We're all mad here

2008-03-07T12:53:00.006-06:00

Need a last minute Easter gift or decoration? Try one of these chicken egg cozies. They take just about an hour from start to finish, and they work really well in using up spare bits of yarn and felt around the home.

Years ago, my mother had purchased some chicken plastic egg cozies, and each person in my family had one that we used to decorate for Easter. Over time, they all became lost. I started a family of my own, and, as silly as it sounds, I wanted to have some chicken egg cozies for each of us in my new family. Initially, I thought the chickens were crocheted. I looked online for patterns, both knit and crocheted, but nothing was really like the ones my mom had. My mom did eventually find one of the original chickens for me, and, to my pleasant surprise, they were knit (at that time, I didn’t crochet). This pattern was written based on one of those original chickens. I've had the pattern figured out for a couple of years now, but just got around to putting it up. I'm kind of lazy that way.

Chicken Egg Cozy pattern

Needles: US size 4, 5, or 6 (3.5, 3.75, or 4 mm) or size needed to obtain gauge. Finished knitted piece is
about 5.5 inches long, so you need to get to roughly 5.5 stitches/inch. Keep in mind, many plastic eggs are about 6.5 inches around from the tip of the egg to the bottom and back, and you want to have the piece stretch out to fit firmly around the egg.

Yarn: About 13-15 yards of any worsted weight or sport weight yarn. Red Heart Baby Teri was used for the one pictured. I also used Bernat Baby Coordinates. Gauge is essential! If you don’t meet your gauge, the chicken may be too tight or too loose to fit around the egg. For the Baby Teri, I used size 4 needles, but the Bernat Baby Coordinates I had to go with a 6, and might even recommend a 7.

Googly eyes, 7mm.

Small bits of red and yellow felt.

Sewing thread to either match felt colors or chicken color.

Instructions:

Cast on 30 stitches. Leave long tail for seaming.
K1, P1, repeat to end. Work three more rows of 1x1 ribbing.
Rows 5-12: Knit.
Bind off 10 stitches, knit 9 more (10 total on needle right now), bind off last 10. Break yarn. There should be 10 stitches left in the middle of the piece as shown below.

Join in yarn to the live 10 stitches left on needle, leaving a long tail for seaming. Purl the first row.
Row 2, 4, and 6: K
Rows 3 and 5: Purl.
Bind off in purl. It will look like this:

To finish:

Fold knitted piece in half vertically down the center stockinette piece, creating the head and body. It should look like this:

Weave in ends not used for seaming. Seam up top and back of head. Seam up back of chicken. DO NOT SEAM TOP OR BOTTOM OF CHICKEN BODY.

To create tail, thread yarn at top of back seam of chicken from inside out. Wrap yarn around a couple of fingers, and thread back into back of chicken. Repeat this 7 times or until you get a tail as full as you want. Tie off.

Using red felt, cut two small circles slightly larger than googly eyes. Glue felt to sides of head, then glue eyes on top of felt circles. To create comb, cut a piece that will fit the top of the head with three or four bumps at the top. Sew to top of head.

Using yellow felt, cut a small triangle. It might work well to just cut off the corner of a square piece of felt. Sew beak on with the tip of the triangle facing down, sewing only at the base of the beak.

Insert a standard size plastic egg into the bottom of the chicken with tip of egg in the front.

2007-12-08T01:49:00.001-06:00

So I found out that apparently my website was used for an anti-Pope post last year when it was hacked. I knew it was hacked, and a lot of sites on that server were. And now I'm trying to fix things and it's not working too well. Blech.

2007-10-28T17:27:00.000-05:00

We didn't get from underneath all of those jobs for work until this past week, and so I haven't made much progress since that point on any seaming for Illyria's dress. And, being the type of person I am, I've started Knitty's Broadripple socks. Yep, I'm knitting socks. It's a first for me, and I've been knitting now for several years. I've gotten pretty far on the first one for only having started yesterday. It's just so much easier for me to think of knitting something than seaming. Much less tedious. And since Illyria's dress is lace, I'd rather not think about seaming things right now. I will probably do a bit of seaming today, though.

