Today's free patterns

http://imaginarywardrobe.blogspot.com/search/label/my%20pattern

Craft Stylish paper hand mask

knit bokaclava

armed robbery for the whole family

Update - knitting and crocheting in October

First some halloweeny things I've been doing lately.
Maple leaf socks by Jeanie Townsend get to be in the picture because of the colors.
The bag is actually a trick-or-treat bag from Lion Brand, but I think it works as a Halloween hand bag too :-) I made the handles with 6 st icord. I want to felt it again, because it isn't thick enough.
The doll is Scara Lee by Sally George. It has been on my to-do list for years now, so it's about time it gets done. I gave her red hair instead of suggested white or grey. My hubby says she has my chin LOL

Spider scarf.

a soulie... a little totem where one's soul can rest when awaken abruptly... It was supposed to look like barbapapa, so pear it was...

Here's my projects... the plastic bags are my new project bags and they work perfectly. Just the right size to hold a little bigger project, see through, easy to move and stand by themselves.
In the basket left is the free crochet afghan.
In the low basket front is the acrylic yarn needed for Krystal's daisy squares; cotton for dishcloths; black alpacka for wrist warmers and pink wool for breast cancer awareness socks

My CPH

Latvian mittens

I have been studying Latvian Mittens by Lizbeth Upitis.

Now, I admire the folk women and their imagination very much, but some of the color combinations they have used in these mittens are... well... the nicest way to describe these ladies' sense of color is... not to describe it at all.

It looks like they have chosen their colors from the give away for free bin from the cheapest yarn store in town, you know the one with acrylic yarns from 70's and 80's - a disgusting combination of puke greens and browns with shocking bright aniline lilacs, pinks and yellows... In a mitten otherwise very pretty they manage to push in one or two threads of fugly spoiling the whole impression... like for example, on a black mitten decorated with red and green flowers and leaves, they add dirty yellow and green stripes and pink (YES, PINK!!!) and grey edge... Or they knit a mitten in black and white - and add brown. And these are not colors straight from sheep either, it's pure white, pure black and pure brown... Brrr. Or the ugly old rose/lavender purple with sheep black and beige. Add a little lemon yellow and apple green and a dash och sheep white, and you have a mitten not even your mother would wear. Or on black peagreen, raspberry pink and mauve.

I start to understand why the Finns don't have this kind of sock and mitten knitting history, though we do have a very nice sock and mitten knitting history of our own. (and here I paused, because my eyes fell on an especially awful pair of mittens on the cover of the book... wine, dirty and pale Neapolitan yellow and apple green... Yikes. Interestingly just the next pair could be Finnish or Estonian... mainly blue and white with pretty white, red, gray and black border. On the other side of the ugly mitten is another ugly mitten: on black dirty greenish yellow and bright green. Above it is a pretty blue-grey and white with black and dark red used to accentuate the pattern. Very pretty.)

Sure, it is quite possible that the color have changed during the time, and that the people knitting the mittens didn't have anything else but just the ugly colors - these Latvian mittens are all very nicely done. Then there are some wonderful color combinations I would never have thought but that look just amazing... like Payne's gray, golden brown and wine or red, purple and yellow with just a dash of apple green.

The worst part of this, I think, is that I know people who think these color combinations are wonderful. I had a class mate who made everything in this kind of combinations... And the people producing the hard acrylics still make them in the worst colors of 70's and 80's and there are people who keep buying them and combining them. "Doesn't this pink make this baby poop (pea mush) green, beige, bright orange and brown look absolutely adorable?" No, it doesn't. NOTHING can make those colors look adorable. Not even a Latvian mitten.



Today's free links: Amigurumi List and Crafty Crow

Kun ei yhtään huvita...

No joo... on sukkakuu ja sukat puikoilla ja useat suunniteltu.
Ompelin tänään projektipusseja - korvaan paperipusseja läpinäkyvästä muovista ommelluilla pusseilla, jotka seisoo tanakasti omin avuin, läpi näkyy ja pitää sisällään hyvin pitkätkin puikot ja sukkalangat, tekeleen ja ohjeen ihan nätisti. Mitä vaan ettei tarvitse neuloa.
Neulon niitä tiskirättejä...


Illuusio-pöllö... ja ei ole ihan neliskanttinen ja viivat suoria ja aloitus ja päättely samanlevyisiä. Entäs sitten? Tämä on tiskirätti eikä mikään pitsihuivi näyttelyyn. Kuka tiskirättejä pingottaa?

Tässä sitten näkyy se illuusio hyvin - tosi vinosti pitää kuvata. Ja sitten vähän tietokonetaikuutta - tuo ylempi kuva venyteltynä ja viruteltuna neliskanttiseksi - näyttää ihan sulista tehdyltä :-)
So... what did I just say? I have been reading Finnish knitting blogs and don't feel like writing in English. Sorry about that. Basically I'm saying that I have knitted an illusion dishcloth and sewing some project bags to avoid knitting socks and my cardigan which I desperately need. It might be 30 degrees Celsius in Canada but here it's at least 10 degrees less. I think there might be frost in ground during the night.

