Friday, December 18, 2009

Flower Necklace

I designed a flower necklace for my Etsy shop, The Concept Cat.
It looks fairly basic, but I had to come up with the shaping for the leaves and flowers based on my crocheting experience, rather than on existing patterns, because everything sold at Etsy must be original.
The neat detail to this project is that there are buttonholes all the way down the length of the necklace, so the flower can be buttoned at any point.

I've considered writing this pattern up, but there are some jiggly things I do with the leaves that I am not sure how to explain - they're non-standard moves, so I'd have to make my own abbreviation for each of them, and try to clearly explain them. While I think I am rather good at writing up clear patterns (knock on wood) this kind of thing isn't what I would like to attempt on only one cup of coffee. Or even with the baby in the house. Maybe if I locked myself in a closet with a flashlight, and nobody was home, or knew where to find me?

Well, you get the idea.

Mother-Baby Beanie Set

I got my first Etsy sale, and it was (of all things!) a request for a custom made mother and baby beanie set. It needed to match a striped baby carrier. This is what I came up with:

It's crocheted. Stripes of varying thicknesses were requested, and not being one to turn away from a challenge (recall me saying I learned to knit on varnished and filed shishkabob sticks...?) , I chose to use single, half double, and double crochet stitch rows rather than just making the rows appear wider by doing two or three rows of single crochet in the same color. I did this because I wanted the hats to not be as stiff as they would have been had they been entirely in single crochet. I needed to pay close attention to when it was right to put in increases because it wouldn't just be every two rows, etc. I also needed to have the baby beanie mimmick the mother's beanie enough so that it was obvious they were a set, but not exactly match because the baby beanie used less rows but still needed all the colors represented. I think it turned out well, and fortunately, so did my customer. :)

I included this flower broach to match the beanies as a thank you gift: