i officially caught it again- yarn fever.
ive been trying to think of useful things to do with it, and i came up with what i think is a good one:
i work at a cafe that isnt doing so hot right now (what is?), so to help im going to make and sell crocheted coffee cup sleeves. this will help because
a) cardboard coffee sleeves cost money (a surprising lot of it)
b) ill split whatever i make off them 50/50
c) just another quirky little reason to come in and love this very lovable little cafe
plus theyre 100% cotton, therefore washable and reusable and earth friendly (yay earth!)
i made them up as i went, but some of them are turning out pretty good:
those two above are really simple: single crochet, about halfway up i added a few stitches so itll hug the cup as it gets bigger. at the top, i crocheted into the side near the top (just a slip stitch) to give it a little grippy ridge.
below, only a tiny bit less simple: i alternated single crochet a double crochet:
this next one i tried to get a little too fancy with…
i wanted to use granny squares because i dearly love granny squares and want to find lots of unlikely ways to use them, but it didnt work out very well. too big, too loose… im thinking maybe next time ill make them with one less round and crochet in between them with nice tight single crochet sticthes. that way i can still add stitches, keep it nice n tight and do a ridge around the top…
as i was giving up on that silly blue granny square sleeve, my roommate was talking about how she needed another eye patch for her lazy eye. apparently she needs them when shes on her computer for long periods of time (for example, job hunting and blogging) and generally just tapes her eyelid down with scotch tape. that being no good (although ruthlessly funny), i gave her a cheap halloween costume pirate eye patch a year or two ago. she wore it at her little office job and it makes me smile just thinking about it. it has, however, either fallen apart or been lost since then and she needed another one.
so, grinning, i picked up my hook and worked out this little cutie:
it ties in the back and has a little whirly-do in the middle. i am very pleased with myself. if for no other reason, then helping her to blog with fewer vision-related headaches:
offthetwig.wordpress.com
in other news, i made a turtle!
see its cute little tail!
i found the pattern on a blog:
http://www.crochetville.org/forum/showthread.php?t=40998
it was really easy and quick (well, i did it in the course of watching braveheart, if you call that quick) and im super excited about all the little ways i can add onto it and modify it. as far as what i screwed up… i definately put the legs too close together at the bottom. i should have put them more towards the outside so it would sit lower and actually stay up (as opposed to falling forward on its little turtle head… which it does. poor turtle.)
it doesnt have eyes yet either… but im working on that. i went to michaels to pick up a few things and they didnt have anything even closely resembling eyes. they had paste-on googly eyes and beads, but no eye beads that you can crochet into. i looked up a blog that i am VERY much a fan of:
http://littlegreen.typepad.com/romansock/
i have found many, many adorable patterns on her blog and lots of good ideas and resources. she gave out the website where she gets her eyes (craftbits.co.uk) and i checked it out. not only was it fun to try and translate prices from pounds to dollars, it was very reasonably priced and even shipping wasnt too bad, considering im on another continent. also, did you know in the UK they call googly eyes “joggle eyes”? so fun.
hopefully theyll get here in a week or less, but until then im going to try and busy my itchy fingers with cotton coffee sleeves. otherwise im going to end up with a roly poly blind menagerie… and thats just no good.
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