Furry Scarf in the Making

Guess what I have?

Faux fur from the remnants bin of Fabricland ($8.25) and crochet cotton from Salvation Army ($0.50) will become this:

For more info, check out:

When Yarn and Fur Combine

and

Further Notions on Furry Scarves

DIY Distraction: Further Notions On Furry Scarves

So, you want your own Danier-style furry scarf, but you don't crochet? No problem, if you knit!

Step 1: Choose a knitted lattice pattern.

Ribbon Scarf Pattern on The Shiz-Knit!

Lattice Pattern on Knit Wiki

Step 2: Choose a trim design!

A Scalloped Edging by Judy Gibson

You could use just the edge of a lace design.

Summer Fancy Work on Knitting-And

Scallops aren't strictly necessary. This is YOUR scarf, after all!

Mama's Lace Pattern on The Tattered Pickle

Step 3: Choose your trim! You could use the aforementioned fur, faux fur or feather trim. Or you could use something else entirely, like a bulky boucle:

Be Sweet Boucle Mohair Yarn on Jimmy Beans Wool

Or hand-dyed pencil roving:

Coral Reef by SpinKnitLove on Etsy

Ooooh, or even handspun super-bulky yarn!!!

HUGE 7oz skein Handspun Mohair by PheonixFarmFiber on Etsy

So many possibilities!!!

DIY Distraction: When Yarn and Fur Combine!

I receive the Elle Canada newsletter specifically to view their "TRENDS" slideshows. It's so much more convenient to click a link in my inbox than to hunt down the info myself. Every week, I have at least one slideshow to view, and one of this week's treats was The 10 Best Scarves for Fall.

Thank you, Elle Canada, for you have alerted me to the existence of this amazing scarf from Danier Leather:

As seen on Killer Kurves

URK. That's the image used by Elle Canada, which you'll notice is not the image on the Danier Leather website:

As seen on Danier Leather

While this beautiful scarf is a reasonable $79.00 CAD, I believe something has gone awry here. The Danier scarf is not the scarf being attributed to them by Elle Canada. The fur is sparser on the Danier scarf, and the scallops are different. This makes me wonder who really owns the Elle-featured scarf...

BUT WHO CARES!

Crafty chicas everywhere rejoice, because YOU can own this scarf for far less than $79!!!

Step 1: Find a crochet lattice pattern. CHECK!

New York Noro Plaid on Make it Messy

Pamela's Lattice Prayer Shawl on Mariel's Magic

Step 2: Locate some pretty fan-based trim patterns. CHECK!

Crochet ARC LACE Edging #1 on Moira Crochets

Edging #3022 on MyPicot.com

Step 3: Buy some fur or faux fur or feather trim. TRIPLE CHECK!

Rabbit fur trim on eBay

Wrights Trim - 10 yard reel of 1" faux fur trim from Joann.com

Wrights Trim - 10 yard reel of feather boa trim from Joann.com

Potentially, this costs as little as $10 for 100g of fingering weight yarn and $15 for a reel of faux fur trim. And you'll have the satisfaction of making it to your exact specifications :D

Craftster: Portal to Knowledge (the tale of a sweater not yet made)

I am a woman with far too many hobbies. You name it, I've at the very least heard of it, read about it, or perhaps even tried it. Which is why Craftster is one of my favourite places on the internet. Being a crafting forum, just about conceivable hand-crafting activity is represented, from interior decorating to knocking off $$$$$$ clothing designs.

Today's topic: persistence in the quest for knowledge. Last August, I posted some amazing yarny goodies that I found to be beautiful and/or inspiring. Among them was this gem in the Etsy store "fuzzybazooke:"

DROOL! A seemingly simple raglan sweater with a cunning shaping device for the waistline. So elegant and pretty, this sweet top has remained in my yarny consciousness for over a year. I've been slowly increasing my knitting skills, but I could not for the life of me find a pattern for that strange braiding.

Wouldn't you know it, Craftster member elderflower has come to my rescue! She posted an absolutely gorgeous sweater made with hand-dyed, hand-balled bamboo yarn:

Not only does she have totally 1337 pattern making skillz, but she pointed me to the knitting website of my dreams! Knitting Fool doesn't just have three different pattern generators, but they also have a comprehensive visual stitch library! Now I have a customisable raglan pattern at my fingertips:

AND!!!! I finally found it!!! It's called Basket Cable!!!!

