crocheted things on apartment therapy!

how cool is this?

i'm thinking i need to make something and then go back and let them know!!  time to get noticed.  and what better way than with a kick ass chevron? just sayin'.

hehe.   :)

i love valentine's day

i say it every year and i'll say it again, i LOVE valentine's day.  LOVE LOVE LOVE it. 

that said, here is the first of some valentine's day goodies i've been working on.  

i saw this tutorial on towel belts.  i know, who'da thunk it right?  i certainly didn't.  until i saw it....

now, i could lie and say that i thought this would be useful for me and all my towel frustration. but i don't cook and i have honestly never had a 'towel-always-falling-on-the-floor' dilemma.  

however,  i was intrigued. mostly because i thought, "can i crochet something like that?"

you bet your ass i can!

here's the before: 

and here's the after!  no towels fallin' over here!  

please know that i'm not making fun of those who's towels are often found on the floor. i'm making fun of myself because i'd too have this issue, if i cooked.  ever.  as in, using my oven to cook food.  

i should try it someday i suppose.  but until then, i'm going to sit back and admire the cuteness.  

i just can't get enough

i just can't get enough...of these gosh darn cute baby hats!  now that i've figured it out, i can't stop.

here we have a pretty pink hat.  i was going to leave it plain, but that just didn't make any sense to me.  i made the pink flower first.  too plain. then i made the cream center.  still too plain.  so finally, this little baby ended up with a double flower. i know, it's cute.

and once again to give you an idea of the size, it's on my diet coke can.  which is turning out to be the best hat stand ever.  it's useful AND tasty.

and now for the dudes. baby yarn is traditionally pretty girly.  but my el cheapo yarn is way too tough for new born heads.  a toddler maybe....but not a baby and especially not a preemie. 

so i searched for the studliest color in my stash.  this isn't a baby blue, more of a light grey blue.  with a cream stripe...i was goin' for a sk8ter boy vibe.  siiiiiiiiiiigh.....it's still a tad girly. 

now onto booties.  these, along with the hats, i used to be an expert at.  but then i reached the ripe old age of 25 and stopped making presents for all of my friends who were having babies. (i'm from utah,  there were a lot during my early 20's...).

this is the simplest pattern i was able to find.  and i'm not in love with them.  i tried to freehand some but it didn't work. 

they're not bad.  they just look rather....i don't know, elfish to me?  and really, i don't want to embarrass the little guys.  with the chicks you can slap a flower on those babies and call it good.

there may just not be such a thing as a manly bootie.  just sayin'.

i'll keep trying.

the power of crochet night...

inevitably during the day, i find myself emailing shannon to tell her how irritated, pissed off, and tired i am only to find that she is feeling the exact same way.

i'm not generally pissed off about one thing, it's often a lot of little things that ultimately add up to one big giant pile of crap that i can't do anything about. except for adjust my attitude.  which will come later, after the complaining.

this past thursday happened to be one of those days.

enter email. and shannon. who, can i just say, is probably one of the top 5 funniest people i know.  also, one of the most thoughtful. and if i had to pick my top 5 favorite characteristic traits, thoughtful would be right on up there.

january 13 started out as an 'irritable' day for kami. personally, i'm a little concerned about some things that are going on in my family, i'm disappointed in some people's decision making skills, and tired of everyone in the world being selfish a-holes all the time.

and then, she had a brilliant idea. i think she said something like this:  I'm about ready to give up on people.  i think i'm going to forget about regular projects and do something for a baby.

