pimpy mclink-link

Just a note from snakey to pimp my new craft blog:

ophidiololo

Stop by the new spot for updates on my current projects and etc.

:D

olive's cecily baby cardigan

my co-worker cube-neighbor gina is about 25 days from her due date and i am making the lovely cecily baby cardigan for her daughter-to-be (aka olive).gina has had a tough first pregnancy with gestational diabetes, high blood pressure and heavy swelling and i realized today that gina and i are now in a race to see who finishes first their "project" first! i did make some headway today: i stopped at hobby lobby and bought some pretty caron simply soft yarn in aqua mist, then crocheted up to row 5 on the yoke.

btw, i gave the site a little facelift and added some wip progress bars over on the sidebar. if you would like to add something like that to your own site, the code can be found here at licketyknit.com. it was easy!

heathered rainbow scarf

this little rainbow scarf whipped up quick. using a g sized hook, i made it by alternating rows of double crochet and single crochet LENGTHWISE. then i added 2 rows of single crochet around the entire perimeter making nice sharp sc-ch1-sc corners. this one was only one skein of hobby lobby's yarn bee rainbow (a wool/nylon blend, i believe. a little bulky.), but it is actually pretty small. (5" x 36") i am making another one in more manly colourway with two skeins worth of yarn.

i found it to be itchy. dang wool! so fun to work with and so evile. i am suspecting i might actually be allergic! sssssss.....

New Ravelry Group!

We have migrated over to the new Ministry of Magic group on Ravelry. The group was founded by some former members of the Harry Potter Knit and Crochet House Cup group a couple of weeks ago.

The founders of this new group are a set of awesome and dedicated craftspersons and personally, I wish them a lot of success and satisfaction with the new launch. I just adore that they are still focused on creating an atmosphere of fun and fairness for all the participants.

Less wanking and more cranking. That's what its all about, folks.

books snakey is currently enjoying

All are muy fabuloso so far!
AND...
I sent off some handmade gifts today, which leads to the question:

Is there any greater joy than inflicting your obsession upon hapless others?

Answer: No, there is not!

pain

i have only been back at crochet for a month and i have been working everyday on something or other. in the meantime, headaches are visiting. two visits to the chiro and 3 chair massages later, i am realizing, i have all this strain in my right shoulder and neck...from guess what?

ssss.

so, i am taking it easier and trying to be very conscious of not curling over the work or twisting too much. hopefully, this will help!

here is a link i found with a bunch of good tips for yarnwranglers.

excerpt:

You are attempting to be a marathon knitter and crocheter. And as such, like any elite athlete, you need to train to be able to knit and crochet with endurance. Too many of you, especially those of you learning how to knit or crochet, or picking up your knitting needles or crochet hook again after years away from the craft, just launch straight hours of work.

Start slowly and build up. As a rule of thumb, you could start by working for 20 to 30 minutes a day, slowly on a sliding scale according to half your age. So for example:

20 for 10 days
30 for 15 days
50 for 25 days
70 for 35 days.

LOL. yeah, right. :p

twisted-like-the-devil

as i am such a baby yarnmeister, i just learned something the hard way. i hate that.

as i have mentioned, i frogged my first attempt at a large crochet project. i blithely balled the yarn for reuse. last night, however, i began incorporating the first of the frogged yarn and discovered it was twisted. twisted as in "twisted-like-the-devil" twisted. i couldn't crochet more than a row and a half without ending up with knots and evilness between me, the piece and the ball.
to rectify the situation, i had to brainstorm. gently twisting it against itself while i worked stitches was futile. i could not simply hang the ball or piece to let it spin out...until i thought of using binder clips to hold the ends of the yarn to prevent unraveling. afterward, i spent a good hour and a half untwisting my yarn by letting the ball hang in midair and spin itself back to normal--2 stinking yards at a time. that...is a lot of twisting in the wind. i balled the yarn, now all nice and well-behaved, and, hopefully, it will crochet without any memory of its evile tortured past.

