Slippers!

I've been a busy little blogger today it seems! As I was cruising Pinterest I found some slippers and decided to give them a go. The tutorial at 2createincolor was super easy to follow and she has a link to a video on how to do the Magic Ring that explains it better than any other place I've found.

Here is her finished product. I hope mine turn out as good as hers!

Stay tuned...

Kitchen Love

I'm really enjoying whipping up these quick little items. The dishcloths are made with Lily's Sugar-n-Cream 100% cotton yarn. It's so easy to work with and comes in so many yummy colors. 

The hot pads are Red Heart & Red Heart With Love and are so fun because they can be made to match any decor, your favorite colors or even your team colors. 

Off the Hook Monday

Here's my project-in-progress for Off the Hook Monday. (Hopefully by next Monday it will be complete.) It's actually coming along pretty quickly. The Bernat Baby Blanket yarn works up fast and the ginormous hook I found (19mm S hook) makes it go even quicker. I can't wait to snuggle up under this when it's done!

Snowman surprise

Isn't this little guy adorable? Hubby surprised me with him yesterday morning! I thought he needed a little something extra so I whipped up a cheery scarf to keep him warm.

The Craft Collaboration II

Here is part two of The Craft Collaboration for my yarn storage system. What do you think? Personally, I LOVE it! It's hanging on the wall right next to me so I have easy access to a lot of my skeins without having to dig through a tub. My Bernat Baby Blanket yarn is still in the tub because the huge skeins won't fit up there but those are easy to dig out. (Hubby is going to make another board just to hold those). The nice thing about this is it's totally customizable to fit whatever you need. It can even be made as a free standing unit if you don't have the wall space.

Bring it on Mother Nature!

I'm ready for winter! Ok, not really because I hate cold weather but at least I'll look good when I'm out there slogging through the drifts. I picked up a skein of this yarn during one of my many trips to JoAnn's and had no idea what I was going to do with it. (One of those "Oooooh, look! It's pretty!!" purchases.) I got it home and decided I'd try to make a scarf with it. Oh man is this yarn awesome! It works up so easy using the V-stitch and it is so soft. I ended up going back and picking up 3 more skeins because I loved it so much. After I completed the scarf I decided to try my hand at making a headband and a pair of fingerless gloves/wrist warmers. 

The picture doesn't do this set justice. The yarn I used is Deborah Norville Serenity® Chunky in Pink Candy. This close up shows you the true colors, isn't it pretty? I'd love to have a reason to buy skein after skein of this in every color made. Maybe once I win the lottery....

The Craft Collaboration

We have pets, ergo, we have pet hair embellishing our furniture. It would be ok if everything I crocheted was in a variegated black and white motif but I like color. I have been racking my brain to come up with a way of keeping as much of the pet hair out of my projects as possible. It's great if I come across a center pull skein because then the little bugger isn't rolling around on my couch as I work. Unfortunately I'm learning that most skeins aren't center pull (unless I'm doing something wrong). I tried putting my yarn in one of those nifty Snapware containers, a big plastic food storage bowl and even an empty coffee canister. Those worked ok, but still not quite what I was looking for. I stumbled across this idea on Pintrest the other night:

Genius!! How simple! How thrifty! But hmmm...how can I put my own spin on it, since I didn't have a box like that or knitting needles? Enter The Craft Collaboration between the hubby and I. He's a pretty handy guy to have around and I knew we could come up with something. Instead of the knitting needle we figured dowel rods would work just as well. I happened to have a Sterilite "mesh" basket to replace the cardboard box. A trip to Lowe's and 3 rods later my yarn holding system was complete! He made 6 rods, 3 long and 3 short to fit my various skeins. I proudly threaded my first skein and got to work....until it was time to pull more yarn and we had a problem. It didn't rotate off the way I thought but it did work for keeping my yarn off the furniture and collecting pet hair. Time for tweaking. I had noticed that when the yarn was just coiled around the skein (a product of ripping out a mistake) it worked great. Since almost all of my yarn is wound like the pic above I needed to come up with a solution. I know I could go out and buy a yarn winder to make my entire stash into center pull balls but those suckers are expensive and I'd rather spend my cash on the yarn itself. Once again, time for another collaboration between the hubby and I. (Did I mention he's handy to have around?) We figured out that an electric yarn winder is like a drill so out to his workshop he went. He came back in the house with his cordless, variable speed electric drill fitted with a cut off golf club shaft. (Could we be any more redneck?) It.Works.Great!

I had to start winding by hand and then I used my foot to push the trigger and we were off and running!

The shaft is slightly larger than the dowel rod so I just slid the yarn off onto the rod.

The last step was to put the rods in the basket

BEFORE

AFTER

                                               

My system is complete! Almost...

Now I need a way to store all these skeins. Stay tuned for The Craft Collaboration II.