Free Pattern Friday: Fail.

During my fantabulous Chibication in New Mexico, I convinced my darling Chibi to take me to a Hobby Lobby.  I really wanted there to be model trains and die-cast miniatures inside, but instead I found these:

 

a cool thing in New Mexico? Really?

Wait, what? TWO cool things in New Mexico? …weird…

My first thought (other than, OMG, why are those two pictures such different sizes?) was, I can totally make those!  Hooray! They look easy enough, right?  Wrong.  Blarg.  The official pattern for my attempt is this:

1: make a rectangle of double crochets 6×30 stitches.

2: sc in the…er… round around the rectangle 5 times and FO.

3: give up now.  this is the best it’s ever going to look.

SO, the important part of this project is the stiffening.  I was too lazy to make my own stiffening mixture, so I ended up with a bottle of generic store-bought stiffener, which instructed me to paint it on the item I wanted to stiffen.  Well, that part went okay, I guess.  I used a foam paint brush, and if you look closely you can see that the foam pulled up tiny strands of yarn along the way, giving the whole tray a rather matted, wet dog sort of look.  Awesome.

It kind of looks like a fail boat, no?

Next I was to shape my little black tray along a form (which I had even planned for, as my pattern makes a tray exactly the same size as the long end of a Cheerios box) and let it dry.  Okay.  Here’s what.  When the directions tell you to put a layer of waxed paper down over your cereal box to prevent sticking, DO NOT feel guilty about using a disposable product.  DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP.  Unless, that is, you want to spend some quality time picking tiny bits of cardboard off the bottom of your tray (You’d think I would have learned this particular lesson after the rag rug incident.  *sigh*).  I even tried the old color-it-in-with-Sharpie-when-no-one’s-looking trick.  Still a Fail.  For some reason, cereal box cardboard gets shiny when you Sharpie it.  You can’t see it in the picture, but there are actually several spots of tiny, shiny Cheerio box sticking to the bottom of my tray.

It doesn't look so bad once you fill it up with something, I guess...

But, since I was determined to salvage this little tray (read: my dignity), I couldn’t just throw it away!  I ended up stashing it in the back of a utensils drawer to collect bottle caps (which I’m saving for another project, of course).  So there you go.  I never said it was going to be a *good* free pattern, did I?  })i({

Advertisement

Free Pattern Friday: Granny Star Ornament + Netflix Freebie

Hi friends!  Sorry I missed yesterday… I had a big post all set to go about my first ever visit to a Hobby Lobby, but then Husband called, and then I got to visit an adorable little baby, and then I got distracted, and then Zoltar overheated (again) and had to be put to bed for the day.  Please forgive me.  In the meanwhile, here’s the pattern for the granny star ornaments I made while in transit for Chibication.   Enjoy! })i({

 

super cute granny star!

 

 

 

Granny Star Ornament Pattern

1: ch5, sl st to form loop

2: (ch2, 2dc, ch3), (3dc, ch3) x4, sl st to close

3: sl st across to ch3 space, 3dc, ch3, 3dc, ch1, *3dc, ch3, 3dc, ch1 in ch3 sp* around, sl st. to join, sl st to corner space.

4:*4dc, ch3, 4dc in corner sp, 1dc in next sp*

5: detatch & FO, then add a hanger at one of the star tips.

You can stiffen these if you’d like, but you don’t have to!

Also, I got this e-mail from Netflix for a free month for friends and family, so… feel free to partake!  Here’s the link.