Cup Work

my ophidian wand cozy features a flip-top head.
(nagini was my inspiration, of course.)
i also turned this slytherin hyperbolic plane
ornament for the arithmancy assignment.

----

also...this little rainbow one simply made of cute.

the rest of my month was all devoted to my big project
and much wank-stalkery. oh, snakey...*eyeroll*

more linkypoos

the queen of all things "scrumble" was the late slyvia cosh and i happened to stumble on a set of freeform crochet workshop pages that her fellow artists have shared.

links to pdf files here.


---

here is a link to crochet by numbers where crochet artist todd paschall shares his pdf training tools to help grasp to his photo-crochet technique. there is also a ravelry group devoted to todd's technique!

scrumbdillicious

we are off! classes are posted. i am reading through and trying to choose how best to use my time.

last night, mair and i went on a yarn-pr0n spree over at etsy. i was able to walk away without a purchase, but it was hard! today, i spent the last hour tweaking my ravelry pages so i only see what i want to see. then, i loaded RSS feeds from slytherin to my igoogle reader. THEN, i researched freeform crochet AKA scrumbling:



it so beautiful! it looks like undersea corals--so organic and magical! i just want to try everything!

*obviously suffering from an acute case of autumn woolmania*

whoa! just when i think crochet is fun, but ugly.....

look at this aussie chick's amazing blanket of crocheted HP portraits!



here is totallee's blog with all the finished portraits.
lookee! A SNAPE PATTERN!

sign ups over at the HPKCHC are open!

the term begins september 1!
anyone thinking of joining?

link to the group


edited to add:
signups are closed, but we are IN! slytherin FTW!

envisioning tiny stitches!

i picked up my new pair of prescription reading glasses at costco today. (i did not like the transitional bifocal lenses. i had them remade into single vision lenses.)


now i have no excuses left when it comes to crocheting that jewelry project i was dreaming of a while ago!

It's 100 degrees outside...but autumn must be in the air

I spent 20 minutes fingering yarn yesterday, then went home and watched YouTube videos on how to knit.


uh-oh!

;)

where i stopped...

i did also work on the ash, but i haven't photographed it.
i am still at a standstill on all my crochet.

sigh.

alas

i did not meet the deadline for the end of the second month on my OWL. not that i hadn't been working-- it is just sometimes, february goes out like a carpstorm. i did get the little phoenix body banged out and most of the ashes, but i didn't even try to submit it before the deadline. i really have been distracted and discouraged.

i also did not finish the braille secret message scarf.

grr.

amigurumi: ur doin it rite!

yes, it looks a bit like the last post! frankly, most amigurumi begins in a circle, but looky what i made! a HOLE! this phoenix body needed a hole in both ends of a sphere. this sphere will have a dowel running through it that continues up the neck (yet unmade!). here is my first attempt (after i remembered about the hole and tore out the actual first attempt). i abandoned it because of the wonky shape of the hole and the arrhythmic increases.

version 2 started with a joined chain ring of 18 stitches. i then went around the ring through the center for 24 stitches. (amigurumi LOVES multiples of 6!) since i started my increases every 4th stitch on the next round, every 5th, every 6th and at this row, i am at one increase at every 7th stitch.

much happier with the results. good amigurumi has such a nice body to it when you are doing it right!

the baby phoenix looks a lot like a large bladder with a little neck. i WISH i had started from the top down on that one, but alas. i am going forward with it as is. the next step for that is the felting.

baby in the making!

this is the inside of the baby phoenix which is about 5 inches now in circumference and will be felted before i am done.

round and round i go!


edited to add:
hmm...i wonder if i should have started at the top DOWN. dang.

devil's snare scarf...done.

snakey's lost her slytherin mind

anguinea of Slytherin proposes to tackle Option 2 for a Magical Creatures OWL.

“Option 2: Hatch an Egg. Identify your egg (dragon, phoenix, etc.) and knit or crochet an object inspired by your creature. If you make a physical creature it must be a minimum of 12 inches in at least one dimension.”

I intend to create a fully-grown Phoenix seated upon a perch and, since a Phoenix does not come from an egg, a Phoenix chick emerging from ashes.