A while back I ended up with a Tunisian crochet hook. It's been in my bag of hooks for probably a year. A few weeks ago I decided - that's it I'm going to learn how to do this thing. I had some leftover light purple yarn that looked about the right weight for my 6mm Tunisian crochet hook. It's leftover first from a sweater I made myself and then from a matching sweater I made River.

I remembered that Heart Hook Home had done a bunch of Tunisian crochet and I started with the Simple Crochet tutorial. The key to Tunisian crochet is that on one row you pick up all the stitches onto you're hook and then in the reverse row you get them all off your hook until you're back to one. I did maybe 12 inches of the simple tunisian crochet and I found that it was curling like made. As I did some research I found that this is actually perfectly normal for this stitch. This is actually one of the things that I didn't like about some knitting stitches. I frogged everything.

I then then found the Heavenly Hyggee Hat Pattern and learned the knit and the purl stitches. A few things that I realized. First - OMG does the knit and purl look like it's actually knitting and not crochet. It makes sense given how you do it, but I was expecting it to be quite so similar. Second, when I was doing the simple stitch I kept dropping stitches, but by doing a pattern of 2 knit and 2 purl for the hat, I never dropped stitches. Third, as fast as I am at crochet from lots of practice, I am slow at this. A crochet hat would probably take me 1-2 hours. This took me way way more than that. Fourth, a big part of the problem was that I would be doing this while on zoom calls. Then I would loose track of whether I was in the forward row or the back row. Lots o' frogging!


I do not know exactly what yarn this is, but it is a worsted weight yarn. For the hat I cast on 62 stitches and made it about 80 rows. Then I stitched up the side and closed the top. Later once I had finished the scarf I added 6 rows around the bottom with the multi-colored yarn and then added the pom at the top.




For the scarf I cast on 26 stiches and I used all the light purple yarn I had left which gave me 158 rows. It was not long enough for a scarf so I searched out a yarn that ws the same weight and matched the color. I am not certain what this yarn is, but I'm fairly certain it's 4th of July from Briar Rose Fibers. It is possible the light purple is the same, but I can't be sure.

I changed colors on the side and went until I thought it would be the right length which was 94 rows. Then I flipped it over picked up my 24 stitches and continued on. The join is barely noticeable. If it isn't obvious I did 94 rows on this side too. I think it could do wiht a big of blocking, but overall I'm really please with how the set turned out.




This being a holiday week this will likely be my last post until next Monday. We'll see, maybe a kiln sneak peak over the weekend depending on how the timing works out. Happy Thanksgiving!

A few weeks ago someone turned me onto Shein. This was both great and expensive. I immediately bought $40 worth of placemats. The one that made this bowl was described as a placemat, but I have no idea how you'd use it as one in real life. It's really 3D, a bowl or plate would not lay flat on it.

However, it makes amazing pottery texture I draped this over my wok mold and added a foot. I'm really excited to see the finished product.

Everything I make with cardinals and birches flies off the shelf. I decided to try to make some larger items and see if those sell as I've noticed I don't sell nearly as many large platters as I do small plates. I really like how this platter turned out. The rim template is a cutter from De La Designs.

A few years ago I planted a Thai basil plant in my front yard, or maybe it was in a pot. The origin was 1 plant, but now every year it grows on it's own. Multiple Thai basil plants grow to small bushes.

We've been having this summer like fall so it's grown even bigger this year. This weekend was the last of the warm weather (it's November) so I went and snipped all the basil to make pesto.

So.

Much.

Basil.




I made pesto for about 3 hours. Pesto is pretty simple to make...basil, nuts (pine, walnut, pecan), olive oil, parmesan. The time consuming part is taking all the leaves off the basil stems. Once you have a pile of basil put it into the food processor. I wait until I have about 3-4 cups worth. Turn the processor on and then through the little tunnel add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. Then add in your nuts and cheese. Scrape down the sides and add more oil if needed.

I freeze the pesto in my canning jars.

Next year I'm going to start making holiday stuff in July. I'm frantically making a bunch now for my final show of the year. This adorable set is made with stamps from De La Designs and Gifts. These are in Laguna 60, but I'm also making a few more in B-Mix. I ordered more Laguna 60, but it hasn't been shipped yet so I'm down to my last 50 pounds.

I'm getting ready for my last show of the year coming up on December 3rd making wintery items. The show is the Howard County Holiday Mart. Tickets are available online for $5, but if you use the code HOLIDAY50 you get $1 so tickets are only $4. While this is my first year at the show, this is the 50th year for the Holiday Mart and I'm really excited for it. Hope to see you there!


Both of these bowls were made with winter themed placemats. The one above is a poinsettia and the one below a snowflake. Both were made with a slab, the texture rolled in and then I used a needle tool to cut around the placemat to create the edging. The slabs were then draped over a mold. For the poinsettia I used a large one I made myself from the inside of a wok. The snowflake was one of Michael Harbridge's puzzling molds. Both got rather large foot rims so that they'd look elegant off the table.

I feel like the poinsettia has to be red, but what color for the snowflake?