Creativity – Page 4 – Mamas2Hands

New Camera – New Problems

March 2, 2017Creativity, Latest News3 Comments

My poor little YouTube Channel is feeling quite neglected lately. Between the Christmas trips and then the death of my old Samsung Note 2 smartphone my productive time has been seriously compromised.

I was working on a project this last weekend uploading the video footage I had shot with my new Smartphone. Unfortunately, though the footage was oriented correctly on my computer screen to review, the clips were upside down when I imported them into my video editing software. That software is a bit older and doesn’t allow for rotating the clips so I may be investing in a software update. That or re-filming the footage to see if I can correct the orientation problem.

The good news is, once I get all this new-to-me technology figured out and working properly, I will be producing more and better quality videos for all my wonderful followers.

This is my new camera that I purchased in February. In a way this camera was partially a Christmas gift. My in-laws knew I was needing a better camera for my work, so they and my aunt gave me monetary gifts to help pay for it. As a micro-business I have to really watch every penny, and I had been saving up to purchase a good camera for the past year. Having my Note 2 bite the dust in January made things a bit of a stretch, but with the help of the Christmas gifts I managed to get this camera and it’s kit.

Some of the accessories that came in the kit are a mystery to me, but fortunately there is lots of information on the internet to help me figure them out. I was happy to find a “For Dummies” E-book that is about my exact model of camera, since the information in the booklet that came with the camera read like a foreign language to me. I’ve been working my way thru the “dummies’ book to understand all the bells and whistles on the camera. Seriously, you would almost expect this thing to wash the dishes, do the laundry and weave in ends.

One of the best ways to learn all this technology is just to use it. Which means I am hoping for some nicer weather to get out and take lots of photos. The great thing about using a digital camera is that I can take loads of photos without all the expensive of having film developed. Hopefully I’ll have some crochet and yarn related photos to show you on the blog before this month is out.

The Greatest of these is Love

February 14, 2017February 21, 2017Celebrating, Creativity, Crochet, Free Pattern Links, Pattern3 Comments

“So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

1 Corinthians 13:13

This bible verse has resonated with me thru-out my life, no matter where my spiritual travels have taken me. The idea that the most important thing that we strive for in life is to live in love.

This is entirely appropriate, since today is Valentines Day, a holiday that celebrates love. Though some folks view it as a “greeting card” holiday that focuses on romantic love, I like to look at it a bit more broadly. I have always enjoyed celebrating it as a holiday about love in all it’s forms.

The love for our children. The love of dear friends that lift us up thru life’s challenges. Even the unconditional love of our beloved furry family members. The love that is expressed as compassion and kindness for our fellow humans on life’s journey.

Recently I was talking with a crochet friend about how we crochet love into the projects we make. Whether it is love for the person whom we will be gifting the finished project to, or love and compassion for others when we are making projects for charity. There is even the love of our craft that is crocheted into every stitch as we make something for ourselves or (as is the case for me about 60% of the time) a project sample for work.

The image I used for the Crochet Love picture is the stitch diagram for my very popular heart pattern “Crocheted Love” from 2013. This heart has been popular with other crochet bloggers to build on in their blog tutorials and such. This has led to some interesting interpretations of the pattern.

Today I wanted to show you some quick tips on making these hearts. They only take a little bit of yarn and time to whip up to include on a card or as an embellishment for a gift item to celebrate the holiday of love.

The biggest stumbling blocks seem to be where to work the slip stitch that creates the point at the bottom of the heart and the final slip stitch that anchors the last “bump” at the top of the heart.

This is a close-up of the stitch diagram for the point of the heart. The conventions for showing the orders of operation in diagrams have the arrow pointing under the chain stitch, but you are actually working behind the chain stitch to get to the double crochet just made.

My hook goes under the front loop at the top of the stitch and under the top wrap of the stitch. The lighter weight purple yarn in the photo above shows the path I insert my hook thru.

This image is the hook in place.

