This is a little something for all those who already know a bit of knitting and crochet. I have a channel on Youtube: Ellowyn, where I will post other tutorials that are better to understand for beginners.
Wanna stay tuned with what I'm doing right now? Follow me on Twitter: @ChibiHako. Tweet me for suggestions, or post a comment on on of my videos.
If you're as well-read as I am *innocent whistle* *cough* then you might stumble over some of these too. If you want, let me know your favorites and I'll try and do an impression of them too.
If you've read the Harry Potter books - or at least The Order of the Phoenix - you know that Hermione Granger's spent the best part of the year knitting hats, scarves and socks for the kitchen's house-elves to set them free. None of them would take them though, so they all ended up on Dobby. Here's a drawing of him wearing a selection of them, made by me:
I wanted to talk to you about the different kinds of reactions you get when you innocently pull out your yarn and needles/hook.
From what I know, there are four differents types of people (I mean related to this topic...)
The first type is "THE GROOPIE"
You want to avoid these. If they see you with even the slightest piece of yarn, they will march over to you (whether they know you or not) and tell you about all their "hand-knitted" pieces of clothing and accessory including the hat and scarf they're wearing that are clearly machine-knitted, but they still paid a fortune for them. These people will not leave you knit or crochet in piece. They will keep talking until they or you have to leave urgently.
If facing a groopie, best send a discrete message to a friend to get you out of there or pretend you have to catch the bus.
The second type is "THE ADMIRER"
Admirers are the kind of people that every knitter and crocheter loves. They will make you feel really appreciated by asking interested questions and observing exactly what you are doing and trying to understand it. This is the type of people who eventually turn into/out to be a corcheter or knitter themselves.
I don't need to give you any advice on how to get rid of them as they're the nicest people you can face while knitting or crocheting.
The third type is "THE DISTURBED"
Now, I don't mean this in any sort of offending, mental health betitling way.
These people will feel offended if they catch you working with yarn. (I was going to write "play around with it" but it is hardly playing, right?) There are more than one possible reasons for this: Number 1: Space. They might feel like your invading their personal space. The worst for these people are the really long knitting-needles with the stoppers at the end. They make comments under their breath saying you could harm someone with those torture-instruments. Number 2: Attention. This is specific, you will only meet this reaction in lessons, meetings or equally attention-seeking activities. If you take out your yarn during class (or during the break between two lessons) most teachers will react with detention, threats of confiscating it or worse: throwing it away, or whole speeches about why knitting or crocheting influences your attention to the lessons in a bad way, even though it is very relaxing and, if you're good at what you're doing, even helps concentrating better.
You can't really avoid the first sub-category of the disturbed, but when you spot one, ignore them!
As for the second sub-category... Just don't knit in class. Or if you feel like you must do it while watching a movie, ask your teacher beforehand if he's okay with it.
The fourth type is "THE HATER"
Every crafty or in any way artistic person knows these. They're everywhere. A real infestation!
They see you with yarn (even if your not working on it, but wearing a finished product that doesn't look like it's been bought) and immediately hate you!
There's a couple of reasons why: Number 1: Jealousy. You can do something they can't. Therefore you are evil. Number 2: Space. Yes, there are "disturbed"s that go over to the dark side of the haters when you put them to test. Number 3: The deepest and worst kind of hate. They have learnt how to knit/crochet and are maybe even (a lot) older than you are. BUT! You are better at what you are doing than they are. This is pure jealousy at its most fundamental level.
With the haters it all really comes down to jealousy in the end.
When facing a hater, there is no better defence than none at all. Just ignore them, eventually they'll go and bother someone else.
Finally I want to say one more thing about this, but I know someone who might carry the message out to you much better than I could do it!
I love getting inspiration from my friend Google. He's ever so helpful! Everytime I ask him whether he knows any nerdy or geeky crochet, he shows me a whole album of inspiring pictures!
This particular time, I have asked him about "crazy crochet". He showd me a lot of VERY colorful pictures. Most of which were rooms, cars or trees completely covered in crochet.
One of them caught my eye, thoug. This one:
Even though they're saying it sucks and is awful, I have something to say about this sweater:
It may be a (quite big) bit too colorful, but the pattern in itself is gorgeous! I have been looking for a Granny squared sweater for a while, because making squares seems much less huge a project than knitting a whole jumper of one piece. I've seen plenty sweaters that only had the back and front in squares and the rest were singel-crocheted. Others were solid granny squares (even the sleeves!) And looked really... granny-ish...
But this one... Especially the trumpet-sleeves! If you used this model and worked it in a bit less attention-attracting colors, it could be an awesome piece of clothing.
