I Am Now a God of Crochet. Here are My New Fingerless Mitts To Prove It

Remember how I told you that I could crochet anything, as long as it was rectangular and done in single crochet on hook size K?

I did not lie, for here are my brand-new fingerless mitts!

I am sorry to tell you, however, that one is somehow two stitches wider than the other, and this is a terrible and obvious thing to me:

I still haven't completely cracked how to count my stitches and rows, at least not in a way in which I get the same answer two times in a row.

Before the older kid suggested that we learn together over Spring Break, I don't think that I've ever picked up a crochet hook with a serious intention to learn how to use it. I did once spend a couple of months fiddling around with learning how to knit, but it was quite fiddly, indeed, and ultimately I didn't like it enough to even finish a single project.

So far, I am really liking crochet, though. Reducing the number of tools down to one feels like it makes all the difference in the world, and I like that, unlike with cross-stitch, I can look up from it to actually watch the show that I'm binging while I work. Ugh, why can't Jed Bartlet be our president for real?!?

And obviously how can you know I've made something at all if there is not this glorious cat helping me model it? Spots and I started off the week in great alarm when I happened to notice that she was looking skinny to my eyes, and this combined with my casual observation over the past several weeks that she was eating her dry cat food quite pickily to send me spiraling into a full-blown Cat Health Scare. 

She's fine, though! Two hundred and ten dollars later, the vet said that senior cats just get picky and it's hard to keep weight on them. But what's even the point of working from home if you can't stop eight times a day and warm up some wet cat food to the perfect temperature, mix it with homemade chicken broth (no added spices or seasonings, of course!), and serve it to your cat on a Fiestaware plate?

Now I just need to figure out who the hell I can snooker into cat sitting this summer with that kind of nonsense routine going on...

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

April WIPs, or, Nothing in My Life is Complete

Okay, *one* thing in my life is complete, because I finished my foster kid quilt last weekend. But do to various stuff and nonsense--

--I still haven't mailed it, yikes!

I keep doing the thing in which I start a new project before my last project is complete, and that has been going just about exactly the way you'd think it would, sigh.

So, for instance, here's the cross-stitch I'm making to teach myself how to cross-stitch--

And after that, I have at least four more projects that I want to make from Creepy Cross-stitch--it's so good! 

And here are the fingerless mitts I started before I finished the cross-stitch project:

I just need to finish weaving in the ends, now that I've figured out what that is, and then seam up the sides, and I'll have myself a super seasonal accessory, lol!

Also currently on the crafting table are the puff quilt blocks that I'm cutting, and will likely be cutting forever. 616 quilt blocks is a RIDICULOUS number of quilt blocks, and anything over 400 should clearly be outlawed.

Even more ridiculous, though, are the projects that I need to start but haven't yet. I want to mail my kiddo who will soon be celebrating her very first college birthday a DIY party kit to share with her friends, so ideally it'll have a decoration, a cake, snacks, a little craft project because I am physically incapable of throwing a party that does not have a little craft project, and party favors.

Do I know exactly what I'm doing for all of those categories? Ish.

Have I started making any of that stuff? Not even ish.

So yep, you've realized it, too, haven't you? I'll be starting this new project before I've finished ANY of these old ones...

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

I Am Learning to Crochet. Please Admire My Washcloth.

When I asked the older kid what she wanted to do over Spring Break, she said she wanted to learn to crochet. 

I have had no interest in crochet, and not a single crochet skill, but when has that ever stopped me from commencing a craft project?

Well, at some point or other, *someone* must have had *some* interest in crochet, because I pulled out this full set of Clover crochet hooks while I was digging out the stash yarn, but y'all know how bad I've always been about buying shit whenever the kids expressed even the mildest interest in something. I hit that homeschool strewing lesson hard, and kept hitting it, ahem.

It's not a hoarder house, y'all. It's a hoarder HOME.

Anyway, this hoarder home comes with a complete set of Clover crochet hooks and enough cotton yarn to do any number of crochet projects (it's also great for latch hook!), but the how-to books you've got to get from the library.

