Mamas2Hands

Another Bunny, Another Easter

April 15, 2017August 8, 2021Celebrating, Crochet, Latest News, Needle Felting5 Comments

As you can tell, I’ve been having way too much fun with needle-felting lately. Since tomorrow is Easter I thought it very appropriate to create a sweet little bunny this week.

I didn’t take photos of each step during his creation because I wanted to see how quickly I could make him. I started him about 7:30 in the evening and he was finished by 11. I had a number of interruptions from the family while I was working on him, so my estimate is that he took me about 2.5 to 3 hours to make.

I wanted to create him using the natural colored wool fiber with just a few touches of added color. I used some dark brown yarn for his eyes, and a little bit of pink roving for the color inside his ears and for his nose.

Don’t despair though, I’ve not abandoned crochet entirely for the sharp needles. In fact, I’ve been crocheting on a bunch of samples. Unfortunately they are all freelance pieces I’m doing for magazines, so they are still in the super secret stage.

This past week was Casual Crochet at Longmont Yarn Shoppe. My friend Karen was busily crocheting goodies for her grand-kids’ Easter celebrations. Aren’t they cute? I loved the little baskets she made, the “grass” in the baskets is even crocheted out of bright green fun fur. She had heavily modified a pattern she found to make the baskets.

I think the little bunnies are the “Easter Marshmallow Bunnies” free pattern on Ravelry. They are super quick to work up and Karen was having a blast making them during the meet-up. I decided to try my hand at making some when I got home. I’m going to put one in each of the kids’ Easter baskets.

I modified mine. I only crocheted 2 layers of the head and body, making ears on the front layer only. It made the ears curl a bit, which I liked. I also didn’t stuff the bodies, I liked the flat squishy of them just 2 layers sewn together.

Now I’d better get on the ball with getting the baskets ready for my family. At least I’m not doing the wild trip to the shops to get chocolate bunnies this year. I actually purchased these 3 before we left on our Spring Break trip. Since I didn’t procrastinate I found the dark chocolate bunnies without any trouble.

I even got some bags of dark chocolate Dove eggs.

I hope everyone has a “Hoppy” Easter.

Deconstructed Yarn Painting

April 11, 2017April 11, 2017Inspiration, Needle Felting8 Comments

This is one of my latest pretties.

Remember all those yarn tails I had leftover when I was working on some free-form crochet? Since they were all from 100% wool yarn I knew that I had a special job for them. At the time I wasn’t sure what it would be. I tucked them into a little zip lock bag and put them away.

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of needle felting in preparation for teaching it. I’ve made my own needle felting pads to work on.

I used some of those massive bags of fiber that I purchased from Brown Sheep Yarns last year at the Scotts Bluff Valley Fiber Arts Fair. That means that all my felting pads are the same color as the pieces I’m felting. Not the easiest thing to see with my “mature” eyes, especially in the evening using artificial lighting.

Then I had the brilliant idea that I could add color to the pads, using my left-over yarn tails! I told my friend Sue, who also does needle-felting. At the time I was saying I would cover the whole pad with color. She mentioned that sometimes she works with color and having a white background would be helpful.

That inspired me to only add color to one side of my pad. That way I would have both a natural white surface and a color surface.

First I started pulling apart the yarn. I would un-twist the yarn and then pull off strands or turn it into fluff. I found it a little easier to do if I cut the yarn tails into lengths shorter than 2 inches. The single ply yarn was also easier to pull apart than the multiple plied yarn. Though the multiple plied yarn strands did add some interesting “wavy” texture. I filled up a container with all the deconstructed yarn.

Then I spread the yarn remains over the pad in a random pattern. It was rather fluffy and vague looking.

But once I felted it in using my multi-needle felting tool it looked quite beautiful. My final result actually reminded me of the expressionist paintings I saw last Fall at the Denver Art Museum. I’m thinking I may have to experiment more with this method of “painting” with yarn.

I’m going to need a lot more yarn tails.

Getting into the Swing of Things Again

April 6, 2017April 6, 2017Celebrating, CGOA, Chain Link, Chocolate, Creativity, Crochet, Inspiration, Latest News, Yarnie FriendsLeave a Comment

Well, it’s been a bit of a hectic re-entry to life in our “normal” routine. We have had lots of snow and some very cold temperatures since our return, not what one would think of for Spring weather, though fairly typical for our springtime. I had quite a few things scheduled for this week, which would have been fine if I hadn’t had the wild 4 weeks preceding this one. I’m slowly chipping away at the mutant To-Do list though.

