Before Christmas I showed you how I went down a crazy path, and made a whole set of coordinating crochet hook handles for myself.  What I never told you was that I tried to use one of the hooks a few hours later, and it was terrible.

I’ve heard people say that they are fiercely loyal to the brand of hook they use, and that some brands just don’t work as well as others for them.  I accepted this, but thought it was kind of silly.  I mean, a hook is a hook, right?  Well, I just could not get that Boye size E to work for me.  I moved up a few sizes, and then down a few sizes, and none of them would obey my command.  I felt like a complete spaz using them – I was so surprised that I couldn’t make them work!

So there I was with a lovingly-made set of hooks that were useless to me. Useless!

Since then, I’ve worked little-by-little, in between holiday preparations and festivities, to make a whole new set for myself.  This time I covered Susan Bates hooks, which I have no problem using whatsoever.  Like the last set, I covered all of the handles in some variation of my Triangle cane pattern, making each of them coordinate with its own metal hook color.  Each hook was given Triangles in a different color scheme, and all of them are different from the ones I used on the original Boye hooks.

What can I say? It helps to have a sizable stash of canes to dip into when I need them!

My honest opinion is that the Boye hooks (on the right) are more attractive than the Bates hooks, when viewed all together like this.  But beauty doesn’t particularly matter when I can’t do so much as make a chain with them, I suppose.

So there it is – sixteen hooks.  And even after all that, I’m still in a hook-making mood.

Shocking, I know.

This coming weekend is the annual Clayathon, and I thought I’d make some more hooks – for you! 

I’ve re-opened the shop for a very short time, and you can place an order for a custom-made hook, just like you did at Christmas time.  I have a selection of nine different patterns to choose from so none of us gets bored with the same-old same-old (and by “none of us” I mean “me”).

Just like before, you can also order pens or shawl pins if you wish.

And if there’s anything else that I’ve ever made that you are dying to have, leave a comment!  My Clayathon time is largely unplanned and I might be able to arrange it.

Ok, so go order a hook if you like! And don’t wait too long… I have to stop taking orders noonish on Wednesday so that I have time to order the hooks I need before I leave for my trip!

Thanks

It’s been somewhat quiet in Blogland these last several days, but I have to believe there are a few of you out there still checking in, just as I have been reading a few long-time favorites, too – mostly via my tablet, from under my quilt, while next to a crackling fire.  Oh, I have such a rough life the week after Christmas, I know!

So for you who are poking your head in here this week, I thought I’d talk a little about one of the few handmades to make it under the tree this Christmas: Amigurumi Link.

Link, for the uninitiated, is the hero of the Legend of Zelda games, which have had a hold on my boys ever since they discovered Twilight Princess a few summers ago.

I made quite a few changes from the original pattern, not because I am some kind of crochet expert who thinks she knows better, but rather the opposite.  This was a really ambitious undertaking for me.  I’d never attempted amigurumi before, and there were just so many parts to construct! I started with less than a week to go before Christmas, and as I got closer to my deadline, I skimped in some places.

Most notably, I gave him looped yarn hair instead of crocheting his hair, and I skipped all of his accessories.

Somewhere around here is a medallion that I forgot to attach to his belt, along with a half-finished sword and shield.  I’ll finish them sometime, I hope.  (But first I really need to finish Aidan’s sweater. The poor boy has been waiting so patiently for that.)  In the meantime, the boys are happy with this Link doll as he is, and they were duly impressed that I made him.  It’s always fun when I can wow them a little!

This may very well be my last post of the year… I have all kinds of thoughts about how to re-organize my digital life for the coming year, and maybe I’ll be back to chat about that. Or maybe I’ll just keep it to myself. Sometimes those thoughts are really just too boring to write down, no matter how much fun I may have implementing them.

So on the chance that I am not back here until 2012, allow me to wish you a happy and healthy New Year!  Thanks for hanging out with me here for the last 365 days!