Might as well get them all, then!

Of these, Everyday Crochet has the best illustrations for how to do a slipnot, a foundation chain, and single crochet. I've never even seen someone crocheting before, so I really relied on the illustrations.

Side note, but this is another way that generations lose this type of cultural knowledge. If we'd seen people casually crocheting all our lives, then the very act of how to hold a crochet hook and yarn wouldn't feel so foreign, and learning the skill set would be loads easier.

The kid also used this book to figure out how to translate everything into left-handedness. It's like regular crochet, only backwards!

Here's my glorious foundation chain:

I had a rough time figuring out single crochet, so I switched back and forth between Everyday Crochet and Crochet: Learn It. Love It. Neither really made it clear to my muddled mind exactly how to count your stitches or where to put your first stitch after turning, so the kid and I spent a lot of time crocheting a few rows, then frogging it all and trying a different way.

This got frogged, lol:

At this point I'd just about cracked how to keep my edges straight, but I had not yet cracked keeping even tension, ahem:

Couple of wobbles on the edges, but look at that mostly even tension. It's a keeper!

I spent another couple of evenings crocheting while watching TV (don't tell the copyright police, but the older kid also taught me how to bitTorrent, and then we got caught up on Our Flag Means Death), and then Everyday Crochet taught me how to fasten off and weave in my ends.

And now I have the one thing that I've always, always wanted: my household's fortieth washcloth!

I meant for it to be square, but I got thrown off by the fact that 25 stitches long is not the same distance as 25 stitches tall. Is it supposed to be? I haven't learned gauge yet.

Whatever. I love it.

Check out Luna guarding me from the neighbors, who have the audacity to be outside on their own property:

I don't know if it's her age or the older kid's absence, but she has gotten SO protective of me. There are a couple of badly-behaved free-ranging dogs who interlope on our property (the one thing that I HATE about the country. Well, that and the giant Trump flag flying on a literal flagpole in front of another neighbor's house. Why on earth would it occur to you to mount an honest-to-god FLAGPOLE in your yard?!? And he doesn't even fly a US flag! It's literally just I Pledge Allegiance to Trump over there!) and they genuinely frighten me, but when Luna's with me she makes it very clear to them that she will kill them before she lets them get anywhere near me.

She also investigated my yarn to make sure it was safe for me.

It was!

If I was smart and methodical, I would make two more washcloths so I could learn double and half-double crochet, but seriously, this time last year the younger kid died on the hill of having a specific and exact number of towels and washcloths in a specific color to take to college, and to achieve that amount in that color at the lowest price I bought towel sets that came with washcloths, then another whole set of just washcloths, but then when she actually saw what the whole kaboodle looked like she obviously walked her request back, because I promise you it was an objectively absurd amount of washcloths, but just kill me now I'd already washed them so now we still own an objectively absurd amount of washcloths, but they're in my linen closet where I have to look at them every day, and not in the kid's dorm where I could have happily forgotten about the whole thing.

So Jesus Christ NO, I'm not going to make two more washcloths.

Instead, I'm amping up my skills by learning how to change colors, and I'm making myself a pair of striped fingerless mitts. 

Counting stitches and counting rows are not going great just yet, and I'm currently ignoring the fact that I'm definitely making this too big for my hand, and I thought my two yarns were the same weight but now I think they might be slightly different and it's messing up the tension or something, but I'm confident that come next autumn, I'll be walking Luna with the perfect striped fingerless mitts of my dreams on my hands.

Also, if you want anything crocheted for you that's rectangular and done in single crochet on hook size K, I'm your person!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

I Made Greek Alphabet Blocks from Cardstock, Because Even College Students Learn Better with Manipulatives

It is completely unsurprising to me that the homeschool kid who knew more about Greek mythology than anyone I have ever met is now a college freshman studying Ancient Greek.

