Glass Inspirations, Part 1: Flowers

I haven't had much time to crochet lately, but I visited a glass studio and spent a few hours flameworking and experimenting on my own. Here are a few of the results!

Basically created by alternating compressions with random streaks/dots of 4-5 different colors... turned out really cool, I think. =)

Here are different views of the same small half-marble I created by dotting color onto the glass and then compressing multiple times.

And a flower pendant, made using similar techniques:

Finally, a 3D rose! =D (or some other pretty flower). This was fun to make.

And a view from the back:

I also made some other really cool glass pieces that I'll post about later. And I'm open to suggestions about what I should try next time, too, so please give me ideas!

Flameworked Glass Pieces

Since I have some more spare time over the weekends this summer, I decided to take a couple of flameworking classes at a nearby studio. I was able to make four pieces and I'm pleased with how all of them turned out, so I thought I'd share them here. These were all made with borosilicate glass.

During the first class, I was able to make a small marble and a pendant. The marble was made by adding two stripes of color in an x-formation to either side of a flattened piece of clear glass, then encasing the color in more clear glass and twisting the piece to create the spiral.

My second piece was a small pendant. The 3D effect was created using "implosion", where small dots are placed at the back of the piece, and then the glass is melted and pulled down around the dots, causing them to stretch out more and create depth.

Yummy Sushi

My mom wanted to make sushi, so I decided to make some, too. =D

If you'd like to make some sushi as well, here are my five patterns (four original, one modified). Feel free to make as many as you'd like for friends and family, and please link to my blog if you like these patterns. Happy crafting!

Terminology (US)

ch: chain
st: stitch
sl st: slip stitch
sc: single crochet
hdc: half double crochet
dc: double crochet
inc: increase (sc2 in same st)
dec: decrease

Sushi with Filling

I like this pattern because it's more realistic in the sense that there's actually "rice" wrapped around the insides of the sushi. You can use anything you want for the sushi filling - my family likes putting egg, cucumber, 肉鬆 (ròusōng, or dried shredded pork), and yellow pickled radish so that's what I put in mine.

To make egg, or anything flat: ch7; starting with the 2nd ch from hook, sc across (6).

To make cucumber, pickled radish, or anything that's slightly chunkier: ch7; starting with the 2nd ch from hook, sc into each of the back bumps of the chain (6).

To make 肉鬆 or anything thinner: ch7; starting with 2nd ch from hook, sl st into each of the back bumps of the chain (6).

For each topping, fasten off leaving a short tail. Knot the starting and ending tails together, and then weave the ends into the middle of the topping (these will be hidden in the middle of the sushi).

L: fillings for this pattern; R: fillings for California roll, below

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

The shamrock pattern can be found at PlanetJune. I found it actually helped keep the shape of the larger shamrocks a bit better if each dc was replaced with a hdc, and a sc in loop was replaced with a sl st in loop.

You can also attach safety pins to the back to make a nice little shamrock pin. I used size 1 (1 1/16") safety pins. If you have a hole in the center of your shamrock, when you stitch around the pin exit from back to front pretty much anywhere, but thread the yarn through the center hole when going from front to back - this fills up the hole and avoids random stitches showing on the front of the shamrock.

Cakes, cakes, cakes!

Recently, I found this awesome site that has free patterns for various cake components and oh so many inspirational pictures. The cakes are really easy and fun to make, and I plan on making many more in the future! My first two creations are below:

1. Super chocolate-y with a strawberry and wafer stick on top. The cake itself is 30 stitches round, with puffy icing one dc smaller than the instructions provided (the final yarn over is when there are 5 loops on the hook.) The wafer stick is 8 stitches across, and I alternated colors between rows.

Norma Lynn stuffs the cakes with potpourri sachets - I just used polyfill, which also meant I had to close up the holes at the bottom. For both cakes, I made evenly-spaced decreases down to 12 stitches around, and then used PlanetJune's ultimate finish technique to pull the hole tight (you need to go around roughly 18 stitches to completely close up a 12-stitch hole.) For the chocolate cake, I also inserted cardstock pieces at the top and bottom to help prevent the polyfill from bulging out too much.

2. White cake with a pink flower. This cake is 36 stitches round with scalloped icing. I used PlanetJune's posy blossom patterns for the flower and leafs - I first created a large blossom (D) and then went around the loop again with a medium blossom (B).

