The Peggy Hat

In Color A, cast on 100 stitches, divided onto 3 needles as 32-32-36.

Rows 1 & 2: in Color A, Knit across

Row 3: in Color B, s2, (k1, s 3) across to last two. k1, s1.
Rows 4 & 5: in Color B, (s1, k3) across

Rows 6 & 7: in Color A, Knit across
Row 8: in Color B, (k1, s3) across

Rows 9 & 10: k2, (s1, k3) across to last two. s1, k1.

Repeat rows 1-10 until piece reaches 6" in length, then continue with rows 11-

Row 11: in Color A (k3, k2tog, k1, sso. k across to last 5 stitches on needle. k2tog, k1, sso. k 2.) Repeat on each needle.
Row 12: in Color A (k2. k2tog, k1, sso. k across to last 4 stitches on needle. k2tog, k1, sso. k1.) Repeat on each needle.
Row 13: in Color B, s2, (k1, s 3) across to last two. k1, s1.
Row 14 & 15: in Color B, (s1, k3) across
Row 16: in Color A (k1, k2tog, k1, sso. k across to last 7 stitches on needle. k2tog, k1, sso. k4.) Repeat on each needle.
Row 17: in Color A (k2tog, k1, sso. k across to last 6 stitches on needle. k2tog, k1, sso. k3.) Repeat on each needle.
Row 18: in Color B, (k1, s3) across

Rows 19 & 20: k2, (s1, k3) across to last two. s1, k1.

Repeat Rows 11-20 until 28 stitches remain, on the three needles as 8-8-12. Bind off and Color B.

Row 21: in Color A, knit all.

Row 22: in Color A, k2tog across.

Cut your Color A yarn loose from the skein, and using a yarn needle or a crochet hook, run it through the remaining stitches. Pull stitches closed and tie off. Weave in ends.

The Moira Hat

In Color A, Cast on 100, divided onto three needles as 32-32-36

Rows 1 & 2: in Color A, Knit across

Row 3: in Color B, s2, (k1, s 3) across to last two. k1, s1.
Rows 4 & 5: in Color B, (s1, k3) across

Rows 6 & 7: in Color A, Knit across
Row 8: in Color B, (k1, s3) across

Rows 9 & 10: k2, (s1, k3) across to last two. s1, k1.

When you have reached 8 inches in length, bind off and stitch the top edge closed, flat.

Wind spare yarn around a 3" piece of cardboard 24 times. Tie off and clip ends to form a tassel. Make 2 for hat, 4 for matching scarf. Attach to top corners of hat and all corners of scarf.

The Ladies' Christmas Honeycomb Scarf

in A, cast on 64 stitches, divided as 20/20/24 on three needles.
Rows 1 & 2: in Color A, Knit across

Row 3: in Color B, s2, (k1, s 3) across to last two. k1, s1.
Rows 4 & 5: in Color B, (s1, k3) across

Rows 6 & 7: in Color A, Knit across
Row 8: in Color B, (k1, s3) across

Rows 9 & 10: k2, (s1, k3) across to last two. s1, k1.

Work Rows 1-10 until scarf reaches desired length. Stitch ends closed, flat.

Super Ruffle Short Scarf

Well, lovies, I've finally gotten the hang of writing out my posts in advance so I'm not doing it as a penance late every Friday. Isn't it nice?
This week's post is the first yarn-related post that I'm actually making totally for myself from the get-go. Yay for selfishness. But! This is birthday sanctioned selfishness! Totally acceptable. My young man's parents sent me a lovely birthday package long ago when it was my birthday, and this included some absolutely delicious yarn. I felt guilty about my delay on Christmas crafts, so I tried to be good and finish all of those before making something wonderful for myself. I'm almost there! Unfortunately, I'm a decidedly selfish creature and went ahead and made something sinfully snuggly anyway.

Super Ruffle Short Scarf

I call this a short scarf because it is! This scarf is only about 40 inches, not nearly long enough to wrap around your neck. It's a tricky scarf though- a sneaky slit hidden in the ruffles means you can thread one end through the other to secure it around your neck. This way there's no wrapping and winding and knotting, just poking an end in a hole. Heh.
This pattern uses chain, slip stitch, single, and treble crochet stitches. It works in a spiral around the foundation chain, working in first the back loops and then the front of the chain, joining with a slip stitch. While this may sound complicated, once you get going it's quite easy. This could be a good pattern for an intermediate to use to practice using all of those stitches and reading a somewhat complicated pattern.

The Materials:

Size H crochet hook
2 stitch markers (referred to in the pattern as Marker A and Marker B)
Approximately 218 yards of yarn. I used 2 skeins Plymoth Yarn's Grande Glow Baby Alpaca.