DING!  a few weeks earlier, a friend had mentioned that local hospitals were always in need of crocheted items for the little ones.

i'm not gonna lie. i started to cry a little bit. because in that one second, i found myself pulled out of all my negative ickiness, and into profound sense of excitement and gratitude that there is something that i can do to to contribute.i think it worked for her too, because before i knew it, we had a million patterns to look at and had decided what we were going to do. crochet night couldn't have come fast enough.

flash forward to crochet night (which, really is what i look forward too most during the week) where we made tiny hats and booties. they are the cutest things i've ever seen. 

sadly, i'd lost my 'crochet hat mojo'...it took me several tries to get something that a baby could use.  i ended up with a 6-month old baby hat and a hat so tiny that i don't know if it would fit anything other than a barbie.  shannon assured me that there are babies of all sizes.  phew!  

fast forward to today, sunday. and i'm sick.  i'm one sick girl.  i'm also mad about this because it's over my three day weekend and i have barely been able to walk to and from the kitchen to the bathroom and back to my bed.  i turned on the tv and they were talking about the tucson shooting again. so i started crying.  again. and then decided to make baby stuffs.  again.  worked like a charm. 

i think i have it back now and today have crocheted the cutest damn hat i've ever seen.  check it yo's: 

i put it on my computer so you could see how small it is. i used extra soft cream and brown yarn. the little ones want to be stylin' too.  that's a little flower. one day, i need to actually learn to take a good picture. 

and here it is on my diet coke can so you can get an idea of it's size. forgive the mess in the back. i'm sick.  although, i'm not kidding anyone.  even  if i was feeling great my coffee table would still look just like this...

i don't have a specific pattern i use.  with me, my hats always come out different and when i try to follow a pattern, they go all wonky. so this is a few patterns put together. just a circle and then rows.  with a flower for adorableness.  easy peasy and cute taboot!

Update from Shannon: Of course I took it upon myself to link this guy up (and I'm sure I'll link some more later) It's too cute not to share!

I Love the Night Life

Crochet night that is...especially when it includes a little Dollar Store craft shopping! (and incidentally I love to boogie on the disco rooooound too) If you hadn't guessed from the spasticness of that beginning, it's long lost Shannon here. I really need to get my act together. I have a zillion projects to post, but I have to get my pictures organized first. In the meantime, I'm just too excited about our crochet night last night to not post about it. My camera is all wonky so you'll have to excuse the phone pics. (not like my camera pics are any better lol) Anyway, check out this little beauty. All in all I spent 2 dollars and the rest of the materials I already had on hand.

I'm totally in love with this sweetness. Let me walk you through its creation. First, Kami sent me an email one day that said "We should make these sometime soon" Of course the first thing I did when I clicked on her link was my signature high pitched squeal. I love the colors and I could just eat up those adorable little felt flowers. Coincidentally I happened to have been reading this blog post and loved the wreath she made too. She used book pages to make rosettes. I noticed that she said she'd made  rosettes out of felt too previously so I was all excited to have a tutorial. I thought, I'll do both wreaths! Where will I put two wreaths? No clue, but I'll do them both anyway! (I'm ambitious like that) The day before yesterday I took a little solo trip to the dollar store and picked up a styrofoam wreath form. I also picked up these little tiny balls meant to be vase fillers. I have no clue what they're made of but they're really staticky. Anyway, I picked up a couple of colors to use as embellishments for lots of things on the cheap.

Now I don't have extra books lying around my house. I usually borrow books from my sister or my mom and then return them. The few books I have at home are ones I want to keep intact. I've looked around thrift shops and the dollar store for books that I would feel comfortable ripping up and I always seem to find books about murderers and politics. Call me superstitious, even if the pages are cut up and no one can read them, just knowing that type of material is hanging on my wall would give me the heebie jeebies. Although we did find dictionaries and thesauri (is that the plural? hee hee) at the dollar store so that is a thought. In any case I have tons of newspaper. I kind of dig the slightly darker coloring they give the flowers. When I started making these little rosettes, I quickly discovered that they take forever. I think it was just hard for me to get a good rhythm. I experimented with how far apart to space the spirals, how big to make them, etc. So all of the smaller ones I made came out looking very different from one another. Not necessarily bad but annoying. I finally figured out how to make one bigger rosette but by that time it was almost crochet night! At this point I was seriously reconsidering making a whole wreath's worth. So last night Kami and I took another trip to the dollar store because I was way too excited to show her the fun things I found. She bought some more balls (lol) and wreath forms too. By the time we got home I'd decided to make the yarn wrapped wreath and use the rosettes as embellishments. A few more rosettes, duct taping (that foam gets messy), and hours of yarn wrapping ended up coming together to make something even cuter than I had envisioned. Add to that a few cream colored balls to embellish the embellishments and I was smitten.