Delicious, yet healthy... how awesome is that?? =)

Christmas Kitties

(Though Christmas has officially been over for quite some time, I'm currently in the middle of a nice big blizzard... which is as decent an excuse as any to post two gifts I made for the holidays.)

I have two friends who are really super close... one loves the color red and the other really likes green, and they both like cute kitty pictures (probably real kittens too?) So when I came across a Christmas Kitty pattern online, I had no choice but to make a couple!

Left: Elf Kitty; Right: Santa Kitty

"Point!"

Squirrel latch-hook pillow! Not a completely original pattern - I based it off an online image of a cross-stitch pattern with two squirrels in some wintry environment, but cropped it and changed the background to a leafy setting:

I used Red Heart Super Saver yarn for the dark brown and black, and Caron Simply Soft yarn for all the other colors. This was because these were the only brands I already owned for the colors I wanted... if you actually want to create your own latch-hook pieces, you ideally shouldn't use either. Red Heart Super Saver is very stiff and on the rough side (for a pillow, anyway) while Caron Simply Soft is fairly thin for the latch hook canvas size and unravels easily.

In terms of both softness of texture and possibly yarn weight, I would recommend trying Red Heart Soft or Lion Brand Vanna's Choice yarn (though no guarantees because I actually haven't tried these myself.) Caron also makes a "craft & rug yarn" that might be good for this - they sell their own DIY latch-hook kits and this could be the yarn they use for those.

Playing with Clay

Haven't posted in a while... so I decided to share some creations that I made a while back! These are clay gifts made out of Sculpey UltraLight clay (they float in water!), painted with acrylic, and covered with gloss.

I wish I'd taken more pictures of these before I gave them away, but I made them in batches and evidently didn't document everything. Sad. Here are some closeups:

Also, a carrot.

Giant Dalek Amigurumi

A pattern for all the Doctor Who fans out there! This came from Lucy at Ravelry and is for a cuddly plush version of the fearsome Dalek.

I used the pattern for the new series and modified yarn colors to create a blue Dalek. Using Red Heart Super Saver yarn in Royal Blue, Black, and Soft White, and Vanna's Choice Charcoal Grey, this came out to around 10-11" from base to top of head - although if you count the eyestalk, the height increases even more!

Be careful when reading the pattern, as there are two or three minor typos! (If I have time, I'll try to find them again and update this post.) For the grey and black grid in the head, the pattern says to slip stitch in the front loop (for example, in round 13), which is what I did here. However, it seems like Lucy single crocheted instead, from the pictures on the site. If I make another one, I plan on testing this theory... or if you decide to make one, please try it and let me know the results!

::click me!::

Firefly Latch Hook Pillow

The ++ part of crochet++... also my first self-designed pattern!

Important fact: I absolutely adore Joss Whedon and everything he's ever created ever. My friend also really likes Firefly, so I decided to make him a pillow with Serenity's logo:

This was 50 squares (at 4 squares per inch) on each side, and was made with a latch hook and 2.5" lengths of yarn (of assorted brands based on existing stock and colors needed, but in retrospect this was not the best idea, since worsted weight yarn differs in thickness and texture across brands.) The back is just a giant piece of black felt. =)

Baby Toothless Amigurumi!

Inaugural post! ^_^ I've mostly been working from existing patterns, with small adjustments here and there. During my search for awesome patterns, I found this fantastic Toothless pattern, which I bookmarked and then promptly forgot about until months later when I tried searching for Toothless again and stumbled upon Lemmy Loop (which also contains some other awesome patterns that I will eventually try someday!)

Here is the result:

I used Red Heart Super Saver yarn in black and burgundy, and most likely a G hook (or possibly F). The eyes were made from black and neon green felt - I stitched the pieces together first, and then to the head.

View from the back! I lengthened the tail to 17 rounds to accommodate for the tailfins close to the body. I also thought the pattern provided for said tailfins turned out much too small, so I ended up making them up on the spot. I don't remember the specifics (sorry) but I believe I chained 6 or 7, sc'ed for 2 rows (minus one stitch), and then ss'ed into the last stitch.

Sewing everything together was a bit nerve-wracking, but then I realized that Toothless isn't perfectly symmetrical anyway, and then everything got better. Baby Toothless, complete! =D