Sock Monkey Hat

Mary Ann Hacking's amazing photography skills and her uber-cute baby wearing my sock monkey hat :)

 My latest adventures in crochet creations:

A friend requested a sock monkey hat for a 6-month old boy, and showed me a picture of a hat that looked something like this. Based on the picture, I was able to figure out a pattern that consisted of hdc (half double crochet), sc (single crochet), rsc (reverse single crochet), and changing out hook sizes. I adapted the mouth idea and stitched in a mouth-line-thingy. I love the way it turned out! The colors are pretty much the same as the original picture, but I made up the stitches, stitch count, and assembly of accessories ... does anyone know where you draw the line in the indie-craft world between copying and creating? Is something like this a copyright issue? I sure hope not ... because I'd love to sell these! :) 

(On that note, let me know if you would like to place an order. I'll be selling them for $35 - $40 depending on size.)

 I gave this hat to one of my friends in exchange for her photography of some of my hats (see a future post for those pictures) and needed to make another one for my friend who requested this hat. The next day I sat down to recreate it from memory, but tried to make it slightly larger. Unfortunately, I was too lazy the first time around to write down the pattern as I went, thinking, I suppose, that I would remember what I did.

epic fail.

I worked at it for about an hour and a half, stubbornly in denial that something was fundamentally wrong.You know that slowly sickening feeling that you're making a big mistake but you know very well that you're not going to stop the chain of events that will ultimately lead to the impending disaster? All melodramatics aside, that was pretty much how I felt.

I'm including pictures here to prove to myself (and anyone else who cares) how vital it is to write down a pattern as you create something.

 and yet ... 

This experience, like all mistakes, provided the potential for learning on a deeper level. Spending hours on this "mistake-hat" forced me to analyze and perfect my color-joining technique. I plan to start creating mini-posts on techniques I figure out as I go, in hopes that the details I learn can be of help to other crochet artists. I took pictures of each step of the process as I went so that I can include step-by-step pictures and instructions in a future post regarding how to make perfect joins, as well as how to securely and invisibly tie off all loose ends.

The picture on the left is my original method of joining colors, which created a bump the whole length of the hat and distorted the shape. I tried something different on the next one and it worked beautifully.

I now have the pattern written down in a shorthand format that makes sense to me, but I would like to rewrite it in a user-friendly form, and possibly sell it on etsy. Before I do that though, I want to experiment with colors more so that I can claim this as my own invention in every regard. I'm thinking about a hat pattern that consists of hdc stitches with a red and tan yarn together and multiple sizes, so that somebody could make two as a psuedo-gag gift for a father and son :) I'm doing plenty of mother-daughter sets, and thought it would make for such a cute picture to have a father and son wearing matching sock monkey hats! ... more on that later. 

 This picture is proof of my eventual success in recreating my own pattern. I posted this picture on my facebook page (SandiesSofties) and got 26 likes/comments in one day! :) 

And finally, here is a picture of my lil workstation ... I'm still dreaming of one day having my very own studio with a litany of storage options. :) (see my post titled "Visions of Bookshelves ... ")

Purple Baby Blanket

This will be one of my most simply written blogs; I am just taking a few minutes to post pictures of my most recently finished project. I was inspired by a picture I saw online of a blue and white granny square baby blanket, and made my own based on some patterns I had found in some crochet books I had at home. (Beyond the Square: Crochet Motifs and Around the Corner: Crochet Borders).

This is a picture of one possible design of squares -- I decided not to go with it because the white was too overwhelming.

After I had put about 7 hours into the blanket (each square took about 9 minutes to make) I realized my work had just begun. My husband took this picture of me beginning to sew all the squares together (which turned into a 3 1/2 hour project excluding the nap).

My book on crochet borders has an incredibly fun assortment of border ideas ~ I chose this one for this blanket, but will probably experiment with others on future blankets, since there are so many to choose from.

This is an up-close picture of the border ~ it is a lobster-stitch chain woven through a double crochet stitch. The entire border took another 3-4 hours, and the final trimming and fastening off loose strings took at least an hour. (that's the most boring part ...)

Both sides of this blanket have a unique look and could serve as the display side.