SQUEE!!!!

DIY Distraction: Awesome Yarn Things - Crochet and Other Stuff

Do you crochet, or macrame? Perhaps tatting is your thing? Check this stuff out!

DIY Distraction: Awesome Yarn Things - Knitting Edition

If you knit, or like knitted stuff, you just might like this stuff!

I knit socks. Lately, I knit lots of socks. When I discovered Cat Bordhi's Sweet Tomato Heel, I just about died!!! A triple-mitered heel that sits much more smoothly than a regular wrap and turn mitered heel, this heel design is the basis of her new eBook. You can also view her free video tutorial.

Do you love ombre/gradient fashions? Now you can knit up your own Chrysanthemum Hat with custom ombre-dyed yarn you can make at home! Xandy shows us her ball-in-KoolAid method.

Broomstick lace is so pretty, but crocheting it is such a pain in the wrists! Which is exactly why wrist-strain-prone Karlie Robinson developed a knitted version.

"Deadbeat" for Contributing Editor by Ben Morris, on Models.com

Paris street fashion on Real Men Cry

Isabel Marant's jumbo-knit sweaters have been on my to-do list for awhile! I love super-bulky sweaters, I love colourful stuff, and I can knit! But where do I get yarn this big?

Easy! You make yarn out of old t-shirts! If you want to dye your yarn, Dmariemart of Imagine Mechanix suggests dying the trimmed shirts before turning them into yarn.

Martin Margiela AW 2008 silk sleeve top on 1stdibs.com

And for the truly unconventional, thank you Mr. Margiela! Yet another WIN from your crazy, crazy mind! It's so tempting to go to Salvation Army on the next $5 bag day just to get a whole bunch of long sleeve shirts! A knock-off could conceivably be knitted from tubes of fabric, using up some of our copious stash fabrics, right?

Must-Have Knitwear

Earlier this year, I posted about some AMAZING spring fashions in lovely beige tones. I'm sooooo in love with Modcloth's Braid New World, now sold out.

Spring Fashions I Want to Wear (Part 2)

Oh, ModCloth! Why must you tease me so!

I absolutely MUST make a version of this!

Spring Fashions I Want to Wear (Part 1)

I think I'm going to start a series to keep me posting more often. Here's some goodies I LOVE and can totally make so I can stop drooling and start strutting :D

Heel Condoms: Say WHAT?!?!

Many moons ago, I saw this intriguing post on Outsapop.

This is only one image of the work of a knitwear student named Gyu. She does some really interesting things! I'd actually forgotten all about this image until recently, when I was catching up on my fashion reading.

Yet ANOTHER New Hobby! Plus Rapunzel.

I've taken up spinning. Not the sweaty, furious pedalling of a stationary cycle with 20 other people in a tiny room full of mirrors. I mean spinning. For months and months, I oohed and aahed, and finally dove into researching what it's all about. After reading everything I could find on the internet, I splurged on this kit from "Maine Woods Yarn and Fiber" on Etsy:

Not so FAIL! How I saved some stuff, and things that turned out :D

Let me introduce you to "Mo" the mohawked teddy bear:
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I saved his little nubby mohawk by picking it apart with a darning needle, then stitched on dark blue sparkle buttons for his little eyes, embroidered his little nose, and cut a piece off the felting-disaster of the mohawk hat for his cute little tail. My brother was in absolute awe to recieve his un-birthday gift! He was especially fond of the little Xs in his eyes and laughed at his little nub of a tail, and promptly dubbed him Mo. Mikey will be getting the new-and-improved mohawk hat for Christmas so he can match Mo.

