We want to live here…

We think this little video is sooo cute!  We are sure many of you knitters and crocheters have already seen this from Mochimochi Land, but thought we would share in case you hadn’t.

It was a very busy 2012 for Brandy and I with our new company (www.crowdedcoop.com), but knitting and crocheting has been in full swing the last several months.  I have been a sweater making fool, with two down and another 1/2 done in the past two months (B.O.B., Nati, and the London Tunic) , and Brandy is now officially obsessed with socks, and she also has been plugging away on a Sock Yarn Blanket.  We are also both back to being addicted to Ravelry as well.

We hope you all had a very Happy New Year – do you have any craft related resolutions this year?  I am committed to either running or knitting for at least 30 minutes a day in 2013 and am tracking it here, and Brandy wants to master color work, double sided knitting and read 1 new craft book a month – and of course paint more, which she is incredibly talented at – and she is tracking her efforts here.

We look forward to sharing more knitting and crocheting inspirations on our Rewind site soon!

 

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Handmade Holiday Gift Recap

We all do it.  Sometime in the summer we declare:  “I am going to make all my Christmas gifts this year!”

I think we all know how this sad story usually turns out.  However, Brandy and I did pull it together in the very end, and I am proud to present to you…

The Festival of Handmade and Somewhat Appreciated Gifts!  

I can tell you that the first item, a fantastic crocheted Hello Kitty scarf for my sister, wins, hands down.  Theresa, my sister, loves Hello Kitty.  She is also a FANATICAL University of Washington sports fan (hence the purple and gold).  I really thought she was going to cry when she opened this up.  Made by Brandy, with her mad crochet skillz, of course.  Hello Kitty diagram can be found here.

(She’s sporting some toasty fingerless gloves I made as well…)

Continuing on the University of Washington theme, I made my sis a striped phone cozy, and a warm and a toasty basket weave border hat.  I wrote the pattern down somewhere for the hat, if you are interested let me know.  I held two strands together for both the cuff and the body of the hat.

I slaved over this slouchy beanie concoction from Caron for Brandy.  I used Lion Brand Amazing yarn in Pink Sands.  This was a nail biter, down to the wire.  But it turned out really cute and she loves it! (at least she says she does!)

Brandy came up with a great idea for two of her male friends who are from Viking heritage.  She found this awesome pattern and knocked out these two crocheted Viking Hats.

Brandy made me the most beautiful ripple patterned crochet cowl!  I have worn it pretty much every day.  I have asked her to make me another one immediately!  🙂  I forgot to take a photo of it – my bad!

We also made a slew of other items – see the photo montage below – crocheted cowls, knit beanies, bow headbands, and more.

Now that the holidays are over, it’s back to knitting and crocheting for ourselves – Brandy is working on a bobble bunny hat.  She is now talking about bobbles non-stop.   I finally finished my Twinkle Printmaker’s Pullover, which I had mentioned awhile back.   It looks great on my dress form, but I haven’t gotten around to wearing it yet.  And I just started designing a dress/tunic inspired by the shape of this Pinterest find.  I am doing a top down, circular construction.

So for all you gift knitters and crocheters, our hats (no pun intented) are off to you!  Did you finish in time?  What is your next craft adventure?

Until next time!

M and B

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Twinkle Trainwreck – All Aboard!

You know that excitement when you start a new project and you are convinced that it is going to be the ONE.  The PERFECT sweater.  Well I had high hopes for my Printmaker’s Pullover from Twinkle’s Town and Country Knits…

Stay with me while I rundown my flubs:

• The sleeves went super fast.  I thought they were going to be small so I added extra width in the rib (hence forth referred to as MISTAKE #1).
• I also added some length to the sleeves since I am a bit taller than most (MISTAKE #2).
• I also added a few extra ribs to the body (yes, MISTAKE #3).
• I added 4″ in length to the sweater body (my only good decision, but still not enough length).
• There was something funky going on with the sleeve ribs matching perfectly to the body of the sweater ribs so I did some magical decreases to make it work (MISTAKE #4).
• I was so anxious to try it on and see where it was at, I forced my noggin through the circulars while trying not to drop stitches (I know, I know, scrap yarn!) which of course I did (MISTAKE #5).
• I got it on, ran upstairs to check myself out in the mirror, all the while strangling myself with the circulars, and when I got upstairs, I realized I hadn’t taken the skein with me and now I had 100 ft of yarn running out of the kitchen, up the stairs, and into the bedroom.  (MISTAKE #6)
• I could have lived with all of this foolishness if the sweater had looked good on me, but the culmination of all my mishaps had me on the phone to Brandy, exasperated, explaining that I could have stapled a garbage bag to myself and it would have looked better.  I wish I had taken a picture for you…

So I frogged it, and I am going to start again this weekend.  The good news is, it went very fast the first time, and I should be able to knock it out this weekend – I will post a picture of my triumphant victory shortly.  The other interesting thing is I felt a sense of triumph ripping that whole sweater out –  I was getting the better of it by starting over, it wasn’t getting the better of me.

Cheers!

Mary

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Shenanigans and Finished Objects

Not to say that we all don’t love a good bargain, but there is something truly magical (especially for Brandy) about the 2 for $3 bin at our local craft store. Every time we walk by it, I know that Brandy will stop, bury her face in it, and give it a big hug.  I took this picture to prove to her that she is having a very personal and somewhat inappropriate relationship with the bargain bin.  Don’t even get me started on her behavior with the new scented Sugar ‘n Cream yarn.

