Face Case

I was really tempted to call it Head Case but at least you get the rhyming with Face Case. :)

I made this little bag to keep my new mineral makeup travel compact safe and secure while floating around in my handbag. I love the fun bright pink colour - which also makes it easy to locate.

The case protects the compact from getting scratched up and I don't have to worry about it accidentally popping open when it shouldn't.

Girkey

My apologies to Lion Brand, it’s not the pattern… it’s me. I really really stink at making amigurumi. In fact, I should be banned from doing so again in the future.

This “creature” started out as a giraffe, and then ended up looking like some weird monkey-like creature… I have therefore renamed him “Girkey” (pronounced Jerky).

I made this for a swap partner who likes amigurumi and giraffes, but dislikes the colour brown. I thought I’d be clever and make it for her in one of her favourite colours… purple. That was my first mistake.

After I’d completely finished the body, I realised that it wasn’t looking very giraffe-like. It seems I’d forgotten to do rows 14-25 (aka “the neck”). Second mistake.

I was running out of time to finish and get this posted off in time, so I decided to make my own decorations/embellishments and turn it into a slighly different creature. Yep. That was my third mistake.

And the fourth and worst mistake of all? The face. I really don’t have the knack for making cute faces. My husband wasn’t lucky enough to see this “creation” in person, but when I showed him the photos he remarked “That looks like something out of some poor kid’s nightmare.” Under other circumstances I may have been insulted, but unfortunately he was 100% right.

White & Silver Ballroom Scarves

There is a really fun sparkly yarn available from Spotlight called Moda Vera Ballroom. The problem? It's usually $8.99 for a 50 gram ball. That's a little bit rich for me, especially for an unknown, potentially "disastrous-to-work-with" ball of yarn.

It's always looked quite intriguing and I've been eyeing it off every time I go to Spotlight, but it's never been on sale... until recently! Back in May, Ballroom was FINALLY on sale - time to play :)
I'm not really a bling/sparkly kind of person, but I thought my younger nieces might each enjoy a sparkly scarf. I bought two balls of the white with silver Ballroom. I was able to squeeze one scarf out of each 50 gram ball for a total of two scarves. They were a quite skinny (which I liked), but a bit shorter than I would have preferred. Luckily they were for kids :)

I just made the scarfs out of a loose double crochet to help show off the silver sparkles of the yarn and give the blingy bits room to shine through.

I forgot to take any pictures of the actual scarves, but fortunately I snapped this pic of Niece10 modelling one of them.

More Kool-Aid Dyeing

Sunday mornings seem to be a good day for my microwave dyeing. My husband dislikes the smell of the cooking wool, so I can "stink up the house" while he is away at the fire brigade. :)

This past Sunday I did some more Kool-Aid dyeing... this time with the "real" stuff. I dyed 50 grams each of orange, lemon-lime and strawberry. I used two packets per 50 grams of wool. Here are the results I got...

I'm happy with how the colours came out. And as always with Kool-Aid dyeing, you get the added bonus of a fainty yummy fruity smell at the end.

Walmart's Generic Great Value Kool Aid

On my recent trip to the US I decided to stock up on Kool Aid for wool dyeing. As luck would have it, I happened to do my Kool Aid shopping while I was at Walmart. In addition to Strawberry, Lemon-Lime and Orange Kool Aid brand, I also decided to pick up some of Walmart's generic "Kool Aid" in cherry, grape and lemonade.

I can't remember the exact price of the Kool Aid versus the Walmart brand, but it was definitely a significant savings. Maybe somewhere in the neighbourhood of half the price? Well, for that kind of savings, I figured it was worth a go. Plus a lot of generic brands are made in the exact same factories as the name brand stuff - so who cares what the package says?

Yesterday was a rainy Sunday afternoon, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to get some trial dyeing done. I dyed 50 grams each of the cherry, grape and lemonade. I used two packets per each 50 grams... except for the lemonade. After putting two packets of lemonade in, the water was still extremely light in colour. I decided to put in four packets instead to make it more yellow.

Here are my dyeing results...

Some More Hats & Scarfs

Sometime between Christmas and May, I'm not really sure when, I whipped up a few more doll hats and scarfs for my nieces American Girl dolls. Can't forget the fluffy/furry stuff for the trim!

The top one was made with a yellow, green and white acrylic from Carnival and trimmed with some white fun fur.

The second is brown acrylic, Carnival again I think, trimmed with some brown and red fun fur.

The third one is made from red striped Carnival acrylic, trimmed with red eyelash yarn.

Nice, fun, quick & easy projects that are great for using those last little bits of a ball of yarn.

Elmo Hat

I made this hat for a girl at work who really loves Elmo. It was a fast easy project. I whipped up the beanie while watching TV the other evening. Then I made the eyes and nose and attached them the following day at work.

The hat is made from some red 10? or 12? ply wool from Wangaratta Mill (at least, that's what I think it is as I received it in a swap). Then the eyes and nose were made with acrylic (as I didn't have any wool in the appropriate colours).