I’ll be making my gift-giving list later today, and getting myself all organized – I can hardly wait! I love this part: the planning and the scheming.  I’m not too big on the shopping and the wrapping, but I perk up again when it’s time for the giving.  Such fun to play Santa, I think.

So, I’m not really doing the handmade Christmas thing this year.  Not on the grand scale I usually do.  But there was one project that really caught my eye last week, and I just had to add it to my list.  I’m not going to say what it is, just in case one of my sons happens to read this post, but I will give you the link (click here!) and trust that those boys will be good enough not to sneak a peek…

So, did you look? There could hardly be a more perfect crochet project for me to undertake for my boys than that one!

So I ordered a bunch of cotton yarn, and I saw that I needed an E hook. Perhaps you can guess what happened next?

Well, with all of the hook-handle-making I’ve been doing around here lately, I just couldn’t bring myself to start a crochet project with a plain, boring, unembellished hook.  (Really, can you blame me?)  So I decided to cover an E hook. But, the thing is, I have had it in my mind for some time that I would like a nice coordinating set of hooks for myself, and it seemed that stopping with just an E would be wrong somehow.  Now I know you know where this is going…

Allow me to present my new hooks:

This was originally a set of Boye hooks (I really hope I like working with them – I didn’t have the sense to try one out before I covered the whole crazy set) and each hook is covered with a different color variation of my Triangles cane design.  They all match, but they are still different enough to tell them apart at a glance.

I love them!  I sanded and buffed them all, just like the ones I made for the shop recently, and I just love to pet them and feel how smoooooooth they are.  (I know, I have a problem…)

Later tonight, I will curl up on the couch with my project instructions, my colorful box of yarn and my new E hook, and try my hand at this amigurumi thing.  I don’t know if I can manage to finish the entire project – it’s a little ambitious for me, particularly with just a week before Christmas – but even if I only complete part of it, that part should still be gift-able.

Let the merrymaking commence!

I seem to be going in reverse age order with these.  Today’s quick knit is another hat, this time for Aidan.  Aidan is nearly 12, a sixth grader, and he is of the opinion that when it comes to hats, “simpler is better.”

So, no cables for this one.  Just simple ribbing on the brim, and easy knitting the rest of the way.  He approved the pattern, and he picked the color, which is more alive with greens and blues than it appears in these photos.  (I blame the ugly lighting in my family room.)

Aidan is a pleasure to knit for, because he knows how to show enthusiasm for the finished product.  There was no cajoling to get him to put on the hat and pose, no pleas for him to stay still (unlike some younger brothers I could mention).  He just put it on, told me he loved it (yes, loved [what a good boy]) and went back to his homework, while I got all paparazzi-like on his head.

I really have to finish making him that sweater I started back in September (oh, my! has it been that long?)…

The details

Pattern: Seaman’s Cap

Modifications: None

Yarn: Malabrigo Rios in Aguas

Somebody needed a new hat.  Two somebodies, in fact, but this post is about the smaller somebody, in particular.  The hat I made him three years ago was starting to feel a little snug and look a little crummy.  Pilling and such.

He picked out the yarn, and I picked out a pattern that would keep me interested.

As an aside, do you know how I picked such a lovely pattern? I searched for hat projects that my Ravelry friends had made (if you have Ravelry friends, you should try it!)  My contacts have such great taste, I knew one of them would have already made something perfect.  And I was right – Grace‘s Fr. Dave’s Hat grabbed me right away.

I am so pleased with the result.  Just one little complaint.  The crown is a bit wonky, and I could be wrong, but I think it’s the fault of the pattern.  I followed it to the letter through the first several decrease rows, and then just winged it at the end, and I think if/when I make this again I am going to do my own decreasing method right from the start.

(please forgive the blurry image – some people don’t know how to sit still. ahem.)

