green resalvaged purse

So I started this purse MONTHS ago, and it just didn't turn out the way I imagined it once it felted... I used a different brand of yarn for the base when I ran out of the expensive yarn for the rest of the purse, and it shrunk a lot more... plus for some reason the whole thing just looked crazy-misshapen when it was done. So I put it away for a while, and then wound up cutting a whole lot off of it, made a new base (and felted it separately) and hand-sewed the pieces back together to make a new purse.

So this is the final product. I like the color, but it still didn't wind up exactly right, so it doesn't sit well. I don't know if I'll use it much, but that's the story of my disaster purse.

In other news, I have a couple of other purses that I not only slaved over, but I even wrote patterns for them. But right now we're using the laundromat at our apartment complex, and it turns out the hot water cycle there isn't hot enough to actually felt them. So they're just sitting in my house waiting for me to figure out a way to get these felted.

Whenever that happens and I have final products (to make sure they actually look good when they're finished) then I want to find a couple of people to test the patterns to make sure they work. I'll let y'all know when I have something to show.

The Gourd Purse

I made this a month or so ago, but just finally got around to having The Chris photograph it for me. Both pieces are crocheted with Lion Wool, using a popcorn stitch for the bumps, then felted. I call this my gourd purse because once it was done I decided it looks very much like a gourd, although I don't think that was the intention.

In case it's hard to tell from the photos, the purse has a small handle and a large one; the large handle fits through the small one to close up the purse for carrying it. That does mean it takes a little more work to get things out of it, because you have to slide the handle out, but it's so cute that I decided I'm okay with it. I'm pretty happy with the metal ring for an accent, too... it's great for clipping my keys onto. And the little orange cozy is actually the perfect size for my ipod mini, but I find it comes in handy to hold my Marta card, my apartment complex gate card, and my chapsticks. You know, all the little things I need to have handy at a moment's notice.

And since this shade of green is currently my favorite color, the gourd has become my favorite purse.

I made these up on the fly and I'm still terrible and writing out patterns as I go, so I'm no help there. Sorry.

more felt coasters!

Friends of ours got married this weekend, and they requested handmade gifts for their wedding, so I decided to make another set of felt coasters for them. This time I went with brown and tan, and I actually steam-ironed them to make them more flat and well formed.

Chris suggested I do different designs on each coaster, instead of doing the same thing for each one like I did for my gray set. He thinks they look like crazy monsters, so while that wasn't my intention when I started, I guess the grommet can't help but look like an eye... but that means I have some pretty deformed monster coasters!

I'm also working on a couple other ideas with felt circles, but those will take a while to finish. I did make a couple other crazy felt things this past week that I'll have to get Chris to photograph... it was a crafty week for the Kendra.

I've got all sorts of ideas for things I want to make, and some of them are things Chris and I can work on together, which is really exciting... I think we make a good team, skill-wise. So hopefully we're able to do some of the things that have been floating around in my head, and then I'll have all kinds of new stuff to post later. But probably things will slow down the rest of this month, because we are moving to a new apartment soon, and I have some freelance stuff that needs to take precedence over crafty fun. Alas!

the coasters (above), and the trivet (below)

Felt bowl and coasters

So this isn't a new idea or anything, but after seeing tons of felt coasters on Etsy, I decided I needed to make my own. And a bowl and trivet to go with them. They make me kind of happy.

I made The Chris take a ton of pictures for me. Poor guy. We don't have any room to actually set up anything real for the photo shoot, so he has to improvise. A lot. But he's talented like that.

Maybe one of these days I'll try to block these so they are a little less frumpy. I'm bad at things like that though... all the crocheting and felting seems like no problem, but the process of blocking seems like too much work to me. I have no idea why.

Jaime's Phoenix

Not a lot of exciting things going on, but I do have a new amigurumi to show you. This is a phoenix I crocheted for Jaime's birthday.

luisa's bat

K-dawg emailed me and told me I needed to blog. And I've got a bit of downtime tonight hanging out in Lakeland, so I figured now was a good time.

This is the bat I made for my friend Luisa's 30th birthday. We stopped by to see her on Friday the 13th on our way down to Florida for a wedding.

Luisa used to work at the Luby Foundation outside Gainesville, Florida, where they housed a lot of bats. One time she took me and Tiffany on a tour and we had a blast. Here are some video and photos from our trip... 6 or 7 years ago.

Pi day!

It's my favorite math-alicious day again, and I almost MISSED it. Luckily some random website tipped me off. So I went out looking for pi-themed crochet, and I discovered that last year's post about pi day is in google's top 10 list for a search of pi day crochet ... go figure. I'm a nerd. (For those of you who have no idea what Pi Day is, including all my coworkers, here's the wikipedia page to explain it all.)

In honor of the day, here are a couple of pi-themed crochet things I found:

Transcendental Number as Personal Chronogram (Pi)

And a little less high art: the Pi Calculator Case

Happy Pi Day!

Deer, side view

Chris posted a photo of the deer I needle-felted him for Valentine's day, but he never posted a side-view, which I like better. So here is a side view of my first completed needle-felting project. (If you can't tell, I'm playing catch-up with posts this morning.

I've been really slack with crochet projects lately. I still need to finish that sweater, and I made a baby blanket for a friend at work, but I don't really have any fun new projects to post. Hopefully I'll get some time to work on some of the stuff floating around in my head soon.

