Stolen Surprise

Really... who wants to steal a 9 ft long scarf and a huge pair of crocheted glasses?

Some of you might know that Part 1 of the latest Harry Potter movie was released at midnight last night. I'm a bit of a dork and thought it would be really fun to do something different for fans of the book and the people in my town. There's a pair of statues in the main town park - lo and behold they're lions (it's a HP thing if you don't already know). My brain started working and I came up with a fun and whimsical (do people still say that?) surprise for my town. YARN BOMB!!!

It took me a few days to crochet, like I said the scarf was 9 ft long. I even hand drew a little tag that said Gryffindor on it out of a piece of felt so there'd be no question about why it was there. I took it out last night ad spent at least 30 minutes putting it on the lion (the glasses were a little tricky). I took a few pictures last night, but not many since it was 11pm and very dark. I went back home and set my alarm to get up early and take pictures in the daylight, before anything happened to it. I pulled up to the park and my heart dropped. It was gone.

So these are the only pictures I have because someone stole what could have been a funny, surprising, and all around great day for me and the people in my town. I hope you can at least enjoy these, since no one in my town will ever have the pleasure.

Getting ready to put it up

Shhhhh... it's a surprise, well it would've been.

It would've looked so cool in the daylight.

Final shot of me with my handiwork.

To the person who stole my hard work: You didn't just steal an abnormally long scarf, you broke my heart.

Updated Website

I've been working for a few days and it's finally ready to unveil! I have added two new pages where you can buy my patterns & custom hats directly from me. No Etsy/Ravelry membership or Paypal account needed! The pages can be found at the top of my website "Buy my patterns" and "Buy my hats". Take a look around, ask questions, visualize colors, and place your order for a custom Playin' Hooky design!!

HAPPY HOOKING!

Trying to Catch Up

Lately I've had the best problem! I don't have enough time to get all my custom orders done! Between updating my shop, taking care of my kids & my house, and my part-time job, it's been a crazy time! I'm so excited about all the amazing hats my customers have been requesting. It's true that I make them, but they pick the colors which is one of my favorite things to do! I LOVE working with people to make them a hat that is personal for them!

I've just been so busy lately that I haven't had much time to blog or get my website more organized. I'm trying to create a 'page' on my site where you can buy my hats & patterns direct, instead of going through Etsy, where a lot of my fans don't have an account. It'll be an easier checkout process and you can still order fully custom hats! I'll keep you updated and let you know when I'm ready to launch it!

In the meantime, here are a few of my recent orders & new photos for my shop:

New Photography:

    

                      

     

Custom Orders:

  

  

Varie-hated

Ok, maybe hate is too strong a word, but I'm talking about variegated yarn here. You know that familiar feeling when you walk into a yarn store - your hearts starts beating when you see all the amazing colors and different textures. Out of the corner of your eye, you see an amazing color combination and it's all contained in one skein! That's variegated yarn. But then you get home and start to use this perfect yarn with the perfect pattern, expecting to get a fabulous mix of colors. What you get instead is a finished product that has a distinct color pattern, exactly what you didn't want!

Well, maybe it's never happened to you, or maybe I'm just a yarn snob, but I tend to shy away from commercial variegated yarn. I'm not talking about the delicious hand-dyed stuff that's so good you should be required to get a prescription to buy it. Nope, I'm focused on the big name, usually crunchy-feeling 3-4 color yarn. Variegated yarn, by it's nature almost always gives you some pattern, just because the color repeats itself in fixed intervals. But knitted items made from this yarn usually turn out pretty cool looking. No one ever thinks of us hookers who want to achieve that same look.

 

(Neither one of these items were made by me, by the way. They're just examples of the color patterns)

Alas, I am working on a custom order right now for a kid's camo hat, I can pick the design, it just has to be camouflage colors. First of all, that's a pretty big range of color palettes, but I narrowed it down and and started searching the 3 places in my little town where I can buy yarn (Walmart, the high-end LYS, and a modest little craft store). Instead of buying 4 solid-colored skeins (most of which would not be used in the hat and I'd have a lot of yarn in colors I don't normally work with) I broke my rule.

I settled on a skein of surprisingly soft commercial yarn from the craft store (not Red Heart!!!!!) and got to work. I knew I couldn't bring myself to do a simple hdc or dc hat because I'd end up with exactly what I'm trying to avoid. Sometimes I like that variegated pattern, it's just not what I was looking for this time. I tried alternated rounds of hdc and sc. It was working for a while, but soon, a pattern started to emerge. It wasn't as obvious as the all-one-stitch hat would be, but I wasn't happy with it. Aside for the fact that I'm making this hat for my boss's kid, I knew I could create something much much better. The frogging began (frogging = ripping out your work. rip-it, rip-it, get it?).

I remembered an interesting stitch texture I saw once and thought, I could do that. It's called a 'basket weave stitch". basically it's a sc hat, but you work a ch between each sc and on the next round, work into the ch-space. Here's what resulted. There's still a pattern, but it's a little more subdue with a little more texture.In the end, I'm happy with it.

HAPPY HOOKING!