Yarn over and pull thru all the loops of yarn, including the working loop on the hook.

Tighten the finished slip stitch.

Make the next 2 dc stitches in the same stitch of Round 1 as before, and continue following the stitch instructions for Round 2.

This is a close-up of the stitch diagram for the end of Round 2.

When you finish the last 7 treble crochet stitches you will need to anchor it with a slip stitch.

Work the ending slip stitch between the final dc stitch and starting chain of Round 1.

Tighten the slip stitch to create a seamless finish to your heart.

As a little extra bonus today I am including the instructions for making a single crochet border around the heart.

You can use this border to give a more finished look to a single heart or to connect 2 hearts together.

For the heart above I cut out a heart shape from heavy card stock, using one of my hearts as a pattern to draw the heart shape. When I cut it out I trimmed the shape a bit smaller to leave room for the border stitches.

I then sandwiched the cardstock heart between the yarn hearts while I crocheted the border. This makes the heart extra sturdy for hanging from a garland.

Instructions for Single Crochet Border

After finishing Round 2 of Crocheted Love Heart – Do Not Fasten Off, chain 1, starting with first Treble of Round 2 – (sc in next st, 2 sc next st) 4 times, sc in next 5 sts, 2 sc next st, ch 1 and slip st in top of last sc made, 2 sc next st, sc next 5 sts, (2 sc next st, sc next st) 4 times, slip st to first sc of round.

After finishing the border you can cut the yarn and weave in the end, or chain to the desired length to use as a hanging cord for the heart.

If you make your 2 hearts with a bulky yarn and appropriate sized hook your hearts will be a generous size and you can insert some stuffing before completing the border to make a sweet little pillow.

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I am going to spend part of my Valentines Day in my traditional celebration of consuming Dove Dark Chocolate hearts. I hope you all have a wonderful Valentines Day and that your life is full of love.

More Books and Fiber to Play With

January 14, 2017Celebrating, Creativity, Humor, Inspiration, Needle Felting, Yarnie Friends1 Comment

It’s been a busy week since my last post. I’ve been working on 5 different things all at the same time, a couple of them were to do with opening my Etsy Shop. I have set the 15th of January as my goal for getting my shop open, that is tomorrow. Eek!

I may only have a couple of listings when I open my shop, but I figure you have to start somewhere. Funny thing is, the making items part is actually the easy task. It’s the getting all the information online and figuring out how to do all the listing stuff that slows me down. I’m hopeful that once I’ve gotten some practice listing items on there I will be faster.

Meanwhile there is yarn and fiber stuff happening too. Last night I was getting ready to do reading time with my boys and my husband said, “Oh I forgot, you got a huge box in the mail.” Then he handed me the box. It was from my friend Pam in New Jersey.

We spoke on the phone a few weeks ago. She was doing some clearing out and she wanted to see if I would like any of the stuff she was getting rid of. At first I said “No” because my own studio needs a serious clear-out. She wasn’t giving up that easy though, and began to tell me about some books she thought I would like. She also knows I have been doing needle-felting and offered some roving and felting tools that she thought I would find useful. Plus, as she put it, the roving would make good packing material for the books.

By the end of the conversation I had agreed that the books sounded very interesting. Here they all are: 3 books about crocheting with wire, 1 about wire-wrapping, and the last is any interesting book about Textile Techniques in Metal. She even included a couple of articles from Bead & Button issues that were about crocheting with wire. Very distracting and fun.

Then there was the colorful bag of roving.

I was expecting wool roving, but Pam included some lovely alpaca and silk as well.

Look at this beautiful stack of hand-dyed silk hankies. Pam and I have similar tastes in colors, so these just about jumped out of the bag into my hands. I haven’t played with silk in this form before, though I have read about it.

Last of all was a handy Needle-Felting tool from FeltCrafts. This will be very useful when I am working on some of my larger projects. I’m looking forward to testing it out. Don’t you love the fun little container it came it? It is really nice when one can keep all the sharp things gathered up.

