First sale!!!

I made my first sale on etsy!!! A bun cover. Figures, the item I'm probably never going to make again. XD

WOOO!!

Philosopher's Coat Update

It's been a while since I've done an update on the Philosopher's Coat. I have been working on it - promise! I had a period where I just needed a break...hence all the new things in my etsy shop.

I'm still taking it slow on the Coat, but I'm very close to being done. My mom and I had knitting/crocheting parties last week while watching Grey's Anatomy, and now I have the first front panel done! Woo! All that is left is the second front panel, sewing it all together, and figuring out how to do button holes. I've mastered button holes on felted things, but that's a little different. I guess it'll be a learning experience!

I will be so glad to have this Coat done. I'm excited to see what it looks like, but also excited to have all the leftover yarn that will come with it! :) I see many felted bags in my future...*rubs hands together and cackles*

I finally decided what to make for the Ravelympics! I've joined Team TARDIS and will be making my first two items from Stitch 'n Bitch: The Happy Hooker! I'm making FrouFrou with my boxfull of Noro Gemstones for the Sweater Sprint. I'm excited to have found a pattern for this yarn and hope it turns out well. My second event is Vest Vault...though technically I'm making a shrug. I'll be making Short and Sweet with Reynolds Saucy in black. I wanted to make a red one, but my LYS didn't have red worsted cotton. But, as everyone tells me, black goes with everything.

So....GO TEAM TARDIS!

Organizing...

Whew. An hour or so ago, my room was a pit...clothes everywhere, fabric strewn about, scarves piled in a corner, and yarn, yarn everywhere. I'm still amazed I didn't jab my foot with any pins...but maybe I shouldn't test my luck*knock on wood*.

In the past few months alone, I have amassed a fairly decent pile of yarn. Some of it was "acquired" from my mother, other is leftover from England, projects, and who knows what. And then there are the twenty balls that were given to me.

I keep my yarn in a plastic bin in the corner of my room. I bought the bin last summer so I could easily tote my crafty stuff (yarn and fabric, mostly) back and forth from school. Last summer, it was maybe halfway full. Now it's overflowing, and the yarn is attempting to kick the fabric out.

Granted, my yarn issue is nothing near what my mother's is, but she's been collecting for a lot longer than me, and she teaches at a yarn shop. I'm just her daughter.

But organization is needed when I'm trying to sell things online. So now I have all my etsy stuff sorted into ziplock bags with names on them so I know what I have. I have my yarn sorted out into ziplocks as well, except the large balls that aren't going to unravel into Giant Mess of Doom. I even have a nice bag full of fabric scraps, which may or may not come in handy. You never know.

I'm feeling much better about my yarn situation, though it might get a little crazy when I finish my Philosopher's Coat...I'm going to have a nice amount of Cascade 220 leftover to play with. And no, I'm not excited about that at all. *grins*

Now we get to see how long it'll stay organized...hopefully until I go back to school...then the yarn can start working on taking over that room. My poor roommate.

Ravelympics

Is anyone doing the Ravelympics? I've been considering it...I have some yarn lying around that needs to be crocheted...not to mention a WIP that desperately needs to be finished. It looks like it could be fun, and it really only makes sense to enter because I'm going to be crocheting while watching the Olympics, anyway...why not crochet for a purpose.

I read somewhere on etsy that some people donate some of their profit to charity, and I've been considering having a line of products where a certain percentage of the profit goes toward a charity. I don't have a particular charity in mind, though I know of one that gives books to children, and another whose goal is for LGBT children to be accepted in schools, and both of those places seem like worthy charities. I really like the idea of donating to charities, though I wonder if I should wait until I've made a few sales before starting this. On the other hand, it may bring more sales to my shop. I'm not sure. Thoughts?

Well, I'm off to bed. Happy Hooking!

Free yarn from a stranger

This beautiful yarn, Noro Gemstones (which I hear has been discontinued) was sent to me by a woman who happened to come into my LYS a few weeks ago. She's from a bit of a ways away from here, but when she came in, I chatted with her a bit. She liked my shawl, which is made from Lorna's Laces, and told me she had a few balls of that sitting around. She offered to send it to me. Well, what college student would deny herself free yarn?

Today I got the package, and not only where there two skeins (technically a skein and a ball) or rainbow Lorna's, but also there were 17.5 balls of this Noro. I want to hug this woman, but we don't even know her last name - I can't even send her a thank you card.

So now I have this Noro. I think it wants to be a sweater...but I can't find a pattern that I like. It's bulky, that's the problem. Bulky yarn just is difficult. Not to mention it looks like I'll be buying a large crochet hook. But I'm not complaining - I just got free yarn! And beautiful yarn at that.

Any suggestions as to what I should make?

My current projects

Looking around, I begin to realize that I am one of those people who can't just do one thing - I have to do twenty, and I have to do them NOW. With crocheting, as well as writing, I move quickly from project to project, never able to focus on one for too long. I think I can blame this on my mom - she has more WIPs than me. (I would have more if I had the money for the yarn.)

