'50 pairs from 50 shops'

For those who prefer a softer color shift in their projects this week is for you :)

Jessica Elliot owner of Zweena Yarns (zyarns.etsy.com) kindly sent me a whole skein (220 yards, in center-pull ball form) of her Sky Blue Worsted Weight yarn to work with.

Having experience with her natural base yarn I was thrilled when Jessica replied to my convo about using one of the beautiful colored yarns in her shop for the 50/50 project.

After much consideration, I choose the aforementioned Sky Blue for it's gentle shifts between a bold turquoise blue and natural wool. Sky Blue is a very fitting name for this yarn.

About Zyarns:
Happily married and located in Denver, this etsy shop owner has a keen sense of nuance when it comes to yarn dyeing. Her yarns offer soft shifting colorways in single and multi-color combinations. The characteristic saturated vs. natural provides an impressive balance allowing the colors to show their richness and dept without being overpoweringly one color or the other.



Per Jessica's etsy site these subtleties in appearance are due to the fact that Zweena Yarns only uses natural dyes and earth/people friendly processes in there hand-painted/dyed yarn production. The end results are just awesome and meld well with the strong stitch definition supplied by the multipurpose 100% Peruvian Highland Wool her yarns are made from.

These yarns are well suited for next to skin or outdoor accessory type projects and come in a wide range of yarn weights.

To purchase the shoes mentioned above please visit mysweetiepeas.etsy.com.
At least $13.00 of every '50/50' shoe purchase goes directly to
http://www.directrelief.org - no strings attached (well... you know what I
mean *smile*.)

For more info on Zweena Yarns and her natural dye colorways, please visit
her http://zyarns.etsy.com to see for yourself.

For more details about contributing to '50 pairs from 50 shops' please leave
a comment or convo me on Etsy at http://mysweetiepeas.etsy.com Thanks and
Have a great week

'50 pairs from 50 shops'

Multi-craftual, that's how I'd describe this weeks Etsy Shop owner Catherinette aka Katie Stack. She's most well know for her ultra cute hand made pin cushions which include forest animals, monsters, an anatomically correct human heart and um... a swimmer... yeah a swimmer.


She's also creating hand bags with plastic bags and learning to spin. One busy gal, I'd say. The skein Katie sent me spent half it's first day being randomly oogled because it is so squishy soft :) It's colorway is a rich mix of periwinkle blue, plum and chartreuse (lime green).


Katie also sent a little nugget of yarn equally well dyed in a chartreuse, deep red and plum colorway. I'm sure the project this was from turned out smashingly.


Check out the specs below for a bit more detail: 95 yards 55% Superfine Alpaca 23% Silk 22% Merino

The good new is there is another skein just like this for sale at her shop :) (cheapo shipping too!)

Swatch Round Up: So I've come to the conclusion that my shoes are actually just a unique way of swatching yarn, that being said the pair this yarn worked up was just '2!' stitches away from being identical, which is an incredible feat for variegated yarns on such a tiny project. There will probably be enough yarn for two pairs from this skein... we'll have to wait and see.



To purchase the shoes mentioned above please visit my etsy shop. At least $13.00 of every '50/50' shoe purchase goes directly to http://www.directrelief.org no strings attached (well... you know what I mean *smile*).

For more info on this awesome chic with a natural skill for the crafty, please go visit her blog and shop to see for yourself.



For more details about contributing to '50 pairs from 50 shops' please leave a comment or convo me on Etsy at http://mysweetiepeas.etsy.com Thanks and Have a great week

'50 pairs from 50 shops'

Welcome, welcome to the first weekly installment of '50 pairs from 50 Shops'

The first shop's yarn arrived earlier this week and oh my gosh!


Noelle of Noelle's Noodles sent over 600 yards of fingering wt. yarn my way. (that's a lot of baby shoes!) The picture below shows the first two pairs with more to follow.


