Author Archives: KJ

Amigurumi amp; Plushies, crochet, octopus, patterns

Octopus in the garden

I’ve seen so many cute little octopuses around the internet lately that I just had to try making one. Coincidentally, my step-nanna also gave me a big bag of yarn that she’d cleared out of her shed, and in it was the perfect octopus shade! So I made this little fellow in about an hour yesterday, while I was watching TV.

Octopus

He’s so adorable! I made him from this pattern, and I think I might use him as a pincushion 🙂 Sometimes it’s good to have a quick little project you can do and feel accomplished!

Now, some of you may be wondering when I’m ever going to put some patterns of my own on this blog. That’s fair enough, and I am very eager to have some patterns of my own up! I’ve got some works in progress at the moment that are from my own patterns, and I promise that as soon as I’m finished with them, I’ll put them up for you guys to see. I still have another week of University holidays, so hopefully I’ll be able to finish a few more projects before I’m swamped with study again.

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beret, crochet, Hats and other stuff

This beret is so damn puff

Yesterday I finished crocheting my first item of clothing! It’s from a pattern I’ve had my eye on since I first started crocheting a few months ago, and I finally felt confident enough to tackle it.

Puff Stitch Beret

Excuse the horrible photo of me modelling said hat, please. The beret is done using a crochet stitch called a puff stitch, which took me a little bit of time to master. The whole time I was crocheting it, I was worried about it being too big – a lot of people on Ravelry said theirs ended up too big – but it ended up being a little bit too small. I must have a large head! I’m planning to make another one and add a few rows to it to make it bigger, because it really is an adorable hat! You can find the pattern for it here. I used Moda Vera Merino Blend yarn, in colour 418 and a size 4.5mm hook.

PS: If anyone is confused about the title for this post, Dominos Pizza launched a short-lived campaign a while back to try and make the word ‘puff’ synonymous with all things cool. Clearly they failed in this ridiculous endeavour, but I can’t resist slipping it into conversation every once in a while.

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Amigurumi amp; Plushies, crochet, hello kitty

Hello, Kitty!

So, after I made Miffy, my Mom discovered that yet another colleague of hers had a child that was having a birthday soon, and commissioned me to make another ami. I chose Hello Kitty, since I’d considered her for the Miffy project, and I bought the pattern from Etsy. There were a couple of free ones kicking around the internet, but I didn’t really like how they looked.

There was a bit of pattern drama – the first one I bought wasn’t sent to me for ages, and then turned out to be one of the worst patterns I’d ever seen (seriously, avoid crochetpattern on Etsy if you can, her feedback suggests I’m not the only one to have had problems with her), but luckily the second one I bought was much better. I bought that one from marjan1017, if you’re interested. The pattern still wasn’t perfect, but I think Hello Kitty turned out ok, anyway.

Hello Kitty

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sewing, tips, Tips and Tricks

Svenska sömnad

Yesterday I popped into one of my favourite places to shop – IKEA! I had heard that they had fabric there, and I was getting a little tired of seeing the same old stuff at Spotlight, so I decided to go and check their range out. Oh, and pick my brother up some chest of drawers, but that’s not important.

As it happened, IKEA had an awesome range of adorable fabric, and I ended up buying three different prints, with which I plan to make utterly fantastic bags. But as wonderful as the fabric is, that’s not the reason why I’m making this post. I’m making this post because while I was there, I happened to see a brilliant little sewing kit, and I just had to buy it. It’s called a beginner’s sewing kit, and it is terrific value.

Sewing Kit

Contained within this magnificent kit were the following:

– A pair of dressmaking scissors

– A packet of various-sized needles, at least twenty of them (not pictured)

– A tape measure

– A little tub of pins with a pincushion on top

– 1000 metres of black and white sewing thread

– A seam unpicker

All of that, and the little box it came in, cost a grand total of $9.95. The scissors feel really good, and I’ve already tested them out! They’re quite weighty and definitely feel like quality scissors. It really is excellent value – just a seam unpicker alone at my Spotlight cost $7.95! I highly recommend anyone who has just started sewing and doesn’t yet have all the basics go along to their IKEA and pick one up 🙂 I also grabbed a packet of 4 different colours of sewing thread (red, green, blue and yellow) for $2. Ah, I love IKEA.

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Amigurumi amp; Plushies, crochet, miffy

Miffy

A couple of days ago, my Mom asked me if I could make something small for a work colleague of hers whose daughter is turning one this week. Even though I’m already snowed under with other projects for everyone under the sun, I agreed because I’m nice like that. Or a doormat. Your choice. Anyway, Mom left the choice of toy up to me, so I hovered for a while between Miffy and Hello Kitty, and finally decided on Miffy because I already had Miffy colours in my yarn stash.

Miffy

I think she turned out quite well – I used this pattern as a guide. It only took me two nights of sporadic crocheting, which was about what I was hoping for with this project. The yarn I used was Cupcake by Moda Vera (which I absolutely adore for making amigurumis) in Pumpkin and White. It’s 50% acrylic and 50% nylon, and it’s sooo soft.  She stands at 15cm tall and I almost wish I could keep her myself – she’s too cute!

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tips, Tips and Tricks

Marking Stitches

I may not have been crocheting very long, but there is one thing I have learned very quickly – to be good at making amigurumi, you either need to be good at counting, or have a stitch marker on hand.

