Afghan Envy Complete!

What happens when a project consumes you, AND your brain insists that 3:30 or 4:00 am is a great time to kick on and stress about the day? You have lots of quiet time in which to crochet lots of colorful hexagons and sew them together.  This project took just a little more than a month to complete, from start to finish.

You can see my start, and the pattern I put together based on photos from another source, in my previous post.

The finished afghan consists of 72 hexagons: eight each of eight main colors, and two each of four alternate colors. Since I'm a photographer and graphic artist, when it came time to plan the color layout, I naturally turned to photographs and photoshop, rather than a physical layout.  I photographed one hexagon of each color, using the dots in the viewfinder of my camera as a placement guide, so all the hexies were roughly the same size and orientation in the photographs. Used a piece of foam core as a background and photographed in the shade outside. Imported the pics into photoshop, selected out the hexagons, duplicated the layers the appropriate number of times, and digitally planned the layout.  Below is a pic of the layout in progress.

After I was happy with the arrangement, I exported the JPG and sent it to my phone. Instead of numbering hexagons, I just referred to my picture so I knew which color hexagon to grab next when I was assembling.

I used a reverse mattress stitch with medium gray yarn to sew the hexies together. Some of those stitches are visible on the back, but for the most part they disappear. I was very careful about weaving in all ends, so the back is nearly as pretty as the front.  The edging is a single crochet picot stitch (*sc in hexagon, chain 2, sc in 2nd chain from hook*, repeat in next stitch) in the same color as the hexagon.

I've already given this afghan away, but it turned out so well that I've got four hexies complete for another one. :)  This one will be for ME!

Afghan envy

Recently I pinned this utterly gorgeous afghan by CoCo Rose to my Crochet board on Pinterest.  I want one, I want one, I want one!!! 

The pin proved to be quite popular, and one Pinterester asked for the pattern.  Since I didn't make the afghan, I didn't have the pattern, and it turns out the original artist got the pattern from a book (details at the CoCo Rose link).  But I got to looking at the pictures and thought... "You know, that looks easy enough to figure out." So I did. 

It's a basic granny hexagon pattern, except the fourth round is v-stitches (dc, ch1, dc), rather than 3-stitch clusters (3dc). Please note that the pattern below is NOT the pattern from the book--it's my own kludge-up, based on pictures of hexagons made from the pattern in the book. Not the same thing.  The basic color palette and progression is blatantly copied from and inspired by CoCo Rose's afghan, though. Obvioulsy. :)

I used a size I/5.5mm hook, and my hexies are a smidge over seven inches from straight edge to straight edge, and eight inches in diameter at the corners.  All with Red Heart Super Saver worsted weight.  Here's a nice big pic of one of the hexies, followed by a very... um... non-professional-quality pattern in American terms.  Eight hexies made, 56 more to go.

Chain 4, join with slip stitch to form loop.

Round 1 (yellow in pic): Chain 2 (counts as first dc), dc in loop ch1, *2dc, ch1* five times for a total of six 'spokes.' Join to top of 1st dc. Fasten off.

Round 2 (pink in pic): Join new color at any chain space, ch2 (counts as first dc), 2dc in same chain space, ch1.  *3dc in next chain space, ch1* five times for a total of six clusters. Join to top of 1st dc. Fasten off.

Round 3 (green in pic): Join new color at any chain space.  Ch2 (counts as first dc), 2dc, ch1, 3dc in same chain space. Ch1. *3dc, ch1, 3dc, ch1* in each of the five remaining chain spaces. Join to top of 1st dc. Fasten off.  Your hexagon shape should now be obvious, with six distinct 'corner spaces' and six 'middle' spaces.

Round 4 (v-stitches in light aqua in pic): Join new color at any 'middle' chain space. Ch3 (counts as first dc and ch1), dc in same chain space.  In next chain space (first hex corner), dc, ch1, dc, ch1, dc, ch1, dc.   In next chain space (which will be a 'middle') dc, ch1, dc. Continue around, working each corner as before and each middle as before. Join to top of 1st dc (2nd starting chain). Fasten off. 