Additional Bits and Pieces:
This top shelf quality arrived in my post box in the form of two very awesome colorways 'Eat.Sleep.Knit' and 'Sweetheart A'.

The 'Eat Sleep Knit' yarn was created specially for the online store EatSleepKnit.com. This colorway features saturated blues, greens and reddy browns consistently spaced and clearly defined. I used double strands while crocheting with this yarn... the colors matched up perfectly! (Yes, she's that good.)

Plus since I received a whole skein they'll be more than one pair available, so keep an eye on my Etsy shop for more details. Remember all proceeds benefit Direct Relief.


To see this yarn in sock action check out Noelle's blog for some very cool socks in progress.

Please note: Eat.Sleep.Knit has been selling Noelle's yarns like hot cakes so hurry while supplies last!

The other colorway 'Sweetheart A' is not currently available on NoellesNoodles.com, however there is a teaser skein of Sweetheart B listed on her site (again, hurry).

This girly mix of pinks and red bits created an uber cute pair of shoes/booties. To add to the yarn love, I'd been secretly oogling this color for a little while ... so sweet to receive 178 yards of yarny goodness (that's at least 2 pairs for the 50/50 project). The picture below doesn't quite do the yarn justice, visit Noelle's sites for a better appreciation of what this gal can do. Seriously.


Noelle's has had a shop on Etsy since 2005, she's super professional, accommodating and very gifted. Her shop currently contains a wide assortment of yarn weights, unique colorways, kits and accessories including roving.

Trust me these wool yarns are extremely easy to care for, richly dyed and handle like a dream :) so hop on the bandwagon and get them before they're gone.

Additional details about each new pair of 50/50 booties can be found on my Etsy store. All proceeds from the '50 pairs from 50 shops' project go to http://www.directrelief.com.

Be extra sure to check out Noelle's shop and Eat.Sleep.Knit for her special limited colorways in Aran and Sock Weights.

Charity Selected!

After a lot of research I've discovered a great charity that reaches globally while also maintaining an amazing bottomline. Voted as 99% efficent by forbes.com the charity which will be benefiting from my 50/50 project is...

http://www.directrelief.org

to quote my son...

i did it!

presenting pair number 120.. grape and berry vari. in size 6 months. Finished today, Dec. 30th at 8:29 pm
(and yes I'm crazy).

getting excited, yarn is on it's way... Yippe!
special thanks to the etsy's who have already join my project so early. stay tuned more to come :)

a year winding down and up at the same time

As the year winds down my shoe count has risen a lot: 117 total

With a few day to rush, I think I'll hit 120 (crossing fingers). Pretty amazing concidering April was an off month with no shoes produced.

Of course with the end of one project starts a new:

'50 Pairs from 50 Shops'

The invites are starting to fly out for my next project scheduled to being in Jan. 2008.

So far as planned starting the first or second full week of Jan. I'll begin to display and promote one etsy shop a week which has donated or sold me yarn for this project. Links and pictures to be included for your browsing enjoyment.

By the year's end I'm hoping to accomplish my goal of creating shoes from yarn supplied by 50 different independent etsy shops.

If interested or for more detail please leave a comment or a convo on etsy.

My shop is http://mysweetiepeas.etsy.com

Happy New Year Everyone.

look mommy they made themselves...

first the back story:
My 3.5 yr old. dd loves to hord things under her pillow. (ie. play jewelry, makeup, stuffed toys and/or special blankets) she also has been bugging me all week for another pair of shoes to go with the 3 or 4 odd pairs I've already made her.

the story:
Xmas eve eve (dec. 23rd) - 9 p.m. moo-moo (dd's nickname) is in no mood to go to sleep so she comes into my office to have a look around and stall.

Seeing my newly purchased yarn stash of pinks and purples she decides to grab the grape n' berry to take with her back to bed. not really liking this idea but not wanting to spend the next hour trying to get her back to bed I let said dd take the full 5 oz. skein of worsted wt. yarn with her.