2007-10-14T21:23:00.001-05:00

Even further today with Illyria's dress. I have one bootie seamed and complete with ribbon. The rest will have to wait until we don't have 380 jobs sitting in our queue. The good news is that I think it should fit her when she is a year and not immediately. I had her put on the bootie already, and it was just a bit too big yet. As it will most likely better fit her in a few months, I won't feel rushed to get it done in the next couple of days (as the girls are having pictures done Tuesday), and I'll have a nice dress for her for Christmas/her birthday.

2007-10-14T00:58:00.003-05:00

Finally! I'm finished knitting all of Illyria's dress. Now onto the seaming part...

2007-10-07T20:27:00.000-05:00

I know I've been a bum about updating this, but quite honestly, I have had nothing to report. I've been working on Illyria's dress for ages, but it's just about complete now. Luckily, I think she should still be able to wear it by the time I am complete. Right now, I've just got to rip out the top of the front of the dress and reknit that (that won't take long at all, really) because I made it a little too high, and then I've got to add on the picot edging to the dress and bonnet, and finally I have to block and seam it.

Here are some pictures of the dress as I was blocking the back prior to finding out I had knit up too far.

I also still have to complete the hat, and my dad's dragon, and I have to get some work done on some Fibre-Craft mermaid pillow dolls for the girls. Those are crocheted, though, and I'm still working on getting that down.

2007-07-21T09:47:00.000-05:00

Ugh, sorry it's taken me forever to update. Of note:

-I finished that bear. I will post pictures later, but you will be able to see it in the Men and Boys (title pending) Stitch n Bitch book this fall, pattern and all

-Currently working on a hat with the Grendel pattern on it, a yellow lace dress for the baby (who is almost 7 months already!) and the Norberta dragon from Knitty. I hadn't knitted much in the last month or two, as I was busy getting a work experience in medical transcription, getting my girls set up in daycare, and just being busy in general.

Will post pictures later, and perhaps post some other things in this oft-neglected blog.

2007-01-23T21:54:00.000-06:00

Progress!

This week, or possibly early next, I should be all done knitting the bear. Below is the picture of what I have finished so far. Basically, I've got the arms and legs, body, head, tail, and bee done. All I need to do now is knit the ears, muzzle, and blood, sew on the eyes, nose, and mouth, and then stuff and seam the thing. I'm excited it's almost complete, and I'm rather proud that I've learned new things while creating the pattern.

2007-01-19T01:03:00.000-06:00

So I know it's been a long time since I updated this, and I have tons to post. But here's the deal: I had my baby early, so knitting was postponed. I'm about halfway done with this bear/bee now. When I get the opportunity to, I will post pictures.

The progress as of right now is as follows:

Bee-The body is done. That includes the striping of the body, the head, and the legs. The wings are done, but I'm not quite sure I like them. I'm also debating about antennae.

Bear-The arms are both knit. The legs are also knit and joined together.

What I have to go-the body, the head, and the blood. With the legs joined together, the body should come along fairly smoothly. I'm hoping it will, anyway.

I'm up way too late typing this, so it's time to go to bed, and hope that the baby sleeps through most of the night.

2006-12-10T09:03:00.000-06:00

Finally! I know I've been holding off on posting in here, but I just received my yarn for the project. I've been waiting for a while, and we had to switch companies as the one discontinued a lot of colors. The yarn I'll be working with now is Brown Sheep Nature Spun. I'm a bit concerned that I won't have enough of the main color, but I'm sure I can scrounge up some if need be.

So this is the plan here:

As I said before, I had to modify it from the original bunny design to a bear, which really didn't bother me any. It's probably better as a bear, anyway. But this will be 100% my pattern, and while that's great, it's also scary. Especially because I've got six weeks to do it.

Updates on this blog will be generally just posting progress. Due to the nature of the project, I can't really post pattern details, but you can watch me struggle with picking up stitches all that you like :). Which brings me to picking up stitches. I blow at it. Suck hardcore. But I think that it's going to be the best thing for me to do for the appendages. You see, the bottom of the legs and arms are round. So I figured the best thing to do would be to knit a circle, pick up the stitches around it, then knit in the round to make the arms and legs. But oh, does picking up stitches hurt my brain. I never know if I'm doing it right. But I guess I'll see in a while when I attempt doing it some more.

