Crochet Podcast Episode 19 - Playing catch up.

hi everyone my name is katrina chadwick and i am here to talk to you about crocheting and all the crafty things i've been up to i am sorry i have been absent for a bit i haven't been uploading videos since last june i've just realized i can't say last month now and today is i'll give you a date just for a point of reference it is tuesday the 11th of august so i haven't been on and i haven't filmed all of july now the reason for that and i'm gonna sort of not explain so i feel like i have to but i'm just gonna say why so it we hit a year since our son sydney has passed away so i gave birth in july of 2019 to a stillborn son at 30 weeks and i did say that here on my videos afterwards i had a bit of an absence around then as well and we've we've been healing pretty well but grief is grief and it's gonna flare up when you can have moments at any time at any point in life it doesn't matter how far away it is and we were celebrating his first birthday and that's how i'm choosing to look at it is that every year on the 12th of july will be his birthday and we're just gonna have some sort of little celebration within our family so this year we went out in the afternoon and we had a really nice day together with our two boys that we have and we had a really nice time which is really good and i didn't realize but i was having a really tough time in the two weeks before his birthday so i was really getting anxious and nervous and quite upset and didn't understand why or what was happening and i realized once we had gone through the day on his birthday i realized the next day that it was that my grief i was so anxious that we'd do something for his birthday that i was putting way too much pressure on me and my husband and he was going through his own uh grief journey as well and in the end the day was lovely it wasn't overly spectacular brilliant because unfortunately we didn't get to have a son but we felt very happy with with the day that we had and the way we remember him and we'll just go on from here every year but because of that i didn't do a video in those two weeks um before his birthday and then since then i tried to film one night and it was too dark and it was just there so it just didn't happen so this is where we are we're gonna start back in august again and get going so i've had about a month i'm pretty sure it's a month but it might even be a bit more but about a month of makes here so i have 10 finished objects and today's view video is purely just for me to show you my finished subjects uh what i've made where i've gone with them how that's all gone and then i will put up another video because we have had the big wool show here in australia so with covet obviously curve 19 is happening everywhere coronavirus is a massive thing and in the state i'm in new south wales we are not in lockdown as such we are just socially distancing um self-isolating if you need to if you're going to display any symptoms or signs even if it could be something else we're just getting ourselves tested and put away straight away whereas in victoria they're full on lock down don't go out don't do anything because they've had a little a run with numbers for people getting sick and then for people passing away unfortunately as well so all that saying i've lost my train of thought i was saying with coronavirus ah yes due to the coronavirus total brain fart there um so because of that we haven't been able to have any of the wall shows and in victoria they have the bendigo wall show and they call it the sheep and wall show we were going to go this year it was going to be in july the 17th and it just didn't happen so instead they did the big wall show online and they created a youtube channel for it the organizers of the wool show that is and they did a virtual shop experience as well for a weekend um so i think it was the friday saturday sunday so three days and so i'm going to do another video about that as well yes that's me hightailing it back to make my point so i'm going to show you the 10 things i have finished now i don't have all of them on me but i do have my ipad with me so what i'm going to do is i'm going to show you the things that i don't have with me that i've either gifted or i've sold passed on i will show you on my ipad if my ipad chooses to work i had it signed into ravelry so the first one is a amigurumi teddy now it's a bunny sorry bunny rabbit doll and i got the pattern off pinterest it was a free pattern and i was trying to use up some stuff in my stash which has been the theme of me getting in into 2020 i wanted to use a lot of the stuff that i've been gifted or given in the last year or two that i just don't get drawn to first off so i made a point of pulling out something and then trying to make something with it so with this one i used some i'm pretty sure it's like a polyester fluffy sort of chenille yarn and i made this so i hope you can see that it just left i hope you can see that one there so it is the classic stuffed bunny and if you look up that on pinterest it'll come up it is by one dog wolf and i will link all the patterns as well down below so that was my first finished project that was one that i made liked thought it was pretty but i thought it would suit a newborn baby and i don't know anyone currently who is pregnant or about to have a baby so what i did was i listed it on my personal facebook page and just said if anyone's interested would you inspire it off me and i had someone who was having a christening that weekend