Snowmageddon Week 3

 

In Which The Blizzard Has Fallen To Flurries...

This week has been rough for working on stuff. I've been struggling with insomnia again, and it's resulted in a meager 3 snowflakes (the Sun Star by Renata Saj, the Mykonos snowflake by blueraindrops, and this snowflake from bestfreecrochet). The three of them took a total of 2 hours and 11 minutes or so, and they didn't use up that much thread. The last snowflake was the hardest, despite only taking about 45 minutes. The first holds its shape very very well and is a fun challenge, taking me a little over an hour to complete!

I have worked a lot on other gifts that I cannot post here (yet), and I've actually started writing a pattern to be shared in probably January.

Aside from that, though, here are this week's flurries:

Clockwise from top: bestfreecrochet, Sun Star, and Mykonos

The plan for tomorrow is (besides blogging) to sew in the ends on these and start starching and blocking them. I'll do my best to take process shots.

If I sleep tonight, the chances of there being process shots are much higher lol.

I think sewing in ends will take the longest - there's a *lot* of flakes. The ironing, pinning & starching should take maybe half that time, with the rest of the day being all drying time. After that, it's just a matter of finding some ornament hangers and badabing badaboom, we've got ornaments.

I'm debating whether or not to use proper laundry starch or to try an experiment with clear glitter glue...

Regardless, Snowmageddon is nearly done for 2022.

I can't wait to be able to show off more and different projects (especially some of the crazier items I've been working on for my friends & family!!!)

If you guys have any free pattern suggestions or project ideas, please do feel free to comment below - my brain likes to get stuck in loading mode sometimes, so a gentle nudge one way or another is always appreciated.

I'm going to get back to work on my gift list, so I hope you enjoyed today's peak at what I'm up to!

And 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