I just love making these.  They're easy to do, and look really neat!

You need a Styrofoam ball (the fuzzy-looking ones, not the smooth ones), a bunch of fabric, and a butter knife.  Cut pieces of fabric, no bigger than 2 inches across, I'd say, then lay the piece of fabric on the Styrofoam ball and use the knife to push the edges down into the ball (I usually push down on the fabric about 1/8 - 1/4 of an inch from the edge.  As you go, cut more fabric pieces in different shapes, just eye-balling what you need to fill the remaining spaces.

I added the ribbon to hang them by using a straight pin.  I pushed the pin through the two ends of the ribbon, added some Tacky glue on the pin, then pushed it into one of the valleys between fabric pieces.  They hold pretty well.



My mom just loves these. ^_^

I just love this little kitty!  And making them is pretty easy, too.

I got the pattern from the book "Gifts Kids Can Make" (find it here: http://www.amazon.ca/Gifts-Kids-Make-Sheila-McGraw/dp/1895565359/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206913620&sr=8-6 )

They don't make good toys for little kids - it'd be really easy for a kid to pull the yarn out - but I find that older kids like them, as do adults (I know *I* do!).  I've made lots of these over the years, but didn't think to take pictures of them all!

Here's the one I made for myself:


Bird's eye view:


(Yes, that is a crescent moon on her forehead.  Hello, my name is Becky, and I'm a Sailormoon-aholic.)

The book isn't too bad as far as pattern books go.  There's a pattern for some little yarn birds that are pretty cute, and I still want to try making that basket on the front.  Other patterns inside might appeal to lots of folks on Craftster, though there are some in there that made me scratch my head.  At any rate, it was well worth the money for me for the cat pattern alone.

I made this blanket a while ago.  It started with a pattern I bought from Mary Maxim: 

http://www.marymaxim.ca/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_10003_50001_3074457345616757663_-1_3074457345616686307_3074457345616686308

I love rainbows, and I thought this one looked pretty neat in the picture.  It turns out that it was even cooler than I thought.  This is the pattern that go me into using the Bernat Baby Co-ordinates yarn, and using it two-stranded, and "blending" colours that way.  (It occurs to me... I use an awful lot of Bernat yarn... I should get some stock in them, or something. lol)

Since the blanket was for me, naturally the original pattern wasn't big enough, so I just kept going until it was big enough.  If I were to do it again, I think I'd make the coloured stripes wider towards the outside, but oh well. ^_^

Here it is on my old twin-sized bed:


ETA: here's a close up of the stitches.  I've pointed out where the colour changes are:  P= purple, B=blue, G=green

I made an afghan for my mom for Christmas two years ago.  I thought I should post more pictures of things I made, so here it is, sorta.  I only have a picture of one octagon from the afghan.  I'm planning on making one for myself, but with purple flowers instead.  The original pattern has pink ones.

Here's the link to the pattern:
http://megan.cc/RosesBlanket/

It uses Bernat Satin yarn, which I absolutely love working with.  It's so soft, and easy to use. Yay!

Here's the pic:

(sorry about how dark it is... not sure why I didn't use the flash...)

ETA: I e-mailed my parents and asked for a pic of the finished blanket.  Here it is!:



P.S. if you are going to try this pattern my best advice is to count your petals before you continue on.  If you look carefully at that pic, you'll see that one of the "octagons" in the bottom row only has 7 sides.  (That made piecing it together an adventure, let me tell you!  It wasn't until after I had it all together and had given it to mom when we noticed that it only had 7 petals.  Oops!  At least she has an original, right? lol

I've been making slippers to wear at work. 

A friend of mine turned me on to how to make these.  There's no pattern, really.  You just take a non-straight yarn (I used Bernat Boucle); do a couple of chains, join them together, then use dc's, increasing from the toe, then continuing in a tube until you reach where your foot meets your leg on the top, after that, just crochet in a kind of U shape until you reach your heel.  Tie off, then use the tail from that to sew up the back.  I just keep putting it on as I go to see how many more rows I need. 

I did find with the Boucle yarn (or maybe it's just the pattern, or the nature of crochet) that it stretches a lot, so when I was "measuring" it I tried to pull it on my foot as tightly as I could.  Doing that seems to make them last a bit longer.

Here are some pics!





(yes, I have gigantic amazon feet... size 11 women's, woo!)

I found a package of five plastic party leis at the dollar store when I was shopping for the Dollar Store challenge.  I bought a pack thinking I might use them for my challenge entry, but it turns out I didn't need them.