And this final picture shows both sides together. I am going to post it on my etsy site for $130, based on the 14+ hours it took to make, and the going rate for similar products on etsy.

quite a lovely saturday

so this morning i woke up early (well, before the tornado sirens went off at least), determined to add to my head covering collection. (as in, hats and head band scarf things ~ see pic ~ i don't know what they're called)

I laid out all the head-related things I still have (i wish I had taken pictures of the ones that I've already sold or given away!!). I'm hoping to get some time with my wonderful photographer (megan!) and some beautiful friends tomorrow to do a nice photo shoot of some of this so I can finally start listing things on my etsy site.

I had some coupons for Hobby Lobby and Michaels (both are right down the street) so I went out and bought some more yarn and some buttons and random scrapbooking stuff that was on clearance. I've pretty much made it a policy to only buy things at Hobby Lobby or Michael's if I can get it at least 35% off, and I've found out that if you go weekly, the sales rotate around enough so that you can buy everything at a very discounted rate! :) Here's the results of my shopping adventure today:

I branched out into a new brand of yarn today: Baby Bee Sweet Delight. I bought 6 different (mostly coordinating) colors and had a lot of fun making this hat. I love the multi-colored yarn, because it's like a mini-adventure making any project, discovering how the pattern turns out as you go. (lol, i guess that officially makes me a yarn geek??) I don't know if this will actually fit anyone ~ I just kept shaping it as I went according to some imaginary picture of a child's head ... I need to get some set of standards for head/hat dimensions so I don't have to keep playing this guessing game everytime. Is there somewhere I can buy a bunch of different sized styrofoam heads? That would pretty much be the coolest thing to line up against our patio window :). {Anyone up for a Paint the Foam Heads party?} For now, I'll have to try this hat out on a few of my friends' kids and make adjustments as needed to the pattern I made up for this hat.

I also began three other things but they all were being a little bit too much uncooperative and frustrating, so I changed gears and decided to write this blog post. I know that at some point here I'll have to pick a few items that people like and just make tons of those, but I haven't quite transitioned into the business mindset yet. At this point, everything I make is still a unique idea (or based on a pattern, but with the goal of learning the basics so I can venture forth into uncharted copyright-free territory). I've come up with a few things that I really like based on requests from friends and family ~ I'm always honored when someone asks me to make something, like an elephant or a baby boy bear hat, b/c it gives me that giddy feeling of theythingiknowwhati'mdoing!!! anyhow, somewhere in the process of manning up to the challenges and being too embarrased to admit that I really am not as talented as they think, I discover how to create amazing things that I never would have attempted on my own accord. So a big shout-out to everybody who has faith in me: Thank you! :D

and one last note and pictures for this post, before I turn back to the rebellious piles of unravelled yarn and half-begun projects behind me. ...

sock yarn!

 I've been tempted to buy sock yarn every time I go to a craft store, but I've held back so far ... well, until my friend took a trip to Portland, OR and discovered an epic yarn store and brought me back the neatest sock yarn I've ever seen. So today I broke down and bought some more to add to the collection and picked up a few patterns and knitting needles. :) that will be another story, I'm sure.



behind the scenes

So in between posts on life, creativity, and the pursuit of happiness, I thought i'd post some of the back-stories to my creations.

story number one, in which sandra finds alternate uses for skulls

so, to make a simple story complicated ... My friend has a friend who has a little girl and is pregnant with a little boy, and she (my friend) wanted a baby shower gift for her friend's baby. Actually for the little girl. Because baby gifts are never really for the baby, who wouldn't know a Gucci baby rattle from a dandelion, but might prefer the dandelion due to its edibility. Baby gifts are for the parents. And the older siblings, often on the brink of a pyschological meltdown from the epiphany that some scrunched-up crybaby is about to monopolize the Adults' Attention, gets left in the dust while the new ball of babyness gets loads of diapers, toys, clothes, and burp rags. So a plot was devised to care for big sister and Mommy. I was to crochet a baby boy doll to give to the girl to help ease her into the idea of having a baby brother. I loved the idea and was up for the challenge.

I found a pattern for a boy doll, changed up just about everything except the head, and ended up with an anorexic big-headed boy in footie pajamas. It was very disheartening. I posted pix of my failed experiment and put it away for a few days. I knew that something needed to be done soon, but wasn't sure what to do about it, and didn't really like it anymore, now that it was all skinny and ugly.