Round 5 (aqua dcs in pic):  Join new color at any 'middle' v-stitch chain space from Round 4. Ch2 (counts as first dc), 2dc in same chain space.  1dc in next stitch (where the v's come together, NOT a chain space). 2dc in next chain space. The next chain space should be a corner. Dc, ch1, dc in the corner chain space. **2dc in next chain space; 1dc in next stitch (where the v's come together, NOT a chain space), 3dc in chain space of middle v-stitch. 1dc in next stitch (where the v's come together, NOT a chain space). 2dc in next chain space.** (total of 9 dc on one straight edge between **, not including corners) Dc, ch1, dc in corner space. Continue in the same fashion around. Join to top of 1st dc. Fasten off.

Round 6 (dark aqua in pic):  Join new color at any stitch along a straight edge. Ch2 (counts as first dc). Dc in next stitch, and in each stitch until you reach the corner space. As before, *dc, ch1, dc* in the corner space. Dc in next stitch and in each of the next 10 stitches (total of 11 dc on one straight edge, not including corners). Continue in the same fashion around. Join to top of 1st dc. Fasten off.

Inaugural Plarn Project

Moxie Rule of Life #458: One can never have too many sturdy bags. 

After tackling a fair portion of my dog food bag stash to make shopping bags, I noticed that the flimsy plastic bag used to store flimsy plastic bags was sort of... um... overflowing. (Note to self: Reusable shopping bags are veritably useless if you leave them at home or in the car.)  I'd bookmarked a plarn tutorial a while ago, so I set about cutting, assembling, and rolling a good-sized ball of plarn. 

I cut and plarned all the bags I could find, without any real regard to color except to mix them up a bit for variegation. I knew I was making a grocery-shopping bag, and since it was my first foray into plarn, I figured I wouldn't care about color.  And I was wrong.  After I'd finished crocheting the bottom of the bag and gotten a good half dozen rows up the sides, I decided I hate that Kroger-bag brown. Ick.  But I was too far into the project, and it is just a grocery sack after all, so the finished bag has sort of a spotty brown bovine feel.

It's interesting how this one bag is sort of a snapshot of my life. Bags mostly from Kroger and Walmart, many from Goodwill and Hobby Lobby, and the odd bag from Staples, Old Navy, and Kohl's.

For future projects, I'm going to keep the brown separate, reserved for dish scrubbies and loofahs and such.

By the way, I sort of made up the pattern as I went along, but the basics are:  Chain 20-ish with size N hook. Single crochet in each stitch, 3 sc in the end stitch and then sc again down the other side of the chain and keep sc-ing around, increasing at the ends, until the bottom of the bag is as big as you want it. Do a hdc, then dc around and around and around until it's as tall as you like. Split for handles and sc around until the handles are thick/sturdy enough for your needs.

Moxiemum flower power

I was playing around with flower designs to add to a purse I'm finishing (will share pics of the purse soon!). This one ended up looking pretty cool, so I thought I'd share it. It's a nice full flower (24 petals!!) that's not too bulky.  It's so easy that I'm sure someone else has come up with this before, but I'm calling mine a Moxiemum nonetheless :)  Chart and text pattern in US terms below!

MOXIEMUM PATTERN:

CENTER in Color A (Yellow)

Magic circle, chain 2 (counts at dc), 11dc, slip stitch into top of 1st dc. (12 st) Fasten off and cinch circle closed. Weave in ends.

BACK LOOPS in Color B (Dark Pink)

Attach yarn at back loop of any dc. *Ch 4, tc in back loop of same stitch, ch 4; slip stitch in back loop of next stitch.  Continue from * around. Last slip stitch should be at start. Fasten off and weave in ends.

FRONT LOOPS in Color C (Light Pink)

Attach yarn at front loop of any dc. *Ch 3, cc in front loop of same stitch, ch 3; slip stitch in front loop of next stitch.  Continue from * around. Last slip stitch should be at start. Fasten off and weave in ends.

When finished, if the flower petals want to go sideways, pull every other petal of the front layer to the front, and every other petal of the back layer to the back, so the petals overlap slightly.