In true Craftster style, I wanted to know how they were made, hoping that it was one long piece of plastic scrunched up, so I cut the string on one to find out.  It turns out, this is exactly the case!  So, I'm crocheting with it.  Here's a preliminary pic:



Once I've used up the entire orange lei I'll post another pic to give an idea of how much plastic is in one of these.

It seems to me to be an excellent (and cheap!) way to add colour to a crocheted (or knitted, or other) projects made out of plastic bags.  The plastic is 2 inches wide.

I was inspired by this post: http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=231365.msg2530080#msg2530080

What if we had a challenge where you had a certain budget, but had to send a non-crafty person (who hasn't been prepped on what crafty things you can do) to the craft store to get you the supplies.  The challenge is to see what you can make out of those items.

(I think I'd agree with the original post, though... this might be *too* challenging)

To make a long story short: I fell on the ice on Feb. 11th while walking to work and managed to sustain a rotator cuff injury in my right shoulder.  Boy, has my life been boring since!  No crafting, no music making, barely any typing.  You know there's something wrong with the world when the most exciting thing in my life is my *job*.

Well, I'm slowly getting back into crafting (though, my shoulder reminds me when it thinks I'm over-doing it).

I finished off a baby blanket that I started ages ago at my parents' house, and when I was spreading it out to take a picture I learned a valuable lesson: never do drugs and crochet.  When I started up with the blanket again I was on my first weekend on the Tramacet.  The pattern that apparently started out as "four rows of each colour" turned into "three rows of each colour" (this is after *counting* them).  And at the time I remember wondering why I had to add two more colours to make it long enough. Hmm...

So, here's a picture.  This is the first baby blanket of many that is going to Neighbour To Neighbour's layette program in Hamilton, Ontario.  They're giving layette sets to poor new mothers.   I just love this yarn!  It's Bernat Baby Co-ordinates, used with two strands.

My New Year's Resolution for this contest is to do more crafting for charity this year.

One of the charity projects I'm working on is making hats, scarves, and mitts for young school children.  I haven't quite worked out how to make mitts (*yet*) but I make the hats and scarves on my Knifty Knitter.

My entry for this contest is as follows:

I wanted to have a way to track how much I get done.  Normally I take the stuff I've made with me to my parents' house as I do it (the charity project is associated with my mom's sorority), so I won't ever have a pile of finished hat sets to look at and keep me motivated.  My first thought was for some kind of thermometer poster to colour in, like people use when fund raising, but that didn't seem crafty enough for me.  I decided instead to make a rug using the yarn ends I cut off the hats and scarves.  When the rug is done I'll have a neat memento and a LOT of hats and scarves.

It really has worked as far as motivation is concerned... I have at least 6 more pieces done than I thought I would by this point!  It has also had the side effect of making me leave longer ends for weaving in (not having enough to weave in has been a problem of mine in the past!)

Here are the pics:

The stuff I've made since I learned of the contest:



The rug "pattern" created in Paint:


Planned out on the rug mesh:


The progress on the rug as of today (Feb 1, 2008) I didn't realize until after I took the picture that the rug is upside down. Oops!:



You can see my Knifty Knitter loom and the Duct Tape / Ziploc wallet I made to hold the loom hook, scissors, measuring tape, and yarn needle in that last picture.

I also created a new crafting blog to keep track of my progress throughout the year:  http://craftymio.livejournal.com/  (there's a picture of the inside of the wallet there, in addition to the pics I've posted here)

This is my first contest entry, and I'm terribly excited about it!

Thanks for looking!

Edit:  A new progress picture of the rug (I have since run out of this yarn, but more is on its way because my bf is *awesome*)  This time it's upside up! (of all things)



Good luck everyone!

Hello!

I've been hanging around this site for what seems like forever.  I haven't posted much, until recently, that is.

I made the mistake of poking around the forums all day today from work and now I seem to be addicted.  I've already convinced many of my friends to consult me before throwing just about anything out (darn you, recycling forum!).

I originally joined for the crochet section, but I find myself spending time in many of the other areas.  I recently posted pictures of a cake I decorated for my Dad's birthday, and a chain of origami dodecahedrons (dodecahedra?).  I'm debating attempting to make mittens on my Knifty Knitter for the current knitting challenge (I likely won't get to it until the challenge is over, but the thought is there!).  One day I might actually get around to posting something I've crocheted, of all things.

Time for me to pack up a craft to take with me to work tomorrow... I can't believe how much time I've wasted on the subway commute to work when I could have been crafting!

So, greetings from Toronto, and happy crafting!
Becky