Soon enough, my friend asked about the progress of the doll, and I had to admit that I was starting off my crochet business on the wrong foot, what with disappointing people and not following through on orders in a timely way. L I learned all about that from my weekly etsy emails. Anyhow, she said the anorexic boy was cute and I should just send him. That kicked me into gear, because there was no way I wanted that droopy doll with a dangly head haunting my sales history forever. (admittedly, an overkill on the alliteration) I knew I could do better than that, and if the new adopted mommy of this boy was going to say that I had made him, I wanted to at least not be ashamed of him.

But I really didn’t want to remake the head. So I tried untying it.

When that didn’t work I just cut it off and gave up on the whole neck idea.

After remaking the body I tried to re-attach the head but it was very disproportionate.

So I undid it, stitch by stitch, still hoping to take it down to a reasonable size and just make it smaller from there on out. But the sewn on wig cap ruined that idea.

All of which is to explain how I ended up creating the skull bowl.

Determined to show the doll how disgusted I was with him, I decided that his upside down empty head looked quite reminiscent of a bowl, and if coated in plastic, would actually serve quite well for cereal.

(i would insert a clip here of the scene about eyeball soup from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom ... but i'm not quite sure that it's appropriate or funny, having never seen it myself ...)

Anyhow, eventually I redid another head, used other eyeballs, since the original child-proof eyeballs were irremovable, and attached it to the (neckless!) doll.

And in the end, I kinda like him. :)

fanatical, fantastical, financial figures

$11/ hour. That’s how much I make teaching 8^th grade math in Oklahoma.

I’m so glad I didn’t calculate that until now, but now that I have enlightened myself on the futility of money-making in this particular line of stress-intensive (insert-descriptions-here) work, it does make facing the final 9 weeks a bit of a daunting and discouraging task. How can America at large expect teachers to produce an intelligent-and-competitive-in-a-global-economy generation of young people when They (the Great and Unknown entity of They-ness) pay teachers $11/hour?? Oy. But that’s another story for another book. (coming soon to your local trash can)

So in a moment of transcendent inspiration, following months of considering this idea of taking the crafty crafting world by storm, I decided that I could earn myself $11 an hour crocheting and skip the stress of daily teaching drama (left purposely ambiguous in this rendition of the story).

Since $11 is my “real” money after all the taxes and insurance and retirement and feed-the-hungry-millionaires percentages are cut out, I did the math (trust me ~ I’m a math teacher) and figured that if I made $140 dollars worth of products, five days a week every week, I could make up for all taxes, insurance, cost of materials, etc. and still come out ahead of my teaching salary. If I throw 5 hours of math tutoring a week into that, I’m down to about $100/day. That’s 3 hats. One bird mobile. Or 2.43 frog-and-turtle duos. (I just made that up. … but it sounds cute. I think I’ll try it.) Of course I still need to build in time for Research and Development (aka, designing the frog-and-turtle duo, since it inevitably won’t be quite right the first time), blogging, posting to etsy, facebook, twitter, etc.

Number theories make me giddy. Within minutes of this fanatical and fantastical epiphany I was sky-high in my dreams of living the high life in the delicate balance between creativity and insanity. Talking it over with my ever-faithful-and-pragmatic business partner, my husband, brought me quickly back down to earth. It’s too dangerous to take this leap of faith when we’re $100,000 in debt from college loans and trying to start a family in the reasonably near future. Etc. He was very loving and gentle in his reasonings. I was equally thankless and harrumphed in my murmurings against his reasonable reasonings.  But of course it was what I would have told myself if I didn’t have him there to tell me.

But still… $11/hour??? I don’t want to go back to school tomorrow… I think that’s what this all comes down to … (apologies all around if any of my students ever end up reading this ~ I heart u all!)

So I’m signing off a bit discouraged … I have so many dreams of projects I want to do and so many leads to follow through on (see future posts) and not nearly enough time. I’m afraid that these dreams will shrivel up and die and my potential customers will forget about me if I don’t follow through soon. And strong. And my present career path is draining me of everything. That’s seriously another book though.

Closing quote from my dearest “hubband:” Honey, I think you’re wonderful.

Me: well, I know that, but I just want to be more wonderful.

Vote of confidence: 1

Vote of discouraged-i-just-want-to-hide-in-a-hole-and-not-go-to-school-tomorrow: 1

Score tied. Overtime play-by-play to be continued.

in the meantime, here's a picture of a knit headband i made today :)