It's actually turned out to be her most rigorous class--more than the math classes, more than the classes that required multi-page papers, more than the upper-level literature class she took as a first-semester freshman! I took a year of Ancient Greek when I was in grad school, but when I looked at her homework last semester, I was all, "Um, your teacher is a LOT harder than mine was. You should probably sign up for a peer tutor, ahem..."

Anyway, you'll never out-study this kid, and she doesn't actually *need* these manipulatives, because her class blew through the alphabet stuff back in late August, but when I wanted to put something light and handmade in her care package this month, I remembered this set of DIY Greek Alphabet Blocks that I purchased and downloaded way back in 2017. 

Because a vacation is no fun if you don't study for it!

Unfortunately, the shop where I purchased them is currently taking a break, which is a bummer because this set of blocks comes together perfectly.

Tediously, but perfectly!

I experimented with white glue, super glue, and double-sided tape, but the quickest, easiest, and by far best is hot glue. I also recommend super thick cardstock for a project like this, a bone folder, and a good movie to keep you from getting bored.

It really does take a long time to cut these out, fold them, and assemble and glue them, but they came out so great!

You can't quite do the words perfectly without accents--

--but nevertheless, I think she'll have fun spelling things out:

I mean, if you don't use alphabet blocks to spell out Greek curses for motivation while studying, then are you even a college student?

P.S. I post on my Craft Knife Facebook page all. The. Time, sometimes even while I'm in Greece! Come see!

I Learned a New Trick, and Now I'm Going to Film Myself Crafting Everything

I have been wanting to figure out how to do the thing that all the cool craft TikTokers do, in which they film a hyperlapse of themselves creating a project from start to finish.

But I couldn't quite figure out how they were doing it! One creator posted that he used a Go Pro strapped to his chest, which... that's a hard no for me. I wanted something more like a nature film, with a stationary camera mount that has my entire workspace in its field of view. I do NOT want something strapped to my body that I'm going to forget about and end up taking to the toilet with me. Just... no.

I swear I thought for months about this, wondering if I could set my tripod up on top of my table without getting too much in my way, or if I needed something more like a boom to swing the camera over my space, or if maybe I should just nail a couple of straps to the ceiling and duct tape my camera to them.

But then randomly this week, as I was about to sew a Pumpkin+Bear shop order, I was all, "What if I just stick my ring light on a shelf and hold it there with my giant dictionary?"

It's inelegant, and with the added weight that entire shelf is definitely going to come down on my head and kill me one of these times, but by golly, it worked!

And boom, that's what it looks like when I sew a custom American Girl doll face mask!

Next up, I need to make a couple of kite paper window stars in my kid's school colors to send to her in her next care package (her dorm room has a wonderful sunny window), so I'm going to film that, too! And then I wanted to figure out how to quilt a Philadelphia Flyers logo to go onto a sweatshirt, so I can film that, and THEN I want to send my other kid some DIY Ancient Greek alphabet blocks in her care package, so I can film that, too.

And then, honestly, I may film myself reading for a few hours, because if I'm not DIYing something, I really just want to be reading.

P.S. If you want to sew your own American Girl doll face mask, here's how.

P.P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, encounters with Chainsaw Helicopters, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

I Finished the Wool Felt Moveable Alphabet (and the Dolch Sight Word Cards!)

 

Once upon a time, waaaay back in January 2023, Past Julie thought, "Ooh, I have the perfect idea for a cute Christmas gift for my niece! I'll hand-sew her a moveable alphabet out of the rest of my stash of wool felt. I'll just sew, like, one letter a week and she'll have SO many letters by Christmas!"

June 2023 rolled around, and Past Julie thought, "Hmm, no big deal. I'll just start stitching a couple of letters a week."

During the October meeting of my mending group, I happily cut out letters and burbled to my fellow menders that "I just need to sew one a day and they'll be done in plenty of time before Christmas!"

During the November meeting, I said, a little more grimly, "Just two a day and I can squeak them into the mail just in time for Christmas."

