Ages ago I asked on the ReveDreams Facebook page for items I could crochet out of embroidery floss, and my aunt suggested a tooth. There it is at long last. It has only two roots mostly because it’s a pain to work that small, with the reverse-engineered rationale that this way, it can sit on the edge of something.

Second, one that I completed but that really didn’t work out so well: a pair of slippers. If you have a Ravelry account you can see more of the saga on my project page for these, but long story short, after a good deal of effort to resize these, they are a bit loose and not at all the same size as each other. Crochet chain shoelaces mitigate the problem but don’t quite fix it.

One thing I would consider doing again, though, is adding loops of yarn to the perimeter of a felt sole for ease of sewing it to the bottom of crochet slippers. That way I could use a blunt needle, and should the sole wear out it will be easier to remove and replace than it would be if I’d used a sharp needle to sew it directly on. That’s 3D fabric paint on the bottom, my attempt to add traction. It works better than I expected but we’ll see how well it lasts (likewise the loops of yarn, some of which appear to be pulling out already).

Bis morgens!

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Tomorrow is Barbershop Quartet Day, the 76th anniversary of a Tulsa songfest considered the beginning of the Barbershop Harmony Society. I’ve never celebrated, but it is nevertheless close to my heart because I grew up with barbershop music. My mother has been in a Sweet Adelines chorus (and sometimes quartets) throughout my life, and through her I heard many choruses and quartets, male and female. The latest Sweet Adeline Queens of Harmony are a young quartet called LoveNotes, but the big name when I was listening a lot was Ambiance. I believe I’ve seen them live; I know I saw Joker’s Wild and The Gas House Gang — I have the cassettes to prove it.

The latest music to hit my ears was from this gang:

Be sure it’s true when you say “I love you;” it’s a sin to tell a lie…

If you have your own quartet, only lacking a barber pole, a pattern is below, in time to make for any of your Barbershop Quartet Day celebrations. It may be made with stripes in up to four colors. The one above is two white and two red stripes, but it would also be traditional to have two white, one red, and one blue stripe, with the white stripes separating the red and blue. The store has a name your price pdf of this pattern that not only prints more nicely, but also includes a 6-stranded version so you can make cheerful candy sticks, and instructions to use either the 4 or 6 stranded version for a lip balm cozy, pen case, or reading glasses sleeve.

General spiral instructions:

• My crochet abbreviations and conventions may be useful, though the only ones that might be ambiguous are: 2sc for sc increase, sc 5 for “sc once in each of the next 5 sts” (and similarly), dec for sc dec, and NJ for needle join.
   
  I used worsted weight yarn, an F/5 hook (3.75mm), and a small amount of fiberfill to make each barber pole.
   
• Active versus on hold: The barber pole is made with four spirals of stitching that combine to form a solid tube. There are no color changes, but you cannot make each spiral in its entirety before starting the next because you will run out of places to stitch. Therefore, I will refer to strands that are not finished/cut, but also not currently in use, as “on hold.” To place a strand on hold, loosen its last loop or place a stitch marker in it to keep the stitches from coming undone. To “activate” a strand, remove the stitch marker if necessary and snug the loop back down on your hook.
   
• If you place loops on hold by loosening the loops, you’ll have a lot of strands to deal with. If you use stitch markers, though, make sure they are secure and won’t snag the other strands (such as tight split rings or the kind that look like safety pins).
   
• Because of frequently stopping and starting a line of stitches, your tension may be a little whackadoodle. Pay attention to snugging the loop down appropriately when you come back to a strand and it shouldn’t be noticeable. Also make sure the side of the loop leading to the working end of the strand is in front of the hook.
   
• Upstream: The spiral strands are worked in counter-clockwise order for a right hander, clockwise for a lefty. That is, after placing one strand on hold, the next one to be activated will be the one you come to when you back up along the stitches you just made. I will refer to this as “upstream.”

The instructions are in six sections. For the barber poles shown, make the bulb and clean-up/base sections in silver or gray. The rest are in the red and white or red, white and blue. I’ve given progress photos of one made with four different colors for ease of interpretation — you will have just as many loose ends with two colors, since you must have four strands regardless.