and said oh yes i'll definitely grab it so that was awesome and then i made another of the velvet teddies i don't know if you remember but in my last video i showed a velvet yarn amigurumi teddy bear using another free pattern off pinterest and i had posted that on my facebook page as well and somebody really liked it and had asked me to make them them one as well so i had some more yarn and i had to get some more brown but that is the teddy and that one there is going to a it's not the best photos unfortunately i'll show you again but this one's going to another baby i think the baby's due in december but they would just saw it and said i'll put it aside for them which is lovely so i'm really happy with that because a couple of my uh makes and some friends that i've recently not recently met but i've known them for a while but i've recently had them added on facebook they've been able to see what i've been making and it's been really really good so they were the two that i don't have and then i also i'm going to show you these because i don't have these either but i have made some more of the simple seed stitch beanie sorry i'm looking down and looking at my ipad to make sure i get the right patterns and things so i made two and the request was for two black beanies and i got some new yarn i was on the bendigo woolen mills website looking for some yarn for to finish off my husband's blanket which i will show you in a minute and i found this yarn it is called haze h-a-z-e and it is in the midnight mix and it's a black but it's almost a charcoal gray mix it's not really quite as dark as a black mixed with a red and it makes quite a nice simple seed stitch beanie and i'm hoping that that goes down well it did come out slightly different size to the other one i had made which is this one here just in plain black and for this black one i used lincraft veronica yarn it's called veronica it is a worsted weight yeah it's a 10 ply or worsted weight yarn just plain black i think that's even just what it's called and i'm making the extra large men size in those beanies so they're both the same size even though ones turned out slightly less than the other with the bendigo woolen mills the black with the red mix through it it was an eight ply so i just held two strands double i got a pack for ten dollars and had four 50 gram skeins in it which i thought was really good i used two of them completely two of the skeins and i started on the second two and probably used up two or three grams it wasn't very much it was just enough to finish the little edging on the brim so that's really good and i'm really happy with that then so that's all the stuff that is purely i have to show you through my ipad but otherwise i'm just going to show you the other finished projects so i finished a shawl i finished a couple actually but i have a skein of yarn left over so i can show you what it looks like and unfortunately it is falling apart this one my kids have gotten to it but this is the skein but i was using commander yarn and it's a european collection yarn that lingcraft is currently stocking and it's 100 grams it's in the ocean mix uh it's made in turkey it's 50 more 50 acrylic and i don't know if you can see that but it's got a beautiful halo in it as well so it's all in mixtures of blues it's tonal it goes from a light to a dark blue it says to use a four and a half millimeter hook i think i used whatever the pattern recommended which was like a five or five and a half i think and i would say because it does change thickness it goes from sort of anywhere between an eight ply to a ten ply in the thickness of the yarn itself uh i would work with it as if it was a worsted weight yarn just because they're halo as well and it gives you a little bit more definition in your stitches otherwise you won't really see too much between all the fuzz and you won't be able to frog it as well so yeah lincraft yarn i used six bowls of this i bought eight because this uh shawl scarf is called the tassel shawl and it is a free no it's not it's a paid pattern that i bought in a booklet from leancraft and i bought this and so because i recommended this yarn i bought this yarn but it recommended eight i thought it was big enough at six i haven't moved in my edges so i'm sorry but this is the oh big shawl so it's enough that i can wrap it around my shoulders and keep myself nice and warm and cozy this is big enough for this but i could also wear it as a massive oversized shawl big wintery one and we are in winter currently in australia so it's been cold we have been having anywhere from minus two to minus eight overnight temps in the last week week and a half and last week we had two days where the wind chill made it minus eight during the day which is really rare we don't usually get the minus eight during the day it usually warms up just a little bit but it's been quite cold for the last uh week and a half we get two to three weeks of really freezing cold almost snow like weather uh in the midst of our winter and then it starts to warm up for spring so perfect shawl scarf for winter so it's all in the blues i don't know if i'm going to keep it i don't know if i'm going to gift it i'm starting to think about my christmas presents for teacher gifts my son's in kindergarten and i have a preschooler so we do have half a dozen people that i like to give gifts for um i am trying to do some small gifts and i don't have to do large ones every year but i do find that with all that's happening this year i think everyone needs something extra