One of the best things about coming home from Spring Break was picking up our mail. This nifty little box was waiting for me from my dear friend Bonnie Pierce.

I met Bonnie and her husband Bill at the first ever CGOA conference I went too. She was wearing one of her gorgeous Free Form crochet capes and I practically attacked her to look at it closer. I was completely on my own at that show, but Bonnie and Bill took me under their wing and included me in many of the group events they were involved in.

They even rescued my hook case that I had left laying on the table one afternoon. Bonnie and I chuckle about it every time we get together. But it has been far too long since I last got to spend some in-person time with Bonnie. Fortunately we stay in touch online thru social media and messaging.

Recently Bonnie and I decided we needed to have a piece of each other’s work. These 2 drop-dead gorgeous scrumbles are what Bonnie sent me. I’m so inspired by her work, though a little chagrined at how clunky and chunky my own Free Form efforts look. Bonnie is truly a talent with her Free Form artistry.

She is well known for her bullion stitches. Which she had tried to teach me numerous times with limited success.

This flower with the sparkly embellishment is currently my favorite bit on this scrumble. But every time I look at them I see something that delights me.

When Bonnie and I met in Portland in 2008, one of the things we bonded over was Chocolate. We both have a love of wonderful dark chocolate. She told me about a Portland chocolate company called “Moonstruck” and shared some that she had with her. It is marvelous stuff and whenever I find the brand I purchase a few bars, but it is rather scarce in Colorado.

So it is very fitting that Bonnie included some delicious chocolate in the package too. I’ve got to get my piece finished to send to Bonnie now and will have to hunt down some special Colorado chocolates to include. This might require me attending the Chocolate Festival again, sigh, the sacrifices I make for my friends.

I’ve been busy with working on developing classes since our return from our big trip. This cute little needle-felted sheep is one of them. I’m finding the needle-felting quite addictive, I think the total attention that is required is a great form of meditation. That’s been very good for me as I process everything the last 4 weeks has thrown at me and my family.

I hope you are all having a beautiful springtime. April is looking to be another fast-moving and busy month. I’ll try to keep up with the blog and (fingers crossed) to have some more videos for you very soon.

Good Bye to NatCroMo 2017

March 31, 2017Celebrating, Latest News, NatCroMo3 Comments

Wow! What a month. I had some grand plans for NatCroMo and some came together, others…not so much. 2017 seems determined to keep me on my toes with surprises around every corner. Thanks to all my wonderful friends and family I think I’ll continue to meet the challenges, I definitely couldn’t do it alone. I am so grateful for all the kind messages and the folks that took a bit of my burden from my shoulders.

I had wanted to post on the blog every day of this month. Despite all the madness, I got pretty darn close to success. The purple stars above are the days I posted. I only missed 3. I would be interested to know what you all thought of it.

Experiencing it from my side of the computer it was really a challenge. The more time I spend working on the blog the less time I have to develop crochet designs, work on exciting art/craft projects or create new classes. So I think I am going to stick to my 2 times a week schedule. That is usually challenge enough. I still may do a solid month of blogging here and there, but I’ll hopefully plan it out ahead of time better.

I thought I would end NatCroMo with a re-vamped Stitch Chart of my Crochet Love heart. You can find the original pattern for the first 2 rounds on my blog post here, and the border round is in my blog post from this February here.

How did everyone’s crochet month go? Did you learn something new about your yarn art? Maybe this was the year that you learned to crochet, if so, a big welcome to you. I hope whatever your crochet status you had a month that gave you a bit of time to celebrate playing with hook and yarn.

We are driving again today, so I’ll be putting in some serious crochet time. Road trips are a great time for me to crochet. At least while I have daylight.

Today I was clever and also packed a booklight for crocheting after dark. We’ll see if that works out for me. Either way, it seems an appropriate way to end NatCroMo. Be sure to stop by regularly and see what new crochet and crafting fun I have for you.

Pet the yarn and hug your loved ones.

Oh my Goodness!!!