• Barber pole bulb:
  1. Form magic ring, ch 1, and sc 6.
  2. 2sc around (12).
  3-4. Sc around (2 rnds; 12 sc). Stuff.
  5. Dec around (6).
  6. Sc around (6).
  7. 2sc around (12).
  Sc in next st and cut yarn. NJ in 2nd st from last (shown below and in its own blog post) and FO (may stuff end of yarn into neck of barber pole).

  

• Spiral set-up: Each strand of the spiral will get a block of three stitches in a row.
  For each: tie sl kn in strand, place on hk, attach to BL of first stitch with sl st.
  Also in BL only, sl st in 2nd st, sc in 3rd st. Place each strand but one on hold. Two views of the progress so far are below.
  
• Spiral block A: The currently active strand is, now and forever, the “lead strand.” You may wish to mark one of its early hdcs with a stitch marker if it is the same color as another strand. You are now working in both loops.
   
  Skip joining sl st of next strand; hdc into 2nd sl st and sc. Place on hold.
  *Activate upstream strand. Sk joining sl st of next strand; hdc into 2nd sl st, sc, and each hdc. Place on hold.*
  Repeat *…* for remaining strands; each will have 2 more hdc than the previous, so the final strand has 8. The result at this point is shown below.

  

• Spiral block B: Activate lead strand; hdc into each hdc of next strand (8 hdc). Place on hold.
  *Activate upstream strand. Hdc in each hdc of next strand (8); place on hold.*
  Repeat *…* for remaining strands. The first picture below shows the result of one B block.
   
  Repeat block B, and then activate the lead strand, hdc into each hdc of the next strand, place on hold and continue to block C. The second picture below shows the status at this point.
  
• Spiral block C: Beginning with the strand upstream from the lead strand, *hdc in each hdc of next strand except final 2. Sc, sl st, cut yarn.*
  Repeat *…* for each upstream strand in turn, finishing with lead strand (which should have only sc and sl st left).
  FO all ends and stuff. The result of this block is shown below.

  

• Clean-up and pole base: Tie sl kn in new strand of yarn and place on hk.
  Sl st to join in any sc of block C. Ch 1, sc in same sc.
  Sc in next sl st; sk hdc into which sl st was made.
  *2sc in next sc, sc in next sl st* three times. You’ll be back where you started.
  Sc in same st as joining sl st.
  Top off stuffing and dec around in BL only. I like to alternate (bulky) standard decrease with (short) slip stitch decrease. FO.
  

  Above: Photos taken halfway through the round of sc and halfway through the round of decreases.
  Below: Halfway through the running stitch closure for the final hole, and the finished base.

  

If you want to change the length of your barber pole, change the number of repetitions of block B. Whenever the lead strand reaches your desired length, skip to block C. If your lead strand reaches the desired length before a full 8-hdc “round,” that is fine. Just undo stitches until every strand except the lead strand has at most 2 hdc that have not been stitched into.

Barber Poles & Candy Sticks Pattern

I hope you enjoy it!

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They were stitched with six-stranded embroidery floss and a size 4 steel hook (2 mm). One skein of floss (8 m/8.7 yd) made one animal, with plenty left over. I used some small beads to weight their back ends, and a tiny bit of stuffing for the rest. Each one is about two inches long.

The hippo’s little ears don’t want to show up, so I think I would add a chain to each were I to make another. Otherwise I’m very pleased by the translation. Spider Plant likes them too.

The post Baby animals for spring appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

After that, though, I got back to the embroidery floss amigurumi with the mighty & ferocious dragon. I really liked this project and the way the variegated floss looked with it.

This dragon was given to a friend of a friend to be a cross-country road trip mascot. I may have to make another one.

At this point we have essentially caught up with ourselves. I hope you’ve enjoyed this walk down Memory Lane as much as I have. When next we meet it will be 2014 – happy New Year!