Lastly I needed something to hang it with. So out came my trusty twine. For some reason I really love doing stuff with twine. I crocheted a regular chain and noticed that it started spiralling on its own. What an unexpected, happy surprise! So I glued it to the back of the wreath and realized I made it too long. No worries, just double that baby up and it perfectly covers the ghetto push pin I used to hang it.

Here she is resting in her final home. I'm using the cabinets I got from Kami as my "mantle" for decorations. I'm the type who has a designated decor space in each room. I like the rest of my flat surfaces to be really simple and uncluttered. Hey, I said that's what I like, not that my apartment actually looks that way!

Along the way Kami was going on her own wreath. It's amazing how it can be the same general idea but come out so different. And SOOOO CUTE! I'm going to turn the time over to Kami now to share her adorableness. Feel free to jump up and down and clap. I did.

enter kamcicle: 

kami here!  you'll notice that i'm entirely too lazy to capitalize.  that's how you can tell us apart!

i'm am so excited about this little guy that i can barely stand it.  i had the intention to make some as gifts, but wrapping things in yarn takes FOREVER so i'll have to love you a lot to consider something any bigger than this.  

as shannon mentioned, we bought foam wreath forms to cover in yarn.  this is all fine and good except for that they are floral foam wreaths, which are messy and break easy.  *siiiiiiiiiiigh*  plan b.  lucky for us, shannon had some duct tape. so what you see in these pictures is a labor of love and cuteness.  because not only did it take a few hours to wrap this lil' guy in yarn, we had to pre-wrap the wreath in tape.  

and as she was making her rosettes out of paper, i was crocheting as fast as my little hands could take me.  4 rosettes later, some white balls (haha, can you tell we think it's funny when someone says balls?) and presto!  not really presto, but presto in blogger land!

behold:

i wanted to match the flowers, so i crocheted a little ribbon like dealio for the hanger. i must say, i'm a little in love.  it's on the wall here just so i can take a picture. i'm still debating on it's permanent home.  

stay tuned for more adorableness!  

And because we gals love a good party, check out where we linked!

  

http://www.sugaranddots.com/2011/01/what-i-whipped-up-wednesday-linky-party_11.html

and here and here too!

the inner bitty is now the outer bitty

this christmas was spent making things for other people. 

as i was thinking about what i wanted to make for myself, i realized that i wanted to sew a slipcover for my chair cushion.  but then i realized that my cat would just lay on this new slip cover and ruin it.  like she does everything else. 

she lays on everything.  she especially likes things that have been freshly washed.  i've caught her in my laundry basket...and my jammy drawer. but that was my fault because i left the drawer open. 

i couldn't have her ruin the new slip cover, so i made a slip cover...cover?  let's think of a fun name!

here she is messing with the yarn. she can't keep her hands to herself for 5 seconds. 

it's a kitty cozy!  she wasn't too happy with me at this point. i made her get in it so i could take the picture....

see how she looks like she's about to make a run for it?  she's thinking, "i'm going to murder you in your sleep...."

here she is snuggled up.  a kitty snuggie?  hehe...she got in it on her own this time.  does she kind of look like she has a lazy eye?  she does walk into walls on occasion....she also looks like she's still plotting my demise...

ahhhh.....sleepy time now.  

doesn't she look so cozy?  i'm such an old lady.  because this is my idea of a good time.

and should i be embarrassed that there are 5 pictures of my cat in this post? i promise i do stuff.