Crochet and Braid T-shirt Scarf

I wasn't going to post again until the New Year, but I'm so excited about this project, I have to show it now.  NOW.  I have some problems with delayed gratification, can you tell? (Although, I did wrap my own Kindle Fire and waited until Christmas to open it, to everyone's amusement.)

Ok, so I saw some pretty nifty braided scarves on Pinterest and Google.  Follow me on Pinterest to see my inspirations!  I decided to mash up the braided scarf idea with the upcycled t-shirt idea, and this is what I got.  

I didn't cut up old t-shirts though, mostly because I only have a couple of them hanging around, and they're not of a size to produce enough fabric for this scarf.  So I went to Hobby Lobby (for the FIRST TIME!) and almost swooned at the sight of the craft heaven that it is.  

In a nutshell, this scarf consists of a cuff made from crochet, and a whole bunch of knit jersey fabric braided and tied into the crochet cuff.  I'm thinking about selling this on Etsy!  (Did I mention? I'm starting an Etsy shop - another New Years resolution that I'll talk about later.)  Update: I have not been making these for sale because it takes more fabric and time than I have available.

If you'd like one, let me know and you can support my Etsy endeavors! :-)  Or, check out the instructions below and try your hand at making one yourself!  

Materials:

2 yds jersey knit fabric

yarn in coordinating color

thread in matching color

scissors, embroidery needle, crochet hook (I think I used size K)

3 hair bands (3 hair bands?!  I know, I'll get to it)

Make a crochet cuff, which is really just a crocheted rectangle folded up and joined together.  My pattern was CH 13, *turn, HDC 12 starting with the second chain, CH 1, then start from the * until you get a cuff large enough to be folded.  To join, fold the rectangle up, and join your first row with your last row with a row of HDC 12, then fasten off.  Did that make sense?  I'm terrible at patterns.  I'm also terrible at gauges, so good thing this project doesn't require any size accuracy!

For the braids:

Cut up your fabric into (24) 2 inch strips.  I tried using 1 inch strips but the "t-shirt yarn" was thin and weak looking.  

Since I had 2 yds of fabric, my strips were 72 inches long, but I needed twice that, so I sewed two strips together, to make 12 strips total.  If you had 4 yds of fabric, you could cut some ginormous strips and save yourself the sewing.  Then this would become the No Sew Braided Scarf instead of the Minimal Sewing Braided Scarf.

To make the "yarn" from the strips, pull the fabric strips so that the edges curled in, which means no need to hem!  SCORE! and yay! for the jersey fabric.

Now I had a whole mess of jersey yarn spaghetti, which obviously, Josh wanted to play with.  I forgot to get a picture of the tangle that he created when he pulled the whole mess onto the floor and wallowed in it.  These pictures are of my t-shirt noodles, after Josh had gone to bed.  I felt like the asian noodle master on the Kung Fu Panda dvd.

Thread the 12 noodles into 12 holes at the bottom of your crochet cuff so that the seam, or the middle, of the noodle is hidden by the cuff.  This means you should have 6 feet of noodle on either side.  Now you have a weird 12 pronged dodeca-pus squid monster.

It's time to BRAID!  Pick 3 noodles (that's 2 from each side of the first crochet hole and 1 from the second) to braid.  At this point, save your sanity and roll the noodles up and tie with the hair bands.  Otherwise, you'll be messing with 6 foot open ends, knots up to your eyeballs, and no amount of liquor is going to make you want to continue.

Lock down the crochet cuff somewhere so you get enough tension to braid the noodles.  I did this in my guest room, so I just tucked the cuff in between the mattress and the boxspring.  Ha! I knew the dead weight of the Tempurpedic was good for something! 

Now there's nothing left to do but braid.  And braid and braid and braid.  Twelve noodles halved gives you 24 strips, which means you'll end up with 8 braids.  At 6 feet per braid, that's 48 feet of braiding.  Maybe open a bottle of wine at this point...

As the braid progresses, release more of the material from the hair band.  Towards the end, lose the hair bands altogether, then knot the braid at the end to fasten.

Braid, sip wine, braid some more. Chug wine.  Keep braiding.  Before you know it, you'll be done, and you'll have kicked that bottle and be feeling good!

To wear, wrap the braids around your neck once and secure in the cuff.  

Here's me taking pictures of myself after Drew told me I had plenty nuff pictures already.  After dozens of shots pointing in all the wrong directions, these were the only 2 that turned out, sort of.  

Ok!  NOW I can sit down and seriously think about my resolutions for 2012!

[Update] : I got myself a sticker!

Christmas Recap

Since it's only a couple of days until the New Year, and my vacation is coming to an end (sigh), I thought I'd do a quick recap of my all-too-short holiday break.