2006-11-17T19:51:00.000-06:00

We'll see if I can actually get this to post. The other ones don't seem to be publishing like they should.

This will be the spot where you can watch the progress on the toy I'm knitting, which should be published sometime within the next year.

When I'm a bit more awake, I'll post what I have so far.

2006-05-13T10:38:00.000-05:00

Finally, I've finished the rabbit trio! I finished them and shipped them out yesterday. I just took a quick picture, so you can't see all of the details. Made with Red Heart and Caron acrylic yarns, which I'm not too fond of, but hey, it probably works out the best for a toy. They took me the last month and a half to complete, and I'll have some more to do in the future.

Look for some pattern details in a future post. For now, I'm just enjoying a much-deserved break from them.

2006-04-22T20:49:00.000-05:00

Yes, I've lacked in updating this for a week or so. I know, I'm terrible, but I have no readers to really apologize to.

Update on bunny progress: I've gotten all of the body parts done, one carrot, and one of the greens. Not much is left, and I should have gotten it done by now. Why haven't I? I'm sick, courtesty of my daughter. She started to get sick two Mondays ago, and she's almost all over it now. Then my husband got sick, and he got over it in a few days. Now I've been sick for about a week now, and it's taking a toll over what I get finished. Of course, when I want to sleep, I've got these lovely neighbors who find it fit to talk as loudly as they can outside.

Perhaps I should get motivated to do some things now.

2006-04-16T18:04:00.000-05:00

I'm not quite sure why the link didn't work in the last post, but I'll figure that out later (edit: I have since been told the .jpg extention was somehow missing. Gah.)

Not much more progress on the bunnies. However, my aunt (my husband's aunt, actually) had decided to clear out her yarn stash, so there were probably 20+ skeins of yarn she was getting rid of. Unfortunately, much of it is acrylic, so I did not take a whole lot of it. I'm not too keen on acrylic, especially after working on all of those bunnies. Lots of Red Heart, Lion Brand Wool-Ease, and a few other things. My mother-in-law won a lot of yarn off of eBay, and it would be good for making socks. Those were in the stash because she was hoping they could be spun together to make a thicker yarn (which made me wonder, why didn't she just crochet with two pieces then?).

So here I was trying to widdle down my yarn stash, and I just greatly increased it, especially with the addition of those cones. By greatly, I mean I've got those four cones, some balls of cotton, and one skein of Wool-Ease.

I did finish my husband's chicken, and my daughter's was finished a while ago. After I finish these bunnies, I'll take a break from knitting. Which probably means just a week or so off :).

2006-04-14T09:12:00.000-05:00

I've finally decided what I'm going to do with this blog, and it'll be a creative one.

I'm sure many of you have seen that link going around that said, "Beutiful art made with kintting" or something to that effect. I had done some research into it, and it wasn't knitting at all, but crochet. The artist is German soft sculptor Patricia Waller. Anyway, a friend of a friend had asked that friend if she could make the bunny impaled with a carrot. She said that she wouldn't be able to, but I was a "knitting guru" and she should ask me. I wouldn't ever claim to be that, but I agreed to make it. Now, that link mentioned earlier leads you to believe it's knitting, and that's why I agreed. When I found out it wasn't (and I don't know anything with crochet right now, except how to make a chain) I said I'd give it a shot by knitting it.

Much trial and error later, I had finished it. Once I posted it, I had been asked by someone to make three more. Here's the picture of the first one, and I'll take pictures of the others later. Apparently I am a celebrity in the commissioner's house.

Another project in process are chicken Easter egg cozies. As I've been bogged down with the additional bunnies, I haven't worked on these as much as I should have. Eventually I can post a pattern for those. Also in the works will be a knitted hedgehog. That's not even counting the countless other projects I have--snowman ornaments, a couple of cross stitch pieces I've been working on for around 6 years, and various other things.

2005-12-03T01:39:00.000-06:00

Ok, looks like I'll be starting over completely from scratch because I am a moron.

2005-11-25T20:13:00.000-06:00

I'm slowly going to be making some changes to this site. It sucks, I'm sorry. I'm trying to teach myself Dreamweaver and it's not working out super well right now. But I'll get this updated with new colors and whatnot ASAP. Which means, I'll probably get it done sometime next year.