I am very glad that Pam talked me into acquiring these new goodies, now I just have to behave myself and get some of the other stuff on the Mutant To-Do List done before I play with them.

Some Holiday Bling

December 13, 2016Creativity, Crochet, How Tos, Latest NewsLeave a Comment

I’ve been super busy making last minute arrangements for our holiday celebrations. We are going to be having a number of visits with family and friends over the next couple of weeks. That means lots of house-cleaning, laundry, wrapping and shipping gifts.

We’ve been getting some real snow accumulation and days of below freezing temperatures up here on the mountain the past week. The snowy cold weather has definitely gotten me in the mood for Christmas-time. I’ve been thinking about hats and ear-warmers. These are great crochet projects for a quick gift. Especially ear-warmers as they don’t take very much yarn or time. You may recall my Springtime Headband design that I published during NatCroMo 2015.

I decided to make it again using Brown Sheep Wool’s “Lambs Pride” worsted weight yarn and some sparkly silver beads. A bit of bling for some holiday cheer. This headband might become a gift for one of my family members, or I may adopt it to keep me warm during all the running around we will be doing over the boys’ holiday break from school.

It is very simple to make this headband with beads. You’ll need 38 beads. I used size 2/0 E beads, but any bead that has a large enough hole for your yarn to fit thru works. Crochet the headband following the pattern until you reach the Edging section.

Following the Side One edging instructions as written for stitch placement, *work 22 regular sc, then place a bead on the top of the next sc, (work 2 regular sc, then place a bead on next sc) 18 times,* follow instructions for edging until reach the beginning of Side Two instructions; Repeat the modifications from * to* for bead placement, finish the edging following the original instructions from the pattern.

If you need help with how to add beads using the “hoist-on” method, there is a tutorial about half way thru my blog post: Making a Pendant.

You can use this hoist-on method to add beads to the top of any stitches, not just single crochets. Try using this method to add beads for some bling to any of your holiday projects. Think how pretty some beads could look on the edge of a cowl or the end of a scarf.

Some Crochet Surgery

November 16, 2016Creativity, Crochet, Humor, Latest News3 Comments

I’m way late with my mid-week post, but I have been having a Whirlwind of a week. Clearly I jinxed myself naming my newest hat pattern that.

Amongst all my other tasks I’ve been tackling, I’ve been crocheting my latest Playing with Triangles Shawl and ran into a little problem. I had finished the second beaded row and cut my yarn when I discovered that one of my V-stitches in the beginning of the row only had one leg of the V.

It had taken some time to work that row because each V-stitch had a hoisted-on bead on the chain one. I really didn’t want to pull out the whole row and re-do all those beaded stitches. Plus I wasn’t sure I would have enough yarn to finish the whole row once I put in the missing double crochet stitch.

Instead I decided to do a little surgery on my project.

It’s a bit un-nerving taking scissors to my crochet work, but I am getting more comfortable with it all the time. This row wasn’t so bad, since it was the last row I had worked. I wouldn’t have to incorporate the new stitches with a row above.

Unraveling to where I need to work the missing double crochet.

ready-to-add-new-yarn — Ready to add new yarn

pulling-up-new-yarn-loop-with-old-yarn-loop — New Yarn and Old Yarn loops on hook

pulled-thru-old-yarn-end — Pulled thru old yarn end

created-new-beaded-ch-st — New beaded chain-stitch made

unraveling-to-beg-of-next-v-st — Un-raveling to beginning of next V-st.

securing-top-of-st — Securing top of stitch

preparing-to-join-2-vs — Preparing to join the 2 V-stitches

After all the cutting and un-raveling I joined in some new yarn and crocheted the stitches I pulled out. It is a little hard to see what I was doing with these stitches since the new yarn and old yarn are the same color. But this is more just to show you that no one is perfect.

Surgery is over and the patient has survived.

Once the extra tails are woven in, you won’t be able to see where the surgery even happened.