A few hours later I go to have a peek and sure enough, the yarn was lovingly stashed under her pillow.

So a plan begins to develop in my mind and before long I was quietly grabbing the skein from under her pillow so I could hurry off to the living room to crank out a pair of size 10 toddler shoes before getting caught.

Once completed the new pair was quickly placed back under her pillow for a nice holiday surprise.

6 a.m. Xmas eve
As I lay in bed already bushwhacked by the holiday season my little girl comes bouncing into our bedroom, big smile and gleaming eyes... "look mommy they made themselves!".

My husband and I giggle a little, and moo-moo spends the rest of the day telling our relatives about her shoes that made themselves.

happy holidays everyone.
-kat

A few pictures of my shoes made from One Sheep Hill hand dyed yarn and my first 'item' made from yarn I hand spun myself. The roving is from Sweet Pea Fibers.

Count Down to 100!

Today marked my 12th and 11th pair away from '100 pairs in a year' project.

Each pair (ranging from tiny to size 11 mens) has been crocheted by little old me over the course of this year being in late Jan.

I wasn't really planning on shooting for 100 this year it just sort of happened and now with less than a month to go and 10 pairs to finish it should be relatively entertaining to see how thing plan out.

My goal now is to finish all 10 pairs using as many vendors from etsy as possible to complete the task. If interested please visit my shop at http://mysweetiepeas.etsy.com and leave a convo or post to this blog post.

Have a great night.
-Kat

Been a bit...

Howdy boys and girls.

It's already Dec. which is crazy. I've got a bit of my personal hooking done for the holiday season and a long way to go.

Found a great charity called small comforts which is working on gift for Bethesda Naval Hospital. Check them out if you've got a free hook this holiday season.

Not much else is going on for me. Turkey Day went well and fast. I spun enough fiber to create one lone baby shoe which turned out beautifully, so there's motivation there. Picture coming soon.

Toodles
-Kat

Adult Crocheted Shoe Pattern

Hooking for Charities Adult Crocheted Shoe Pattern: Round-about Women's Shoes (size 7.5 - 9.5) can be downloaded here. Adobe Acrobat Reader 7.0 is required to view, click here to download the latest Acrobat reader

Spin, spin

(below) First yarn that looked like I hand-spun (from ViralAnomaly's roving), you're actually seeing batch #3 off this roving... the first 2 well... pratice makes better (I guess). Created enough yarn to make 2 full rows of double-crochet. :D

Next in the line up is created from a sample piece of merino superwash roving from Sweet Pea Fibers

I hit Esty pretty solid this past month, it's all good stuff made by people that care about quality hand-made items. Now it's time to get spinning/ hooking for the holidays. Stay tuned.

Autumn Pause

Not much different on the home front this week, sorry for the delay in post.

I'm still treading through my inventory. It's all good and I'm happy with the amount of items that will be on show starting next week.

My first roving arrived in the mail a few days ago (in a Yule-lious colorway) , so I've jerry-rigged a hand spindle from 2 CD's, a rubber grommet thing, a wooden stick bit and a cup hook. Just like MacGyver would do, well at least the DIY network would do.

It works! that's the best part... though the results are a bit interesting, I'll just have to keep practicing.

Toodles, til' later.

I've got a shoe issue... well about 30 some-ish pairs of shoes issue. So here are a few pictures...

A good chunk of these we be on sale during the Arts Place Holiday Show (runs Nov. 12th - Jan.) with a fair amount of each purchase going directly to Arts Place.

I'll have some gift baskets, clay babies and a hand bag or two to round out the gifting season.

So far I've been crocheting on average between 10-15 pairs a month since August. Yes, I keep track down to the size, color and date finished.