My main issue with the crown decreasing is the K2tog stitches.  I feel like those spots should actually be P2tog, to keep the rhythm of the purled stripes going up the full length of the hat.  If I make another one of these, I’ll try it my way and post my specific changes.  At the moment they’re all theoretical, so I don’t feel comfortable sharing them.

This hat took me 3 evenings to finish.  That’s a perfect size project, in my book.

The details

Pattern: Irish Hiking Hat

Modifications: Just the winging-it at the crown that I mentioned above

Yarn: Malabrigo Rios in Sunset

Yesterday I allowed myself to be distracted (for an hour or so) from my book store packing and shipping duties by the thought of a new pen.

I do think about clay-covered pens often (usually as I am pulling apart the couch or rifling through somebody’s backpack, desperately seeking something to write with).  Pens and pencils have a habit of disappearing around here, but it always seems to take the special clay-covered ones longer to go missing.

So, I do think about making myself a special pen often, but the thought is generally fleeting.

Yesterday, though, the idea of sitting down at the clay table to make a new pen nipped at my heels like an enthusiastic puppy, until I put down my clipboard and indulged the urge.

I really wanted a red-ink pen covered in a pattern that featured red prominently.  So I made one. And then, because I had more patterns in those same colors, and because of that darn nipping at my heels, I made three more.  Four fun-loving red pens covered in a seductively-smooth coating of red, blue, and yellow clay.

And that would have all been fine and wonderful (and the perfect place to stop) except…

…I suddenly needed (needed, I tell you) one in purple.

I am not a perfectionist about most things, knitting included.  I tend to think that any errors in the fabric are far more visible to me than they would be to the casual observer, and as such, I often let little imperfections slide.  These Trenza Mitts, though, crossed the line from “little imperfections” into “glaring mistakes” before they were complete.

And yet, I knit on, and finished them, planning to gift them to my mother-in-law for her birthday.

The first mitt went off without a hitch. I was so pleased with it.  The second one? Not so much.  Three times I cast on for it.  Three times I knit a couple of inches, made a stupid mistake, tried to fix the mistake, made it worse, and ripped it out. By my fourth cast-on, I got more than halfway through the glove before I realized I’d switched a few left-facing cables with right-facing cables along the way and really botched up the pattern. (See the glove on the right? It’s most noticeable in the center stretch, but really, they are messed up all over.)

At this point, I had less than a day before her birthday and I found myself firmly in “she won’t notice, will she?” territory.  I finished it up and planned to give it to her that way.  I mean, it wasn’t that bad, really. (Perfectionist much? Clearly not.)

Well, long story short less long, life intervened and we ended up making birthday plans for later in the week.  For two days those mitts taunted me, “fix us! you can’t give us as a gift looking like this! fix us!”  I resisted as long as I possibly could, and then resignedly cast-on a third mitt.  This time, I clearly marked the pattern to show my confuzzled brain which cables had me holding stitches to the front and which ones had me holding them to the back.  Even then I made some mistakes, but I found a YouTube video that showed the proper way to un-knit and un-purl (my old way always resulted in twisted stitches and looked terrible).

Success!

I felt much better about gifting these mitts, and she seemed to like them.

When I started writing this, it was to show how much of a perfectionist I am not, but what I ended up with was a story of a messed-up project driving me so crazy that I was forced to re-do it.  Not sure I proved my point there at all…  You will just have to take my word for it, that if I didn’t have those extra few days to re-do the second glove, I’d definitely have given it to her the way it was, and hoped she didn’t notice.  Really. Probably.

The details

Pattern: Trenza Mitts by Susanna IC

Modifications: I moved the thumb holes up eight rows and didn’t knit actual thumbs (I left them as holes)

Yarn: Malabrigo Rios in Natural

Needle: Size 8 DPNs

Other Help: Un-knit and un-pearl video by Plant Purl

We saw some turkey fabric last month, while we were killing time at a Jo-Ann’s in Maryland, and Eamonn asked if we could buy some for pajama pants.  Eamonn was four years old, last time I made him seasonal pj pants.  Aidan was seven.  And now, four years later, Eamonn has long outgrown his own pants and can barely wear Aidan’s hand-me-downs.  One more growth spurt, and nobody around here will own mama-made pj’s anymore.