The post The Vault: Part 7 appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

One summer in my mid-twenties, when I had two turtles, they had two goldfish that had been intended as food but left to grow to the size of my hand. I named them Hansel and Gretel, figuring the turtles were fattening them up. I returned from a trip out of town to a traumatized roommate and a filthy tank: “They ate Gretel!” Except they had only partially eaten Gretel; her head was still on the floor of the tank, one big eyeball looking up at anyone who came to investigate the state of affairs. That memory led to this:

Sorry, Maig.

To be continued…

The post The Vault: Part 6 appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

My next project involved color change, which I did incorrectly. However, the pictures are great! Falwyn’s little fox plus a textbook example of what happens when you delay color change by a loop.

To be continued…

The post The Vault: Part 4 appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

I made a tiny whale next and tried to get creative with the photos.

To be continued…

The post The Vault: Part 3 appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

Red and gold metallic floss! It gleams! I have a love/hate relationship with metallic floss (in contrast to my just-hate relationship with satin floss). It’s so attractive, and such a pain to work with (crochet or embroidery… as long as you’re not comparing it to satin floss). The floss is made of a fiber core with a metal strip coiled around it; as you work with it the edges of that strip poke out and turn into snag factories. That’s trickier with embroidery than crochet, fortunately for us here, but it can cause difficulties. I have some advice for crocheting with this material, with the ornament instructions below.

This tree is my Tabletop Tree made in Red Heart Tweed “Camo” yarn, through and through. It is denser and smoother than the other tree.

Garland: This tree also has a chain garland, made using the better part of a skein of each color, but not a magic one this time. I found the strands of the two colors were too intermingled – at least at first – to make a magic chain. I used an E/4 hook (3.5mm) and chained with both colors together, instead. A double thickness was too much for even the roughness of metallic floss, and the slip knot and knot at the end did not want to stay put. I augmented them with overhand knots. If I had knotted each color separately, I would have solved both the problem of the slippery slip knot and the strands intermingling.

Decorating: To put the garland on the tree I wound it around in a spiral, trying to tuck the chain into the branches from time to time to mimic how garlands are placed on real trees. I used a yarn needle to hide the floss ends inside the tree. The ornaments were hung by stitching through the tree, as before, and placed at the tucks of the garland to help hold it in place. I stitched straight through and then down and out the foot of the tree.

General floss crochet instructions: The two decorations below were made with embroidery floss and a size 4 steel hook (2mm). For these my abbreviations and conventions are relevant, though the only one you haven’t seen before is likely “2sc” for single crochet increase. “Dec” means sc decrease. I highly recommend the double magic ring to begin, since it does not require any additional floss-end securing. I also recommend the trick of inserting your hook into the first stitch of the round before tightening the ring so it does not get tightened down along with the ring (shown in the video at the link), under both loops even if you won’t be using both loops. After the second round of stitching, make sure the piece is fully right-side-out, rolling the rim up with your thumbs and index fingers if needed. Metallic floss needs encouragement to change position, which is also an advantage.

Ornament balls (red): One skein of floss will comfortably make 7 of these.
1. Form magic ring, ch 1, and sc 5.
2. 2sc, sc, 2sc, sc, sc (7). Make sure the work so far is fully right side out. I like to loosen the current loop so I can take the hook out and roll the rim up with both thumbs and index fingers.
3. Sc, dec, sc, dec, sc (5).
This should not need stuffing beyond perhaps wadding the initial floss tail (and maybe not even all of that) into the ball. Cut floss leaving a long tail. Stitch a drawstring through the opening: up under the front loop of the first stitch, down through the first loop of the second, alternating to end with up through the front loop of the last stitch. Put the floss through the ball and out the middle of the magic ring. Pull the drawstring tight and roll the ball between your fingers as needed to round out the shape.