I’m reminded of something Margaret Hubert said in a class I took with her, “Admire your work often, you’ll catch your mistakes sooner.” I’ll be admiring my work a lot more before I cut my yarn from now on.

Changing Color, Changing the Look

October 13, 2016October 13, 2016Creativity, Crochet, Tips and Tricks4 Comments

We are going to have some more fun with my “Fans & Lace Afghan Square” today.

When I first designed this square I picked out 3 colors that I thought looked nice together and began to crochet. But you don’t have to stick to just 3 colors. I thought I would show you some other fun things you can do with this square by using more colors or even changing when you change colors.

For this version of my square I used only 2 colors changing color where indicated in the pattern.

In this square I used the same 2 colors, but started with the silver instead of the blue. I also changed colors every round after working the first 2 rounds. Notice the fun zig-zag effect created with the V-stitch rounds.

I was inspired by Tamara’s square (Mooglyblog.com) she worked from my pattern. She used 6 colors working with the changes where I wrote them except in Round 12. I loved the orange zig-zag around her square and decided to play with that in some of my squares.

I also played with using 4 colors. Not sure how happy I am with how this square came out, but I do like the autumn colors in it.

In the pattern I have you fasten off your yarn and join with a new yarn color 7 times. If you wanted, you could use 8 different colors, like I did in the square shown above. This is a great way to use up scraps of leftover yarn in your work-basket.

To help you decide if you have enough yarn I have listed the 8 sections and the yardage each needs. I broke out the yardage for the individual rounds in the last 3 sections, in case you want to use a different color in each round. These were the yardages I used with Lion Brand Yarns “Vanna’s Choice” and a size I (5.5mm) hook. I’ve rounded the yardage up from the fractions so that you should have a little wiggle room.

If your gauge is very different from mine listed in the pattern you may have to adjust accordingly.

Rounds 1 & 2: 4 yards

Round 3: 2 yards

Round 4: 12 yards

Round 5: 4 yards

Round 6: 14 yards

Rounds 7 & 8: 26 yards (Round 7: 10 yards, Round 8: 16 yards)

Rounds 9 & 10: 34 yards (Round 9: 14 yards, Round 10: 20 yards)

Rounds 11 & 12: 42 yards (Round 11: 18 yards, Round 12: 24 yards)

Now it is your turn to dive in and play with color. Be sure to stop by the blog this Saturday as it will be “I Love Yarn” day and I’ll be celebrating with a fun give-away and a video tutorial for the Fans & Lace Afghan Square.

Picking colors for Free Form Crochet

October 5, 2016Art Projects, Creativity, Crochet, How Tos, Yarn1 Comment

Pile of Yarn from Scotts Bluff Valley Fiber Arts Fair

Remember all that yarn I brought back with me from the Scotts Bluff Valley Fiber Arts Fair? I’m putting some of it together with other yarn from my stash to make a free form crochet scrumble.

When I made my first free form scrumble years ago I thought it would be an easy way to use up left-over odds and ends from my stash. That was when I discovered that one of the trickiest things about free form, is picking the colors of yarn to use together. I wasn’t all that happy with my first scrumbles, but I was intrigued enough to persist.

A great short cut for choosing colors is to pick out a multi-colored yarn that appeals to you, then match it with solid yarns in the colors that are in the variegated yarn. This is exactly what I did to begin this project. I used this hand-dyed yarn as my guide for picking the other colors.

If you are like me, a large percentage of your yarn stash is dominated by a couple of colors. In my case I have lots of Purples and blues. I purchased the hand-dyed hank of yarn knowing that I would have other yarns in my stash that would work with it. If you don’t already have a variegated yarn you want to use in your free-form project, look at your stash for color inspiration before purchasing one.

In the end you want a variety of shades as well as colors for your yarn choices. I looked at lighter and darker variations of the colors in my variegated yarn. Like the very deep blue in the furry yarn, that deep color and texture will add some interesting effects to the final fabric. The bright Lime will create contrasting pops.

