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Tag: crochet

  • Bag Lady Swap!

    Over on Ravelry, we’re coming to the end of our second “swap” in the Australian Knitters group. This time the theme was knitted/crocheted bags. Each person had to construct a bag for their recipient, and then ($30 budget permitting) send along some extra treats with it. My package was delivered to the shop yesterday, and my swapper was the awesome Tricia (who’s now travelling in the Middle East).

    Bag Swap Package Apron!

    Check it out! The bag is crocheted out of thick black wool and features a silky red lining with two snaps to keep it closed. It’s the perfect size to carry around a sock knitting project. Tricia also sent me two awesomely daggy 80’s Australian picture knitting books. (I didn’t know Liz Gemmell wrote one of those!) Not pictured is a bar of chocolate, which is currently chilling in my fridge. And that flowery black thing? Is a HOMEMADE VINTAGE APRON. I couldn’t believe it! Tricia made it herself (with some assistance from her Mum). The arms crossover in the back (behind my head), and it’s got two handy pockets on front. That means I now have THREE retro aprons… which I suppose officially equals a collection! Thanks again, Tricia. 🙂

    As for my own swap package, it’s 90% ready to be sent. I just ran out of stupid polyfill tonight so I’ve got to get some more tomorrow to finish something off…

  • Dogs and crochet don’t mix.

    Ahhh, Sydney. A customer in the shop just asked if she could bring her dog to a crochet class. “He’s really small,” she said, “and he’s hypo-allergenic!” Um, no.

  • Square!

    Square knitting needles and crochet hooks. That’s so weird. They claim they’re way easier on your hands and arms and that they produce extremely uniform tension. I’d be interested in testing thing. (Link courtesy of not martha.)

  • Food Scarves

    Crocheted scarves that look like food. Those are absolutely brilliant! My favorite is the Bomb Pop; I may have to attempt a recreation in knitting. I wonder what it is about crochet that inspires so many of its practitioners to create food-related items… (Link via Pop Culture Junk Mail.)

  • Crochet Yoda Ears

    Crochet Baby Yoda Ears. That is GENIUS!

  • Freedom Poncho Über Alles

    Man, Martha’s poncho is everywhere! Thank God she’s not popular in Australia, though. I have enough poncho requests as it is. (Links courtesy of Manda.)

  • Martha’s Poncho

    Oh, good grief. Knit Martha’s poncho. I am disgusted to admit we’re planning a poncho window display for the shop. (Link courtesy of Amy.)

  • Knitting on TV!

    Attention Sydney knitters! I’ve just gotten word from Meg that the Sydney Stitch N Bitch is going to be filmed by Better Homes & Gardens for an upcoming show! The only problem is that the presenter’s schedule means they need to film the spot… tomorrow night. We need to pack Hart’s Pub with as many knitters and crocheters as we can get. If you can hold a pair of needles, we want you there. It starts at 5:00 pm (which is a crap time, I know). Details and a map are available on the website. Hope to see you there!

  • Craftiness + Hoochiness = Knitted Bikini

    Knitted BikiniCheck out what I made! I felt like I’d been making scarves for years, so as a change of pace I decided to knit a bikini using Get Crafty’s fabulous instructions. It’s knitted with cotton, not wool, and as I used a double thickness throughout it’s pretty dense (and therefore ensures no nipple visibility). Unfortunately this design is just not the right swimsuit for my body shape. The trunks, which just barely manage to go over my thighs, are pretty cute, but they’re so low that I have major plumber butt (even though I followed the instructions for “more coverage”). And the top… Well, I think the main problem is that string bikinis aren’t made for girls with larger boobs. I’m a C cup, and the whole triangle thing just doesn’t work. Even if I made them bigger, they still don’t fit the shape of the breast very well. (I really need to figure out how to knit one with an underwire.) So needless to say, I shan’t be sporting this puppy at the beach anytime soon. It was a fun experiment though.Some notes if you’re interested in trying it yourself:

    As I can’t get the kind of cotton recommended in the pattern here, I just went with normal DK weight cotton. Unfortunately I knitted a test swatch and my gauge was way higher than it needed to be. I was afraid to move up a needle size though, for fear that the weave would be too open (and I wanted to keep the nips covered). So I played around a bit and discovered that if I doubled up the cotton and went to a 5mm needle, I got the correct gauge and the fabric was nicely dense. Unfortunately that meant I needed twice as much cotton. Luckily I’d bought 4 50gm balls, and I used up just about all of it.

    Another problem: I knitted the two boob triangles on different days and my knitting tension changed significantly, which means they’re slightly different size. I’d suggest that you knit them both at the same time to avoid this.

    The biggest problem I had was the bit at the end of the pattern where it tells you to “single crochet” around the trunk elastic and the bikini chain. I posted a request for help on Glitter and was directed to this page of instructions. That’s for making a hair band, but I figured out fairly quickly to adapt it to what I needed to do. I did the bikini chain easily, but I decided not to finish the trunks since they don’t fit well enough to ever wear.