Pine cones (gold): One skein will easily make 8.
1. Form magic ring, ch 1, and sc 6.
2-3. Sc around in BL only (6 sc; 2 rnds).
As above, the initial floss tail should suffice for stuffing. Cut floss leaving a long tail and stitch a drawstring through the back loops only of the last round; I like to go from inside the round to outside under each stitch’s back loop. Pull it closed but don’t tighten too much. Put the floss through the pinecone from the center of the last round through the center of the magic ring. Roll the pinecone between your fingers if necessary to make the rounds taller and narrower (increase the distance between magic ring and drawstring).

Additional tips: A stuffing tool will be very helpful, a small fork of sorts to push the floss into the item. I use a plastic yarn needle with the back of the eye snipped off and the two resulting prongs sanded smooth. I have seen a stuffing tool of two pointy toothpicks taped together, but a wider end on the tines would be more helpful – perhaps two flat toothpicks, with half of a third one in between for spacing if needed, using the wider ends for stuffing. I also had a much easier time stuffing after I tried twisting the end of the floss until it was all coiled around itself – it gave me more to push against and I didn’t have the problems with individual plies looping up, impossible to hold onto with the stuffing tool. I had no problems with the drawstring staying closed, even though I didn’t secure the tail (well, except for stitching it through the tightly-stuffed item and out the tight magic ring).

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little post blitz! Here’s a final close-up glamour shot courtesy my husband:

I’ve made the decorations above and in the previous post, as well as my tips for working with embroidery floss, available as a name-your-price PDF for easy printing.

The post Red and gold tree appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

I did not like the blue and silver options in metallic floss (though I fortunately picked up a white skein with my gold and red), so I got rayon/satin instead. As mentioned in the initial post, I now think that was a mistake. Many words not in keeping with the spirit of the season were said, and I may have even thrown the floss on the floor at one point in a fit of pique. I can neither confirm nor deny. The starting slip knot in particular does not want to hold well. I made different fixes for the two types of decorations, described below.

This tree is my Tabletop Tree made with a cone of Red Heart Super Saver “Hunter Green” yarn and branches of Herrschners Holiday “Dark Green.” The Herrschners yarn is finer and twistier than the Red Heart, which led to a shaggy, textured tree.

Magic chain garland: Chenille yarn in an appropriate color, metallic eyelash yarn for tinsel, or a simple chain make great garlands, but for a two-color garland I turned to my magic chain. To make one, hold two strands of yarn together, tie a slipknot, and place it on your hook. Now chain as usual, but grab only one strand for each chain and alternate which one it is. I did these with embroidery floss instead of yarn, though, and used a C/2 hook (2.75mm). To deal with the slippery knot, I held onto it with my fingers until I’d chained a few times, and then trusted to fate for it not to fall out (well, fate and the long tail I left) while I finished the chain. It didn’t, and after finishing I went back and tied the two colors in a square knot, with an overhand knot over top of it so the tails would be pointing the same direction. I pulled the end of one color through the last loop of the other at the end, tightened it a bit, and then tied overhand-square-overhand to secure. The garland used about 2/3 of a skein of each color, but more of blue and less of silver – I think this was due to shifting my grip upwards after the same color link most of the time, so the slippery floss that wanted to pull anyway was inclined to do so more on silver than blue.

This magic chain does not look much like a yarn magic chain, but it’s cheerful. The satin floss likes to keep its own shape and doesn’t have the benefit of friction to make it stay put. To put it on the tree, I used a yarn needle to hide the floss at one end inside the tree, wrapped the garland around in a spiral, and then hid the opposite end into the tree as well. And then I re-wrapped the garland, because it had slipped completely out of place during the end-hiding operation.

To add the ornaments, I stitched the beginning and ending yarn ends through the tree to hold the star in place – leave an extra long tail on both ends for ease of doing so.

Stars: I made the stars with embroidery floss and a size 4 steel hook (2mm), or with worsted weight yarn or two lengths of floss and an E/4 hook (3.5mm). You can make them with 4, 5, or 6 points easily, although 5 looks the most like a star – 6 looks a bit like a flower, and 4 like a cross or plus sign.
Here’s the pattern. Note that when I slip stitch into a chain other than to make a ring, I insert my hook in the back bump of the chain.
Ch 4, sl st into ring.
*Ch 3, sl st in 2nd ch from hk, ch 1, sl st into ring* as many times as desired; each iteration of *…* makes a point.
FO, putting the end of the yarn through the center of the ring, front to back.
To make one longer point, replace the *…* with:
Ch 5, sl st in 2nd ch from hk; ch 1, sk 1 ch of ch-5, sl st in next ch of ch-5; ch 1, sl st into ring.

