October Crochet – Day 10, Halloween Nautilus Shawl

 

Nautilus Shawl

My trusty model Marmie, wearing the Nautilus shawl in progress

 
This is the other project I wanted to get done for me this month. My mother sent me this netted yarn a couple years ago and I could never figure out what I wanted to do with it. This week, I finally decided to hunt down a pattern for it and I found Amy Shelton’s Nautilus shawl on Ravelry. I don’t normally wear shawls, but this one looked interesting enough, I thought I might try it. It definitely shows off the colors of the yarn!

For those of you wondering, yes, Marmie spends a lot of time in my lap. Apparently, she doesn’t mind being covered in yarn… or books… or my laptop… or anything else I might want to put in my lap if she wasn’t there. Marmie is more than just a lap kitten. She actually IS my lap.

I’ll be alternating back and forth between the shawl and the spider web poncho for at least the next week. I may sneak a quick amigurumi in there while I’m at it. But this year, I am determined to make something nice for myself.

October Crochet – Day 09, Spider Web

 

crochet spider web

Marmie models a crochet spider web in progress.

 
I volunteered all day today and did more driving around than any mom should. I have a skull-splitting headache.

However, I did get some crochet done today. I’m making this pattern up as I go. Hopefully, I’ll make two big spider webs and stitch them together to make a poncho for myself.

Going to rest now, and maybe crochet myself a new skull since my old one is killing me.

October Crochet – Day 08, Wool Pumpkin

Huzzah! Another crocheted pumpkin!

Wool Pumpkin

Marmalade models a lovely crocheted wool pumpkin!

 
TThis is another leftoever from last month that I decided to finish tonight. I was going to work on a scarf, but I need to look at a few tutorials before I tackle this one. The yarn for the scarf is one of those netted  ribbon yarns, and the pattern I chose is actually a sort of shawl, so I need to do a little research first before I get started on crocheting it. It is not as straightforward as I would have thought.

But it is a Halloween yarn! It’s black, orange, green, purple and grey, and I think it will look lovely when it’s done. So long as I understand the tutorials I’ve found….

October Crochet – Day 07, The Finished Skull!

 

Finished crochet skull

Ta-daaaaa! My amazing crocheted Day of the Dead skull!

 
I just put the finishing touches on this! Though small, those flowers actually do take a bit of time to complete, especially since I have to hide the ends and stitch them into place on the skull.  But those were the last details to be added, so now I can say this project is done!

Since October 1, I have crocheted a gloomy corn, a pumpkin, and done all the detail work for this skull. If I count the work I did last month, I’ve crocheted a total of 2 skulls, 9 pumpkins, 3 candy corn and 2 gloomy corn. And I still have no idea what I’m going to do with all these crocheted oddities.

Tomorrow, I think I will crochet myself a quick Halloween scarf. After that, who knows! But I will keep posting as I work on these items 🙂 

October Crochet – Day 06, A Pale Pumpkin

Marmalade came and sat on me before I could grab the yarn I wanted to work with to finish the Day of the Dead skull I’ve been working on, so I grabbed the yarn that was in reach and make something else instead.

 

October Crochet 06

Jelly Bean poses with a pale pumpkin

 
I’ve made about a dozen pumpkins so far this season, but this is the first white one I’ve done this year. Somewhere in my yarn stash there are a dozen other white pumkins just like this one, attached to pale green bodies, just waiting for me to add button eyes and embroidered mouths. Maybe I’ll dig them out this week and finish them up for this month’s crochet frenzy. Then I’ll pose them with all the other pumpkins I’ve made along with the candy corns, gloomy corns and Day of the Dead skulls, and I’ll do a photo shoot! Because I honestly have no clue what else to do with these damn things. Seriously, I just started crocheting Halloween stuff last month and I can’t seem to stop.

I think I have a problem.

October Crochet – Day 04, Eyes and Nose Finished

 

Crochet Skull and Kitties!

Ta-Daa! Eyes and nose are finished!

 
I spent most of today working on the webcomic and sewing the Mother Teresa costume for Pixie, so I only got a little crochet work done today, but I’m very happy with what I got done. I decided to go for soft colors on this project, so not black or primary colors for the stitching.

The teeth are the next thing I need to make, and then maybe one or two more decorations. After that, I’m going back to finish up a couple other items I started last month. Then we’ll see what I do next!