Until recently, I’ve been doing it the hardcore way – counting. Counting is all well and good until you get distracted by something shiny, lose count and have to rip the whole thing apart because you have no idea where you began your last round. And let me tell you, that gets old fast. So, I decided I would bite the bullet and get a stitch marker. At least, that was the plan until I saw how much those things cost! The only ones I could find were decorated with glamourous, Czech glass beads and the like, and were at least $10. Admittedly it wasn’t an exhaustive search, but I’d seen enough. My local Spotlight doesn’t have them, but I’m not discounting the possibility that other, better-stocked and better-organised Spotlights might. I have found several tutorials to make my own which I may end up doing one day, but until then, I’ve been experimenting with makeshift stitch markers around my home.

1. A small safety pin. Worked extremely well, except I lost it because it was, well, small.

2. A bobby pin. This is probably my favourite, as I have a metric shitload of them so if I lose one, it’s not a worry. The only problem is, sometimes they can have a little bit of grime caught in them and it can mark your yarn, so it’s best to use ones you know haven’t been near hair or anything else.

3. An earring. You know, one of those fishhook shaped ones. It worked ok for the most part, but had an annoying tendency to fall out at inopportune moments.

I imagine a paperclip would work wonders, but I haven’t tried one yet as I don’t own any. I have heard people say good things about bits of contrasting yarn, and one book I have recommends contrasting felt, but I feel that would be too fiddly for me to bother with.

Anyway, those are my handy dandy tips for using household objects as stitch markers, and if anyone knows of a good, cheap source for stitch markers, hit me up!

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bag lady, Handbags, kitty, sewing

It’s in the bag!

I am so proud right now, guys! I have just finished my very first fancy handbag!

Luke's Mom's Bag

I’m pretty excited about it, as you might be able to tell 😛 I made it for my mother-in-law, after making a resolution for this year that I would give only handmade gifts to people for birthdays, Christmas and the like. Despite much visible distress from my family when I announced this decision, I have forged ahead with my resolution, and so when I realised my mother-in-law’s birthday was just around the corner, I instructed my husband to find out her favourite colours.

The answer she gave was black, pink and white, and so from there I embarked on the largest sewing project I had undertaken to date. It is worth noting that I had actually made two handbags prior to this one, one for myself and one for my stepsister, and had already learned a little bit about the art of bag-making.

My first step was to go to my local Spotlight (an Australian craft store for those not in the know) and pick up my materials. I love choosing materials. I feel like it’s where the adventure truly begins, as mad as that sounds. I got a metre of both my outer and lining fabric, a metre of ribbon, and a metre and a half of the stiffest iron-on interfacing they had. I also bought a pink zip, but we don’t mention the zip. Zips are for the weak.

For the basic bag structure, a friend recommended I use this pattern. While I did use that pattern as a guide, I did end up diverging from it quite a bit in the end. Still, it was an extremely helpful tutorial and I would recommend it to anyone looking to make their first bag.

Kitty

The little cat hanging from the side is my little signature cat! I love cats. I fully intend to be a crazy cat lady when I’m older and have my own house and don’t have nasty, cat-hating landlords dictating my pet allowances. Anyway. I intend for the cat to be different for every bag I make, but for this one, he’s made of felt. Incidentally, it would appear everyone on the internet recommends you don’t iron felt. I searched and searched to see if I was able to iron my kitty onto some interfacing without scorching his little face off, and everywhere said no. But I’m a determined kind of person, and decided to do it anyway. AND HE TURNED OUT FINE. So nuts to you, internet. Disclaimer: If you do iron your felt and it melts or something, it’s totally not my fault.

So there you have it: My first awesome handbag!

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FIRST, introduction

Hello, and welcome to my blog!

This is my little place on the internet to recount my adventures in craft! Having had a Livejournal for quite some time (namely, since 2000 – my, how the years fly!) I am no stranger to writing for an audience, but this is the first time I will be writing for complete strangers, and subjecting my work for your scrutiny.

At the moment I am mainly dabbling in amigurumi (lit. knitted stuffed toy) and sewing, but I’ve also done cross-stitch for years. Incidentally, my amigurumi are crocheted, not knitted, as I am ashamed to say that knitting is the one craft I fail at. Hard. My poor mother cringes to see me picking up knitting needles, and despite her many, many attempts to teach me, I’m still incapable of producing even a mere scarf. In fact, the last scarf I tried to knit started off with 18 stitches, and had grown to 40 by the time I was a quarter of the way through. Yeah, I don’t know either. So it is very unlikely you will ever see anything knitted by me on this blog or in my Etsy store.

Speaking of my Etsy store, from time to time I will be selling my handmade goodies there. No surprises, that’s what an Etsy store is for. If you happen to see something here on my blog that is not on my Etsy store, but you think is pretty cool and you’d like one for yourself, let me know. I’m more than happy to take special requests!

Now, I’m still a bit of a noob when it comes to crochet and sewing – I’m learning a lot with every project I make, and as such I have discovered a lot of awesome (and some not so helpful) tutorials and the like on the web that have helped me on my way. I plan to have some of my own tutorials up and running before too long, and hopefully this will help and inspire any budding crafty-types who happen along this blog.

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