Phyllis Pamplemousse

Phyllis Pamplemousse, originally uploaded by blackic.

I've been envying Ceri's Woolly Monsters for a while, so when she agreed to a socks-for-woolly-monster swap I was very excited.

Here is Phyllis in her new home with me. You can find out more about her here.

Free charts

I've added the digitised charts for two more old cross stitch projects, the Eddie Izzard inspired Covered in Bees and a tribute to the famous sailors from Black and White. Links are over in the sidebar.

Summer Moth

I'm digitising a load of bits of scribbly paper. Want a free cross stitch chart?



I made this for a friend last year, but figured that it was broad enough to appeal to the internets. I spent bloody ages looking for a cross stitch pattern for a moth, then gave up and made my own.

Chart is available here.

Tim's Silly Hat

I challenged Tim to look all mean and moody whilst modelling his new hat. Ha.

Fredde the Fish pattern

As requested by the Knitpickers SnB ladies, here is my crochet fish pattern. This was an attempt to create a baby / small child toy that is reasonably unlikely to cause anyone to choke and die.



Ingredients:
Scraps of DK yarns
Safety eyes
Crochet hook to give you a nice tight gauge for amigurumi. I used a 3mm hook, but I crochet loosely.

Fish is worked in rounds of single crochet (double crochet in UK terminology!), all rounds start with a ch1 and end with a sl st to join, this is to make the stripes look neat. If you aren't as obsessive as me, you can work it in a continuous spiral instead, just make sure to place a stitch marker to mark the beginning of rounds. The pattern starts at the head end of the fish and finishes at the tail end.

The '--'s denote where I changed colour for the orange stripes.

Rnd 1: Make a magic ring, sc 6 into ring, and tighten.
Rnd 2: 2sc in every stitch (henceforth known as inc)
Rnd 3: *sc, inc* around
Rnd 4: *2 sc, inc* around
Rnd 5: *3 sc, inc* around
Rnd 6: *4 sc, inc* around
Rnd 7: *5 sc, inc* around
Rnd 8: *6 sc, inc* around
Rnd 9: sc around
Rnd 10: *7 sc, inc* around
Rnd 11: sc around
--
Rnd 12 & 13: sc around
--
Rnd 14-18: sc around
--
Rnd 19-20: sc around
--
Rnd 21: sc around
Rnd 22: *7 sc, dec* around
Rnd 23: sc around
Rnd 24: *6 sc, dec* around
Rnd 25: sc around
Remember to put in the safety eyes somewhere round here
--
Rnd 26: *5 sc, dec* around
Rnd 27: sc around
--
Rnd 28: *4 sc, dec* around
Rnd 29: sc around
Rnd 30: *3 sc, dec* around
Rnd 31: sc around
Stuff
Rnd 32: *2 sc, dec* around
Rnd 33: sc around
Rnd 34: *sc, dec*
Dec around until hole is closed

Top fin
Row 1: Pick up and sc 10 sts
Row 2: inc in every st
--
Row 3 and 4: sc. Fasten off.
--
Row 5: sc around entire fin

Tail
Row 1: Pick up and sc 12
Row 2: inc in every st
Row 3: sc
--
Row 4: inc in every st
Row 5: sc
--
Row 6 & 7: sc
Fasten off.
--
Row 8: sc around entire tail

Bottom Fins x2
Row 1: Pick up and sc 6
Row 2: inc in every st
--
Row 3: sc
Row 4: sc, fasten off
--
Row 5: sc around entire fin

I'm happy for you to sell Freddes made from my pattern, please just include a link to my pattern if selling online.

Beige Baby

DSCF1650, originally uploaded by blackic.

Finished these cabled baby things for an old friend's unborn sprog.

I never want to knit anything in beige ever again. Bleh.

dragons, also treasure

dragons, originally uploaded by blackic.

Finished this kit (Dragon's Treasure by Cherrytree) that I've been poking away at for a few weeks.

Altered the eyes a little so they look more shifty cos, you know, dragons and treasure...

Corporate zombie Tim!

Corporate zombie Tim!, originally uploaded by Miss Shine.

Had a lovely time at the recent Knitpickers knitting retreat organised by Nic, and made myself a tiny zombie boyfriend.

Cthulhu, lace

It's been a while. I blame Ravelry (also the fact that I have three mahoosive mystery lace projects on the go and don't seem to have had any FOs to share for ages).

But look! Dark Roasted Blend featured a picture of my Knithulhu. Neat, huh?

Apparently I'm on a cross stitch kick...

Here's the one I did for Matt and Jen's wedding yesterday (which was awesome)...



And here's a half-done one that I found in my grandma's house when we were going through her stuff and finished off for her birthday.