October Crochet – Day 03, I Heart Noses

More work today on the cushy, cozy, giant Day of the Dead skull. The eye flowers are stitched on and I crocheted the nose today. I’m borrowing the nose pattern from Beastly Crochet by Brenda K. B. Anderson. There are a LOT of patterns in that book that I’m dying to work on, including a Day of the Dead shoulder bag that I got the nose pattern from. Speaking of which, here’s what that looks like on my skull.

 

Crochet Skull

I love that heart-shaped nose!!

 
I spent a lot of time today working on another project for this month – a Mother Teresa costume for Pixie. She’s doing a report on Mother Teresa for All Saints Day at school. Then after that, I have to make a Sith costume for Pixie and a Jedi costume for Princess. Lots to do this month, but I’ll keep plugging away.

October Crochet – Day 02, Indiana Jones and the Crochet Skull

So, funny but true story. I lost my skull.

Before you panic, or die of laughter, I’m talking about a crochet skull, one I made last month. After I really got going with the whole crochet pumpkins thing, I decided to branch out into other spooky items, and skulls seemed a good idea to me. But I didn’t want a tiny skull, I wanted something bigger. So I dug out some Lion Brand chunky wool/acrylic yarn from my stash and got to stitching. And man, did I make a HUGE skull!

But then I lost it. I took the skull with me back to the stash too look for coordinating colors, because I wanted this to be a Day of the Dead skull. And at some point, I put it down, and it disappeared into my stash, and then I sort of forgot about it as I went to work on making some Gloomy Corns (because my mind jumps around like that).

Yesterday, I realized I needed to finish the giant skull, but I had no idea where it was! And that sort of surprised me, because you’d think even I couldn’t misplace something that big. I mean, this skull is bigger than my actual head!

Fortunately, I found it this morning after searching through my yarn stash again. I had apparently dropped it in a bag of unfinished projects (and yes, it’s big bag because I have a lot of unfinished projects). So I grabbed my skull and the coordinating yarns I had picked out and off and on throughout today, I worked on crocheting some big flowers to use for its eyes.

To make my funny story a little funnier, I just happened to finish making these flowers while watching Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull with Hubster and the kids. So now I want to crochet a big alien skull to go with the Day of the Dead skull I’m working on. We’ll have to see if I actually get that one done.

Anyway, here is The Crochet Skull of Dooooooooooom…

 

Crochet Skull of Dooooooooom!

It’s a verra big skull!

 
As you can see, it’s almost as big as Marmalade, our orange tabby. I still need to stitch up the nose, the teeth, and add a few more decorations, so this project is going to take a couple more days. But I’m hoping to have it finished by Tuesday night at the latest.

 

Cat and skull

Jelly Bean ponders my latest creation.

 
By the way, this is the usual scene when I crochet. One cat in my lap, one cat on the back of the couch, yarn everywhere. It’s very cozy.  And that skull is very cozy too, and cushy. I can’t wait until it’s done. I plan to cuddle up with that sucker and take a nice long nap. You can’t do that with a crystal skull! 

October Crochet – Day 01, Gloomy Corn

Inktober starts today. In case you don’t know what Inktober is, it’s a month-long challenge for artists to practice their inking skills by doing drawings either daily, every other day, or one a week.

I may consider doing Inktober this month, doing one drawing a month. Or I may not. I have a lot going on right now with Girl Scouts, and I’m working slowly but surely on setting up products to put in an Etsy shop.

However, there is one thing I am going to do this month – crochet. I started obsessively crocheting pumpkins at the beginning of September. It started when I found some scraps of orange yarn that I decided to use up, but then I started making bigger pumpkins, and you know, you can’t have pumpkins without candy corn, and of course, I love skulls so I had to make a couple of those as well, and the end result of all this is that my coffee table is now covered in crocheted pumpkins, candy corn and skulls.

So I decided to keep going. Having done a bunch of stuff in oranges and yellows, I decided to switch to darker colors. The result is a very gloomy set of candy corns, or as I call them, Gloomy Corns.

 

Gloomy Corn!

Two Gloomy Corns and a dark pumpkin…

You can just see one of the regular candy corns peeking around in the background.

So I will see how far I can go with this. I have a few unfinished pieces from last month that need detailing, so those will be the next items you see. What I’m going to do with these at the end of October, I don’t know, but I’ll think of something!