Craftyminx

Happy Halloween!!!

For the weekend, I took a couple of days off working on crochet school and let Halloween happen. It IS my favorite holiday after all. We made a very simple jack 'o lantern

He is our only decoration this year. Levi borrowed all of our decorations to make his house awesome for his Halloween party. 

I made pumpkin pancakes with honey butter syrup. 

I painted faces at my niece's Halloween party. They all wanted to be butterflies. 

We managed to get ourselves covered in gray makeup and made it to the parade on time. Everyone could tell that Sheldon was Charlie Chaplin except three guys who yelled Hitler at him. Of course no one knew who I was. Louise Brooks people! :)  There was also a 15 year-old girl who told us she liked our costumes and when her friend asked her who we were we heard her say, "I don't know... white people?" Hilarious.

Funny story; the grayish hose I bought to wear were way too small so I managed to find a pair of gray tights that were also small but not tight, just short. I put them on and didn't think about putting underpants over the top of them so they wouldn't work themselves off. Well, when we got to the parade of course we had to walk forever to get from our car to the parade. And then we found out our friends were standing a half mile down the street so we walked to meet them. My tights were seriously down around my thighs by the time we made it down the street. And of course everyone was looking at us and taking pictures of us because we kind of stood out in the crowd. I finally found a dark alley to go "adjust" in haha. 

I'm sad this is pretty much the best picture I got of us that night. I didn't want to touch my good camera with my gray hands so we just have iphone pics and Sheldon's mustache is crooked in this one. Oh well. Our make-up did really well though and I'll try to share my experience with it. In case I am not able to get to it, we used gray Kryolan Aquacolor mixed with a little white Aquacolor to lighten it up on me. The trick is to do a lot of contouring with gray and white shadows which you can't see very well here because I had to use the flash. Pretend you're a drag queen with the shading and contouring. I would like to do a video on how I did the make-up but my camera doesn't allow me to film for very long without getting overheated and this look takes FOR-EV-ER.

Here's another photo of me with a friend:

Again with the flash washing me out, but look how awesome it looks next to someone in color!

Sunday I got my pumpkin spice white mocha from Starbucks, did a lot of work on crochet school, and painted my nails for Halloween :)

I've been excited to do this manicure for months!

Today I decided to wear my costume again. This time without the gray because I didn't have time for the hasstle and with some tights that fit haha. 

I made the coat I'm wearing! It will get a proper post later. I've had two people ask if I cut my hair over the weekend, which tells me that this is a good look for me I think I might go dark brown and shorter for the holidays.  

Tonight we're going to ignore trick-or-treaters and finally watch American Horror Story and Grimm. 

I Love Halloween!!

Crochet School Lesson 18: Working With Color

We talked a lot about yarn in Lesson 3 but we didn't really get into picking colors because I wanted to do a whole post about colors after the Granny Square lesson. I get e-mails all the time asking about how to pick colors for afghans and I thought this would be the perfect way to get it all out there. We'll talk a little about color theory and discuss resources for finding color inspiration and color palettes. There's also a quick video about changing colors reviewing what we've already learned and adding in a few other tips. 

 

Color Theory can get really really detailed and we won't go into the color mixing part of it because you can't really mix two shades of yarn to make a new color and this isn't a lesson on dyeing your own yarn so I'll save that all for another lesson sometime. What we're going to discuss is color pairing and picking colors for a project.  Also, I should say here, I'm not a designer and haven't had formal training in color theory, this is all stuff I've picked up over the years. 

The color wheel is a visual representation of colors (Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary)  arranged according to their chromatic relationship. 

When looking into color pairings, there are a few color relationships you need to know about.

If you're not used to using a lot of color, monochromatic is a good place to start. You use all the same color, but varying shades of the color. It adds visual interest without getting crazy with color. 

Analogous colors add some more options to the mix but is still a safe option for those of you scared of using color. 

Using complementary colors adds high contrast to a piece. Sometimes this contrast is off-putting, so use complementary colors at your own risk. haha

Split complementary  colors are a great option because they still offer contrast without creating the tension that complementary colors may cause.

Triadic colors are very harmonious and pleasing to the eye.  If you're just stepping into color, I recommend trying out triadic colors after you look at monochromatic and analogous color relationships.

Using this relationship to create a color scheme is often difficult to balance out because it uses two sets of complementary colors. It can be done though, you just have to use lighter shades of some of the colors so the effect is more subdued. 