I've run out of bits of Aida now, so maybe I'll move on to something else...

Doily

DSCF1439, originally uploaded by Miss Shine.

Finished crochet thing of doom that has been hanging around since last March :o

Really felt like setting this on fire by the end. I am coming to the conclusion that I just don't find crochet as therapeutic as knittery...

Geekery

Hee, the GeekCraft group over on Ravelry crowned me 'Geek of the Week' for my Parsley Boobs rendition.

"On the crochet front, in a completely unrelated direction is Shine’s Parsley Boobs. They are based on characters from a company called Weebl’s Stuff but initially I mistakenly assumed that the characters were actually Weebles like these these Romper Room break outs. If you recognize those, I won’t be mean and put that ear worm of a jingle in your head. I was very, very wrong, though. For one thing Parsley Boobs would probably enjoy smacking Weebles around. Then again, who doesn’t really? There’s a Weebl character too though, and a Bob. But these are Parsley Boobs. I won’t front, I really know nothing about any of this, I just followed the link and watched the animated short. It’s funny. I recommend it. It’s also really, really short, like 2 minutes long short, so if you are randomly searching the forums anyway, this shouldn’t pull you away for that long. After seeing it, you see what truly impressive likenesses Shine achieved. Very nice."

I've been really super-busy lately, we've just finished running this year's Roleplaying and Wargaming Student Nationals, Tim's jetting about all over the place telling stories and we should soon be purchasing a house. Phew.

Craftwise, I'm currently getting close to finishing off Talia from the new Knitty, the bulk of which I knitted on a couple of five hour coach trips to and from London to see Jonathan Coulton's first UK gig, which of course was Made of Awesome.

Here's a photo of another Geek Project I never posted pictures of, a Black and White tribute for Alex's Yule/Christmas present:



And here's my reference screencap:



You can get the chart here

Malevolent freeform bag

For Miss Jen Jen Jam, who is becoming a very competent crocheter who I now feel I need to oneup when making ridiculous creations.

I still have pictures to post from Christmas. But I can't do that now, cos I'm too busy melting plastic bags:

Christamocalypse crafting part deux - Eddie Izzard inspired...

Hey, guess what? I'm covered in bees...

COVERED IN BEES!

(ahem)

More to come later, though I'll wait a bit so not to kill people on the LJ syndicated feed. Cos they moan at me.

Free chart here.

Christamocalypse crafting part un

Vintage brass rubbings...


Vintage Whitby postcards...

Cherie Amour wip

cheriamourwip, originally uploaded by Miss Shine.

Someone on Ravelry just made enquiries about the progress of this, so here's a picture.

Doesn't look like cheapy acrylic, does it?

Yarn: James C. Brett Marble Chunky
Pattern: Cherie Amour

SotS hint 2

Still loving it :)

I suspect the guesses on the Yahoogroup of a starry or celestial theme might be more likely, but I have refined my personal guesses to those of ELECTRO-BEES, or butterflies with lasers.

Secret of the Stole hint 1

Look! I made lace! I'm so surprised.

At this early stage my prediction is that the theme of the stole will be Egypt. Or creepy crawly insects.

Pattern: Secret of the Stole - hint 1
Yarn: Colourmart 100% silk
Beads: A random assortment painstakingly sorted out from a load of other seed beads in the interest of Frugality and Reuse.

p.s. my carpet is grubby. Please disregard.

Catch up

I need to catch up before I post my SotS progress! So here's some FOage...


Cursed sweater complete. Cursed boyfriend still present, who would have thought? You will note that he is also wearing my Fetching. Hmph.

Pattern: Curse Your Boyfriend from the fabulous Anticraft. Love love love.
Yarn: Some antiquated green stuff from eBay.



Look! Little hats for Innocent's Big Knit. I sent off 63 teeny tiny hats this morning, courtesy of the Sheffield Knitpickers. Woo!

Also, I've spent some time in the last few weeks messing up the Anemoi
pattern. All my fault, nothing to do with the cunning pattern. I've given up on these for a bit, and am concentrating on lace! Lace lace lace lace.

Oh - and because I apparantly do not have enough things to do - I set up a Ravelry group for the celebration of all things squamous, Cthulhoid and tentacular. Because, for some reason, one didn't exist.

Secret of the Stole Swatch

So this misshapen piece of fabric is my swatch for the Secret of the Stole knitalong. My knitting is not normally this wonky, I was trying out a couple of different needle sizes, also my blocking leaves a bit to be desired.

I'm using ColourmartUK 100% silk in Anthracite, and I'm rather excited. This will be the first proper lace I've knit since Sarah's wedding garter drove me mad around this time last year... :P