The Tiny Chalkboard

So. I work at Michaels, right? And I pretty much love it, besides the fact that I have to do other things besides stock and organize yarn.

And I spend a lot of time there, recently. (I pour all my funds back into this store thanks to their sales) And I just spent about fifteen dollars on crap. Not really crap, I needed it. Kinda.

I bought this mini chalkboard awhile back thinking "Oh wow! This'll be so cool! I'll have a little chalkboard to write on and stick my sushi magnets on for our craft table."

Yeah, it's not magnetic.

And it really shouldn't bother me so bad but I was so disappointed that I had wasted 3 dollars on it (Thanks to the goodwill ;D )

One day I was stocking paint on the craft paint aisle and I noticed Martha Stewart had magnetic paint! Sweet goodness! This fixed everything! I'd read about spray on magnetic paint but read some reviews online that said nothing good about it. But Martha surely wouldn't screw me over like that damn kryon spray on crap.

You see, I trust Martha Stewart. God knows why, but I trusted her paint to save my dream of sushi magnets on my adorable mini chalkboard.

I got the little bugger for about four dollars thanks to a handy dandy coupon and my sister and I read the instructions and painted, waited, and painted some more.

Even though I probably wont ever buy it again it got the job done. Sort of. The jar said to put on 2-3 coats but we put on easily six coats for it to hold my little maki sushi. It's not as sure fire strong as I wanted but I was just too lazy to go get a piece of sheet metal cut.

But now I have a tiny chalkboard! :D

KayDea crafts

Ho hum.

So my sister made a blog for our business and she has designated me the manager of it which means I am suppose to do it. :/

It's basically the same this as this blog, following our crafting exploitations as KayDea crafts. I'm still going to keep this blog for when I do things outside of that. But no one reads this one so I suppose it doesn't really matter.

I'll post a link anyway!

http://kaydeacrafts.blogspot.com/

Blue whale pattern

I actually made a pattern :D It's just a little blue whale but he's only the beginning.

Body:

Rnd 1: 6 sc in magic circle (6)
Rnd 2: Inc in every st   (12)
Rnd 3: *sc 1, inc* around   (18)
Rnd 4: *sc 2, inc* around   (24)
Rnd 5: *sc 3, inc* around   (30)
Rnd 6: *sc 4, inc* around   (36)
Rnd 7: *sc 5, inc* around   (42)
Rnd 8: *sc 6, inc* around   (48)
Rnd 9: *sc 7, inc* around   (54)
Rnd 10-17 sc around for 8 rnds (54)
Rnd 18: *sc 7, dec* around   (48)
Rnd 19: *sc 6, dec* around   (42)
Rnd 20: *sc 5, dec* around   (36)
Rnd 21: *sc 4, dec* around   (30)
Rnd 22: In BL only *sc 3, dec* around   (24)
Rnd 23: *sc 2, dec* around   (18)
Rnd 24: *sc 1, dec* around   (12)
Rnd 25: Dec around   (6)

FO and sew in ends. I used safety eyes but you can felt or stitch

Fins (Make 2)

Rnd 1: 4 sc in magic ring (4)
Rnd 2:  sc around (4)
Rnd 3: Inc around (8)
Rnd 4-7: sc around for 4 rnds (8)
Rnd 8: Dec, sc in next 2 sc, dec, sl st.

FO, flatten and sew to sides of body.

Tail

(I used the foundation crochet but if you would like to chain and then crochet be my guest, just make sure you have 3 stitches.)
Rnd 1: foundation crochet 3 sc  (3)
Rnd 2: In FL only sc 3, you will now turn the work so that the BL are now the FL and your sc are at in the back of the work. Now sc 3.  (6)
Rnd 3-5: sc around for 3 rnds
Rnd 6: *sc 1, inc* around  (9)
Rnd 7-9: Sc around for 3 rounds (9)
Rnd 10: *Sc 1, inc* around, sc in last st  (13)
Rnd 11-12: Sc around for 2 rnds, hdc in last four stitches

FO, leave long tail for sewing

Tail "top"

At base of foundation crochet, the st farthest to the right, sl and ch 2

Row 1: Dc 8 into first tc
Row 2: Sl into center st
Row 3: Dc 9 into last st

FO, flatten and sew on tail.

I used 9mm safety eyes and embroidered on a smiley face.

I lay claim to the pattern (c) so please don't claim it as your own. Other than that have at it, make it, gift it sell it. Make him a horn and turn him into a narwhal! Oo, that's a good idea...

Happy stitching :D

Yarn score

I LOVE yarn. I'm not into the fancy yarn that's textured or made from Peruvian wool (Although I do love wool) I love being able to get yarn cheaply.

My sister and I make toys for bazaars and lets face it, poor people like us can't afford to be spending 4 bucks on one skein. That's why we go to goodwill.

Don't be quick to judge! Think about it, someone tries to pick up knitting and it doesn't work out, wheres the yarn go? Mrs.Crabb down the street passes away, where does all her yarn go? The goodwill.

Checkout our recent score:

My bads about the low quality photo, my cameras a-wall so I had to use the ipod.

FIFTEEN skeins, folks. Fifteen. And all for eight dollars. And if you kindly will look to the top of the photo you'll see the three balls of purple and the skein of orange, yeah, they're all wool. The purple happens to be home spun and the orange is an untouched skein of knitting nation by Red Heart yarn. You know, the ones with the pin up girls with knitting needles on the tag. I know you've looked at them.