special so it could be a gift but it's okay so that was the first shawl i finished and then i finished um yeah to go with this one so i finished this cute hippo and it is all fluffy and hairy because i have cats so it's got little bits of fluff but it is an amigurumi and i used a new cotton yarn so i put in an order the end of may i think it was may but it might have been june maybe it was june early june i put in an order for some yarn it arrived and i wanted to try it out i bought something that i knew i liked and i wanted and then i got this as well so this is milano cotton sport i don't know the color because it just says color 23 it's 100 grams and that gives you 187 meters or 204 yards 100 cotton and a four millimeter hook uh i would say it's an eggplant even though it says cotton sport it is pretty close to a an eight ply like a light dk but yeah so i used the hidden stitch two with crow amigurumi where you throw the loop behind or back rather than um with the way i crochet rather than bringing the yarn back over the hook around it i was going instead over it and it gave this really neat tight fabric and that's the older purple is that milano yarn and i think it's quite nice it definitely works out well for this for amagumi i think it would be nice in scrubbies or face washes it is a nice cotton it is a little bit splitty but i think that's just the nature of cotton i found it was really nice to work with and then with the whites i just got my stash and found some extra um white eight ply that i had for these little bits and then i just put some safety eyes in there so i will get you the pattern i will have to look at my ipad so this one is i think it's just called the amigurumi hippopotamus yep i'm a groomy hippopotamus by grace and yarn and i'm pretty sure this is a free pattern on her blog i'm pretty sure it is and you can get a paid pdf pattern uh as well so i got found this through ravelry and then it sent me to her blog i'm pretty sure as well so then there's that one she um her hippopotamus that she shows in her pictures is a little bit i think bigger than this but that's just because of the uh ply in the yarn so it is i've just checked it is a free pattern so there's that one really like it grace and yarn the designer i i haven't looked into the actual lady i'm assuming it is a lady named grace but it might not be i have made the hippo the bee and another one potentially the reindeer i think it is and i loved the amigurumi patterns and i will keep going so whenever i have an inkling to make amagumi now i think i'm just going to head to her patterns because they are really really good they're really well written and they explain what's happening which is good so then i'm gonna go with something completely different and show you a pillow case so i bought i'm gonna hold it up lincraft loops yarn and it is a novelty yarn with the i think it's polyester let's have a look yeah polyester i'm attached to like a a string or a piece of fabric and then it creates little loops and has a gap and then creates a loop so it's all about finger knitting in this one so i made like a basket weave stitch a pillow case so it's just one big rectangle you fold it in half seam the bottom straight away and then you just do up the sides on this one i already had the pillow insert it was an old pillow case that i took off and then put this on top it just sits on my lounge in our bedroom we have a little seat couch so it is in navy and i would not buy this gun again whilst i think it's awesome for a novelty yarn really cool something to try i did not like that you couldn't see the stitches so i'd recommend using a lighter color but in that instance the lighter colors just didn't work for my bedroom i think there's only four or five colors that you could pick from and with this one you get 14 meters with the ball it's 200 grams and it was a free pattern on the leancraft website so leancraft.com.a you will get to that pattern same thing as always i will link stuff in the bottom so love the pillowcase it's great it'll sit on my couch until it gets really yucky and can't do anything with it and then i'll change it up for something else but for now really nice looks good um i'm chuffed with the way it looks but just not happy with the yarn itself won't be making anything else with loops yarn but i knew going in that i only was buying enough to make that project and that was it and then i'm just making sure i haven't missed anything looking down at my ipad so then we went to a friend's house and we had to go past a spotlight and i bought yarnspirations karen skinny cakes now i'm sure most people know these ones so the skinny cakes are 250 grams and you get 727 meters i got the rainbow colorway which is amazing well i just realized that there was a pattern on the ball bend i wonder if it's crochet yes it is so i'm going to keep that there's quite a nice looking shawl on the ball band i'm gonna keep that for the pattern anyway so i used my rainbow to make a long asymmetrical uh shawl scarf something that can be worn nice big and bright i might keep this on it's getting a bit chilly actually i'm sitting outside so this is a pattern called lean on me i've got to just look up the pattern designer stitch with passion now stitch with passion uh the person who runs it the lady who runs it the man who runs it i don't know sorry apologize i have just found them on instagram myself so i'm sussing out who they are and they saw that i had made this and loved it um and they said that it was lovely and bright and made