Yarny Plannings and Other Plannings

I've been doing alot of crochet. I learned how to increase and decrease! I really wanted to make a faux-hawk hat for my little brother. I started crocheting with black acrylic yarn, but I either did something terribly wrong, or the pattern has something wrong with it. More likely it's just me :P It ended up eight-sided instead of six-sided, somehow. That made it parabolic-ish, and it was tres tres wonky. So I undid it all and went on the hunt around the interwebs. I found some hats with flappy bits like I wanted, but I didn't know how to double-crochet (still don't, really; only tried a swatch, and it was ok, but haven't actually made something with dc yet), and most of those patterns wanted dc, tbc, hdc and other wierd stitches. I finally found a simple beanie pattern in single crochet, though. I used the technique suggested by the first tute to make the earflaps.
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After that, I snagged a bunch of gray-blue, light gray and dark gray wool felting yarn from Todd's mum and started the LOOOOOONG process of cutting and weaving little strips into a mohawk. If I ever make this hat again, I'll hold it to 3 or 5 rows, but this one for Mikey has 7 rows. Then I decided I wanted it to felt PERFECTLY. So I picked apart each and every single piece of mohawk yarn. Then I combed every row. It's now a wonderfully fuzzy multicoloured mohawk. I just have to toss it in the wash in a pillow case and c'est fini!
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Project deux is a surprisingly large amigurumi teddy bear (now that I know how to increase and decrease!). A woman on Craftster wanted a few people to test her pattern and I decided to jump on the chance to try something new. I think I shoulda snagged a 3 mm or 3.5 mm from Todd's mum, because the 4 mm must be too big. The teddy is sposed to end up 14 cm tall, but if his head is this huge, he's gonne be ENORMOUS. I'm making him out of black felting yarn, though, so I think I'll just felt him :D Then he'll shrink, and if I comb him, he'll be slightly furry-ish.
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I'm also taking part in a swap! YAY! It's the Camper's Swap on Craftster. This is only my second swap. My first was the March Birthday Swap. Thankfully, I've been partnered wih a fellow Canadian, so no shipping internationally, YAY! It's only a 4 point swap, but it's gonna be pretty intensive anyway because we are making little travel cards featuring a camping location that we like (not telling what location I picked, in case a fellow swapper mosies on over here). I've already got the layout for mine on the computer, though I may change it up. Once I have the layout all decided, I'm printing out seven of them (cuz there's 8 in the swap including me), then papercrafting my little heart out :D I got supplies from the dollar store and some goodies from Canadian Tire to include.
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I also had an AHA moment while at Dollarama. I'm not gonna say what I'm making, but I'm hoping that my swap partner likes it! It's something I've never done before, and I'm pretty excited. I still need to MacGyver a couple things, cuz I'm not going to buy more supplies if I can help it. It's probably more art than craft, because it's something meant for display, rather than use, but it IS camping related.
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Sharing Vintage Patterns

I did some research into US copyright law. I had to if I wanted to share this awesome knitting pattern:
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Once again, I will stress that this pattern has a teeny tiny slim chance of still being under copyright, and as unlikely as that is, I would encourage anyone who uses this pattern to ensure that you don't make money from that usage. If anyone associated with the Marriner estate comes across this and would like me to remove it, I'll do so immediately.
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If you'd like to download this FREE, NON-COMMERCIAL-USE knitted sweater pattern, go via this Craftster post, where you will also be directed to my research into US copyright law.
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Yarntastic! Finished Some WIPs :D

I'm sooooo bad for WIPs! I just put the finishing touches on THREE scarves. All consist of plain ol' single crochet. I'll present them in reverse order of start-date (you'll see why!).
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I started this one only about 5 weeks ago and finished it two days ago. It's made from leftover felting-wool yarn from my BF's mom (she makes mittens and slippers with this stuff). Out of 5 colours, I have three colours left, but they are TEENY TINY little balls that I'll probably make flowers out of.
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This scarflette was started in March and finished in May. All it needed was buttons, which were put on last night. It's made from black acrylic yarn carrying black and pink polester eyelash.
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This is the LOOOOOONGEST WIP I've EVER had! I started this scarf for my mother THREE YEARS AGO! I got sick of it because the tension has to be maintained PERFECTLY so that the nubbles are evenly spaced. I FINALLY finished it this evening. The yarn is even more gorgeous in person, made from a really soft and fluffy wool/mohair blend. It took 4 balls, 2 each from different lots, which is why each half of the scarf is slightly different. Finished length is about EIGHT FEET and Mumsie is shorter than I am.
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I almost want to make another nubbly one for me!
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