That said, here are some of my current projects:

The Felted Bag (1)

Being bored at work generally means interesting things are brought up, and in this case it was my crocheting. I would never have thought it, but the girl I work with has "always wanted one of those felted bags." Lucky for her, felting bags is one of my favorite things to do (it's addictive, I swear). I quickly told her I could make her one, provided she could pay. Cha-ching, she said yes. She wanted pink and brown, so I picked out this pink Lopi and the brown bulky Cascade. I've done a lot of felting with Cascade 220 and love it, but the weight was wrong to match with the Lopi. (I would have gotten brown Lopi, but she only had one ball of it, and that would not have worked).

I loved crocheting this bag. I think I might make a few more for my etsy. The colors were fun and the yarn was awesome. I really love Lopi, even though it made a mess of the washing machine. Oh well - pink fuzz goes well with everything...right?

The Spinning

I've been guilty of spindle neglect lately. I joined Ten Minutes a Day on Ravelry, which is for spinners who promise to spin for at least ten minutes every day and have hardly spun since. I adore this roving. I bought it at the market at Knitter's Connection. I just don't have the patience to do it right now. Someday I'll finish it and then figure out what to make with it.

The Felted Bag (2)

Late one night, I had a deep urge. It had been a while since I'd felted a bag...and I needed to do it again. I needed to smell the wet-wool smell, to feel the gobs of sopping, felted fabric. Though there was a slight problem: I had no felting wool.

My mom, however, did, and she wanted to get rid of it. And thus this bag was created. It's for sale on my Etsy if you like it. I hope someone buys it before I accidentally use it as my own purse.

The Prayer Shawl

Just wanted to post the finished product!

And finally....

The Coat


I'm getting there. I have more than half of the back done, and I'm really hoping to finish that before the end of this week (cross your fingers for me). I really hope it all fits together. I'm vaguely worried about that...

Etsy Shop!

A week or so ago I finally got a chance to start my Etsy shop, Crafty Writer Crocheting. Now that I have a few items up there, I thought I might as well link it on here!

Right now, most of the items I have listed are snoods, though I recently added a felted bag and plan to add some other items, such as wrist warmers, iPod cases, and more bags.

In addition to joining etsy, I also joined the EtsyHookers group on Ning. I was excited to find other crocheters around etsy!

Do any of you have etsy shops? Link me to them and I'll check them out! :)

Happiness in Crochetland

I don't hang out on the crochet forums on Ravelry very often, though I've joined a few of them, including the Crochet Liberation Front. As you probably know from my blog name, I'm very into the "CROCHETERS UNITE" sort of thing, which makes groups like these pretty awesome in my mind. (I love knitters, don't get me wrong, but the yarn world is pretty focused on knitters rather than crochets...LYSes should be friendlier to crocheters...we use up more yarn! XD)

Well, today I got a message from one of the mods of the CLF on Ravelry saying that I'd won a sort-of award...Set My Picot Free. I think it's for crochet projects that are different. Well, they linked me to this blog post, and I was excited to see that they were talking about my snood! Hee. Well, I don't really "get" anything, but it's neat to see my stuff mentioned places! :)

In other news (isn't there always other news?), I decided I needed yet another break from the Coat (I'm halfway done with the back! Pictures later, I promise!) and thought that now was as good of a time as any to start on a prayer shawl. (Aren't I a good procrastinator?)

I've been meaning to do a prayer shawl for a while, but the cost of the yarn and the lack of a proper pattern left me sort of hanging. But when the flood hit our part of the state, including my LYS owner's house, a yarn company stepped in and shipped us odds and ends of some really beautiful yarn - cotton, mostly - to use for charity projects. I pulled some out of the basket and started on my new project.



I'm so happy with it so far - and very jealous of whoever receives it. But the great thing about this project will be giving it to someone.

Snooods galore

I got a bit tired of the coat. I'm still working on it - I finished the sleeves and am almost halfway done with the back - but lately I've needed little projects to keep me from getting bored.

Last night it was snoods. I made four of them. Yes, I understand that the average person doesn't usually sit around and crochet snoods while watching eight episodes of Torchwood (I wonder if many people crochet while watching Torchwood. It doesn't seem like a likely combo, but it works very well). But I was bored, and I'd uncovered my cotton from the last snood-making frenzy.

A trip to WalMart later, and I was back in business. I started making snoods last year when I was told that proper girls in my Medieval Society covered their hair. Snoods at Ren Faires tend to sell at around $15-20, machine made. I can get the cotton for about $1.50-2, beads for around the same, and my snood is quite a bit prettier than the ones at faire. At least, that's my opinion.


Snoods are easy, lacy, pretty, and take about an hour and a half. Plus they're fun, and there's an endless amount of options for combinations! :D

Okay fine, I'm insane.

(BTW, all my snoods are available on my Etsy Shop.)