Dog food bag bag

This project started with a Rangers baseball game. If you've ever been to a major league game, you know that more often than not, there are freebies handed out to spectators as they enter the ballpark. On this particular day, volunteers were handing out sturdy bags bearing the Rangers logo.  Very handy things, these bags. Our entire family attended the game, so we went home with a good collection of reusable shopping bags.  Days later, I got to looking at the bag, and thought, "Huh. These are made out of the same stuff as dog food bags." That sturdy, nearly indestructible woven plastic material that can't really be recycled. We have a big dog that eats big food that comes in those big 40-lb bags, and we'd been throwing those bags away.

So the next time we emptied a new bag into the food bin, I removed all the binding from the bag, folded it neatly, and tucked it away. Did the same with the next bag, and the next, and the next, until I had an embarrassingly large stash of empty dog food bags.

Lest I become a case study on Hoarders, I decided I needed to finally do something with those bags!  So that's been my project this week while I've been home with the crud.

The hardest part of this project is cleaning the bags. Dog food is oily, and I'm still trying to find the easiest/most efficient/inexpensive way to de-oil. So far it's been trial and error, and/or a cumulative effect of several different approaches. And of course some brands are harder to clean than others.

Materials:
~ Woven plastic dog food bag
~ Sewing machine & thread
~ Optional: fabric, webbing, bias tape, bling, etc.

Step 1:  Completely remove binding stitching and tape from top and bottom of bag.
Step 2:  Wash bag thoroughly inside and out.
- - -
Step 3:  Hang dry.

To make two bags, cut down one side seam (can be done before washing to make that step easier), then cut the bag in half. Use the remaining side seam as the bottom, sew up some new side seams, turn down the top and hem, and add some gussets. Add fabric or webbing handles.

To make one big bag, cut two four-inch strips off the top for handles if desired. Sew bottom seam and add gussets. Turn down top and hem.   Fashion handles from strips and attach.

Note: The feed dogs on the sewing machine are veritably useless on plastic, so wrestling the material through your machine and achieving a straight, even seam, takes a bit of practice.

When the yarn stash outgrows the brain

It was bound to happen some time, right? After 30+ years of crocheting and crafting with yarn, I'm surprised it's only been recently that my brain could no longer catalog all the brands and colors and weights, and whatnot, of all the yarn I have tucked into tote bags. Perhaps that's an indication, not of the copious varieties of yarn in the tote bags, but rather my aging mental capacities.  Eh.  Let's just pretend.

Because I have sooo many different yarns (*wink*), I've started to catalog them. I'm not putting any monumental effort into the process, so I've only started, and it will likely take me a while to get 'em all processed, but here's my strategy:

~ Record the yarn's brand, color, and color number on half an index card (mine were super flimsy, so I folded each whole card in half)
~ Punch a hole in the top
~ Crochet up a tiny swatch (mine is single crochet, five stitches wide)
~ Attach swatch to card (I went with safety pins instead of staples)
~ Put all swatch cards of like brands on a single ring (I'm using a shower curtain ring)

The ring pictured is exclusively for my Red Heart Super Saver solids.  RHSS Variegated/Flecks will get another ring, as will my RH Softs, Impeccables, Lions, etc.:

I had a few colors that were in ball form, the skein wrappers long gone, so on a recent trip to Walmart, I took the entire ring with me and stood in the yarn aisle matching swatches with skeins and recording the info there. And inevitably picked up a few more colors I didn't have.  Go ahead, tell me I didn't look like a hard core crocheter with this big swatch ring and seven skeins in my basket!

Another bonus to cataloging this way: Planning a color scheme or stripes no longer requires dragging out entire tote bags of yarn. Just pull swatch cards and line 'em up, switch 'em around, swap 'em out... Easy.

And when I'm running low on a color, I can take the swatch card with me to shop, so I can be sure the colors are the same.

Maybe years from now, when I have a hundred tiny swatches of discontinued colors, I'll stitch 'em into a watercolor quilt-style afghan.

