Tag Archives: Hello Kitty

Oct30

WIP Wednesday

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It’s 9pm and I thought I wouldn’t have anything to talk about today as there hadn’t been much visible progress. However I added a few rounds to my Moe of Change tonight so here’s a quickie pic to give you an idea – it’s now 13.5″ in diameter.

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My phone didn’t want to focus properly! The other two blankets have had a few rounds added too, but the cardigan is still languishing.

Ooh, I just remembered, I did finish a hat. Tai Chi Man’s god-daughter had a baby recently, so I am packaging up the rainbow blanket (FO blog post here) along with a little pompom beanie made from Caron Cupcakes in Tutti Frutti. pompomhat

I confess to cutting out parts of the stripes to keep it to 9 rounds per colour. It’s only about 14″ in circumference and took about 20 grams of the cake. I ended up using US#4 needles which is skinnier than I would normally use for DK yarn but I was aiming for a certain tension.

Last Wednesday, I showed you my kitty ears. Well, here I am modelling them.

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The Hello Kitty outfit finally came together – I finished sewing the dress, bought the white turtleneck online from Old Navy, wore my Sweet Legs leggings, wore the ears and a pink bow, and went a bit heavier on the makeup.

I wore the ensemble on Monday and again on Tuesday, when I showed up for work with the added armwarmers that I made last year.

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So there you go. All caught up!

Oct23

WIP Wednesday

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WIP Wednesday

Hi peeps, how’s it going? Time for another WIP Wednesday. Seems like no time at all since last Wednesday, and it feels like I haven’t made a whole lot of progress.

The Party Cardi hasn’t been touched so I won’t bother with another photo of that. However I’ve started my Moe of Change…

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This is going to be a pretty blanket. It will be baby blanket size as it only uses two cakes of Lion Brand Mandala but it’s good to have at least one project where I have to concentrate on stitches and counting.

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The granny blanket with the Red Heart With Love has grown quite well though the colours are going to be a bit predictable from now on. The centre used up small balls of leftovers and now I’m on to the big balls, of which I have only a limited number. The plan is to repeat the white/black rows after each set of colours, and I hope it’s going to look ok with the different colours in the middle.

The knitted blanket has grown a tiny bit. I have added a few rows but they are so long that it’s going to be a slow project.

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That cake is one I wound up with my ball-winder when I first bought it and wanted to wind every scrap into a cake!

I also have a Finished Object – a very small one!

I needed ears for my Hello Kitty outfit for Halloween and found this hairband at the dollar store. It’s perfect because I crocheted the ears and slipped them over the plastic ear-shaped bits on top, sewed them on, and they won’t flop.

So I’ve been a good girl this week and got back to the gym. I had two weeks of holiday followed by two weeks of sloth (except for one yoga class). On Sunday, Tai Chi Man and I went to the gym in the morning and I did a 40 minute workout (20 mins treadmill, 20 mins weights machine circuit) to get me back into things. On Monday, I was back for 30 mins of treadmill plus a 30 minute upper body workout. And Tuesday, we had a challenging yoga class with lots of downward facing dogs and OMG my shoulders today are SO painful. But it’s a good kind of pain, I suppose, because it means I did some work! Couldn’t face another workout tonight after work, but I shall see what I can fit in tomorrow around my social commitments. Maybe a ‘leg day’ in the afternoon so that the shoulders get a break.

I have Maui in December to keep me motivated!

Nov15

Winter is coming!

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Hello, lovely people. I hope all is well in your world.

There has been lots of yarn in mine, as usual. And some sewing too. First, I have to show you why it’s important not to take life too seriously and to laugh at yourself sometimes. Do you see the obvious mistake here?

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(Evening shot taken without any thought of styling!)

This is an awesomely warm, comfortable fleece onesie with a hood that I sewed for myself. However I didn’t realise until I was attaching the very last pieces that I had cut it out with the one-way Hello Kitty fabric running the WRONG WAY! I didn’t even think about it being one-way until that point. However, I had it finished just in time for the cold weather and I love how cosy it is. That’s the important thing, right?

As for crochet news, there are two FOs. The first is this one:

The link to my Ravelry page is here, and it contains the You Tube link for the tutorial. This is a yarn-eating cowl. It used a whole cake of Caron Big Cakes, all 300 grams/600 yards of it. (I know, I’m mixing my metric and Imperial.) It looks very odd during construction, with the loops sticking out, but you loop them through each other along the length of the cowl and then the last loop in each row becomes  a buttonhole.

I doubt I will be making another one, but if I did I’d probably make it with DK rather than worsted and also add some length. It will certainly be warm though.

Another project that is hot off the hook today is this one:

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My project page – Cuddly Cat crochet Scoodie This came out looking just like the one in the designer’s pattern photo, and I am pleased with it. (Direct Moogly link.)

Again, if I were to make this again, I’d tweak the pattern a teensy bit. The hood comes out a tad too far at the back for my liking, so I think I’d stop increasing a bit earlier, work straight for a few rows, then do the decreases. This is a gift for a friend – hope she likes it.

I need to toss both of these FOs into the washer and dryer to soften up a bit. The Caron yarn has an odd feel to it – I won’t be buying it again. And the Scoodie is Red Heart Super Saver which always benefits from a bit of rough handling in the laundry!

We have had strong winds whistling around the house the last couple of days. The windchimes on my deck have been clanging away. As the temperature has been hovering around 2 – 5 degrees Celsius, you can imagine with the windchill it’s starting to feel a little chilly around here. We have had a tiny amount of snow which melted straight away, but we can see the snowline moving down closer and closer. Winter is coming! Make yourself a fleece onesie!!