Those last couple of days in December, it was more like six a day while binge-watching Chicago Med DVDs, but look at the glorious result!

I am SO pleased with them! 

Here's a rooster for size comparison, because the entire flock could not get it out of their heads that these colorful nuggets were perhaps made of delicious chicken food:

My favorite part of this project is that even though yes, it took a lot of me-hours to accomplish, the materials are ENTIRELY stash!

The felt is a really nice merino wool felt that I bought long ago for projects with my own kids (it's this exact set, but I bought 8"x10" cuts instead of the 4"x6" cuts shown here). I blanket stitched the letters with basic-grade Amazon embroidery floss and I stuffed each letter with snips of that same felt, and won my own personal game of wool felt chicken because after the very last letter was stuffed, I had less than a handful of little wool felt snippies left. 

I even had all the colors left! I managed a complete rainbow to start the set--

--and also had enough grey, brown, black, and white to make a nice variety and multiples of every letter (except for X and Q, ahem):

My partner handled creating all the Dolch sight words in the same font and size, and I backed each one in pretty paper and laminated it so my niece can use them as templates to make words with the wool felt letters:

Wool felt has such a lovely feel, though, and the colors are so pretty, that I'm hoping that the letters alone are a fun sensory experience. Sensory experiences build intrinsic knowledge and increase one's love for a topic.

It's clear that the chickens, at least, appreciate the sensory appeal!

Even though this project took a loooong time, it was not hard at all, and I actually would recommend it as a beginner-level hand-sewing project for absolutely anyone. Over Thanksgiving break my college kid sewed a perfectly acceptable "I" after about five seconds of instruction, and it's now mixed in there somewhere with the rest of the letters, completely indistinguishable from the lot (well, *I* can distinguish it, but definitely nobody else could)...

Best. Christmas. Yet. Now, to figure out something even more unwieldy to make for next year!

P.S. Want to follow along with my unfinished craft projects, books I'm reading, cute photos of the cats, high school chemistry labs, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

December WIPs: Grapefruit, Cinnamon, Wool Felt, and College Application Essays

Nutcracker is finished, and Christmas is on the horizon! 

Here's what I'm currently working on, trying to finish, or at least determinedly not abandoning:

SUCCESSES

Look at that Mouse King army, all sewn and stuffed, labeled with ribbons that read "Team Mouse 2023," and ready to be wrapped and handed off to a corps of little mouselings!

I sewed these mini Mouse King stuffies from the Nutcracker stuffies fabric that my teenager designed a couple of years ago. I also sewed a complete set of the mini stuffies for the teenager so she could hang them on our Christmas tree... but it turns out that the performance casting document that the ballet department sent out to the parents omitted one kid's name from the Mouse corps, and therefore I was short exactly one Mouse King!

Obviously, the solution was to give that kid my own kid's ornament, lol.

So technically this remains a WIP, as my own teenager's set is short a Mouse King until I upload a fabric panel to Spoonflower that's all Mouse Kings, have it printed and sent to me, and then re-sew that stuffie for her. That's an AFTER Christmas project for Future Julie to enjoy...

Also in the realm of Still-But-Not-Really-A-WIP is the stocking that I sewed for my Girl Scout troop's Elf Project kid. I managed to sew it start to finish during my mending group's monthly Mending Day at our local public library--

--then the next day the troop met to wrap all the presents they'd bought for our sponsored kid and stuff this stocking. I just have to run out today and buy a couple last things, have my teenager wrap them, and then I can pack up everything and drop it off for the kid's caregiver to pick up before Christmas.

Also at that meeting, we made a pretty epic version of these gnomes, which required me to score some faux fur remnants from Joann's, dig through my fabric stash for the body and hats and noses, buy five pounds of rice, make a sample project, then walk five Girl Scouts through their own versions. We had to do some on-the-spot trouble-shooting when their bodies came out weird and none of us could figure out why, but eventually five ADORABLE gnomes are now all sitting fat and happy in five Girl Scout homes.