The satin floss did not work well at all. Here’s a sample:

Slip knot tips: I did learn some things, and made enough stars to say that a skein should make 3 each of 3 kinds: 6-pointed, 5-pointed, and 4-pointed with one longer point. In both metallic and satin floss, two lengths held together don’t make for a sturdy slip knot. With metallic floss by itself, the slip knot holds well. With satin floss, it doesn’t, but if you add another wrap to the knot before tightening it holds perfectly. That is: a slip knot is essentially an overhand knot with the working end of the yarn looped up through it. You want to convert the overhand knot to a double overhand knot. In the lower drawing of my slip knot instructions, the tail going off to the left gets wrapped around the last strand it passes under.

In the stars made from two lengths of embroidery floss I knotted each separately and then worked with them together. Metallic plus satin worked fairly well (blue and white); satin by itself was just mushy and hard to finish off. The silver floss in the photo is some I had at home, which of course was on an unlabeled bobbin.

I’ve made the decorations above and in the next post, as well as my tips for working with embroidery floss, available as a name-your-price PDF for easy printing.

The post Blue, white, and silver tree appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

Hello! Now that Thanksgiving is over I feel open to Christmas decorating. Almost a month ago I wanted to just sit and crochet without a particular goal in mind, and ended up with this little tree, in sport weight yarn:

To make it I stitched a cone of sorts using back loops only, stuffed it and added a base, and then went back with a new length of yarn and single crocheted in each unused loop, with 4 chains in between each time. It’s slow, but not difficult.

I started writing a post about making such trees and decorating them, but it was ludicrously large even before photos, so I broke it up. I have for you a four-post series, two posts each today and tomorrow.

1. This post!
2. Making your own trees like the ones above (stitching a cone, closing the bottom, and adding branches).
3. Decorating the blue, silver, and white tree in the top picture (magic chain garland and stars).
4. Decorating the red and gold tree in the top picture (chain garland, ornament balls, and pine cones).

The decorations we’ll discuss are all made with embroidery floss, which is a little more challenging to work with than yarn. Part of this is the size, and good lighting helps a lot with that. The other part is that floss doesn’t give at all – yarn will stretch a little as you stitch with it, which helps you get your hooks in and out. To deal with that, try two things: make sure your loops get all the way up to the largest diameter part of the hook (especially important with steel hooks, which start tapering a lot farther from the end) so they aren’t too small, and turn your hook’s mouth downward when you pull the hook out of a loop. The downward direction has a little more space in most stitches (where for a chain, “down” means toward the previous chain). I used “satin” floss (rayon) for one tree and metallic floss for the other, and notes on working with those kinds of floss in particular are included with the ornament instructions. I have to say, though, that my advice for working with satin floss is DON’T. It is like trying to crochet with well-greased twine.

Of course miniature Christmas decorations are also available commercially. The tree above is decorated with earrings (the hook kind); insert them into the tree, as far out or in as you like. Crochet is well suited to making wreaths, as well, either on its own or around a plastic ring.

I can’t close without the piece I promised last time. This is fine yarn (Vanna’s Glamour “Sapphire”, weight class 2) worked with a D/3 hook (3.25mm). The branches took forever, but it’s so chic! I decided to go minimalist and simply use individual strands of metallic embroidery floss as long tinsel. I cut the strands to approximately the right length, erring on the side of “too long,” and wet them so they would lose the kinks from being wound on a cardboard bobbin (at least mostly). Then I separated the strands (almost forgetting my own advice to start by pulling off pairs, because separating a single strand from more than one other strand is difficult) and attached them to the branches, near the cone, with lark’s head knots.

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