What Ket did? II

This is some things I have been doing late September, early October.
Owl Sleeping Mask - owls don't have cat eyes...
Boo Bookmark - buu in Finnish ;-)
Morning Glory bedsocks - I just knitted long enough for the purse to become socks, added heel and made them of wool instead of cotton/linen. If you do this, I suggest you make more holes for the string.
Stephanie van der Linden's Binsenkörbchen Socks

I also charted a cute kitty filet crochet - a vintage pattern

I say it's from 20's or 30's and the original is rather damaged. I don't know what it has been... It's too wide to be a bookmark, but it has a really odd shape. Perhaps it was a chair arm cover or bell pull... or meant to be inserted in a blouse. It could also have been the flap and back of a cute little bag. You do what ever you wish with it :-)

The upper part of the chart isn't accurate - I just copied the cat and the general idea - you can add or remove rows to your liking.
You start by crocheting 75 ch and make a dc in the 3rd ch from the hook and in each after that - you should have 72 dc and 1 dc made of 2 ch's. Then you just follow the chart.

You make
- the "black dots" by crocheting a dc in each ch or dc on previous row (one square is 3 dc's)
- the "white dots" by crocheting 2 ch skipping next 2 ch/dc on previous row and making a dc in 3rd
- the "v square" is made by ch 3, skip next 2 ch/dc on previous row, sc in 3rd, ch 3, skip next 2 ch/dc on previous row, 1 dc in next ch/dc.
- the eye is made by making a "v square" and on the next round dc, ch 2, tr in the same dc, tr in the dc "on the other side of the v square", ch 2, dc
- The nose is a bit special. You replace two "black squares" by crocheting 1 dc, increase 3 dc, skip 3 dc from previous row, 1 dc in 4th dc and 1 dc to "finish off" the "black square".
Here's little help on how to increase in filet crochet and here's how to make the "fancy mesh" - "v square"

I came here to post a new entry...

Here's Tip Junkie's Halloween tutorials
The Happenings: 30 days of halloween
Someone created a blog with a Halloween project each week, and I was moderately interested, but I have lost the URL. Well... (It was Roman Sock)

Here's Gothober... it's a bit special. Countdown calender to Halloween. Not crafty.

My sister was talking about the reborn baby dolls...

and eventually I got here: painting your own reborn baby doll
This reminded me of all the OOAK fashion doll remakes and such, and I found Legends by Valkyrie. She has some very nice tutorials and other interesting information on her site, among them link to her tutorial videos at YouTube. Well... one thing led to another and I was thinking of using the ideas and techniques for painting the reborn dolls to painting fashion dolls, and I was thinking of giving it a try. I love these OOAK dolls... and one really doesn't need to be perfect to create something very nice.

Though sometimes... the best efforts can produce something I don't think was the purpose...
From left to right - Raegynh by Dolla Butler, Pocahontas by Mattel - the base doll to both of these remakes, and a repaint by Medusa the Dollmaker...
Now Dolla can do better, and I'm sure this Raegynh is excellently made, but the face and the make-up together add up to a transvestite... named "raisin"? (I'm sorry, Dolla, no offense intented, just my opinion.)
Now, Medusa's remake... WOW! Amazing!

Here's some repainted Barbies by Lauren Leigh. Here's dolls by Kedra Manning.
Here's dolls by Aleksandra Bryla.

Here's "the best rerooting tutorial ever!"
how to root eyelashes
1/6 sense tutorials

In my old computer I had some links to how to remold (sculpt) the face by cutting and sculpting with gesso, but it's gone...

Don't take my blog too seriously...

My blog is a picture of a short moment in my life. Mostly I'm quite ok. Sure, I'm depressed and sad, but I can be happy too, laugh and fool around, and I do that every day, so I'm not that sad a person ;-)

Today I'm going to share with you my "Good Witch, Bad Witch" sock pattern. It's really easy. You start as you like, from toes up or cuff down, have the kind of toes or cuff you like best. The sock is going to have 48 stitches with as loose hand as I have or 72 stitches, if you knit tighter with finer yarn. You can also choose any amount of stitches that suits your yarn and hand, and add black/orange color stripes on both sides of the pattern, so that you get the amount of stitches you need. This pattern repeat has 24 stitches, so if you knit socks with 60 stitches, you'll add 6 stitches on both sides of the sock. That way you can also knit knee high socks - you put the increases/decreases in these color stripes and just repeat the witchy pattern as many times as you like. (Click on the chart to see it bigger.)

When you get to the heel, make it the way you like - it would look nice in two-colored brioche...
You can continue with the pattern on the foot too, but leave the brooms out and center the pattern. It will look better that way. Also, make the sole "dotty", like in Norwegian socks. That doesn't really need a pattern... it's R1: *1 MC, 1 CC*, 1 MC, r2: *1 CC, 1 MC*, 1 CC - repeat rounds 1 and 2 as many times as needed.
And, frankly, you can mix the stripes as you like, add other patterns and basically do what ever you want. You could make only cats the whole sock... The cat is 6 stitches wide, so it fits any size socks alone, whether you use 48, 54, 60, 66, 72 or 78 stitches in a sock. It would be lovely to make cat sock with different cat colored scrap yarns...
(Yes, I'm aware that the bats don't look much like bats, but - if you have a better chart for bats, use that in stead.)