More Paint Chips for Halloween

On the blog path today I saw this!



Go here to see the HOW TO.

You may remember that I posted HERE about a rather somber grey paint chip tomb stone bunting a few years ago.



What is it about paint chips and Halloween that excites me?  I would LOVE to make these cute paint chip characters into a bunting and send it off to my niece and nephew who are super into decorating the house for Halloween.  There's certainly still time to make one NOW for you own house this season, but... I'd have to send mine in the mail as my sister's family lives a few hours away.  I've pinned this craft to my Halloween Board so I'll remember it for next year.  Pop on over to pinterest and see what else is there.

Sher

Pitt Coasters - a College Gift

About a month ago, I crocheted some coasters for my son and his friends at the University of Pittsburgh.  Pitt's colors are dark blue and gold.  I had to improvise on some of the coasters with a bit of yellow but I prefer the color scheme of the gold.  The coasters were a request from his friends.  They are reportedly well-used on the coffee table in the dorm room.  Although no step by step pattern is shown here, any basic circle or square shape could be used with a bit of cotton yarn in collegiate colors to create the same sort of gift.  Enjoy the inspiration!  Sher

Sugar Skull Bunting

Ready for Halloween?  How about Autumn?

Every year I like to make a new bit of Halloween/Autumn decor to install around the house.  This past weekend and up until yesterday mid-morning, the weather was freaky warm... hot and humid even.  It was not October.  The skies were grey the leaves were blowing around on the streets but the temperature didn't match the rest of the scene.  After a few wet downpours, the temperature dropped and dropped and now it feels like fall!  Welcome cool and windy weather - LOVE IT!

I've been eyeing up some groovy skull buntings on pinterest and yesterday I sat down and crafted one of my own - can I tell you something?  IT IS AWESOME...just exactly what I wanted and now it's hanging across the mantle just waiting to scare all who enter my living room.

Want to make one of your own?  Well here's how.

I found this cute skull pattern here.  It's from a blog called Kristen's Krazy Knits.  It is crochet however.  I pretty much followed the pattern as written.  I'm not sure if there's an error in the instructions or if I made the same error six times repeated, but when the instructions say," This should get you back to the chain 2 you made to create the nose," I found myself off by two stitches every time.  Nonetheless, I did manage to make it work and I'm happy with my rainbow colored skulls.  I used sugar and cream cotton yarn and an H sized hook to make the skulls.

I also loved the sugar skulls in this crochet bunting from Red Heart.



Red Heart provides an entire pdf with instructions for this bunting.  I could have just used it entirely.  I did look at the photo up close and figure out that the white skull part was a sc circle with a rectangular off one end to place the teeth, but I didn't follow the pattern, just winged it on my own.  I liked the eyes, the teeth and the flower on the forehead - however, I wanted a heart for a nose.  I also winged the teeth.

I used this flower pattern for the eyes.  I had this heart pattern saved in my crochet heart board on pinterest. I added a row of crochet chain stitch to the heart and attached it upside down.  I used this pattern for the forehead flower but winged a set of double leaves to look like the sample.  The forehead flower pattern is in a non-English language and even with translation, I couldn't quite follow.

Most of the sugar skull was made with the same sugar and cream cotton yarn.  Most of it was done with an H crochet hook but I did switch to an F sized hook to make some of the skull face parts a bit smaller.

I stitched the parts to the white background with a weaving-in needle and a bit of knot tying to the back.

The whole thing was assembled into a bunting using the H hook, some black cotton yarn, and a bit of chain stitching.  It looks just like I wanted!

With the drop in temperature I decided it was full time to hang my FAVORITE crochet wreath back on the door... check out my Autumn Wreath Pattern here - one of my most loved crochet creations.

Sherbet Waves Blanket

Hello!

The last time I posted it was back to school time - now it's full on Autumn (tho. today seems more like summer weather and my fall/winter clothes are still packed away in the attic).

At the end of the summer (and right before my vacation) I started a baby blanket project for my cousin.  Her baby shower is this weekend.  She is having her first baby, a girl.  I could not attend the shower but my gift is somewhere riding in the back of a brown truck en route to the shower location.

The blanket is NOT a pattern of my own creation.  I found the pattern on pinterest and saved it in my blankets and pillows board.  You can follow me on Pinterest or just some of my boards if you'd like.

I didn't take many photos of the making along the way - not sure why.  But it was a fun and easy pattern with a lot of color and texture and it was a joy to create.  The name of the original pattern is: Wavy Baby Blanket and I found it here on Carina's Blog.  The blog has the pattern in a non-English pattern but also a translation is included.  I had no trouble following the translated version.

Here are the specs on MY version of the blanket which I have named Sherbet Waves.  This Sherbet Waves blanket is of the girl variety as I would have chosen other colors for a boy.  As recommended on the blog, I opted to use an odd number of colors in my pattern repeat.  My pattern was an 11-color repeat.

The yarn I used is Red Heart Creme de la Creme.  Although it is a worsted weight, I would consider it a light worsted.  I used a G Hook (4mm).

I chose soft and bright girl colors and mixed those in with a variety of off whites and a khaki color.  Though I cannot find my order form from the yarn and I have misplaced some of the skein wraps, my color repeat was:

off white (pink hue)
dark pink
off white (yellow hue)
lavender
khaki
off white (ivory)
light pink
khaki (the only color I repeated because I wanted more of this color)
bright yellow
true white
mint green

I didn't use an entire skein of any color, but almost.  I used a bit more than one skein of the khaki ( I had 2 of those).  I don't know the number of yards in the skein as it's not listed on the label but the skein is 70.9 grams and is a light-weight worsted, not quite as small as a dk or sport.

The yarn is 100% cotton, and though the finished product it a bit stiff, I think it will be less so after washing.

I'd suggest weaving in the ends as you go - the pattern calls for a color change at the end of each row.  I didn't and had SO many to weave in at the end.  UGH.

The reason this blanket isn't just a shell stitch blanket is because it has a row of single crochet in between each shell row.  The pattern has a 4 row repeat which is easy to memorize after just a few stints thru.  My finished blanket was about 32" long and 26" wide.  I chained 142 stitches to start.  You can do any length because the pattern is listed as groups of 14 + 2.  The finished blanket had about 150 rows.

I love it when patterns list all their data like yarn and hook size and patter repeats, etc... it makes for SO much easier math if I want to change size or use different yarn so thanks to all of your who give lots of pattern data on your blogs.  I find that when I add pattern data to my blogs, it gives me a great record to remember what I myself have done if I ever want to go back and use a pattern again.

I hope you enjoy this pattern - I will probably post a link to it on Ravely (follow me here) as well.