Now I'm not saying I look at the color wheel every time I pick colors, but this is a really good place to start if you don't naturally see color pairings. Once you start working with colors you'll eventually be able to match up great color palettes on your own. 

Depending on the project you're working on, you won't need too many colors. For accessories and clothing you probably want to stick to no more than 2 - 4 colors. However, when you're working with color for afghans the sky is the limit. If you're just starting out with color though, you might want to stick with 6 - 8 different colors. 

 

If you're still a little leary of picking out your own color palettes, there are many resources out there to inspire you. Many design blogs share color palettes where they take a photo and pull colors from it to create a working palette. The image below is an example from one of Katrina from Pugly Pixel's colour lover posts. This is a really lovely palette mixing some analous colors with split complementary colors. 

Here are my favorite blogs for color inspiration:

Creature Comforts color Inspiration posts
Style me Pretty Color Palettes
Emma Lamb's Color Palettes 
Pugly Pixel Colour Lover Posts
You can also browse pinterest for more color palettes.

Other cool resources:

Kuler - A web-based color palette generator developed by adobe. People also post the palettes they create so you can create your own or just browse the ones that people have posted. 

COLOURlovers - Amazing color collections. 

Random Stripe Generator - I have been using this tool for years! Take a boring pattern and give it pizazz by making it striped.  You tell it how many rows you need pick colors close to what you're using  and pick which stripe widths should be allowed . It will generate something like this (I used colors similar to the palette above): 

Here is the text version of the above pattern:

4 of gold O O O O 
1 of aquamarine O 
2 of gold O O 
4 of gainsboro O O O O 
5 of hotpink O O O O O 
4 of gold O O O O 
1 of hotpink O 
1 of gold O 
1 of hotpink O 
2 of gainsboro O O 

If all else fails, just follow the pattern. Pattern designers spend a lot of time developing the color palettes used in their designs. 

 

 

Credits - Chalkboard backgrounds: Kitschy Digitals by Danielle Thompson Chalkboard Paper Kit. Fonts used: school script dashed, Rudiment and Homemade Apple. 

Crochet School Lesson 17: Granny Square 101

Remember way back at the beginning of the month (I can't believe we've made it this far so quickly!) when we were learning how to stitch into the chain and I said that the chain was often the downfall of many beginning crocheters? Well I have to say that I believe the Granny Square is also a stumbling block, but not in the same way. The Granny square is really easy. So easy in fact that a person who has never picked up a crochet hook or yarn can learn how to make one in a short amount of time and be pretty successful with it. Why is this a problem? Because the granny square will be the only thing that person will know how to crochet until they seek out more instruction. I'm aware that many of you have been in this boat so thank you for seeking out that further instruction through this class! I'm proud of you. 

That is why I have waited until you have learned all the basics of crochet before I taught you the awesomeness of the granny square!

I hold granny squares very near and dear to my heart. My mom has a granny afghan that my great-grandmother made (or had made for her, we're still not completely sure) that I absolutely love and I admire often.

I have even been doing a granny square a day since January this year as my 365 project. I'm behind on blogging them because of teaching all of you this month, but my granny squares are coming along quite nicely. In fact, if you decide you don't want to do anything else with crochet and just make granny afghans for the rest of your life, I would be ok with that, because once you have the basic knowledge of crochet you'll begin to see that all of what we've learned so far and even more advanced techniques can be found in granny square patterns.  Granny squares can be simple like what I'll teach you today or super complex like this granny square that I made last month:

FYI this square took close to 3 hours. FOR ONE SQUARE! That's pretty crazy. It's definitely the most complex square I've ever made.

 

Now that I've written a dissertation on how amazing granny squares are, I guess I should tell you how to make them. Note: This is my preferred way of making granny squares. I know there are a million ways to make them and I'll touch on a few of the variations as I go, but I probably won't cover them all. Just do what works best for you.  I'm using worsted weight yarn and an I hook for my squares. Use whatever hook your yarn calls for. Gauge isn't super important with granny squares, but you don't want them tight and stiff. You want a nice soft and cozy fabric. Granny squares do make blankets after all!

 

Granny squares are all about color, but you can most definitely make a one-color granny. And here's how to do it:

See what I mean about granny squares being easy? You've probably already got the bug. Please don't ignore the rest of the videos though haha. You still have a lot to learn!

(oops this assignment is too big for my normal chalkboard!)

1. Make 4 granny squares. We'll use these in Lesson 22 on Seaming. 
2. Make them all the same size with the same amount of stitches on each side. Make at least one color change granny and one monochrome granny.
3. Post a photo of your granny squares to the flickr group. 

