Category: knitting and crochet

Dropped stitch scarf

I think Sidra needs another scarf since he only had one, so I knitted this short scarf last night. The pattern is based loosely on a scarf pattern in one of the knitting pattern books that Yoshimi has so kindly sent me (thank you so much, Yoshimi!). The books are in Japanese, but one of my favorite things to do about Japanese pattern books is figuring out the diagram. It feels like playing a puzzle game. The original pattern calls for 21 cast-on stitches and the stitches are dropped every 5 stitches. But I only did 11 cast-on stitches and […]

very orange person

Now that I know that Japanese knitting needles size are different than US needles, I finally use them for my first ‘proper’ knitting! My husband likes the color orange and he wants a scarf with stripes of orange on it, so I made it with these super bulky orange and beige yarn and JP15/6.6 mm knitting needles. The yarn is a mix of nylon and wool and it has different widths on it, creating some interesting bumpy texture to the scarf. I knitted it in simple stockinette stitches, so the scarf kinda rolls into a tube. To complement the scarf, […]

Donguri hat

Excuse my model, he just woke up this morning when I wanted to take these pictures. Crocheted with very chunky wool yarn and 10 mm needle hooks, the pattern is actually for a hat with earflaps. But as it was being crocheted, the hat slowly turned to the shape of donguri (acorn) in my eyes, so I decided not to make the flaps and put some chained strings instead. I also added a chained loop on top of the hat. It kinda looks like a tea cozy when not being worn, but once on the head, I think it looks […]

Face wash puff

The pattern is actually for a bath puff, but I made it smaller for washing my face with. It is made of organic cotton yarn, crocheted double-yarn with a 10 mm hook. The original pattern calls for 4 round, but I only did until second row, then replaced the third row with all single crochets into the chain 1 space. The pattern was confusing me at first, but when I don’t really understand, I just start doing it and it usually get figured out along the way. So that was what I did, and it turned out pretty quick! Finished […]

Orange lace scarf

The orange yarn was originally meant to be a knit hat, but I made mistakes with the stitches halfway and didn’t really know how to fix it. I think the yarn was not really a right choice for the hat anyway, so I unravel it and reclaimed the yarn for this crochet project. This scarf was pretty quick to make, I started last night and finished it this morning. As only one skein of yarn is used, the scarf is pretty short, about 90 cm in length. I really like the pretty lace-like pattern, I’m thinking of making a longer […]

Red Bobble Hat

I’m hooked on crocheting! I found these skeins of yarn in a secondhand shop for ¥200 for two of them. The label says that it was wool made in Marabá, Brazil. This hat used up about 1.5 skeins of the yarn. The finished hat is not as slouchy as I want it to be, but I guess it still looks cute. I really like those little puffs. Pattern is Bobble Beauty by Dot Matthews, found from Ravelry .

Japanese knitting needles and a new project

Yesterday I just found out the reason why Sidra’s hat is too small (and why my fingers hurt when I’m knitting). The reason is: I didn’t know that Japanese knitting needles sizes are different than US sizes! D’oh. It means that all this time I’ve been struggling to knit with needles that are 2 sizes too small. No wonder that my fingers hurt! I was just beginning to wonder that I really had no talent for knitting, it was so hard knitting those yarns. Then I found this site that says: “Japanese needle sizes are different from another countries. We […]

Easy crochet headband (or my first crochet!)

When I started to try knitting, I joined Ravelry, a community for knitters and crocheters, to learn about knitting and have a look at all those patterns and projects. Naturally I’d bump into some crocheted projects too, and then I started to get curious. I chose this easy crochet headband from creativeyarn because it is, well, easy. The book I bought the other day about knitting has some crocheting lesson too, so I learn the basic from there. It only took me a few minutes to finish this! I’m very happy with the result because actually I use a bigger […]

Yellow hat

I finally finished it in about three days, and it turned out to be, uh, a bit too small for Sidra. Darn it. But as usual, he’s very excited about the new hat. I added a pompom on top of the hat and another one of those bug button on the hat. This time, the button is a blue kuwagata-mushi (another kind of helmet beetle). Because it’s too small, the hat doesn’t serve any other purpose than being cute. It can’t be pulled down to cover the ears or forehead. However, for serving the purpose of being cute, I think […]