Hopefully I’ll have some pretty Free Form scrumbles to show you in the next couple of weeks.

My New Book!

September 30, 2016Book, Creativity, Crochet, Crochet Design4 Comments

Well, I’ve been mostly quiet about this project, waiting for the book to actually be available. You can purchase it now on the Annie’s Craft Store, online here.

I’ll be telling you a lot more about this book and my inspiration and processes creating these designs over the next couple of months. You might recall this teaser shot of swatches from last Autumn. That was the beginning of this book.

For now, I’ll just leave you with some eye-candy of the designs so beautifully photographed by the folks at Annie’s.

The Dilemma of Naming Designs

September 16, 2016Creativity, Crochet Design, Free Pattern Links, Humor, Indie publication, OnlineLeave a Comment

As I have said before, trying to think up names for my designs can be one of the most challenging aspects of my work. It’s not just me though it turns out. Thursday this week I was facing the naming struggle once again and decided to tweet about it.

“Sometimes the hardest thing about being a #crochet designer is coming up with a name for my designs.”

My tweets show up on my Facebook page and I had a chuckle today when I finally looked at my page today and read the many responses from loads of my yarnie friends.

Some of my designer friends had funny stories about how they came up with a name. My friend, Bonnie Barker, had some help from family recently.

“Yep. I get that! That’s why when I was out of ideas (while working on my latest book), I spoke out loud wondering and my son replied with a silly (but catchy) name, and I ran with it! That’s how the Fergus Shrug got its name.”

My friend Kathryn White shared her solution, that sometimes creates it’s own problems. Turns out the talented Vashti Braha has this same solution and problem.

“Oh I know that problem. Whenever I see or hear a possible name I try and jot it down. But then I have to remember where I put the note….”

There were a number of designer friends who had some very helpful advice that I will be taking note of.

My good friend April Garwood of Banana Moon Studio says,

“Lately if I can’t think of one easily I use city names in Oklahoma. There is a list of all of them on Wikipedia. Maybe choose a theme: flowers, birds. I also once used part of a scientific name. The color of the scarf reminded me of purple cabbage, so I looked up the scientific name for the plant. That became Brassica Scarf.”

The talented designer and editor of “Crochet! Magazine” for Annie’s Publishing, Ellen Gormley had this helpful advice,

“Street names, city names, flower names, rock/gems, color names, simple words in other languages… I look at all of these to help.“

My dear friend, Brenda Bourg shared her favorite resource,

“I have a site with over 20,000 names in all different languages. It makes it pretty easy to find names. If I can pronounce it, and I like the meaning, I run with it.“

I think the suggestion that made me smile the most was from Elfie, one of my good crocheting buddies from Kansas City,

“Name then after your friends… for instance a hooded oversize sweater made with dark and sparkley with hints of green yarn would be an Elfie in the woods ..lol…or a purple butterfly shawl Erin about town..”

I still need to come up with a name for this latest design, in fact I’m working on 6 designs right now that are in need of a name. I tend to like “geeky” names or names that have a pun to them.

Recently I named this series of blog posts and the resulting shawl pattern “Playing with Triangles” which is a bit of a geeky inside joke.

And there was my alliterative and contradictory “Sophisticated Simplicity Necklace”.

Last fall when I was stumped for a name for this light and lacy shawl, I asked visitors to the blog to vote on a name. “Mountain Whisper Shawl” was the name that won. I tend to stick “mountain” into names as a nod to where I live.

One thing is clear, naming my designs may not get easier. Fortunately that won’t stop me from dreaming up new ones all the time. Have a great weekend dear readers. I’m off to see a special exhibit at the Denver Art Museum tomorrow and then I’ll be teaching crochet to knitters on Sunday at the Longmont Yarn Shoppe.

“Uncle!”