The Abbreviations:

CH- chain

SS- slip stitch
SC- singe crochet

TC- treble crochet

The Pattern:
CH 101
Row 1: 3 SC in the back loop of the first chain from the hook, placing Marker A in the first stitch. SC along the back loops of the chain. When you reach the end, put 3 SC in the front of the last stitch in the chain, placing Marker B in the first of these three.SC along the front of the chain for 25 stitches. CH 10. Skipping 10 stitches on the foundation chain, join back in and continue to SC along the foundation chain (see image below). SS to join into your first SC (at Marker A).

Row 2: CH 3. 2 TC in the first three stitches, moving Marker A up to mark the first of the three. Work along the first edge, alternate 2 TC each in two stitches, 1 TC in the next, along the first edge. When you reach Marker B, work 2 TC each in the next three stitches, moving the marker to the first of these stitches. Continue along the opposite side alternating 2 TC each in two stitches and 1 TC in the next. Join into first stitch (Marker A) with a SS.

After working the first side of row 2, I was worried it wouldn't be ruffly enough!

Row 3: CH 3. 2 TC in the first six stitches, moving Marker A to the first of these stitches. Work along edge, alternating 2 TC each in three stitches, one TC in the next. When you reach Marker B, work 2 TC each in the next six stitches. Then, continue alternating 2 TC each in 3 stitches, then one TC in the next. When you return to Marker A, join with a slip stitch.

Tie off and weave in ends!

Wear, feeling fabulous in your yarny accomplishments.

CiR: WWII Era Men's Knit Cap and Matching Scarf

Dear Readers, having born with me through part of my winter craft-a-thon, it's time I let you in on some of the other projects I enjoyed. To be frank, I'm still working on some of these. Knitting takes time, people! I decided that I wanted to make matching scarf/hat sets for my family, and am impressed that I finished as many as I did. Now I have a few of these ready to mail back, but not before I get a good blog post out of them, darnit! I did a few google searches for guy-appropriate patterns, when I found one that seemed perfect, especially for my nephew. It's a WWII Era pattern distributed by a yarn company in a pamphlet of knit hats to be made and sent to soldiers. The pattern was simple enough that I was sure the men in my family would not object, but nice enough that they wouldn't look sad next to the fancy ladies' sets.
Here's the link to the pattern!
I used the beanie pattern on the top, which I found to be simple and easy to follow if you're used to working with double pointed needles. The only complaint I have is that the pattern does not provide a gauge swatch. I made an entire hat on size 4 needles, as recomended, and came out with something fit for a retro-inspired toddler. That said, I switched to size 8 needles, still using regular acrylic, I Love This Yarn brand yarn, and the hats came out perfectly man-sized and comfy. It took less than one skein, but I would recommend buying two so you can make a matching scarf! The I Love This Yarn brand is great for guy-knits because it's super soft without being visually and texturally overwhelming.
To make a scarf that will go with these hats, I figured I would use ribbing as a tie-in, but also to make them thicker and warmer. This pattern is super simple, and great for a generic "guy scarf"- not too stylized, but without the shabby or rustic look that some simple knits can end up with.

Matching Guy Scarf:
I Love This Yarn acrylic yarn on size 8 needles
Cast On 32 stitches

K2, P2 across each row.
Continue until you have 60 inches or so. You might have the recipient try it on so you can make sure it's long enough to not look silly, especially if it's for a taller guy.
Cast off.

Wasn't that simple? :)

Cinnamon Apple Crepes

I've had a dreadfully unorganized couple of weeks, friends, so I apologize for my long absence. Happily, this time involved the boy and I finding a new kitty to come live with us, so it hasn't' all been stressful! Anyway, to ease myself back into things, here's a recipe I made almost a year ago. I actually learned to make crepes before I ever made my own pancakes, so this is one of the very first recipe I was comfortable enough with to start changing. Hope anyone who tries it enjoys it!

Cinnamon Apple Crepes:

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon sugar

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon cinamon

1 pinch of nutmeg

2 cups milk

3 tablespoons margarine or butter, melted

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1 egg

1/4 cup apple butter

some extra butter for the frying pan

Directions:

Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl.

Add all other ingredients (excluding butter for frying pan) and mix with hand mixer until smooth.

Heat about 1/2 tablespoon of butter in your frying pan on medium.

Pour about 1/2 cup of batter per crepe into pan. Immediately lift pan and tilt all around so crepe is nice and thin.

Flip when edges start to golden.

