Linkage

Linking to my buddy Sarah's blog.

She's my hippy friend and she has a pretty kick ass blog full of useful tips and some great meal planning!

She also hosts a "Mostly Homemade Mondays" part of her blog where other bloggers can share/link up their pages.

Hop on over and take a look! Frugal by Choice, Cheap by Necessity

S'mores Cake Batter Fudge

Another pinterest inspired post.

Cake Batter Fudge

looks delicious, doesn't it? and for something that uses the MICROWAVE for dessert, I had to try it, and it came out pretty good! (although next time I will omit the frosting, it's very sweet!)

So  I decided to use chocolate cake instead and add fluff and grahm cracker crumbs to the top and this is what resulted. Came out pretty darn good and seriously, try it. your ass won't thank you but your taste buds will!

 

sorry for the ugly shadow in all of these pics, i'd make a lousy Papa-razza

Hello Kitty Hat

I made this hat for a friend of mine's little girl, she just turned 4 and had a Hello Kitty birthday party. I know it's August, but I couldn't resist practicing my new crocheting skills.

I used bulky yarn and the 6.00mm (J) hook
Base of pattern: Earflap Hat (unfortunately i can't share it because it was purchased)
Additions: ears, whiskers, pink trim and bow accent, button eyes and nose

There is a free pattern here. but I did not use this pattern, it's just what I based my final product off of. The one I did use was similar but I made some changes. I hate that I can't get more specific but due to copyright laws I can't.

I'll need to start writing my own patterns.

Cabled Dog Sweater

Before I had my daughter I was obsessed with dressing up my dog, yes I'm one of those people. Although, can you blame me she is adorable.

Yes, she had her own play gym too. ::sigh::

So naturally, i have a whole wardrobe for her, but with everything i've bought her every sweater has been too short. She's very long and lean unlike myself. so i decided to try making a dog sweater. once i figured it out it was pretty easy. she's tiny 4lbs 3oz so i used the small 24 peg loom, and some bulky yarn.

Materials:

• yarn, either use bulky or do two strands of medium/worsted weight yarn.
• cable needle (if you're doing cables, if not no biggie)
• size loom for your doggie, like i said, my dog is tiny, and this sweater probably wouldn't fit a dog much bigger than her but the pattern can be adjusted to fit any size loom!
• loom tool
• tapestry needle
• stitch markers

 This pattern is for a small/teacup dog, so everything is little!

Before you cast on look at your loom. Put the starting peg in front of you, now counting the two middle pegs go out an additional 4 pegs on each side. These 4 pegs on either side of the starting peg will be your leg holes.

Please forgive my horrible diagram, but hopefully it explains it well enough.

Click it to make it bigger!

Cast on normally and knit (all in e-wrap if no cable) if you are doing a cable down the back you need to add a purl stitch before and after your cable stitches. so on the diagram above, the stitch marker would go on the 1st and 4th peg of the cable, and make your purl stitch before and after these.

so, you've cast on and have about 4 inches done. now it's time to make the leg holes.

to do this knit your first two stitches as normal, then once you get to the first stitch that you want to cast off, follow this method.

i'm going to name the pegs A and B, A being the peg on the left and B on the right. take B, put it on peg A, so now you have two loops, knit off stitch, place back on peg B. it sounds complicated but it's really easy. then continue for the next 3 pegs until you have 4 empty pegs. after you have your 4 empty pegs, wrap your working yarn around them as a foundation for the next row and continue on knitting around the loom again until you have 6 pegs to go, repeat cast off of 4 stitches, knit last two pegs.

The round after the leg holes, knit all stitches!

keep knitting until you feel the sweater is long enough.

But wait, you mentioned cables right??

--ah yes, cables.

If you are doing cables i suggest doing them about every 6 rows. and the method i use to cable is pretty simple.

It starts with the row before, when you get to your stitch markers make your wraps for the cable stitches pretty loose, finish out the row.

Once you reach your cable stiches in the cable row (i do a 4 stitch right cross cable, you can do left if you want or add more stitches, but it does get VERY tight to work with, so i found that 4 stitches is plenty and it looks nice).

take your cable needle and pick off the two right stitches starting with the most right, place in back of the pegs.

 move over the two left stitches onto the two right pegs, placing the more right of the pegs on the far right peg, followed by the left peg.

now take your stitches on the cable needle and put them on the empty pegs, knit all 4 stitches and keep going to finish the round.

hopefully i explained that well, i feel like i was speaking another language. i'm going to try and put a video tutorial together for these methods as my diagram drawing leaves something to be desired.

Almost as important as everything else is the bind off. you may be tempted to use the bind off method i described above to finish your project but don't i tell you! it has almost no stretch and your dog will hate you more than he/she will for putting it on them in the first place.



The method i used is called the super stretchy bind off, and it is exactly as it sounds, super stretchy, it's wonderful and i'm actually not scared of most loomed projects now because of finding it.

in a nutshell the super stretchy bind off is very easy. measure your working yarn to about 3 times the length of your loom, add a little extra and cut it off, thread it through your tapestry needle.

skipping peg one, put your needle up through peg 2 and keeping the yarn infront of peg 1 so now there are 2 strands of yarn on peg 1, pull the yarn taught, now, go back and put your needle down through the top of peg 1 behind both strands of yarn. skip peg 3, go up peg 4, and back down through peg 3, all the way across until you've reached the last peg, and work back over peg 1 to make sure you have a good closure. now, be brave and pull all of the work off your loom. i'll wait...

see! isn't it pretty? and stretchy?!? good. now weave in your ends and you're done!



The final product on my beautiful model Layla

She was too ashamed to show her face

she seriously wouldn't look at me, i took at least 20 pictures

that about sums it up, no?