Gramma's trivet

 

My Gramma taught me to crochet. My earliest memories of her have yarn and crochet hooks involved, and stacks and stacks of afghan squares.  She made each grandchild a uniquely colored afghan--mine was pink. She also crocheted dolls and towel toppers and slippers and potholders and trivets and all kinds of things to give away or sell at craft fairs. As she got older and her hands and eyesight failed her, she crocheted less and less, until Alzheimer's and dementia took away that part of her.

This past weekend at my mom's house, I ran across a trivet Gramma had made... probably more than 25 years ago. And my heart twinged a little bit. (Pardon poor quality of the first two pics--I took 'em with my phone).

I say 'ran across' as though it was an accident. Truthfully I went looking for it, so I could re-create it. I wanted to figure it out and write down the pattern. Even though she probably didn't make up the design herself, it's still a sentimental connection to the Gramma I remember. So while I was there at my mom's, I did my best to duplicate the trivet.  Mine turned out bigger, but it's likely a difference in size of crochet hook. My hook of choice is I/9, and Gramma always used an F or G. 

Here's my trivet nearly finished, beside Gramma's trivet.

This morning I picked up the pattern I had scrawled on the back of a choir program, and worked it again, looking only at my notes, to make sure I had it right.  Also got a little creative on the color scheme.

And then I went a different direction, making multicolor rosettes for an as-yet-to-be-determined project (afghan? shawl? table runner? bag?).  Pattern for both the trivet and rosette are below.

I used worsted weight acrylic yarn and a 5.5mm (I/9) hook. These are US terms.

Cluster = 2 dc together into same stitch.  (YO, insert hook, YO, draw up loop, YO, draw through 2 lps. ^YO, insert hook, YO, draw up loop, YO, draw through 2 lps, YO, draw through all 3 lps on hook.)

Ch 4, join into ring with sl.st. in 1st ch.
Rnd 1: Ch 2 (counts as 1st dc). 11 dc in ring. Join with sl.st. to top of ch2. (12 st)
Rnd 2: Ch 2 (counts as 1st dc), dc in same stitch, chain 1; *2dc, ch 1* in each remaining stitch. Join with sl.st. to top of ch2.
Rnd 3: Ch 2  (counts and 1st half of cluster), complete cluster from ^, ch 1, cluster in 1st chain space.  *Cluster, ch 1, cluster* in each remaining chain space. Join with sl.st. to top of 1st cluster.
Rnd 4: Ch 2  (counts and 1st half of cluster), complete cluster from ^, ch 3, cluster in 1st chain space. *Cluster, ch 3, cluster* in each remaining chain space. Join with sl.st. to top of 1st cluster.
Rnd 5: *6dc in chain space, sc in top of cluster* 12 times around. Join with sl.st.

FOR TRIVET: Make 2, put back to back, then sc the edges together to join them.
FOR ROSETTE: Work Rounds 1-3. For Round 4: hdc, dc, tc, dc, hdc in each chain space, sc in top of cluster. Join with sl.st.

Ruffle Ruffle Ruffle Ruffle pillow

So I usually try to have a portable project to work on every weekend, because we're always running here and there, and I sometimes have some down time where I like to have something to keep my hands busy. This was my project this past weekend. And unlike a lot of my projects, I actually finished this one in a timely manner. Began it Sunday evening and finished it this morning.  A ruffled pillow, inspired by a photo (which is pinned on my Color and Whimsy board) from this post on Attic24. Mine is much more... um... rough, shall we say? *ahem*  Definitely more...chunky.  But I love it.  And it's certainly colorful/whimsical.

My original thought was to write up a pattern for it, but really, it's a hot pretty mess.  The front was a make-it-up-as-I-go endeavor, and the back--in order to make it fit the wonky front--was a mathematical challenge. If anyone is interested, I can write up some very basic instructions.

Into the beginning

Yes, another blog. This one to share my return to moxiedom, finding my chutzpah, refining my design sensibilities, experimenting, creating.

So I guess it started when I created my 'Color and Whimsy' board on Pinterest to collect objects and ideas that utterly appealed to me. Once upon a time, my life could be defined by those two words, and in some ways I miss that. I realized that I'd like to reclaim a bit of that former self, a pursuit which would dovetail nicely with my ongoing Moxie Reclamation Project.

So welcome to Moxiepants :)