So it's probably pretty obvious that we won't be ending the class before the end of the month. Right now it's looking like it will go until the end of next week. These last few lessons have a HUGE amount of information so I'd rather they all be thorough and of the quality of all the other lessons instead of being rushed to finish the class "on time." The schedule was really more of a hopeful time-line anyway.  

I have been working really hard on the textbook and it is pretty cool! Instead of making a pattern book for purchase through ravelry, I have decided to format the textbook into a private password-protected blog so it can be interactive like our lessons. Each pattern will have the directions, along with videos to explain new techniques not covered in crochet school and other tips for each pattern. Each pattern will also have a printable version so you can print out your own little "textbook" I'll share more info when it is ready. I'm hoping to have it ready for purchase on the last day of our lessons. Here's a little peek of some of the patterns that will be in the "textbook:"

Credits - Chalkboard backgrounds: Kitschy Digitals by Danielle Thompson Chalkboard Paper Kit. Fonts used: school script dashed, Rudiment and Homemade Apple. 

 

Crochet School Lesson 16: Going in Circles -- Working in the Round

I have a big confession to make. I don't like crocheting in rows! I know, I know, that's all we've been learning and I don't even enjoy it. My main reasoning for not enjoying crocheting in rows is because knitting lends itself to row work far better than crochet ever could and I personally think knitted fabric looks nicer for garments or what-not.

The reason I really love crochet is it's ability to easily work in the round. Of course, you can work in the round with knitting, but it's not super easy. You have to use double-ended needles which aren't easy for beginners and you can't really see how your progress is going while the yarn is on the needles. Since crochet is worked stitch by stitch you can form your piece as you go. Once you learn how to work in the round, your crochet ability will greatly increase, you'll be able to make hats, booties, dolls, and more just by learning the basics of this technique.

We're going to start working in the round by making a circle. Circles can be a little confusing but I think you all can do it! I've worked really hard to help you all be able to read crocheted fabric for this very lesson. Being able to see increases is extremely helpful when you are working in the round. 

 

The graphic below will give you a visual of the pattern we just learned.  (please note this circle starts with 8 stitches not 12 like we did in the video but it follows the same increasing pattern. Also these aren't the proper crochet symbols we'll learn in a later lesson, just a rudimentary visual for you to follow)

 

Making a circle the way I showed you is (I believe) the easiest way to start working in the round. There are also ways to make a circle by working in a spiral but I find this a little difficult to work with in the beginning so I am going to save it for the beyond the basics crochet school.  But for any of your over-achievers out there, here's a pretty good tutorial on how to make the spiral circle. For the spiral, you don't connect at the end of the round so it makes a seamless looking circle. It's more aesthetically pleasing but a little harder to work with. 

Like I said in the intro, making a circle is the basis for making tons of different patterns. And while an author will write this process into the pattern it will be much better if you understand the process. 

Credits - Chalkboard backgrounds: Kitschy Digitals by Danielle Thompson Chalkboard Paper Kit. Fonts used: school script dashed, Rudiment and Homemade Apple. 

Halloween behind the scenes

Halloween has kind of been on the back burner this year, which is sad because it is our favorite holiday. Thankfully, we switch off which holiday we have our big party on and this year we are all about Christmas. We went all out for last year's Halloween party.  I haven't had a lot of time to think about Halloween because of Crochet School but this week I am being thrown into everything Halloween. Tonight, we have our annual pumpkin carving party with Sheldon's side of the family (2010, 2009) which I'm really excited about. It is always fun to have traditions and I started this tradition with everyone so that makes it even more special. 

I've been frantically pulling together all the little pieces for my halloween costume. Here are a few peeks:

Can you guess what I'm going to be? 

Sheldon and I started dressing up in couples costumes from the beginning of our relationship (2010, 2009). We seriously talk about costume ideas all year long. We kicked around quite a few ideas this year but we finally decided we are going as silent movie stars Louise Brooks and Charlie Chaplin gray-scale make-up and all. This is my reference photo for Louise:

I have had to do so much research on make-up to make this work out for us because typical halloween make-up will not do -- I've tried it, it looks good for all of 10 minutes then cracks and looks awful. I might do a how-to after I actually do all of the make-up. It will be involved. I've only practiced little sections but it's crazy how weird it looks to have gray skin.  I haven't even tested the make-up on Sheldon. If it doesn't work with his dark skin-tone we may just have to cut some eye-holes out of a sheet so he can be a ghost!