 

Aug8

Ten minute clothes pin (peg) bag

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peg bag

Hey, how are you? I’m enjoying a day off today and the sun is shining and it’s going to be hot again. The laundry is out on my brand-spanking-new clothes line which we bought from Amazon, with the brand-spanking-new clothes pins/pegs that we bought from Lee Valley. It just didn’t seem right to use the old weathered pegs on the new line!

The plan is to bring in the pegs each time to get them to last longer so I felt I needed a bag to put them in. I could have crocheted one – nope, too slow – and I could have sewn a fancy one out of pretty cotton, and I could have made one out of an upcycled T shirt, but there weren’t any in the thrift store bag (lots of socks and underwear, but no T shirts)!

I rummaged through my fabric bits and pieces and found this Hello Kitty fleece – it was already a rectangle and I just needed to fold it, square it up, cut a small hole in the folded edge for the plastic hanger, cut an opening and hem it for the access hole, and sew up the sides and bottom. And reinforce the hanger hole, just in case.

And Bob, as they say, is your uncle.

The ripple blanket has grown a bit – if only I could actually spend more time crocheting and less time browsing Ravelry! I know I’d like to get it done before the 17th so I can start the Peacock Tail Bag CAL without a WIP hanging around. Maybe I should have joined the Ravellenic Games on Ravelry, which would have given me a deadline of the closing ceremonies of the Olympics to finish it.

Ah well, I shall do a bit more housework so I can feel justified in getting back to the couch for some more rippling later on.

Mar31

FO: Monochromatic pompom cowl

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This is a totally free cowl, as the Needle Crafters Biggy Bump Chenille came from one destashing friend and the Cascade Pacific Chunky came from another.

It took a 10mm hook and a slow pace to hook the yarn between the pompoms so that they ended up all on one side and didn’t need to actually be pulled through any loops. Plan to work in the round if you use something like this, unless you actually want your pompoms to be on both sides.

It’s very soft and smooshy, about 26″ in circumference and 4″ wide. And I’m glad that I can say goodbye to another ball of random yarn.

It was a gorgeous sunny day in our valley, and I had two walks, plus took a drive to drop some stuff off at the Salvation Army thrift store and stopped in at the dollar store to pick up some large zipper-seal bags. Whilst there, I also found some clear plant protectors that just might keep the quails off our lettuces this year, a new calculator, and (ahem) this…
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I’m a bit of a sucker for Hello Kitty!

The large zip top bags were partly for my yarn. We’ve had a few large ants in the kitchen, only one at a time, but enough to make me think of all the bugs emerging from their winter hidey holes. I sprayed a lot of diluted peppermint oil around last night and haven’t seen any since, but thought it wise to seal up my yarn just in case anything decided to burrow in. It was also a good opportunity to enjoy looking at the colour packs I bought a while back. I still haven’t decided what they will become.

Well, it’s still quite early by most people’s standards, but Tai Chi Man has already turned in and I am not far behind. Sleep well, dear readers, and thank you for reading.

 

Nov20

Pillows – lots of them

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We’re hosting a teen potluck here on the weekend and I’m hoping that we will all be gathering in my not-so-big living room for some good food, fun and games. Rather than borrow a bunch of extra chairs, we have invested in half a dozen body pillows (20 X 46″) and I ran up some pillowcases for them tonight. It didn’t take long, and the cool thing was that it used up my Hello Kitty and flowery stash that I brought home from work as remnants. Once this event is over, I’d love to turn our family room into a comfy place to hang out, so I’ll be looking at ways to make it look less stark in there. These pillows will be a good start. 

The top pillow (pink Hello Kitty) is not as well-covered as the others as I was limited by what I had. 

  

Oct17

Hello Kitty pyjamas

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Hello Kitty fleece

Hello Kitty fleece

Pattern tracing paper

Pattern tracing paper

Weekend Sewing

Weekend Sewing

Finished pyjamas

Finished pyjamas

This is a book I bought recently, as I found it at the library and liked it enough to invest in it. I pulled out the Burda pattern tracing paper that I bought on sale at work some time ago and the three metres of blue Hello Kitty fabric, also bought on sale (I think it was buy one metre, get two free)!

I made the largest size and the pyjama pants just fit with a small amount of positive ease. I was hoping for more roominess but if I make more I can use my current fleece pyjama pants as a pattern instead. This was project #2 today.

Sep5

Yarn!

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Stylecraft Harlequin Chunky in four colourways

Stylecraft Harlequin Chunky in four colourways

Bonus! Sale fleece - buy 1 metre, get 3!

Bonus! Sale fleece – buy 1 metre, get 2!

Bonus! Remnant from work. More Hello Kitty!

Bonus! Remnant from work. More Hello Kitty!

First batch of Stylecraft Special DK

First batch of Stylecraft Special DK

Stylecraft Special Aran for a future blanket

Stylecraft Special Aran for a future blanket

Second batch of Stylecraft Special DK

Second batch of Stylecraft Special DK

All of the new DK together

All of the new DK together

Woohoo! Two yarn deliveries this week. Deramores sent my order in two batches as some of the yarn was back-ordered, but maybe the mail was moving faster than usual because it didn’t seem to take long for it all to arrive. Not only that, but I brought home two pieces of Hello Kitty fabric tonight. One is a small remnant that was marked down at 75% off, the other was on sale for Buy One, Get Two. Both fleece.

Our family is going to Wild Play tomorrow. The boys have been warned to be ready on time, as I have booked and paid for it online. Sunday, Tai Chi Man and I are attending a class, and Monday is Labour Day and blissfully free.

After that, we will have to get used to a new schedule, as ds2 starts at the local college.

Happy weekend, everyone.