Nora's Dragon

I posted this to my Flickr account a while back, but kept forgetting to post it here as well. This is the dragon I made for my friend Nora as a belated Christmas present (I think I managed to finish it right before the end of January).

I was inspired by this slightly fierce but friendly really dragon, but I wanted to come up with my own design. The first time around the face was more of an alligator's face, so I made my dad a gator for Christmas (but forgot to take a picture, alas).

More Instructables Awesomeness

Much to my surprise, I got an email today letting me know that my crocheted goldfish is one of the winners of the Lion Brand Yarn Challenge at Instructables.com. I had seen SO MANY great projects on there that I wasn't expecting to win at all, so I feel very honored.

In other news, our lives have been crazy and work has been crazy and so blogging has been... nil. But things are good, and we're starting to shop for a house in Atlanta, which is pretty exciting. I actually haven't done much crocheting lately, because I've been focussed on other things. I still have a ton of half-finished projects and ideas for projects that I want to work on... and I actually have photos of some things that I haven't posted yet.

But if you're here looking for craftiness, check out my husband's blog where he posted the tiny needle-felted deer trophy I made him for Valentine's day. It's my first needle felting project, I'm really happy with how it turned out. But he needs to post a side shot... it looks better from the side.

momma purse

For my momma's upcoming birthday, I crocheted her a purse. She got it in the mail today so now I can post photos of it! I recycled a metal clasp from another purse and started by crocheting right onto the clasp, and then building it down from there. I used Lion's Brand alpaca yarn (same as I used for my elephant), which I love the look of, but the alpaca hairs really shed all over and I wouldn't recommend it for anything that is going to be WORN, which is why I just use it for purses and amigurumi. And it's really soft, so the purse was really flimsy... I had to rig some metal wire inside to keep its shape, and kinda sew that into place, and then I hand-sewed a lining to go inside as well. (I'm still kinda scared of my sewing machine, so I decided hand-sewing was the way to go). It definitely isn't perfect craft (I'm not much of a sewer), but I'm pretty happy with it. And my momma sounded excited about it, so that's what matters.

rocking my socks off

Okay, just when I was thinking I was making some kinda cool stuff, I find this girl's blog and find someone making way cooler stuff. I'm so jealous of her mad crochet skills... I like how she makes her stuff more realistic, not just cutesy. Most amigurumi is just some colored circles and cute eyes and a smile, it's a bit more rare to find someone doing something more realistic. I also think she's a bit more determined to make a ton of them until she gets it right... I don't have that much determination. Usually I just go with whatever I can come up with, or I give up. I never thought of brushing my yarn to make it fuzzier, I will definitely have to experiment with that now. And I might hafta try making her tree frog. I love tree frogs.

Penguin wins!

My crochet penguin pattern won 2nd prize in the Instructables Homemade Holidays contest! Hooray! I'm pretty psyched to get a subscription to Craft magazine. I'm already addicted to their blog.

Crochet Goldfish Pattern

I made a goldfish this week, and I actually kept track of what I did and wrote a pattern for it. Since I'm kind of experimenting with writing patterns, I'm giving it away for free:

crochet goldfish pattern in Acrobat PDF format (right-click: Save Target As... in Internet Explorer)

I would love feedback from anyone who makes this. I'm thinking the yarn i used is a little too dark orange, I may go looking for another color yarn before i make another one.

All the photos are courtesy of my wonderful husband. Yay Chris!

my new hat

I made this last week to help keep my ears warm. My piercings get REALLY cold when it's cold and windy out. I also decided I needed more green in my wardrobe. I love this color green.

featured 2

New update, they also featured my penguin pattern. Pretty cool!

crochet purses

I was just organizing posts with labels and such, and I realized I never posted a picture of the purse I made Emily for her birthday, because I didn't want her to see it. Now I can post it. So here it is:

This was actually the second purse I made... the first one is the one I use every day.



(first purse)

These two were both crochetted with wool and felted. I actually have a couple others I just never took pictures of. Right now I'm working on a purse for my momma (not felted)... I actually need to get off the computer and hand-sew a lining for it... I'll post a photo once I finish that one.

featured...

So I posted photos of my crochet elephant on instructables for a contest... a few minutes later I got an email telling me they were featuring it on their homepage. Pretty cool!

I took a screenshot of it cuz I'm sure it won't last there long.

Crochet Penguin Pattern

Okay, I posted a pattern for my baby penguin on Instructables. This took way too much work.

crochet holidays

So between my birthday last week (I turned "too many" years old) and early Christmas gifts, it's been a very crochet holiday season. I'm pretty psyched with all the yarn and yarn gift certificates and similar crochet-erific gifts. And teas. I love yarn and teas, and apparently everyone who knows me knows it too, which is great. Oh, I also got two Oxfam Unwrapped gifts, irrigating a farmer's land and providing seeds to farmers. Pretty great! Anyways, back to the crochet.

I think the best crochet gift ever is the one that my friend Jaime gave me last week. It's a crochet hook with an LED light at the end, so I can crochet in the DARK! Why would I want to crochet in the dark? The main reason is road trips. We tend to drive long distances at night, and it kills me that I can't do anything useful in the car when it's dark. But now I can continue crocheting! Because I'm a crocheting maniac.

Pretty great stuff!