their monday because i shared it monday which is yesterday because it's tuesday i've just sewed in the ends i've had this made for like two weeks but just sewed in the ends and managed to take some photos yesterday and it just it's just nice so i've haven't washed it i don't know how the wash and wear is on um karen's skinny cakes but i would buy another karen skinny cake for blankets and for shawls and scarves because it was really nice and i found the colors in it were really nice as well i was just really drawn to this rainbow i was feeling pride month at the time and i fitted in really well so i got to make myself a pride shawl scarf and this one's definitely staying with me i don't care if i only wear it once which i doubt i'm sure i'm going to get lots and lots of wear out of these i'll just wear all my neutrals underneath and yeah so i'm really chuffed with that um pattern was good well written i had started to make it and i think i finished about 15 rows ish and i put it down and started another project when i came back to it i didn't have my hook in my bag rookie mistake i know so that was a bit of pain and i ripped it back to like the second or third row and then started again so that worked out really well just by ripping it back it was easy and then just kept going and i made these um it was a bit monogamous monogamous i worked on just the one project to get it finished which is really good really really good so this one is a paid pattern uh i bought it through ravelry just so you know and you can buy it there i don't know if it's on etsy as well i have not looked so apologies for that but you may be able to find if you find uh stitch with passion on instagram you might be able to see if they've got a link tree to show you uh where you can get their patterns so last two getting on the other one is i'm going to show you this because i finished this first out of the next two i finished a habitat cardigan so it is it's not i just realized that i can't really show you but it is in a lovely spotlight worsted weight yarn it's four seasons is the brand the actual yarn is called usa spot saving yarn so it's a 10 ply comes in 200 gram balls it's like a bog stock standard that everyone loves to buy here in australia um i'm on a couple of facebook groups um for crocheting and everybody that seems to love it at the time was on special probably two months ago when i bought the other yarn i was talking about i kind of bought a bit more sorry not sorry and i bought this and this is called peacock the color i will get your better photo with me wearing this because i'm not going to put it on now and fiddle but it's the habitat cardigan free it's by make and do crew and i was tossing up between two different designs and i just couldn't work out which one i wanted to do so i did this one it's by jess coppam of make and do crew just getting this photo up to show you and ignore my face but that is me in it so i'm quite a tight crocheter so i used a size six millimeter needle which i think is a j and i so templar yarn with that and i was getting under gauge now that's fine because i've already made two of these before so what i had to do was i made the rectangle for the i think it was the medium large size yeah so it was small to medium medium to large large to extra large of the three sizes i made the medium to large for this in the back piece and i think i made that and left it as it was i just put some pins uh stitch markers in the sleeves where it says to join from the rectangle to make that and i had to do one or two last stitches to seam it up to create that armhole so that it was comfortable enough because i have quite broad shoulders um just to have enough space so i could get a bit of a broader range of movement and then i had to once i made this tush section i actually had to widen it so when i put the markers where because it folds together and creates two triangles on the sides of the rectangle once you create the arm sleeve and then you create a tush section i can say this because it's all free pattern underneath i needed to widen that slightly so that it would actually cover my bottom because yeah got a bum it's okay no dramas just gotta live with that and just gotta know so i widened it a little bit but then it recommended 13 rows and 13 rows wasn't enough to come right down as far as i wanted so i think i made it between 15 and 20 just give it an extra length so i made it longer and then i did a little bit more of this so this is this what'd you call that like the cow the neck i can't use my words today the edging well let's just say edging the edging around your back of your neck and it comes all the way down it's all one big piece and you work it back and forth it says to have 24 rows and 12 of these bumps in the edging and i did about 15 so i added on about six extra rows just so it comes in far enough what i did because i know with myself i wear a lot of things over and over again and they stretch whether it be handmade or any sort of knit whether i've bought it from a shop so i made it so it would fit around comfortably but over time if i hang it up on a coat hanger in my wardrobe which i know you shouldn't do with these knit items but occasionally i forget and i do hang it up with my other stuff and it might stretch or drop and that's fine so i've made it so i can hang it out say on the washing line as is and it will drop out if i were to make it as baggy as the pattern um the way she's written it oh the way it looks in her photos i would have need to have made the extra