I'm a terrible blogger!

I am terribly, terribly sorry, blogworld. I've been neglectful (again) of my little corner and I really have no excuse for it except for laziness. Oh well! I'm back now, and with a fun little project to show you.

As most people who know me are aware, I love mushrooms. I am enamored with them! I doodle them, I have a phone background with mushrooms, and now I have crocheted them!

You can find my Ravelry project page HERE! With a link to the pattern itself.

seedling

Two months or so ago, I started something I must've done 500 times as a child - I tried to grow an avocado seed. This time, however, I had the internet on my side! This article at The Hungry Mouse sums it up pretty well, and while my pit isn't doing exactly as it said it would, I still feel pretty confident. As soon as I have another jar, I'm going to be doing another one for one of my former coworkers. 

This is my little avocado - yep, that's one long root shooting out the bottom, and no leafy stem or shoot from the top yet! It has seriously cracked quite a bit, but it's still going strong. I've got it in a Mt. Olive pickle jar on my kitchen windowsill and I really can't wait to see how well it develops.

granny square

 

Finished granny square! I finished it Friday night (at a bar, no less) and love it. I just can't figure out what I'd like to do with it now! I'm sure it will find a place on an end table or a shelf or something, but I'm still admiring how soft and lovely it is for now. 

I used the remnants of the skein (still at the bar - all my friends were like, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING YOU CAN'T CROCHET AT A BAR.") to make myself a sweet little cell phone cozy, which I still haven't managed to get a picture of.... :/ I should probably get on that. 

Anyways, hope you enjoyed your weekend, and happy Monday!

Instagram Catch-Up

April and May have been very busy months. The boything had to have surgery and has been off work for almost two entire months, and I've been working QUITE a bit! I've had a little bit of time to dabble here and there, and here are some things I've made.  All of the pictures are from my Instagram (follow me @aramanthe)!

 

First off is a triangular doily type thing I made to go underneath a gnome and a few candles in my bathroom. I love gnomes! This is the set-up before I added the doily:

I don't have a picture of before, but as you might imagine it does add a nice pop of color. The doily was made from my favorite yarn, Lion Brand Amazing, in Wildflower.

Next up is a MUCH belated thank you to Carolynn of Kitty-ears.com for these two knitted cuffs! I won them in a giveaway from her blog and they are adorable. I so wish I could knit! One is for a friend (although honestly I can't decide which friend to gift it to) and one is for me to keep. Lovely!

Last of all, I've been making granny squares out of my Bernat Mosaic yarn. I think when I get done with a few more, I'm going to make them into a small bag or pillow. I love how the yarn morphs from color to color!

Just finished another hat!

 

Very basic pattern of my own design. Chain enough to wrap around your head where you want the hat to sit, then half double crochet until the hat is wide enough to cover your head. Sew up the sides to make a tube, then cinch the tube at the top to close off one end of it. Voila! Instant hat. I think next one I'm going to do like this will be a chevron pattern...

Finished Projects!

First off is a hat I made for myself, which has been dubbed The Jellyfish Hat by my coworkers. It's Lion Brand Amazing in Mauna Loa, and I finished it in about five hours total (which is a record for me, haha). I really, really, really love this hat! It's very slouchy and comfortable, but if I need to I can roll it up and have a nice warm brim covering my ears. The only issue I have with it is that the yarn is 47% Acrylic and 53% Wool, so it can get kind of itchy if I wear it for hours on end. The pattern is from Ravelry and is called the Give It A Whirl hat. You can find my Ravelry project page for it right here!

 

 Next is the hat I made for my boyfriend, Chris, who loved my hat and immediately decided he needed one just like it. He chose I Love This Yarn! Stripes in High Sierra from Hobby Lobby, which was a good choice but I almost didn't have enough to finish! The end result is a bit snug, but it's stretching out and he loves it. The yarn is Acrylic which is good, because the first time I made him a hat it was Wool and he ended up felting it on accident!

This is a sort-of stashbuster project (which I'm now offering for sale on my Facebook) that I'm calling the Strawberry Ripple Scarf (that's a Ravelry link, folks!) and I really do adore. The yarn is Lion Brand Amazing in Strawberry Fields, and originally was going to be a hat just like the other two projects I've featured in this post, but Chris changed his mind and chose an all Acrylic instead. It's super soft, was super easy to work up, and works well as a cowl/infinity scarf. I learned the pattern from a Youtube video, and I've made several similar scarves. While I was taking pictures, my fuzzy shih tzu Abbey was very interested in what I was doing. Photobomb!

Strawberry Ripple Scarf

Newest project :) 

It's a pattern I've used before, and the second colorway of this yarn I've used, and I love it! It will be a scarf and I'm debating on whether I'll use buttons or just sew it up at the ends, kind of to make it a cowl.

Had a very strange dream that my best friend tattooed this onto my left forearm and spoke Mandarin Chinese to me while she did it. So of course I had to draw it almost as soon as I woke up so that I didn’t forget what it looked like.

I'm the worst blogger ever :C

So, as is to be expected, I completely neglected this blog for a few months! Sorry, non-existant readers! Life has been good to me; Chris and I moved into a splendid rent house and I've got my own "office" now (also known as the room of no return). I promise to document my latest crafty-crap endeavors and post them here, but for now you can check out my foray into the world of webcomics:

dragonchaser.blogspot.com