I heart artichoke hat

Here’s a fun little project that I’ve been tackling the last few days.  The inspiration for this hat came this past Saturday from my table neighbor at the November Cleveland Craft Coalition Bazaar.  She had a beautiful scarf crocheted in a variegated fall color way using a crochet stitch that I had never seen before called the crocodile stitch.  Since I love learning new techniques,  I decided that I had to teach myself how to make this stitch.

The process of learning the technique was fairly easy with the internet.  All I had to do was google “crochet crocodile stitch” and I got tons of results.  I started with learning the basics from this video on YouTube.  After I learned the basics of the stitch I was ready to put it to use.

Though I think a scarf is a great application for this highly textured stitch, I wanted to try a hat, which is how I found this free crocodile stitch hat pattern.  What’s interesting about this pattern is that it’s worked from the bottom up, which is opposite from the way I am used to crocheting.  Along with becoming very familiar with the crocodile stitch by making this hat, I also needed to learn how to make a half double crochet foundation row, for which I used this YouTube video.  Unlike a regular chain stitch foundation row, the half double one allows for much more stretch.

As soon as I saw the pattern online I knew right away that I wanted to make my hat look like an artichoke.  I mean this stitch just screams ARTICHOKE to me!  Luckily, I had nearly an entire skein of Caron Simply Soft yarn in Dark Sage from the shamrock garland I made last March.

It was very easy to adapt the before-mentioned pattern to look more artichoke-like.  All I needed to do was create a stem on top to complete the look.  Easy!

Have you made something recently that utilizes a new technique?  I’d love to hear about it, or better yet see it!  You can post a photo of a finished project using a new technique that you learned on the zween facebook page, or just tell me the story of a project in the comments below.

Plastic Sack Button Bag

If you’ve been to a vintage store recently, or remember the 60s-80s, than you’ve probably seen a button bag.  It’s a pretty cute design really.  They have wooden handles, a lining, and an outer layer of the bag which is removable via the buttons and can be reversed.

I came across one such bag on a recent thrift store visit and knew immediately that I wanted to use it to make one of my handbags made with recycled plastic grocery bags.

What you see here is my second attempt.  My original idea was a variation on a granny square, but alas, it was an epic fail

What can I say?  I’m just really in love with working in the round and utilizing the tapestry crochet technique.

Yep, that zig-zag pattern didn’t happen by accident!  I love the variations in designs that can be achieved with tapestry crochet.

What sets this bag apart from all the other plarn (that’s plastic+yarn=plarn) bags I’ve made to date is that it’s lined.  Not that it needed to be lined.  In fact, I like it better when they aren’t, but since the lining was already attached to the handles I figured I might as well just leave it attached.

Like the messenger bag featured in my last post, this plastic bag purse will be available for sale starting this Friday, September 23rd in the gift shop at MOCA; Cleveland.

Thank you for stopping by!  If you are a fellow crafter who makes purses or items with plarn I’d love to hear from you.  Leave me a comment below.

Also, make sure to like the zween facebook page because I like it when people like zween.  It makes me feel good.  Plus, you will be updated whenever I write a post and sometimes I write up crafty tutorials, so what do you have to loose?

This post has just been linked up with Homework: today’s assignment, be inspired.  You can find more show and tell projects here.

AND, this post was just linked to Upcycled Awesome at the T-Shirt Diaries.  Click the link below for more upcycled awesomeness!

This post was also added to Made By You Monday.

Where am I going? A July Challenge

Today I watched a very interesting video called Etsy Success Workshop: Crafting a Well-Rounded business.  This video features Becky Johnson of Sweetie Pie Press and Church of Craft.  During the course of this hour-long video, Becky talks about her background and how she developed her creative business.  It’s a very inspiring story and it made me think about what it is that I’m doing and where I want to go in the future, and more importantly, what steps I need to take to get their.

As a creative person, sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in individual tasks while losing sight of the big picture.

For the month of June I gave myself a challenge to write one blog post per day.  It hasn’t been easy and June isn’t over yet, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  It was a big challenge for me because, like most people, I don’t always have something particularly profound or interesting to say every single day.  But by forcing myself to come up with a post, I really stretched myself to find subject matter that would be interesting to write about and (I hope) to read about.  I was surprised to see how my subject matter feed organically from post to post, sometimes inspiring a continuation of a thought while sometimes veering off into unexpected directions.

Though I don’t plan on posting new content everyday once June is over, I do plan on continuing to post regularly (probably 3-4 times per week) and really push to make the posts that do get published on this blog to be of high quality.

June was very much blog focused.  So where should I go in July?

After watching the before mentioned video, I’ve decided that I really need to focus on making zween a real business.  I’m still at a loss as to what that means to me, but July will be all about finding that out.

What will be your personal challenge this July?

What does zween mean?

zween comes from Arabic and means:

Beautiful, cool, cute, lovely, pretty, kind, attractive, appealing, unique, wonderful, pleasing, fine, delightful, ideal, exquisite, dazzling, elegant, magnificent, marvelous, superb, excellent, interesting, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera…

In the context of this blog, zween is about embracing a D.I.Y. attitude and celebrating the handmade.

Why?

Because our planet is becoming a more homogenous place every day and I do not want Wal-Mart to take over the world.

Because I appreciate the handmade and recognize creativity in each person.

Because Do-It-Yourself is a good mantra to live by and there is a small but growing army of people doing so.

And because as an individual with a blog I have the power to help people create not only things, but experiences to enrich their lives which aren’t available at big box retailers.