The Shtick I Do

Are you busy making your gifts already? I am, too! And I want to share one with you today. I've looked at these lovely dishcloths for some time now and I finally decided to make one (well two) for one of my aunts for Christmas. Here's the one that's completed: I just LOVE how it turned out! I used a crochet thread #10 for the eye and embroidered it on and yes, as you can tell, I didn't have any yellow cotton yarn so her beak is made of regular ww acrylic. But it still looks great! Here's a link to the pattern that I (sorta) followed. Hen Potholder/Dishcloth The site is in French but the pattern is a diagram that you can follow. I think I'm going to write out the pattern for myself though, since I had to make some adjustments when I was following the diagram. I am going to ask that if you're the praying sort, to add some prayers for my family in the mix. We've lost another loved one to cancer last night, my cousin Mark. He will be miss...

Still working from sunny Florida and I have to admit I'm enjoying the beautiful weather. Who wouldn't? I made some more dish cloths using the Scrub It! yarn from Mary Maxim. I was curious as to how many dish cloths I could get out of one skein so I decided to find out.  The green cloth was made straight from the skein using a pattern I found on Ravlery called Simple and Practical Dish Cloth  from Stitch 11 . I used this same pattern with the leftover ends from the blue skein and  almost  got  a nother full dish cloth out of it. The pattern calls for 16 rows before doing the finishing round and I got to row 14 before I ran out of yarn. But no problem for a crafty crocheter, right? I just used the multicolored skein leftovers and did two rounds of the finishing stitches and it came out great!      The next thing on my agenda is to tackle some of the patterns found in Kitchen Favorites  available fr...

I'll start this with the same question everyone else does: "Ever find a knitting pattern that you love , but you crochet?" This is the part where they tell you to pretty much just play with it. How irritating, right? Well, I am here to help! I'm going to give you a knitting pattern, convert it to a crochet pattern, and... and tell you why it works. Before we start, a disclaimer: This will not   be an exact replica . This is simply because these are two VERY different crafts. You can replicate knitting closely, and to the untrained eye, there is no difference. However, to someone familiar with both crafts the difference is very obvious. So let's train your eye. The first thing I learned to knit was a potholder from my 8th grade teacher. I'm actually one of the founding members of my middle school's Knitting and Crochet Club. It's not much, but I'm proud. Anyway! Ms. Jones taught me this pattern, so any similarities to another pattern...

Here's a last minute gift idea if you find yourself in a crunch. This cost me $5 for a total of 4 gifts! That's only $1.25 per gift and it's something you can personalize as well. It doesn't get much better than that. First a picture to get your creative juices flowing : Here's what I used and what I did: Materials : Set of (5) Wooden Kitchen Utensils - cost $5.00 Crochet Potholders - cost $0 (already had on hand) Recipe Cards and Recipes - cost $0 (already had on hand) Raffia or Ribbon for bows - cost $0 (already had on hand) I tried to make the recipe something that the recipient would like. For example, I used the 7-Up Biscuits for an uncle of mine that likes to cook. I found the recipes online and I'll list those for you later. I used a hole punch to make a place to secure the card to the utensil, using raffia because it's literally what I had in reach. I tried to pair up the utensil to match the recipe also. I dug out the pothold...