August 24, 2016Creativity, Crochet, Free Pattern Links, Humor, Inspiration, Latest News, Paid Pattern Links, Pattern, YarnLeave a Comment

Sometimes getting back into the routine of school days is a rough transition. That would definitely be the case this week. This is the first full week my boys are back in school and to add to the fun (not): my husband is out of town for work and there are major construction delays on the 2 shortest routes down the mountain to school.

I am really glad that we are getting our roads back to better-than-before. If you all remember back in September 2013 there was a nasty flood here and we had extreme damage to numerous roadways in Colorado, especially in the mountains. The construction has been on-going for the past 3 years, with the big job starting last year about this time.

What all this means for me though, is less time in my office at home. Being on the go isn’t too bad when I’m crocheting away on a pattern, but it gets a bit tricky when I need to do photography and video work.

I had planned to have an awesome Tuesday post for all my dear readers. Unfortunately, I finally had to accept reality since it is now Wednesday evening and I still don’t have the awesome post completed. I’m crying “Uncle” this time. Awesome post is being moved to my Saturday post instead.

But I won’t leave you with a completely empty plate. No starving children in Mama Andee’s house!

One of the good things about being trapped down in town this week, I had the opportunity to get lots of shopping errands out of the way. Seems like there are always little errands that get pushed off the day’s list when I come down during summer break.

This past Tuesday I took care of all my grocery errands, but I also made some time for errands that were a bit more fun. Like stopping by JoAnn’s and Michaels.

I needed some foam cushions for a project and knew that JoAnn’s would have the ones I wanted. I spent a few minutes having a wistful browse of all the lovely Ott-Lites they have in stock. I did resist that temptation, but a skein of yarn said it needed to come home with me.

I really like crocheting with Red Heart’s “With Love” yarn (very aptly named as well). It is nice and soft with a lofty springy twist to it. Great for making home décor or even wearables. I picked the Water Lily color because I thought it would play well with some purple that I had in my stash. Don’t they look nice together? Will be coming back to them later this winter.

There has been a lot of posting in social media about Caron Yarn’s newest product “Caron Cakes”. They are only in Michaels stores from what I understand. They did have them online at the Michaels website, but as of this writing they are out-of-stock. You can take a look at the various colors online though and see if there is a store near you that carries them.

I wanted to see if I could find them in my local Michaels. The store I go to is located in Superior, Colorado in the same shopping area as my nearest Costco. I decided I had time for a stop in Michaels before heading to Costco for groceries. I was pleased to see the yarn there, though they had already sold quite a bit of it.

I had to adopt a few balls for myself. I decided on 2 balls of the purple toned “Bumbleberry” and 1 ball of the “Blueberry Cheesecake”. The yardage in each ball is very generous at 383 yards. It is a yarn that requires a bit more care, the instructions on the label say “Hand Wash. Lay flat to dry.” A little surprising as the fiber content is 80% Acrylic/20% Wool. The yarn is very soft in the ball and doesn’t have that slight scratchiness you sometimes get with wool blends.

I’m looking forward to working with this yarn and seeing what new designs it inspires for me. Meanwhile my good friend and fellow yarnie blogger Jessie has put together a Round-up of pattern suggestions for folks that are wondering what they can crochet with this yarn.

You can find Jessie’s suggestions and the links to the patterns on her blog: Jessie At Home. I was flattered that she included my C2C Basics Scarf in there. Some of my other patterns that could work up nicely in this yarn are:

Granny Fans Redux, this is one of my paid patterns that has detailed charts and the instructions for 3 different styles of neck wear. The long runs of color in the Caron Cakes would likely give you fans in each color.

Playing with Triangles Shawl, this pattern is available here on my blog and I have a “how-to” video on my YouTube Channel.

You can see in the above photo how fun the color changes were using Red Heart’s Treasure. With the Caron Cakes the color stripes would be even more dramatic. The squishy loft of the Cakes yarn would make a very snuggly shawl, perfect for a gift for a dear friend or family member this coming holiday season.

Enjoy the rest of your week, and be sure to stop by on Saturday for another fun pattern and video.