When both sides are golden, remove from pan and set aside.
Add more apple butter, smear with nutella, cover with strawberries and whipped cream, or whatever your favorite crepe filling is. Roll them up and om nom nom!

Crepe Paper Bouquet

Hello once more, friends. This post has taken a while due to the tragedy of me losing the cord that connects my camera to my computer! Luckily, just as I typed those words, I remembered where I had left it. So huzzah for that. Now I'm going to stop writing for a moment so I can actually upload and sort the images.

. . .
Back!
So, as you may know, earlier this month some young man and I got engaged. The wedding's over a year away, but that's no reason to put off the DIY elements that will keep. So, for the last two weeks I've been shopping around to figure out what is worth the cost to buy and not have to worry about, and what would be easy to make myself. When I got around to looking at floral arrangements, I decided the universe was just messing with me. Seriously, $100 for a simple bouquet I would use once in my life? Seriously? So, like any crafter, I started looking around for ways I could make this happen without investing in ready-made.

First, I looked at tutorials for arranging bouquets. This tutorial and video on theknot.com, a site with lots of great wedding resources DIY and otherwise, was my favorite. But then, I ran across something I had never heard of, although now I see that it's rather a common project- crepe flowers! Martha Stewart has a great tutorial up on making very realistic crepe flowers, but I was really inspired by this Mother's Day Corsage tutorial, which incorporates painting the flowers to add color variety. So I set out to combine the beautiful, articulated petals of Martha Stewart's creations with the depth and detail of painted crepe. Here's what happened.

Crepe Paper Bouquet

Materials:
Crepe streamers in petal color and stem/leaf color

scissors

wire cutters

20 gauge floral wire

acid-free glue stick

gouache paints

paintbrushes, size and shape depending on what you want to do with your flowers

water for mixing with gouache and cleaning your brushes

palette or plate or something for holding/mixing your paint

Optional:

plastic bag to cover your paint-space

coffee

Star Trek: DS9 on netflix as background entertainment

Since there are a few steps to this project that tend to spread out, you'll want a work space that's free to be taken over by this project for a while. Like this.

To start a flower, fold one end of your crepe paper over about 1.125" - 1.25", then continue folding it in a flat roll 20 times. Now cut that flat roll into your desired petal shape, making sure to leave the bottom ~.25" of the petals connected at either side. The aforementioned Martha Stewart tutorial has some good petal ideas, but unless you're going for total realism, I would use them as ideas and not strict rules.

Now unroll your petals. The ones that were furthest inside the roll might need a bit of extra shaping, so go ahead and do that now.

Time to play with paint! If you're wanting your flowers to look more real, go ahead and google whatever type of flower you're making and see what sort of color variations happen in nature. I noticed three color schemes that I really liked and used for the three flower types I tried: a lighter color at the center/base of the petal, a darker color at the center/base of the petal, and a color edging the petal.

Gouache is my paint of choice for this because it is as easy as or even easier to use than regular water colors. Use water to thin it out a bit on your palette, and have fun mixing the tones. For my roses, I made half-circles of an interesting mix of bright yellow, flat gold, and light salmon at the base of the petals. My carnations received creamy white edges around each petal. I painted thin, bruised-purple lines up from the base of my quasi-dahlia petals. You can also mix colors down to a thin consistency and use them to tint your petals so that each flower isn't identical to the next, or to make your flowers a better color match to another decoration.
When your petal strips have completely dried, it's time to assemble your flowers. Begin by cutting your floral stems down to a manageable size if necessary. Then, bend about a half inch over 180 degrees at one end. This gives your flower a larger area to glue onto than just the straight end of a wire. With 22 gauge wire, I didn't even need pliers to make this bend.

Now run your glue stick along the bottoms of the first two petals and wrap them around the bent end of the wire. Continue applying glue to the petal bases one or two at a time and layering them around the flower. If your crimp and pleat the bases as you go, this will help your petals fan out a bit, so your flowers won't all be tight buds.

To cover your stems so that they aren't bare wire, cut a length of crepe about 1.5x the length of your wire. If you don't like the color of the crepe, take a moment to tint it with your gouache and let it dry completely. Now fold an end of your stem crepe so that two inches or so of it are pointing 90 degrees away from the rest. Cover the crease with your glue stick.

Roll the crease around the base of your flower, making sure to let the two inch end stick out above the rest of the crepe, as this will be your leaf. Continue wrapping and twisting the long end around your wire. Crepe likes to stick to itself well enough that, aside from the top crease, you probably won't need any glue to hold the rest of your stem crepe in place. When you reach the bottom of your wire, just pinch or cut off any excess crepe. Cut the leaf-end into a leaf-shape and you have a beautiful, unique, painted crepe flower!