That’s a little sad to me, so I was all too happy to buy him the turkey fabric.  When we arrived back in New Jersey, I pre-washed the fabric, folded it neatly next to the sewing machine, and promptly forgot all about it.

Tonight, I spotted it, peering out at me from under a pile of miscellany that had sprung up over the course of the last month.  Well, shoot.  I had missed making the turkey pants in time for Thanksgiving.  Lucky for me, Eamonn is the type of guy who has no qualms about wearing Santa pjs in July or Halloween pants on Easter.  Turkey pants after Thanksgiving is over? No problem!

For a pattern, I traced a pair of well-fitting lounge pants.  Sadly, I neglected to add enough extra fabric at the top to make a good casing for the elastic, and the resulting pants looked somewhat, er, wedgie-inducing.  I asked Eamonn about it. At first, he tried to spare my feelings and said they were fine, but when I pressed him, he said, (and I quote) “they kind of hurt when I scratch my butt, and that will probably be a problem because I scratch my butt a LOT.”

Boys, eh

Thank goodness the pattern on these pants is crazy-busy, because it let me get away with doing a little surgery.  I pretty much just sliced across the top of the pants, cut off the first three inches, and then reconnected the two pieces by way of a two-inch wide strip.  It’s completely inelegant, but he isn’t particularly concerned with elegance (see butt scratching comment above), and it’s only really noticeable if you’re looking for it.

I have enough fabric left to make Aidan a pair, so once again I will be able to tuck my matching mama-made pj-wearing boys into bed at night.  At least until the next growth spurt.  Oh, they just grow so quickly, don’t they?? *sigh*

By the afternoon, I had made enough hook handles to determine my best practice for future orders.  By evening, I had sanded and buffed the daylights out of all of the handles I made.  By bedtime, I’d gotten the order form up on the website.

A very very hooky day, if I do say so myself.

And so, without further ado, I am so happy to present: the new Polka Dot Cottage Gift Shop, featuring Made-to-Order Polymer-Handled Crochet Hooks!  I’ll be collecting orders for the next week (or until I have as many as I can realistically handle), and then it will be all hooks all the time over here at the Polka Dot Cottage World Headquarters!

I greatly appreciated all of your valuable feedback about these, and am truly looking forward to filling your orders.  You can choose your hook size, hook brand, handle pattern, and whether or not you’d like an indented thumb rest.  I will have them completed and shipped by mid-December, hopefully well in time for gift-giving.

Oh, and for those of you who don’t particularly care about crochet hooks, I’ve decided to add a little something: you can order custom-made shawl pins and stick pens, too.  Stick pens make great teacher gifts, especially in red ink (hint, hint).  Enjoy!

This morning, I was still quite eager to see how the whole clay-handle-on-a-crochet-hook idea would work for me, so I decided not to wait for the granny square cane to come to fruition.  Instead I tried it with another design from my stash. (It’s a plaid cane, like the one in the shawl pin lesson.)

So, what do you think?

There’s a lot about it that I like.  In particular: the hook size (G) that is embedded in the top, and the super smooth sanded and buffed handle.  I haven’t spent much time actually using the hook, but the few chains I did make felt good.  I know the color of your hook handle really shouldn’t make much of a difference in your crochet experience, but it kinda does!  It makes it somehow more artsy and fun.  Or something like that.

I wonder, would you go for these hooks, if I made them in a variety of colors and sizes?  Would it be worth re-opening the shop for a week or two, and stocking it with a selection of them for gift-giving purposes? Or even for totally selfish keep-it-yourself purposes? Really, I’m not one to judge…

Thoughts?