True, if you have a big project and find a color you like there's no guarantee that you'll find the color there again and sometimes it smells like old people but there is literally bags FULL of brand new yarn.

So, yes. I do shop at goodwill. :)

Crescents

Cooking doesn't really fall under crafting, I think, but it is a creative outlet and I love food. Lovelovelove lovelove. And who can resist a fluffy crescent?

Anyway, I had one week of summer break and I was gonna utilize it by doing nothing. Between the vegging and mass production toy making I squeezed in some baking.

I was on a real pie binge a couple of months ago then it was cinnamon rolls but then I remembered how we learned how to make pastry dough in culinary class, it wasn't that hard, just tedious. It's practically like pie crust! Only treated differently.

 Here's my dough and slab of butter. (That's ten ounces of butter, I'll have you know) We didn't have plastic wrap so I improvised and cut a little garbage bag in half :3

 Beautiful dough~

And beautiful folded dough!

You have to let it rest over night and fold it the next day for three days so they were done just in time for fathers day, isn't my timing amazing? So I woke up at the butt crack of day and began rolling, cutting and baking for my dear father <3 And since we don't have a rolling pin either I had to use a plastic cup. Creativity comes in all shapes and sizes.

And were they amazing, folks. I'm really sad I didn't get any pictures of the final product because they were Gorgeous! Baked up so pretty and could see every layer on the edges. A couple of them had cheese inside but the real popular ones were the ones I put jam on, I folded it like a pin wheel and put some jam in the center so it looked like a flower.

Because everyone loves a flower :D

Dye it!

So, my sister and I went to costco the other week and bought underwear and misc other things, as we do. We get home and see that we have three packs of black and WHITE underwear.

Wearing white underwear is just bad joojoo. Who can keep white white, y'know?So what are two 19 year olds to do with their summer break and white clothes? We decide to try our hands at dying. B]

Tye Dye is big here in Portland, it's pretty much the bees knees. We figured, if a bunch of stoned hippies can do it the it really can't be that hard.

 We decided to use our yarn bowls since we couldn't find a bucket big enough.

 Here's Dea mixing the dye :)

And the finished products! Obviously, we had blue and green dye, we only went funky on two of them and in retrospect we should have tried that with the other ones. All you had to do was wrap a hair band around them. Who knew, right?

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Domo-chan

Ok, I'm pretty sure this is going to be my last post today unless I have some stroke of genius. Don't worry though, that doesn't happen very often.

On to more important matters!

Everyone knows who Domo-kun is and if you don't know who he is you at least know what he looks like.

. He's a kids show smash hit from Japan and we don't know exactly WHAT he is he's just domo. And people seem to be satisfied with that. 

I was on the internet and found http://nerdigurumi.com/  which is an amazing website headed by an amazing crafter and she actually made a crochet pattern for domo-kun.

(c) to nerdigurumi.com

So I proceeded to make two domo's one was slightly pygmy while the others eyes were slightly off center but then I had a thought! Domo-chan.

For those not familiar with Japanese terms kun is a kind of cute word of familiarity you put after a boys name while chan goes after a girls name.

That's right. A girl Domo.

Please, if this has already been done before let me live in my little world of ignorance and think I'm actually halfway creative.

I put cardboard in the bottom of her feet so she'd actually stand up. I even gave her lipstick and used black eyelash yarn to give her full lashes. :3 Isn't she cool?!

Cables

I told you I'd be back today ;D

Anyway, I've been crocheting for about two years now and have always idolized knitting, I loved the old fashioned nuances and linear stitches.

And of course CABLES. Gorgeous wonderful cables! And not little ones that look like sticks that will endanger your eyes, but FAT cables. So I had to try and after watching 10 different youtube videos about 20 different times I finally got this:

The cables aren't that well defined since I used a chunky wool yarn but Damn. Grandma would be proud.

 This was the yarn I used, I have two skeins of it since it was only a dollar at Michaels back in the Christmas season. Seeing it's normal price is 5 dollars I probably should have bought out their whole stock.

But, the lady on youtube said it would be easiest if I had a cable needle, and from what I saw it was just a double ended knitting needle. And me being poor and a Do It Yourself-er I tried to make my own. Picked up a stick and went to town with some sand paper and then covered it with some clear nail polish.

That didn't really work out, since apparently I'm severely impaired and didn't know you needed to knit a couple rows in between your twisting of the yarn. (//>_>//)

Somehow I managed and learned how to do it without my makeshift cable needle! Is it sad that that makes me feel cool?

Ah! A blog!

Yeah, I made a blog.

I've been on the internet a lot lately, as I do, and I've been finding myself at an abundance of craft blogs. And on a magical little whim here I am.

This is basically just a place for me to rant about all my crafting adventures since I have no friends.

I'm just a poor 19 year old going to community college, scrounging for a job to support my crafting addiction. I am an avid crocheter, mediocre knitter, baker, jewelry maker, and am about to try my luck at sewing! And, hopefully, I can get my hands on a drop spindle and make my own yarn.

And since I have no life there will probably be another update today about something I can scrounge up.

And ha-zah! The intro has been done!