As soon as I'm finished with my current granny-projects, I'll have a go at this one!
PS: I know that a few people are waiting for the Part 2 of the Totoro tutorial on Youtube, I'm sorry about it, it'll take sone time for me to get back into that project... And I have to find a pillow to put in there, as I'm intending to make it a pillowcase.
I started off my "week" on wednesday with a lazy day... I didn't make a single square on wednesday... But I reckon that's okay, as I've been doing more than one square a day ever since I started this project...
There you go:
THURSDAY:
+ 5 squares
FRIDAY:
+ 9 squares
AND:
+ 4 squares
SATURDAY:
+ 4 squares
SUNDAY:
+ 7 squares
MONDAY:
(including the first YARN DATE)
+ 3 squares (one of which was given to me at Yarn Date)
I even made two very similar squares by accident... =/
TUESDAY:
+ 3 squares
That makes a total of:
15 squares for Jade's birthday present and
21 squares for my afghan - well 20, one of them wasn't made by me...
I am ending this "week" before hand... I know that there's quite a lot left of this tuesday, but I kind of want to do some drawing and/or writing, so here you go. See you next tuesday!
I started on Sunday so I kind of cheated on the "one a day" thing... I only got stopped by an empty ball of wool... that grey-blue on in the top left corner...
I have this idea from this blog: Gingerbread Girl
I started today (sunday), so shame on me... My mum always says "Never start a project on a sunday, you'll never finish it." Unless you finish it that same day...
I've nerver managed to make a straight granny square all on my own before, I had to ask my mum to start them for me. So this is my very first, all-on-my-own, start-to-end granny square. Yes, I am very proud!
I'm making this (these) for a surprise birthday-present for my friend Jade who is celebrating her birthday on easter-weekend. If I make one square a day, I should finish it by then... Hopefully...
I know there's some people from France reading my blog, I can see the stats. Probably people I already know, but well... I can still have a go, can't I?
If you live in France, more specifically in the upper-rhine region of Alsace, have a look at this: Yarn Date
I'm very proud of this poster, because I made it myself. I used a program called Sai.
They're finally finished! The pattern for the pokeball can be found on this blg in the early posts. The pattern for Smaug is this one : Smaug The Tremendous
I still ahve to find a pair of buttons for Smaug's eyes... A pair of quite small butons...
PS: I've unravelled the Slytherin-Scarf. I didn't like the green anymore... I'll buy some darker shade and start again once I have less WIPs.
Today I went shopping to get this week's necessary groceries and some wool for pokeballs and Smaug. The friend at whose house I'm staying alos bought some fluorescent polymer clay (FIMO), large wooden beads, a cord, some looped screws and a magnet for closing a necklace:
This is what I turned it into:
A necklace inspired by the games "Resistance" on... Play Station 3 I think... The teeth are soppused to be the teeth of Chimera, who are the evil alien creatures in that game. There's a caracter called Capelli who wears a necklace like this one. Well... Without the beads... But we needed something to put some space between two teeth. I'll post a picture of the "glow in the dark"-version as soon as the clay got enough light to "charge up". =)
This evening however, my boyfriend made a noodle-casserole for the three of us and I made French toast to go with it. They were delicious, even though it was my first try. But I had a little accident... When I wanted to flip over the first piece of french toast, I was a little... clumsy... So I burnt my index and my middle finger with the oil... Nothing really serious... just some blisters, but it still hurts like hell! So no crocheting nor knitting for me until the blisters are gone... =(
In the meantime I'm using some frozen exotic fruit wrapped in a towel to cool the wounds... Ouch...
Don't forget to have a look at the Trailer for Code Gamer! There's English subtitles! Code Gamer - Trailer
I'm spending this week at a friend's place and I only have the wool for the Slytherin Scarf, I haven't worked a lot on it though, because I have only scraps left.
But here come the good news: Tomorrow I'll get some new colors to make several different Pokeballs, Smaug the Tremendous and a Metroid. These are for a podcasting-project that my boyfriend starts tomorrow. It's called "Code Gamer". Tomorrow the trailer will air on YouTube. You can find them on facebook, Twitter and YouTube of course, although, on YouTube they're called "HollowMitsu". Look for this banner:
It's in French, but we're working on subtitles for the videos.
You'll probably get quite a lot of pictures during the upcoming week of the stuff I'll be making for them. =)
As or the Slytherin Scarf, I'm making 20 stripes of green, 4 grey, 8 green, 4 grey and so forth. I casted on 40 stitches with 3mm yarn and needles. I've made 4.5 sets so far. I think this wn't take too long.
