Easter Lovelies

The awesome find of this lovely Easter dress for $6 at a local thrift store called for something to make it a bit more special - and so that my dress-loving girly could wear it to school. Since it's sleeveless, she just needed a bit of a cover-up. I bought three skeins of Caron Simply Soft in a peach color and got to work after finding the formula for a seamless top-down cardigan online. It was a surprisingly quick knit, since I made it short-sleeved and cropped so it hit at the same point as the empire waist on her dress, and it took less than one skein of yarn - which means this sweater cost less than $3! I couldn't believe it! I'll definitely be making more.


Because I had two full skeins of yarn left, I decided to make her 18-inch doll a matching outfit. The dress was very simple, using the top-down seamless formula for crochet on the top, but putting the opening in the back. Then I increased for the skirt to make it fuller and kind of ripply. And as soon as Averie saw the sunhats I made for my grandmas, she wanted one, too. So a peach hat with peach rose completes her Easter ensemble.



(Pictures taken in front of my brother- and sister-in-law's gorgeous new house in Phoenix, where we spent Easter this year. Thanks for your hospitality! We love you guys!)

A New Treasure

I have the best mother-in-law a girl could have! She and my father-in-law made the trip up north this weekend to visit the bird refuge with us, and if that wasn't enough she brought me this gem she'd found at a thrift store.


Any guesses? It doesn't look like much, and it's obviously VERY dated. I didn't even know something like this existed. It's a knitting footstool! The top opens up so you can store your knitting supplies in it!

I was so excited when she told me what it was! It fits all my various sets of knitting and crochet needles, as well as my various notions. I figured eventually I'd re-cover it, but didn't plan on it anytime soon. Then I found some gorgeous, cheap printed canvas at Walmart (2.50 a yard!), and raced home to "git er done." Lots of staples, hot glue, and just a little while later, I had this beauty.


I wrapped the fabric around the bottom, so I didn't need any trim there, but I did need a trim to cover my staples at the top. I didn't feel like going out to the store and spending more money, so I grabbed some cotton yarn from my stash and crocheted a quick trim which then got hot glued on. And voila, a custom, cute knitting footstool. I love it!!!

Grandma Birthday Hats

I recently came across a cute pattern for crochet sunhats, and the first thing I did was make one for each of my grandmas for their birthdays! This is my sweet Grandma Rae in her hat, done in white with a green band (her favorite color), and with a peach rose.

This is my fun Oma, whose hat is red with a purple band and bow for Red Hat Society. She wore it to their monthly function this past week and I now have an order for another for one of her friends. :)

Easter buddies

I can't remember exactly when I got the idea for these, but I was so excited when I could finally get to the store to get some soft, fluffy yarn to get them made. I used Bernat Baby Blanket, which is almost like chenille, so it's chunky and super soft. I was hoping to get a bunch of these made to put on Etsy in time for Easter, but this darn cold that keeps going around our family had other plans. My daughter nagged me for over a week to "get pictures taken already" so she could snag these up to snuggle, so they were definitely a big hit!

Stripes

This afghan came about because I had quite a bit of yarn left over after completing my slipstream afghan. I wanted to do something with random stripes, but I have a really hard time being random. I learned about something called the Fibonacci sequence, and decided to give it a try. Basically, it's 0+1=1, 1+1=2, 1+2=3, 2+3=5, and on and on. I did it up through 8 (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8) for this pattern, using the colors in the same order all the way through - because I had 17 colors and only five colors in each pattern repeat, it made it so the colors were different sized stripes each time they were used. I think it really gave me that random look without having to be random at all, and I'll definitely use it on future projects. Hooray for math!

Doily blanket

I have become addicted to making afghans, and more specifically quick and easy afghans. Combine that with my newfound love of all things vintagey, and I knew I had to make this doily blanket the second I saw it. It's from ohmygoodknits! Lace Love eBook, which can be found here. It took just over two skeins of Red Heart Super Saver yarn (I used the color Aran), and took just a few days to complete. It's about 45 inches across, so a nice size for a throw or lap afghan.

St. Patrick's Day decor

March is here, and in our neck of the woods it has definitely come in like a lion! We've had more snow in the past week than we did for most of the winter. Lucky for me, the nasty weather is a perfect excuse to hunker down and crochet or knit.

The argyle wreath above was inspired by the one I found on Pinterest and made for Valentine's Day. I had the idea for this wreath at that time, since I already had the green knitted wreath base hanging around - I meant to do something with it for Christmas, but just ran out of oomph. It's knit in a super chunky yarn (Hometown USA) in garter stitch, which I wrapped around a picture frame and sewed together. I used my Cricut and the Designer's Calendar cartridge to cut the shamrock out of chipboard, which I then used as a pattern to trace onto my two colors of felt.

The table runner was inspired by a free Red Heart afghan pattern, found here. I used two bright shades of Red Heart Super Saver green, sewing them together and doing a single crochet border around it all.