FAILURES

Unsurprisingly, I suppose, after all the extra holiday projects I put on my own plate, most of my November WIPs remain WIPs. I haven't even touched the skull quilt block or the weaving loom or the England travel journal since then. 

That kind of project is what the cozy, relaxed week between Christmas and New Year's Eve is for!

CURRENT WIPS

I called my teenager in to take a process photo of my hands kneading this cinnamon dough for an upcoming tutorial, and while she was at it she also took a photo of me fighting for my life to keep my fuzzy monster foot slippers (I bought these in 2019 and still wear them allll winter every winter!) out of the frame.

These grapefruit slices took a LOT longer to dehydrate than I thought they would. I think I cut them too thick?

My goal is to write tutorials for both of these projects for my next couple of freelance writing pieces, in the process making a nice winter dried grapefruit slice and cinnamon cut-out garland for my kitchen.

Y'all, I only have SIX MORE LETTERS to sew to complete my niece's hand-sewn wool felt moveable alphabet! They are turning out as cute as they can possibly be! I still need to sew a carrying bag, print and laminate some sight word cards to go with the set, write my niece a holiday letter, and then pack and mail it all off to her. Do you think a Saturday mailing is too late to get it to California by Christmas?

Other remaining tasks: finishing up one last handmade-ish Christmas present, keeping an eye out for the last of the family presents to trickle in and then wrapping them, helping/prodding the teenager to finish up college applications and her Gold Award proposal, and picking my college student up from Ohio after she finishes acing all of her final exams. 

After that, it's nothing but cookie baking, movie watching, gingerbread house decorating, and board game playing for the rest of the year. I can't wait!

P.S. Want to follow along with my unfinished craft projects, books I'm reading, cute photos of the cats, high school chemistry labs, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Here's How to Make an Easy Macrame Plant Hanger

 

This tutorial was originally posted on Crafting a Green World.

This easy macrame plant hanger makes a comfy home for all your favorite plants!

Like every city planner faced with overcrowding, I am dodging population control measures with my houseplants by instead going vertical. Every window is fair game, as is every corner with ambient light. Even the central room with no exterior windows now has a couple of ferns hanging under the skylight.

Plant hangers are great for getting your houseplants off your crowded shelves and into those sunny windows. They also put all of those tempting spider plants and inch plants and other delightfully dangly leaves out of the reach of cats, dogs, and toddlers.

Especially if you’ve got an older house, though, or any place with unconventional windows or other spaces, you’ve probably found that store-bought plant hangers just don’t fit your space exactly the way you’d like. Or maybe they’re just not the right color. Or maybe, like me, you simply don’t want to have to buy something when you’ve already got everything that you need to make it.

That’s why I found myself making my latest stash of plant hangers: the houseplants had a bumper year, and after dividing them and giving tons away I still had more than I have room for on my shelves. But my weird old house with its half-vaulted ceilings and oddly-sized windows doesn’t lend itself to the comfortable placement of most lengths of plant hangers. AND about five years ago both of my kids went through an epic paracord crafting phase, one that left me with a large stash of unused paracord after they both eventually moved on to using up all of my embroidery floss on super elaborate friendship bracelets.

I have made SO many macrame plant hangers this summer, using my easy technique that lets me make them exactly the length that I want. Here’s how you can make yourself an easy macrame plant hanger, too!

Supplies

To make this easy macrame plant hanger, you will need:

• split o ring. This is the ring that holds your cute keychain. You want it to be VERY sturdy, but most keychain rings are.
• macrame cording. Cotton cording is availability in multiple widths and colors, and is natural, eco-friendly, and quite sturdy and long-lived when used indoors. Any cording that doesn’t stretch will work well for this project, however. This paracord that I’m using, although it’s all polyester and therefore an ecological nightmare, actually makes amazing plant hangers! Whatever you choose, you’ll need 80 feet, or eight 10-foot lengths, for the hanger, and 2 feet, or two 1-foot lengths, for the gathering knots.
• tape. A lightly sticky tape, like masking tape or washi tape, will help you keep cords together as you knot them.

