Su Mwamba of Tangled Crafts has provided me this great instruction set to share with you! I am so impressed by all of her productivity!
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“Black Swans (Cygnus atratus) are mostly black feathered birds, with a line of white flight feathers of the wing edges that sometimes show when at rest, and are conspicuous in flight.” (wikipedia)

I’m really growing fond of combining crochet and knitting together. It is the perfect coupling of techniques. Crochet is organic and thick and has a much different drape than any knit fabric. While knitting has stretch and give and is wonderful for so many garment structures - you can do ribbing with knitting that is perfect for keeping caps on tight. I named this beret the black swan because, just like a black swan it’s all black with a few flecks of white.

I’m not sure if you noticed it or not, but I added a “Donate Here” button to the side bar. Basically, as I’m sure you all noticed, things are tight all over for everyone. And it’s a hard time to be self employed. And Jason and I are both now officially self employed. Craft Leftovers has always been a free source of information, patterns, and how-to’s related to using up your stash - which I’m sure most of us are digging into more and more these days. I really want to keep it that way. And any donations would be much appreciated. Even $1 from each of you would make a world of difference. I’m not talking buying new craft supplies or fancy new tools, your contributions would help pay living expenses - groceries, cat food, the internet bill even.

I’m going to do the npr fund raising thing here:

“How much is Craft Leftovers worth to you? How much would you pay for your favorite Craft Leftovers pattern? $1, $2, $5? If each reader who stopped by Craft Leftovers each month gave just $1 once a year, I would be able to work full time on Craft Leftovers. So then next time you download a pattern, get inspired by an article, or learn something new from a tutorial, think about how much that is worth to you and click that donate button - help make Craft Leftovers happen!”

Okay, npr type pitch over. I’ll see you all tomorrow with something I’m really super excited about and can’t wait to share with you!

Happy Crafting!
Kristin

So the coffee sweater is this month’s Craft Leftovers Monthly Kit. I did a run through with it to make sure it would work with fingering weight yarn. Welllll, it does…. but then while knitting through it I found that just about ever row, except the “knit all” rows, was rittled with errors! GAH! I can’t say it’s not my fault, but on the other hand, I did get the stitch pattern from the stitch dictionary -it’s a really common slip stitch pattern- and I didn’t think to check to make sure it was right, I just assumed it was- I should know better!

Anyway, so I spent pretty much most of the day yesterday working through it and ripping and writing and scratching things out and making notes and I think I finally got it right. If you see something odd in it or something that isn’t quite making sense, just email me at corrections (at) gmail (dot) com
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I have been buying the majority of my spices and herbs from the bulk bins for quite awhile now. At least a few years actually. I tend to reuse the spice containers that I had on hand from the pre-bulk-bin-buying period in my life. I would just put the little sticker from that I used to label them at the health food store to the jar I filled it with. Well a few week ago it finally hit me, I could weigh the jars I reuse, make the weight on them, and just fill them directly instead of using the bags at the shop and transferring them when I get home. So I asked about it and they said “yes! of course” and thought “of course yes, duh” and they would even let me use their scale to weigh it, so if you don’t have a scale at home you can do this too.
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Quite some time ago I first wrote and posted the pattern for the Cherry Chirp Bird. I love this pattern and think it came out really cute. Standing about 8 inches tall, 4 inches wide, and 8 inches long he’s a quick knit and takes a mere 40gram of worsted weight cotton yarn + 15g in a contrasting color for beak, feet and eyes.
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My friend Carolyn has been knitting up little mini sock ornaments like a whirlwind of crafty goodness. And I have been envious. They are just so cute! So i decided that this was just the perfect thing for leftover sock yarn and wrote up my own litlte pattern for using up this bit and rockin’ around the christmas and jazzing it up a bit with little mini replicas of socks you’ve knit over the year. And best of all, it’s a sock you can finish in just 2 hours or so! and no need to worry about second sock syndrom because you only need to make one to be done with your project instead of two. Continue reading →

I made Molly a cat hoodie quite some time ago. Jason and I thought RapCat (checkers’ commercials) was just too ridiculous and therefore, pretty funny. We invented a synario where RapCat was Molly’s secret lover and it was a long standing, pretty bizzare, joke. We even joked about Molly wearing RapCat’s hoodie, you know, the blue and blue one. We laughed so hard about it…. and then I made one for her and we laughed some more. And the really funny thing is she doesn’t mind wearing it at all!
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My friend Carolyn of Knitting Crimes told me the other day “you know, you should make a paper snowflake pattern. It would be a lot of fun, really cute, and make great decorations in your windows or on your tree.” Now that’s not an exact quote, but pretty close. I thought that was a great idea, so here it is. And unexpectedly while I was taking them out of the window so I could draw up the templates, Jason said “oh you are taking those down? I kind of liked them up there, they are pretty neat.” That surely must mean they turned out well since Jason is not one of the decorating/holiday/festive types!  Continue reading →

I was lucky enough to be contacted by Janet of Napa Needle Point about doing a guest pattern for Craft Leftover! Splended! Of course! And I think the fates are aligning because it was while I was working on 2 needle point embroidery kits and then doing the first sketches of my own needle point ornament! Good timing too because needle point is great for leftover yarn and takes a little longer than other ornments. We all still have plenty of time to make our own needle point leaf ornments! Wonderful! And if you change up the colors, it could be a beautiful snowflake too!

Vellus simply means SnowFlake. I thought latin would give a nice twist to the simple “SnowFlake Ornament” title that popped into my mind initially. When I first started this project I mapped it all out on paper, made sure everything fit, and then after stitching the border threw it all out the window and completely changed things around. It was fun working intuitively instead of planning it all out. How it worked out so well was the miracle of working from the center out to keep it all symmetrical. It was a whole lot of fun to make, Continue reading →