Fiber Monday

 

In Which I did make progress
In Spite of Video Games...

You might remember that a couple of weeks ago I was working on a waistband for a skirt I'm planning to make. This has... not gone as quickly as I'd hoped. I haven't even made it 25% of the way on the waistband itself.

It's still pretty big, though!

Yup. That's the reason it's been so hard to make big progress.

I'll be real with you, most of my time has been spent excitedly trying to fight hinoxes (waaaay easier than BOTW) and Lynels (harder, but that's 99% because of my stupid drift problems), escorting Koroks (it's very amusing to me to just... drag them around, no devices, no flying, no torture, just carrying them with Ultrahand). I have been, in short, slacking off where crochet is concerned. I'm also having Project Scatter.

Project Scatter is what happens when my brain goes "yeah, this is a project you need to finish... but what if you did like 6 other things at once?"

Needless to say, my brain is a bit sparky this week, and I've been struggling to focus.

Hopefully next week, I'll have at least half the band finished and some idea of what I want the actual skirt itself to look like. Because yeah. I have no idea what this thing will look like.

It won't even be white... eventually. I think.

I don't know what color it should be, though...

And boy do I have a lot of work to do.

Regardless, I'll do my best, and hopefully it'll get done before I head to the Ren Faire in September.

For now, I hope you're all doing alright and making headway on your own projects.

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Fiber Monday

 

In Which I Have A New Project:

So I have a Ren Faire to attend in September. This means I need an outfit. I have a lovely top from Holy Clothing (a Torvi top in Huntress Green), and I have some tan jeggings that, covered by the top, will look almost like deer suede. I will probably try to wear my boots, but if it's gonna be wet that day, I'll just wear some good hiking shoes and sacrifice fantasy aesthetic in favor of not losing my feet or damaging my good suede boots.

But just a tunic and leggings isn't very... fancy, is it?

No, I want a ridiculous, complicated, lacy skirt.

I admire the designs of a lot of the skirts I've seen, but I wanted to make my own 100% of the way. So far, I'm using white crochet thread and a 1.5mm hook. I've only just started the waistband.

As you can see, it's not that big

I'm hoping to have this skirt be double-fastened with ribbons and some sort of buttons or hooks as well.

I started by chaining 51 and then single-crocheting 25 rows of 50 stitches each, chaining one and turning at the end of each row.

The next row, I single-crocheted 10 stitches, chained 10, skipped 10 stitches, single crocheted into the next 10 stitches, chained 10, skipped 10 stitches, and then single crocheted the last 10 stitches before chaining one and turning.

The next 5 rows are all single crocheted, single crocheting into each chain and stitch across. Then I kept repeating the spaced-rows and the 5 rows of single crochet. I'll keep going like that until I'm satisfied with the way it wraps around my middle, and then I'll probably do another 50 rows of just plain single crochet, just to create a comfy overlap to prevent any gapping (not that anyone will see the waistband at the Ren Faire, but what if I want to wear it elsewhere?!)

My plan after the waistband is done is to create a row of half-double crochet along the bottom edge to which I'll eventually attach the skirt, which will start as wide as my waistband and then I'll keep adding stitches until it's wide enough to be swishy and fun and long enough to qualify as a skirt and not just a flirty little coverup. I already know this girl's gonna be heavy, and I'm debating whether I want to add beads to make it even heavier. 

I'm considering all of the laces and trims that I've found on Ravelry. There's a very old squirrel one I think would be absolutely darling as a feature of the skirt, but we'll see how that goes.

Alright, I think I've said all I can say so far on this project. I'm only maybe 20% done with the waistband. Maximum. We'll see where I'm at next week!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Snowmageddon Week 2

 

The Weather Outside's Been Frightful
But all This Snow's Delightful!

The weather this past week has been unpleasant up here in the beachy north. Temperatures have unreliably fluctuated between 28 to 52℉ (-2 to 11℃), and it has rained, snowed, and blown a gale (up to 50mph/80kph), sometimes all at once. When it's been clear, it's been cold or windy. Needless to say, I've spent a lot of time holed up in the blanket fort, hooking up a small blizzard.

In total, I now have nearly a dozen snowflakes! I believe that on last Monday, I had only 4 or 5 completed. I have... more now.

I actually ended up taking pictures of all of the snowflakes I've completed up to now (including the ones from last week, sorry).

Snowmageddon Part 1

Snowmageddon Part 2

The snowflakes I've completed since last Monday are as follows:

Snowflake #1

Crochet Snowflake

Cake Head Snowflake

Lace Snowflake

Chocolate Chip Eater

Snowflake Corfu

That list above links directly to either the Ravelry page for that pattern or the pattern itself (if the pattern is on someone else's website/blog). And if I can crochet them by desk lamp light while the wind howls outside and my coffee cools on my desk, you can crochet them, too!

There is a lot of counting involved in some of these flakes, and it takes me an average of 45 minutes to make each one. In fact, it took me over 8 hours to crochet all of the snowflakes in the last two weeks that I've done. I only skipped one day, but I've hooked a few in one day, too.

On average, it takes about 45 minutes for me to crochet these using hooks between 1.5mm and 2mm on the white cotton crochet thread you can pick up at Wal-Mart. The longest I spent on a flake was an hour and a half (on the Chocolate Chip Eater), and the fastest flake I made was the "Crochet Snowflake", which took a little over 15 minutes to make. If you're going to make one single design of a flake, that might be the one to make en masse.

If you're going for fancy flakes, though, I'm really loving the humorously named flurry of patterns that Jessica Wifall is putting out this year on Ravelry, so if you're on there, those might be your idea of a good time, too. The Wifall patterns are taking me an hour or more per flake, but they're delightfully complex-looking while not being overly complicated, stitch-wise. In fact, it's mostly just a lot of yarning over for hilariously long stitches (really, I've never even seen a trtr stitch before this month, and they're so fun to make - yarn over 4x and start pulling through over and over!) and counting chains.

The crop of snowflakes available this year is magnificent, and if you're looking to make yourself a bunch of ornaments and learning some new patterns, this is definitely the year to do it.

Let's get flakey, y'all!

And Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Snowmageddon 2022 Begins!

 

Snowmageddon is upon us once again!

Every year, I try to crochet a bunch of snowflakes, and this year is no different!

Today's batch of snowflakes were selected off of Ravelry and I spent a little under two hours hooking them up.

A Trio of Snowflakes!

The Tire Roll Snowflake

The Snowflake Wishes 2 Pattern

The Frozen Freeze Snowflake

These are reasonably easy snowflakes that mostly involve a lot of counting and/or yarning over extra times. I worked on them while watching YouTube videos, and once the tails are woven in and I block them, they'll look pretty dang good!

They already look pretty good!

And I think that designer Jessica Wifall's choice of 1.5mm hook was perfect for such structured shapes! Since they're so tightly-crocheted, most of the interior structures hold their shape perfectly even without starch!

My goal is to make one or two flakes per day until the week before Christmas, so let's see how that works!

I'm also still working on a few gifts for people. Some are... interesting, I'll say that. I think I'll record everything I make as gifts and then post them all the week after Christmas. How does that sound?

I think that'll do it from me today.

Tomorrow will be an absolutely gorgeous day, if chilly, and I may go for a walk before blogging. Tonight, however, I'm insanely cozy and very satisfied with my three little flakes. The Blizzard grows.

Snowmageddon cometh.

Go Enjoy Something!

FC