Step 1: Use a gathering knot to tie the cording to the split ring.

Cut eight pieces of cording, each approximately 10 feet long, and one piece of cording approximately one foot long.

Thread the eight pieces of cording through the split o-ring and center them.

Now, it’s gathering knot time!

With one end of the cord, make a long “u” over the spot where you’d like the gathering knot to be. I like mine just below the o ring.

Keep that “u” in place as you take the other end of the cord in hand and begin to tightly wrap the bundle with it. Each wrap should be just below the one above.

When you near the end of your cord, leave a long tail and tuck the end through the bottom of the “u.”

Put your hand back on the top tail above the gathering knot, and pull on it to tug the “u” bend, and the end of the cord that’s tucked into it, up inside the gathering knot. It’s a bit of a fiddly process to figure out exactly the right amount of strength to use, so don’t feel sad if you have to start this knot over a couple of times.

The finished gathering knot will look like the one above, with the “u” bend pulled inside to the middle. Notice that I left such a long bottom tail that you can still see it, but the knot itself is well-secured.

Trim both tails for a cleaner look.

Step 2: Tie four groups of five square knots below the gathering knot.

Separate out four adjacent cords. The cord on the right will be what the vertical sides of the knots will look like, and the cord on the left will be the center color.

Ignore the fact that I’m not working up by the gathering knot here. It was too hard to photograph single-handed!

Pass the cord on the left OVER the two center cords and UNDER the right cord.

Pass the cord on the right UNDER the center two cords and OVER the left cord. You can also think of this as putting it through that left loop made by the left cord as it prepared to pass over the center cords.

Pull the knot tight.

You can see that the vertical piece is created on the opposite side from where you started–if you lose count, you can use that to tell you what side you’re on. You can also see that the left and right cords switched places.

To finish the square knot, continue from the right. Pass the right cord OVER the two center cords and UNDER the cord on the left.

Pass the left cord UNDER the two center cords and OVER the right cord, or through the loop that the right cord made when preparing to pass under the center cords.

Pull the knot tight. It should tuck up right under the knot above it.

Repeat four more times to make a total of five square knots with that group of cords. Hint: you’ll have five vertical pieces on each side.

Repeat three more times to make a total of four sets of knots around the gathering knot. This will use up all your dangling cording.

Step 3: Make a second set of square knots six inches below the first set.

Measure down approximately six inches from the bottom of the first set of square knots.

From two adjacent sets of square knots, take the two right cords from the left set and the two left cords from the right set. These are the cords you’ll use for your next set of square knots. I like to tape them flat and in the correct order, because at this point it’s very easy to start getting mixed up.

Tie another set of five square knots (one knot starting from the left, then another knot starting from the right equals one set) with these cords.

Repeat with the remaining three sets of cording, until you have four new sets of square knots, each six inches below the first set and made up of cords from two adjacent sets above.

Step 4: Repeat the process 1-2 more times.

You have enough cording to tie four total sets of square knots, each set approximately six inches below the set above. That being said, four sets results in a plant hanger that is quite long, and I prefer to stop at three sets for most of my plant hangers.

Step 5: Tie a gathering knot at the bottom of the plant hanger.

Measure six inches from the bottom of your final set of gathering knots, and tape the cords together at that spot.

Using the second piece of foot-long cording, tie a gathering knot at this tape mark.

Trim the rest of the cords below the gathering knot.

On the left is a shorter plant hanger (three sets of five square knots long) mounted just above the window. On the right is a longer plant hanger (four sets of five square knots long) mounted to the ceiling.

These plant hangers are super versatile, and since you only have to learn two knots, they’re super beginner-friendly, too! Once you’ve mastered this simple version, feel free to fancy it up with more complicated knots.

P.S. Want to follow along with my unfinished craft projects, books I'm reading, cute photos of the cats, high school chemistry labs, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!