My parents came up to spend the holiday with us, and they ended up giving to Josh the weirdest (and most fascinating to us adults) gift under the tree this year - a My Keepon.  It's basically a yellow snowman sitting on top of a lot of batteries that react to your voice, your touch, and boppy music. We are a family of engineers and it took us most of the morning to play around with it.  Of course, being the family of engineers, nobody bothered to read the packaging, the instruction booklet or look it up on the internet until the afternoon.  The story with it is that a professional version of the My Keepon was originally built to be used in autism therapy, since it responds to different actions, sounds and music.  People found it cute, or weird or both, and they've come out with a toy version that does most of the same stuff.  It's definitely an interesting toy, but not as interesting or as cute as Josh trying to make sense of it.  And him trying to figure it out is definitely way cuter than us trying to figure it out...hence, there's no pictures of us playing with it.

I spent a lot of time on the floor trying to get good photos of Josh's first active Christmas....a very active Christmas indeed.  All that time spent on the floor made me realize that I didn't do a very good job cleaning before my parents showed up, so it's probably a good thing I was the one down at kid level most of the time, staring at dog hair puffballs and clumps of needles being dropped by my dying Christmas tree, and lamenting the scratches in my beautiful hardwood made by our very own Izzy dog.

Oh, I've also been up to my eyeballs in The Hunger Games.  Good thing I just finished the third book; otherwise, I wouldn't be sitting here writing up a blog post.  If you want to discuss the series, just let me know.  I've got a bunch of thoughts and opinions (and questions) floating around in my head, so I'm just waiting for someone to vent it to!

That's about it for my vacation!  There's been a lot of lounging around, playing of video games, Carcasonne and my brand spanking new Kindle Fire, and just enough of working on some projects to make me feel productive.  I'm sorry, I feel like I haven't made as big a deal out of my Kindle Fire as I should.  I love my Kindle!  Staying in Josh's room until he falls asleep (as he stubbornly hangs on to his separation anxiety phase) doesn't seem as much of a drag anymore, now that I can play all sorts of silly little games in the dark, waiting for the fidgeting and singing and blabbing to stop.  I had made a cover for my sister's Kindle Fire - you can check it out in my previous post - but I still have to make myself one.  And this whole "making of the cover for the tablet" thing has turned into a "you should start a store on Etsy" thing, which has now so occupied my mind that I find myself thinking about it ALL THE TIME, to the point that I'm not sure I can go back to work and be productive (especially with the 300 emails that await me) until I successfully sell something.  Ok, so please excuse my excitement - that was a bit of a rant.  

Do you have fun plans for New Year's Eve?  We are going to see if Josh can sleep in another baby's crib while mommy and daddy celebrate their survival a first full year of parenthood with some good food, good times, and some bubbly!

Happy New Year everyone!

Kindle/iPad Cover

Woo!  I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! We had family + dog + baby + wood stove + good food + video games + board games + TABLETS.  Yes, our family went a little nuts for tablets and e-readers this year, so I put together a little accessory to go with all that high tech gadgetry, and now I can finally show it off!

I bought my tablet cover pattern from Birdiful Stitches, and had some fun at Joann's picking out some colorful fabrics.  My parents, and Drew, keep telling me I should make more and sell them - so a question out to you:  Would you buy this for your Kindle/Nook/iPad?

Happy Boxing Day!

Looking for some Christmas cheer

Would you believe it's 3 days until Christmas?  It's sad to say, but I'm hardly feeling any of the cheery holiday spirit this year, even with the Christmas-y crafts I've been churning out.  Bubs had a fever over the weekend, we went to a colleague's funeral yesterday and now we're fighting a bout of pink-eye on Bubs.  There's just something about my baby's goopy eyes that makes me sad.  And there's a house to clean before the family descends upon our dog-hair, toy-explosion, empty-fridge home for the weekend.

What am I doing here?  I should be cleaning, crafting, cooking, making lists, something!  I have so many unfinished projects, I think I want a craft room more to store all my unfinished thoughts than to have a place to actually get them done.

A 4-way braid will one day be something neat...

This was going to be a vase, before I ran out of patience folding the little pieces of paper.

A cork Christmas tree never made it to our mantel.

Still, I look forward to the time off I get next week, to stay at home and cuddle with dog and baby, work on crafts, write blog posts and sleep.  Ok, maybe not sleep.  But I'm definitely going to be taking some time to play with the neat little electronic device that I know is waiting for me under the tree!

Merry Christmas everyone, and Happy Holidays!  May the Spirit of the Season infuse your home with love and happiness!

This Year's Teacher Gift, from Starbucks

Since I'm in such a crafty mode these days, I decided to dress up the Starbucks Gift Cards we bought for Bub's daycare teachers.  

I got the cups for free (by asking nicely of course!) when we bought the gift cards, and had some extra brown paper bouncy filler hanging around the house.  And then, it just a matter of assembly!

I added a candy cane poem printable from Delightful Order because I thought it was just too cute, and true!

Of course, I put everything together, took all my photos, then realized I had forgotten the upside-down candy cane to go with the poem.  Where is my mind these days?!  Here is the re-tied package, with candy cane in place.

This was a quick, easy and cute little gift for two wonderful women who are somehow able to get Bubs to eat everything in his lunchbag, and get 4 to 8 kiddies to nap all at the same time!  I am constantly in awe, considering the chaos that reigns at home on weekends.  

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all the wonderful teachers out there!