the large to extra large sizing to get it that baggy i was happy to have it a little baggy but not as much as she has it you'll understand if you see the photos or if you've made the pattern it's just one of those things i don't think no i've haven't sewed into all my ends on this one but i love it i've already worn it i wore it on sunday to lunch which is awesome and then my last thing that i finished so i will give you my last one is the seaside stash busting blanket by coastal crochet it is a free cow that she had upon her project sorry on her website her name is eleanor tully of coastal crochet and i found the pattern on rivalry that i wanted it took me to her blog and it's set up in weeks to do the cow easy i didn't complete all 35 weeks which she has written there because i didn't want it as long she makes it long enough to fit on a single bed for length and then it's just wide enough to drape over really nicely this blanket is for my husband and he wanted something to sit on the land with to be able to snuggle on under and for something to be heavy so when he's cold he can have it over the top but with that sensation of weight as well he'll just fall off to sleep he loves i need to buy him a weight blanket he really loves it so i have used bendigo woolen mills rustic and this is just one of the colors i didn't bring out all of them because i actually used up the rest this is what i've got left so this is their rustic in hermitage it's an eight ply 100 wall and i used a four millimeter hook which was what the yarn recommended not with the pattern i didn't go off that because the pattern itself was just giving me a rough guide to work off and it said to use any so i have this one now i even though it says here warm hand wash i did put it in my washing machine on a gentle cycle and i laid it out to dry and i pinned it out to dry because i wanted it to be stretched out and to be in exactly a rectangle shape because early on in the piece i did make a mistake and my edge kind of wobbled in a little bit on one side but with my border you can't even tell so you won't be able to see all of it but it is oops no that's the back i use this scalloped edge and i've used five colors so we've got hermitage marine i think there's an earth is the brown forest is the green and i think this lighter cream almost oh sorry light brown cream is stone so used five colors i use 200 grams quite a large blanket so it's 200 grams in each ball for the body of the blanket and then i needed to get more so i was going to use originally the blue and the red on the border but when i ordered it i could only get the red the blue was on back order so i haven't gotten the blue as yet i'm still waiting on it because as it turns out bendigo woolen mills in australia is now selling three kilos of yarn per hour to customers it's crazy and i don't know if it's the per hour or per sale but it's intense they were saying that they are going in overdrive for a not a small company they're quite a decent sized company in australia for for milling yarn but they do the whole production themselves and they have a shop front and they are part of the sheep and wall show which i said before but they have just done amazing during covert and lockdown because everyone's taking up knitting and crocheting and any sort of yarn hobbies and crafts and it's great to see so i don't care i have no qualms with it coming a bit late but i haven't used it in the end and i just used the red and i used another half so that's half the ball there and i've still got half left so i'll add that into something else later and yeah so i am super happy i can show you an older photo of what it looked like when it was sort of three quarters done to give you an idea of stitch pattern and definition my husband didn't care what colors i used where so i just picked up what i felt like when i wanted it and just added it on and i think it looks smashing i finished sewing in the ends last night i added the border last night so i'm super chuffed because it usually takes me ages finish blankets like i'm talking years like a year and this one was about six months so and with all the different stitch definitions i don't know the size i just know that it'll cover a large sized man tall and broad but that's a picture just for an idea of what is happening so that is the seaside stash blasting blanket so thank you for watching that's my 10 finished objects through the last little bit and it's been getting me through crochet has really saved me and saved my sanity with all this uh staying home extra and being extra cautious um yeah the stress and the strain from keeping my children safe and explaining to my kids and taking on the worry i've used crochet as a great tool uh therapy tool which i'm glad i was already told not to feel guilty about by my psychiatrist when i had sydney pass away she told me to use crochet as my therapy and i'm so glad because a year later and it's amazing i can make all sorts of amazing things so i hope everyone is looking after themselves especially with mental health obviously that's the big thing on my mind at the minute with um my mental health so i'm hoping everyone else is looking after their own um if not sending you big hugs virtually not in real life because i don't want to hug lots of people but big virtual hugs love you all thanks for watching bye

Channel: Katrina Chadwick

Views: 944

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Id: W9ZGPh9ndhY

Length: 35min 33sec (2133 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 15 2020