March 30, 2017August 8, 2021Latest News, Needle FeltingLeave a Comment

Life is still being crazy. Yesterday got away from me without a chance to do a blog post at all. It’s been a near thing for today.

Yesterday, the little bit of working time was actually spent writing class proposals for the Scotts Bluff Valley Fiber Arts Festival. I’ll be teaching there again this coming September. Still in the process of figuring out which classes I’ll be teaching.

Some of the classes I’m offering to the education committee are crochet, but I am also developing some needle-felting classes. In aid of that I was needle-felting pieces to photograph yesterday.

Today I got quite a bit of crochet time in while we visited with family. This morning was Baba’s funeral service. It was very nice and my kids each lit a candle for their Baba as part of the service.

Nana and my sister-in-law had created a wonderful collage of Baba for the service as well. The large central photo was this one you’ve seen already.

It was good to be with all the family and friends who loved Baba, and to share stories and our memories of our time with a very dear and special man. There were tears, laughter and lots of hugs. Sometimes we need to be reminded of our mortality to recall how special all our loved ones are to us.

Tomorrow we will be back on the road, I’ll be crocheting in the car again. I’m hoping to have a least one of my projects I brought along finished before I make it back to the mountain. Looks like we will be headed back to some real winter weather again.

My house-sitter says we had about a foot of snow the other day and that the plow blocked the end of our driveway when they cleared the roads. Of course the weather took a snowy turn, I didn’t pack my big coat or my snow boots for this trip.

On the Road Again

March 28, 2017August 8, 2021Creativity, Crochet2 Comments

20170328_162336 Well today involved some crocheting as we are on the road again. I do have Willie Nelson’s song playing in my head (if you don’t know the song you can check it out on YouTube {Warning – You may have it stuck in your head after listening}).

I’d hoped to do some drawing during our stops along the way. I’ve had a couple ideas percolating around in my head for awhile and would love to get them on paper. I managed to leave my drawing pens at home so I had to make a quick trip to Michaels last night to get some replacements. I was so excited, for once I actually had my coupon with me in my wallet. I picked out these Staedler pens partly because I loved the little case they came in. Things to keep the pens corralled together are always a good plan in my book.

I haven’t gotten much drawing time today so far, though I will do more tomorrow once we are at Nana’s house. I tend to take a back-seat and let Nana have full reign with the kids. It’s fun for everyone.

A No Crochet Day

March 27, 2017August 8, 2021Humor4 Comments

What?!!!

Yes dear readers, you are seeing that correctly. I did not crochet today at all. My kids are on their Spring Break from school and today was all about spending time with cousins, uncles and grandpa. I thought I might get a little crochet time, I even had my project with me just-in-case. But nope. There was no time to crochet.

There was lots of laughter.

Some really big hugs.

Kitten cuddles and baby snuggles.

But no crochet.

That’s alright, there will be time for crochet again tomorrow. Today was pretty perfect despite the lack of yarn entertainment.

18 Patterns in 2016

March 26, 2017Free Pattern Links, Paid Pattern Links2 Comments

I was talking with a crochet friend the other day about how many patterns I had published in 2016, and I wasn’t sure. I knew I had been doing a lot of work in 2016. So today I decided to take a tally. Turns out I had 18 patterns published, counting the 6 that were in my newest book: “Wraps for All Seasons”.

There were 5 decorative neckwear patterns:

Sophisticated Simplicity Necklace – this pattern is available here on my blog.

Springtime Cowl – this pattern is available here on my blog.

Loopy de Loop Necklace – this pattern is available here on my blog and I have a video tutorial for it on my YouTube channel.

Sweet Song Decorative Scarf – this pattern is available here on my blog.

Beaded Crochet Necklace – this pattern is available on the Red Heart website.

There were 3 Hat patterns:

Mountain Top Beanie – the pattern is available for purchase in my Ravelry Shop.

Simple DC Hat – the pattern is available here on my blog.

Whirlwind Hat – the pattern is available here on my blog.

There were 2 fun little projects in Thread crochet:

Simple Victorian Earrings – the pattern is available here on my blog.

Frozen Star Snowflake – the pattern is available here on my blog.

One afghan square:

Fans & Lace Afghan Square – the pattern is available here on my blog as well as tutorial videos on my YouTube Channel .

