We made all of the cake batter, icing, and fondant ourselves (never again will I dye my own black fondant). Sorry for the rambling and I hope you like the cake!


^ The completed cake


^ The cake without the two cupcakes and the top tier


^ Detail between the first and second tiers (sorry for fuzziness)


^ All SIXTEEN sticks of butter that were used in making the cake, icing, and fondant (talk about unhealthy!)

So my friends birthday and my birthday are only a couple of days apart and so for our 16th birthday we are going to have a HUGE birthday bash and we both love to bake so we decided that we would make our own cake for our Sweet 16th, but we don't want to just make any old cake we wanted to make an AMAZING cake, so we decided that we needed to practice first. So we got together on the last two days of Winter Break and we made this cake:


^The bottom teir is two 9 inch cakes and the top tier is two 6 inch cakes. We iced them in buttercream icing and then covered them in fondant and all of the decorations are either fondant or royal icing.


^This is the bow that we made out of fondant. You can see how it cracked a little, but we were still really happy with it.


^These are the fondant roses that my friend made. I think that they are gorgeous.

We made the batter and all of the icings and fondants for the cake from scratch. It took us a total of 10 hours to make including a hour or two of clean up. This was the first cake that either of us had ever decorated, and although it has quite a few mistakes we were both very proud of it.

I made this about 6 months ago but I didn't have a camera to take pictures with until this christmas when I got my camera.  The hardest part of making the purse was collecting the tabs because there is never any soda in my house.  So I drove all of my friends crazy by pestering them for soda can tabs. Please comment!






^the lining


^close up of the outside

To make my purse I made 2 side panels that each have 7 rows of 25 pop-tabs. Then I have a long skinny piece that makes up the other 2 sides and the bottom and that has 2 rows of 65 pop-tabs. Then I have the handle that is 1 row of 41 pop-tabs. So my purse has 521 pop-tabs in it.

My Purse measures about 6 1/2 inches tall: 8 1/2 inchs long: 2 inches wide. 

If I were to change anything about how I made my purse I would have made the long piece that made the 2 skinny sides and the bottom also part of the handle so that it would be more sturdy.

Here is the tutorial that I promised. Sorry that there arn't any pictures my camera is being stupid right now.  If I can I will try to get some uploaded.  This is my first tutorial to write so sorry if it is to long or confusing. Feel free to ask questions if you don't understand something.

TUTORIAL:

You will need
-Ton's of poptabs
-yarn, string, ribbon, or something that you can used to thread the poptabs together
-a yarn needle makes it a butt load easier to get the yarn through the holes of the pop tabs
-scissors (to cut stuff, duh)

To make my pop-tab purse I basically made short pop-tab belts and then sewed them together to make sheets of pop-tabs which I then attached to each other to make a purse and then I sewed a lining out of some $1 fabric I found at Wal-Mart.

For the belts I’m sure that you could use any of the versions that you can find but this is how I made them:

1.   Hold a pop-tab w/ the wrong side facing you and then put a tab w/ the right side facing you on top of that.  Then thread the yarn from back to front through the top hole of both tabs.

2.   Now scoot the tab on top over to the left so that it is only covering half of the bottom pop-tab. Place another tab (w/ the right side facing you) on top of the right half of the tab that has it’s wrong side facing you. Then bring the yarn diagonally down through the bottom hole of the tab you just picked up.  Then bring the yarn up through the bottom hole of the other tab that has its right side facing you. Do not pull the yarn through the tab with its wrong side facing you.

3.   Bring the yarn up diagonally and through the top hole of both the tab w/ its wrong side facing you and the tab that you picked up last.

4.   Pick up another tab and place it, with its wrong side facing you, under the tab on the right.  Then bring the yarn through the top holes of both the tab you just picked up and the tab that is on top of it.

5.   Then repeat steps 2-4 until you have the length that you want.  On one side of the “belt” it should form little x’s across the whole thing, a little like this: x x x x x x x x
On the other side it should sort of form little dashed lines, a little like this: _  _  _  _  _  _
         _  _  _  _  _ 



To attach the “belts” together I just turned them all over so that the side that I did not want facing out when I was finished was facing me.  Then I just whipstiched (I don’t know if this is the right word or not) the layer of tabs closest to me together.  Here is a picture to help show you what I mean:

The thick black line is the yarn. It is only going through the tabs that are purple in the picture which would be the ones closest to you.

I can't really help with the lining. All that I did was take all of the pieces when I was done and before I attached them to each other I took them and used them to make my self a pattern to use to sew the lining.


4/14/07- edited to add pictures and tutorial