Green hat with yellow felt flower

Crocheted hat with felt flower

HDC hat. Felt flower with button center.

Hat with red felt flower

White hat with felt flower

HDC.

Tan hat with felt flower

Another HDC hat.

Hat with felt flower

Bernard Baby Blanket white yarn, done with a K hook in half double crochet.
Felt flower.

Hat with flowers and buttons

Half double crochet in green with a finishing single crochet row.

A Couple of Strays

I've been on a hat frenzy, crocheting as many as I can for charity before a self-imposed Thanksgiving deadline. I wound up with 21 hats.

"In Bloom" Cap

Hat with buttons.

"In Bloom" Cap

From Ravelry.

More

Thick yarned hat, as well as a Bella "La Push" hat.

Striped hats

All done with half double crochet; two with alternating single crochet strips.

Using up the rest of the green yarn

Using the "brain waves" pattern, for the wavy one, single crochet on another, and half double crochet on the multi-striped one.

Leftover yarn hats

Mostly done in half double crochet, with the exception of one done with a popcorn stitch.

Mini pumpkins

Not as good as Martha Stewart's, but cute nonetheless.

Frankenstein Hat

Spider Web Hat

HDC hat with spider web.

Pumpkin Hat

Worked sideways in HDC, joined, then SC in green, reducing stitches until it's stem-sized.

Carved vegetable "flowers"

Carved radishes and turnips. The large "flower" is Napa cabbage.

Rice Sack Apron

Outdoor Seat Cushions

I've been looking for replacements cushions for years. I could never find any at the stores that were the right size. I checked with cushion stores online, and saw that mine were non-standard size, and that I would need to get the cushions custom-made. An average estimate for six cushions that are 3 1/2 inches deep, with piping, made with Sunbrella fabric, was approximately $500-$800. No thanks.

I'm not much of a sewer: mainly Halloween costumes done on a Hello Kitty sewing machine, but I was determined to save money and do it myself. I found a great tutorial online, which helped immensely in explaining in great detail all of the steps in constructing a cushion. Sunbrella fabric at the local fabric store was $35 a yard: I found an online source for $17 a yard. I borrowed a sewing machine that had the all-important zipper foot attachment. Coupling the fabric with various notions (piping, heavy duty thread, zippers), re-using the innards of the old cushions, and the covers I made wound up costing me about $200.

The cushions took me one week to sew. Some days I worked on them for several hours straight. The fabric wasn't easy to sew: it frayed quickly, and the several layers of thicknesses I had to sew through were often too much for the basic sewing machine I had borrowed. Again, I'm not much of a sewer, but with a lot of patience, a good seam ripper, and time, these cushions are definitely do-able.

The next thing to do will be to stain and seal the bamboo frame.

ABC Blanket

"Stop cheating I'm reigning"

Nice. This happens to me every once in awhile. And no, I don't cheat.

They make a poorly spelled accusation then take off before I get a chance to respond. I know it's the mature thing to just ignore it and NOT respond, but sometimes it gets old.

What incredible words have been used to indicate that I've cheated? I've gotten beat plenty of times, by plenty of people, often by hundreds of points. I never resign midway through, though it's apparent that I have no chance of winning. I see the game through to the end and try my best. I expect others would do the same, but sometimes they don't

I know, I know: relax, it's just a game. I just had to vent a little.

Felt Book

I haven't made one of these in awhile, and I forgot how time-consuming they are. Each page took about 2 1/2  hours to complete. The blanket stitching took some time as well: if I tried to use enough thread to go all around the page, I spent a lot of time untangling knots. If the thread wasn't long enough, it took time to hide and secure the ending thread, while trying to create a seamless transition to the next stitch. I wound up going with the long thread method, but even doing it that way, I still ran out of thread before I got all the way around.  

 

 

I: Inchworm and ivy. There's some poison ivy in there as well.

S: Sea turtle, sea star, and seahorse.

A: Alligator.

B: Buddy the black Basenji, and balloons.

E: Elephant.

L: Ladybugs.

L: Lion.

A: Armadillo. The white stars form the constellation Taurus, which is Isabella's astrological sign. 

Leaves of three, let them be!