The best part is seeing babies (and parents) enjoying the shoes. The new moms are so cute :D

My 3.5 year old dug her shoes out today as the weather has gotten a bit more fall like. She has a cozy pair made from chunky variegated pink/maroon/orange yarn and a beat up pair (neon variegated) from when I first started making shoes in 2005. The later mentioned pair gets stretched skin tight when she proudly pulls them on. The smiles from them and the fact that I am providing for them with my own two hands makes me feel like I've really accomplished something from nothing but string.

So enough mush :)


Below are a couple more photos from my recent shoe binge.... enjoy.

Shoe/Sock/Slipper the World

Finishing up a new size of shoes with pattern mods soon to join it plus, gasp an actual photo!

One hooking event left for the year (scheduled at least) then it's off to my personal mix of gifting and charity work.

cleaning up house

this week been cleaning up the blog... new color, less cluttered lead in.

Next Hooking Event

October 11, 2007 - same place/same time :)

Finito - The Last Part of the Adult shoe/slipper/sock Pattern

Okay, I confess, the pattern was a bit lost for a few days... ode to my grandma T. I had the whole thing wrote out on an unused business mail-back envelope :P Yes, I knew the pattern roughly in my head but I wanted to wait till I found the actual scribbled out instructions to finish this post.

So here it is...

Recap:
The toe and heel part of this pattern are located below or in the September archives.

After following those you should have a nice complete slipper looking thing minus the cuff of course and here it is.

Start with base of shoe/slipper/sock turned right side out.

chain stitch 2 (making the first half-double of the first 'cuff' row)

now the trickier part: (it may take a few tries/frogs to get this right)

half-double crochet around the top of the shoe base until you've got 31 additional stitches roughly even around the whole thing. once joined chain stitch 3.

now go back and count the stitches in the row below it should total 32 (or at least 31, we can flub that last stitch in).

this is an important step because if you're off here and finish the next row before counting that's A LOT of triple stitches to rip out and redo.

Counted ok? Good, next step:

If you've got 31 stitches then tc (triple crochet) into every stitch and join at the end (32 total stitches).

* If you've got 32 stitches then tc / join the first two stitches and tc into each additional stitch, joining the ends together. (32 stitches neatly forming a nice ring)*


Repeat the *instruction here* trying not to increase your stitches.

*** in case you're wondering.. I'm kinda slow on the whole increase/decrease thing and my crocheted pieces would go wide/narrow/wide so this is why I'm explain'n the stitch counts real simple cause I know I'm not the only one out there doing it that way.***

Any who...

*chain stitch 2
Gather first two stitches into one dc (double crochet), dc the rest of the row. Join last and first stitches to form completed row/ring.*

Repeat *instruction located here*. Finished!

Tie off and wear. Tah-Dah.

Generally Kat

Hooking for Charity is slowing down a bit, hopefully as the days get colder our turn out will be better. I'll have the newest segment up for the "adult shoe/slipper/sock" soon for those crocheting.

Adult Shoe in a Round - Part 2

For details on part one scroll down or view the archives...

We left off with the toe completed and now will start the heel from the last row of 28 stitches which has been joined to form another ring/layer.

From this point chain stitch 2.

Increase 1 (crochet in every loop) crochet in each loop until there are 7 stitches left in the row.

On the 7th stitch from the end; crochet into both loops then chain stitch 2 (counts as first dc of next row) to begin forming the opening for the foot to enter into the shoe/slipper/sock.

Continue to chain stitch 2 to form new rows then dc in each loop across the newly created row.

Complete 8 rows then single chain stitch followed by half-double crochet to complete last row.

(if half-doubles are hard for you... go ahead with one more row of double crochet stitches (dc).)

Turn shoe/sock/slipper inside out and dc the two ends together using only the inner facing sides of each loop. Once the bottom is reached dc up the other side of the shoe by grabbing the far facing end of every other loop on that side only.

This concludes the heel portion of the tutorial, now you've got a 'shoe base' which could be worn 'as is' or follow the next set of instructions to complete a comfy cuff to crown your shoes. Best Luck.