We have a family Halloween party on Saturday, then the downtown Halloween parade (my favorite part of Halloween!) and Saturday night Levi is having a big Halloween party. It will be interesting to see how long our make-up lasts. We'll probably do it before the parade and do some touching up before we go to Levi's.

What kinds of fun things are you doing for Halloween? I want details! I need to live vicariously through all of you that decorated, picked the perfect candy for trick-or-treaters, and have a kick-ass costume planned out. 

FYI crochet school students. The lesson on crocheting in the round will go up tonight :) with other lessons following along. So much for my schedule eh? haha

Crochet School - Lesson 16 is coming

Hey students!! My husband and I have been super busy, and working opposite schedules lately so that means I can't film when my man isn't here to keep an eye on Dash (our puppy who has a bad habit of eating things that don't belong in his tummy) so the filming for the next few lessons is behind schedule. I'm hoping to do the rest of the lessons tonight when he gets home at 9. Just wanted to let you guys know I'm too busy for my own good. 

So practice your stitching, make an account on Ravelry (we'll talk about this more later) so you can start looking for pretty patterns you will be able to read and understand when we're finished, and I'll see you as soon as I can. :) 

Pub Night

No, I'm not talking about the pub crawl we went on in Denver, although that was a great time and I posted many pictures of it on Instagram. I'm talking about the dinner party we had on Saturday night. It all started when Sheldon decided he needed a practice run of making cheddar ale soup for our work's soup day this Wednesday. I said we should invite our friends and have some other pub food like scotch eggs and pretzels. And so pub night was created. 

Sheldon's soup was awesome! He used a really good ale which you could taste in the soup and he got and nice sharp Irish cheddar for it. We were all swooning over it.

I would share his recipe but he rarely keeps track of what he does when he cooks. 

The star of the evening were the scotch eggs!

Have you ever had a scotch egg? They are seriously the best pub food ever! Here's how  you make them:

Baked Scotch Eggs

Ingredients:

4 hard boiled and peeled eggs - cook them a little less than you normally would. You don't want them runny but you don't want them grainy either. 

1 pound of breakfast sausage - sometimes we use the spicy kind for an extra kick or the turkey breakfast sausage when we want to feel like we're trying to be healthy

flour for coating

Egg wash - 1 egg + 1-2 teaspoons of water

bread crumbs

salt and pepper

Separate your sausage into four equal pieces. Flatten each piece out big enough to wrap around the egg but not too thin. Coat the peeled egg in some flour tapping off the excess and wrap it with the sausage. Then roll it all around between your hands to make sure you have a tight packed ball of sausage around the egg. Sit on a plate. Complete these steps with the rest of the eggs. Then place the plate of them in the freezer for about 30 minutes to firm up. You don't want them frozen solid, just firmed up because rolling the sausage around in you hand melts the fat a little too much. 

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fairenheit. Make your egg wash and put about a cup of bread crumbs in a shallow dish. Coat each of the sausage covered eggs with egg then dip in the bread crumbs. Place on a cookie sheet I then spray them all with some olive oil but this is optional. Bake the scotch eggs for about 30 minutes or until the sausage is cooked through and the outside is golden brown. 

Let them cool for about 10 minutes, then slice them into quarters using a really sharp knife. Serve with mustard (we like Inglehoffer sweet hot mustard)

Enjoy!

I also made some pretty awesome pretzel bites.

I used a recipe I found online and instead of turning the dough into pretzels I just cut the snakes of dough into little bites. They were pretty dense so I'm glad I went with this option. The link to the recipe is below.

Honey Whole Wheat Pretzels on Honest Cooking

I didn't get a picture of it but one of our friends brought an amazing Pumpkin Dump Cake. It was so good, I'm going to have to make it for Thanksgiving.

Crochet School Lesson 15: Creating Texture

Sometimes crocheting a flat piece of fabric won't do. Texture makes pieces interesting by providing something for the eye to be drawn to. We're going to go over 4 common ways to create texture in this lesson.

I will just be using the double crochet stitch for the demonstration videos. But all of the stitches work the same for these 4 techniques. 

 

 

 

 

When you encounter these stitches in patterns they will usually be abbreviated. Below are their common abbreviations. We'll revisit all of the abbreviations we have learned when we talk about reading patterns.

 

Credits - Chalkboard backgrounds: Kitschy Digitals by Danielle Thompson Chalkboard Paper Kit. Fonts used: school script dashed, Rudiment and Homemade Apple.