There were 7 wraps patterns:

The 6 in my book from Annie’s Publishing – “Wraps for All Seasons”, which you can purchase on Amazon or at the Annie’s website.

Playing with Triangles Shawl – the pattern is available here on my blog as well as an informative video on my YouTube Channel.

Let’s see if I can double the number of patterns in 2017.

Whispering Wind Cowl

March 25, 2017January 3, 2018Creativity, Crochet, Crochet Design, Indie publication, Paid Pattern Links, PatternLeave a Comment

I enjoy creating moebius style cowls but decided to challenge myself with designing a simple tube style cowl with this design. I wanted to create a crocheted cowl that would have a very graceful drape and would be a lovely accent piece to wear indoors, but could also serve nicely as a warm layer under a coat or jacket.

First order of business was chosing a yarn, I picked Berroco’s “Folio” yarn. This luxurious yarn is an Alpaca/Rayon blend that feels like cashmere, with marvelous drape and warmth. I paired the yarn with a simple mesh stitch pattern to allow the yarn to really shine.

Next I gave some serious thought to how I wanted to work the foundation and how to finish the opposite end of the tube to compliment the foundation. I usually like everything to be very precisely matched. It’s probably the math part of my brain dictating terms. I decided to give myself permission to have the finishing edge be different from the foundation.

Freedom!

Funnily enough, the 2 edges don’t look all that different. But never fear, I will be playing with this some more and there will be some very different edges in the future. I just wanted to get my toe wet this time around. I have definitely found a new fascination. Throwing out the idea of precise matching has stirred up all sorts of creativity in my brain.

I used my stacked row foundation to start this cowl, then the rounds of mesh stitch are worked off one side to the desired length. In this pattern I have written the instructions, and worked the sample to be 31 inches around and 13 inches wide from foundation to finished edging. I’ve also included instructions on how to modify the pattern to make a wider cowl (deep enough to be pulled up as a hood), or a longer cowl that makes it more like an infinity scarf.

You can purchase the pattern in my Ravelry Shop for $4.99.

You can use a different yarn than I chose for the sample, but I would strongly recommend a yarn with a large percentage of fine alpaca fiber or rayon. You want the yarn to be very fluid to get the fantastic drape you see in the photos.

All Those Tails!!!

March 24, 2017March 24, 2017Creativity, Crochet, Tips and Tricks2 Comments

Whenever I talk about Free Form Crochet to other crocheters, they all bring up the dread part of yarn work: Tails!

They are correct, there are a lot of tails to contend with when doing Free Form work. I am not terribly fond of weaving in tails myself. Years of working as a designer have taught me some patience with the task.

Way back in the mists of time I remember learning to embroider and my Grandmother telling me that the back of your work should look as neat as the front. Seemed like an impossible task at the time, but it became something I strove for with all my making. Whether I am embroidering, sewing, crocheting or knitting.

I actually find crocheting to be the easiest to create a tidy back to my projects. As a rule the fabric creation has enough body to it that there are always good places to tuck away the tails. When I weave in ends I always pick one side of the project to be the “right” side and look at that side after I’ve woven in my needle to be sure it doesn’t show. I use a bright silver colored needle because it is easy to see a glint of it on the right-side if I’ve woven wrong. I also try to weave my tails in different places on the scrumble so I don’t create a stiff or thick spot.

In Free Form there is also the option of using the tails to sew pieces together. In the scrumble above I wove in all the ends, but left 2 of the longest at the edges to use later when I am joining them to others in my final project.

This photo is the same scrumble from the back after I finished weaving in my ends. This is also the same scrumble that you see from the back in the very first picture.

I was left with quite a pile of tails after I finished the weaving in for all 3 of my little scrumbles. I save these bits to use as stuffing for dimensional projects. When they are wool or mostly wool I also save them as filler for my needle-felting projects, or to use to add color to the outside of those projects.

Other ways I’ve seen Freeformers deal with tails: Tie them together using knots and cut off close to the knot (You want a good tight surgeon’s knot if that is what you chose), or bring the tails to the front of their work and use them as design elements in the finished project.

There really are a lot of choices in Free Form for dealing with tails, they don’t have to be a terror. I hope you will give Free Form a try, for me it is the pinnacle of “Zen” crochet. A bit like coloring with color pencils.