On the Mary front, I finally finished my turtleneck tube vest from Stefanie Japel’s wonderful book, Fitted Knits.  I love the top down construction – it is very intuitive and just makes great sense.  I even used the same color that was pictured in the book – loving the periwinkle (not very imaginative I guess).

Up next – out of Twinkle’s Town & Country Knits, the printmaker’s pullover.  I am done with the sleeves, but I had to special order the size 19, 29″ and 24″ needles.  Love how fast the sleeves went – but I feel like I am knitting with kindling, damn those needles are big!

I guess to sum it up, knitting is full steam ahead over here – hello fall, I love you!

Mary

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Look what Brandy made..

Brandy is not the knitter, she is the crocheter.   I am pretty proud of her for figuring this out.  We saw something similar on Ravelry, and from the picture she was able to reinvent it.  And her dog Jackson – really, does it get any cuter than that?  He seems to be handling the indignity quite well…

Mary

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Bernat Crochet Along – Mystery Blanket Project

Calling all crocheters! Calling all crocheters! Brandy here, telling you about this super exciting Crochet Along brought to you by Bernat. Why is it so exciting you ask? Well I’ll tell you! It’s a mystery blanket project!! Starting Sept. 22nd the Bernat Blog will start posting weekly clues (and I assume patterns). Each clue will guide you as you begin to create a blanket, the design revealing itself as you go. I love this idea especially since it will be complete by Christmas making it the perfect paced DIY holiday gift. If you are a quick crocheter you could create a few blanket simultaneously thus crossing off your Christmas gift list even faster! AND It get’s better!! How you ask?? At the end of the project Bernat is having a contest for best “designed” blanket. So not only will you have a cozy, surprise design blanket or two, you could win enough yarn to make another. So fun, count me in! I’ll be working on this project through out the weeks and posting the progress as I go. For those who can not tackle this project because you are already up to your eyeballs in projects, you can live vicariously through this blog. Happy crocheting (and knitting…)!

If you want to participate get all your FAQ info here.

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Sicky Craft No. 2

So I’m still battling the virus that is trying to take me down. Or should I say viruses as I had the stomach flu, now I have a head cold. So gross. This week’s sicky craft is a charming little crochet tote bag using a mix of Lily Sugar n’ Cream yarns. The yarn was left over from our tawashi madness. I’m not a huge fan of cotton yarn like Mary is so I decided to use it up, knowing I’d never really use it if I didn’t design a craft specifically for it. I really like how the Fresh color palette emerged out of the scrap yarn, it just worked out that way. The tote was a total experiment, I had no design in mind… again I just wanted to crochet. Mary and I are complete dorks if you haven’t figured it out yet, so when I showed Mary the finished project I was compelled to put it on my head to show its various uses. Blame it on the cold medicine… okay I’d do it if I wasn’t drugged out of my gourd, I admit it. What resulted from the hat show was a gigglefest, tears and the amusing photos below. Not to sound crazy but it does make a cute hat!

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Don’t Worry It’s Not Contagious!

I’ve been home sick for a few days… yuck! What I hate more than the illness trying to take over my body is the feeling of complete uselessness. The doc prescribed rest and fluids. Rest…check! Fluids…check! Boredom…check! To keep my idle hands busy I decided I just want to crochet; not caring about patterns or color palettes (OMG I know!!). I started out with a circle that just continued to grow until I had a large disk, now what? To amuse my dogs, okay… to amuse myself I stuck it on my head. That’s it!! I’ll make a sick day hat. I started to decrease and began incorporating some scrap yarn I had next to me. Coming up with the chain link pattern was easy, the decreasing was the hard part. I frogged it several times… too loose… too tight…ouch I just removed some hair. Finally this turd of a hat was complete. By this time the hubby was home and he actually said it was cute! It may see the light of day after all. I’m still down for the count, let’s see what sick crazy craft I come up with today.

Seriously… don’t laugh, it’s not nice.

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Inspiring Each Other

Mary and I often find that when we exchange our current projects ideas with each other we get inspired for more projects… it’s a vicious creative cycle!  That is exactly what happened when we came up with the pressed leaf capelet.  Mary was so inspired she started a knit capelet pattern. Inspired by the Geo color group this capelet features a minimalistic rib and eyelet pattern. Right now you just see the rib pattern, don’t worry it’s not complete yet… The tentative plan for finishing is a cowl style neck.

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WIPs : test patterns for February

First off Mary and I are ecstatic over the unprecedented amount of traffic our humble little blog has received over the past few days. We love to see all the downloads of our latest published free pattern; the number of Ravelry queues makes us giddy. Huge THANK YOU!!

As Mary and I mentioned at the beginning of the year (can you believe January is half way over?!) we got together to plan the coming year. This included monthly color stories, featured product and of course patterns. We are already testing next month’s patterns… it is hard for me to not gush and spill all the details so I’ll stop here. (Before Mary beats me… or posts any more embarrassing photos.)

Below is a little pattern teaser of a crocheted small purse we are tentatively calling the crescent clutch.  We still have to finalize the strap/handle, but this size is perfect for your cell, keys, and a few other necessary tidbits.  The yellow yarn was to test the pattern, it is what I had mass quantity of… this is NOT a color story teaser. For those following along, February will be from the Geo color group. We would love thoughts on what color we should make the final clutch? Or any yarn suggestions?…

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