Showing Off: Valentine Tote

I am going to brag on myself a little here.

I saw a pattern for a square and turned it into a felted tote bag. How cool is that?

Not only is that cool.. I used Tunisian and did lots of color changes.. whoopee!!
Based on the December Square from the Stitch to Win contest at CrochetToday : Pyschedelic Heart. I was also a maverick in that I used TKS instead of TSS.

You might have to register to be able to see the pattern, but it's easy and unobtrusive. I had to enlarge the graph to be able to see where to make the color changes, which means I had to d/l an editor for my foxit pdf reader, but once I had gotten that accomplished, the rest was gravy.

(I did write to coats and suggest that they make the graph larger and on a separate page for those of us with impaired eyesight.. or make the graph in black and white and label the squares p, r, o for the pink, red, orange colors.. they wrote back thanking me for suggestions and offered to send me all the patterns. No telling if they'll take my ideas and use them, but at least I'm getting all the patterns already printed out for free. I'm happy.)

I didn't have any orange wool, so I used white. I know white sometimes doesn't felt as well as other yarns, so that made me nervous.


Here's one side:


Another side:


Another thing that made me nervous was all the color changes.. would they hold together during felting?

Here it is this past weekend, 99% complete, waiting for handles and to be seamed up.


This morning. I finished making handles. Ran out of enough red to make handles and finish off edge, so used some hotpink too. I think it actually looks nice this way.



Just another photo. Prefelted the body measures about 11" wide by 14.5" tall.. about the size of a legal sheet of paper.



I threw it in the machine with a tiny bit of Gain liquid detergent, hot water and permanent press cycle. (We have soft water..so I can get by with tiny bits of soap). I stopped the machine at the end of the wash cycle before it spun.



A better angle where you can see the handles. I'm not sure if I like the short handles. If I were plannning on keeping it, I might redo them.




The finished size is about 12" high and about 9" wide. Not exact measurements cause I measured while it was stuffed with plastic bags drying.

What do you think? I think I love it!!

Felt-it Felting

It's just my luck. About the time I discover a yarn, the company takes it out of production. Such is the case with Caron and it's Felt-it yarn (actually, I think I'm beginning to notice that Caron is rather quick to discontinue yarns.. or is that only my imagination?)

Here is a little tote that I made with 3 skeins of Caron's felt-it. I'm pretty sure the colorway is called Wildflowers, but mine doesn't have as much cream in it as the colorcard at Caron shows.

I had 3skeins and it was barely enough.. but would've been enough if I hadn't experiemented with doing the handles in a different manner and messed up some of the yarn.

I was so short that one of the side seams wasn't stitched securely enough and it came apart during the felting process. I had to stitch it back together while still wet with a totally different wool.. but I don't think it shows very much.

Actually the mend makes it even more unique and one of a kind. ::grin::

Without further ado.. here are the pictures.



Mended area

Postfelting

Prefelting


I can't give out the pattern, it's based very heavily on the Felted Tunisian tote class taught by Kim Guzman. You can visit her group at Ravelry or one of her websites, CrochetKim or Wips'NChains. Perhaps she might agree to assist someone, but I cannot share it, so please don't ask me.

Felting again

I took an online Tunisian class with Kim Guzman and would like to show the results.



Prefelting Right side out



Prefelting Wrong side out



I changed my mind about placing the handles before I felted and moved the knots to the outside.

Drying over a cereal-box-sized tupperware.

I think the tupperware is too large, so I will probably stick this back in the machine and find a smaller box to dry it over. It will also need a going over with a disposable razor after it finishes drying.

The Taupe and Burgundy are Paton's Classic Merino which was a Christmas surprise from Maddie.. a friend at CalPals.. Thanks so much Maddie!! And the Pink is some Lionbrand Wool.

And something I've discovered about felted purses.. velcro sticks to them wonderfully. I have a small cell phone and glasses cases that came with another storebought bag that have velcro on them.. they're GREAT in my felted purses.. they don't wander off. Stick right to the side of the purse where I stick them.

Frustration

I'm taking an online class to make a felted bag using Tunisian (sometimes also called Afghan stitches).

Found out after getting halfway done that I've done it in TSS instead of TKS.

So, it looks like some frogging is in order.

I'm halfway inclined to finish it in TSS.. but I will frog and restart. And this is a good thing because I had noticed some errors and problems, but wasn't going to go all the way back and fix them correctly.. was going to try and use a yarn needle and some yarn and try and fix it.

But now it will be fixed correctly.

But DANG at all that frogging.

Haha.. maybe I'll meet my prince. :D

SimplySoft Quick Blankets

I'm getting ready to make a delivery to Project Linus, so I'm getting pictures posted of things I've had made for quite a while.

I'm not super speedy at crochet.. just am really bad (or good?) at procrastinating at making pictures of my work.

Material: Caron Simply Soft Quick





Please click to enlarge

The top one I made first by the pattern provided by Caron on the label of the yarn. They are Tunisian squares, made on a regular (non-tunisian) P hook. It was a tight fit, but as the squares aren't really large, I managed to squeak by. I will probably have to enlarge this one (which will mean frogging the border) and adding more squares. It's a bit on the small side for Project Linus purposes, but I will take it to our coordinator first and see what she says.

The second one is made of the same yarn, same pattern, but a size N Tunisian hook. I just made more of them and joined with black. I realized after I made it how 70's looking it is!!

Tunisian Baby Blanket

Here's a blanket made with some Joanns Classic Sensation Yarn. Comes in huge 11oz skeins. Very soft and fuzzy.. fun to work with, but a bit difficult to frog.

The stitch is from "Harmony Guide, 220 More Crochet Stitches" that I got free, courtesy of Walmart messing up two of my orders around christmas (see this post). No name to the stitch, but I tried to follow the directions for VI.26

If you have that book, you can see it does NOT look the same (the one in the book has a lattice look). I wonder if what I came up with is in a book or has a name?




please click to see larger

The yarn label says to handwash.. but I ran it through the handwash cycle of my machine and tumbled it on low.. and it came out just fine.

Red Scarves for Orphans

I finally got them all in the mail...and now to pictures. All pictures are clickable if you want to see them in more detail.
















Some are regular crochet and some are Tunisian.. all are 100% acrylic and most are machine washable (important consideration for college kids).

My goal was to get 20 done. I made 21 (somehow I missed getting a photo of the last one). Next years goal is to make 20 AND to get them in the mail before January 31st!!! LOL

Here's the site for those who aren't familiar with this charity.
http://www.orphan.org/carepackages_main.xhtml