1 hour toddler slippers

I crocheted these in one hour one night for my youngest girl. I'm yet to work out how to make them the right size for the other girls or for myself.
You will need to know how to crochet a bobble stitch or treble two together, which will be notated as treb2tog in this pattern. Treb2tog is creates by starting a treble stitch, but then doing a treble half way through. That is, yarn over, insert hook in to stitch, yarn over, pull through 2 loops, yarn over, insert into stitch, yarn over, pull through 2 stitches, yarn over, pull through three loops. Pictoral instructions are available here.


Using 8ply yarn and a 5.0mm hook, chain 4. Slst into first chain.

Child size

Chain 3, double stitch into circle formed – this creates the first treb2tog. Treb2tog a further 11 times.
Chain 3, double stitch into first gap, treb2tog into same gap.
Treb2tog twice into each gap.
*Ch3, treb into each stitch**. You should have 24 treble stitches.
Turn. Repeat from * to ** once.
#Ch3, treb into 16 stitches ##
Turn. Repeat from # to ## at least 5 times, until slipper is required length.
+Treb into 3rd stitch, then treb into each st until 3 from the end. Slst into final stitch++. This creates the heel of the slipper.
Repeat + to ++ until the top of the heel is even with the edge of the sides of the slipper.
Tie off neatly.

Repeat the whole thing for the second slipper.

I was looking through some Facebook photos...

You know, I'm always after innovative ideas for design. And as a former food and beverage attendant (that is, waitress ;) ) in fine dining and function premises, I find name cards/place holders a design opportunity that often gets neglected and/or ignored.
But this photo ticks all the boxes. Seasonally appropriate, innovative, and very original.

Thank you to my friend Viv of Ish and Chi fame for the photo.

A simple infinity scarf

So, on Tuesday, Isabella brought home a lovely invitation - castles, rainbows, unicorns, and the birthday party is the Saturday. Yeah, it didn't leave me with much time.
I rang to RSVP (please note, I do that because it's manners. Not replying to an invitation is one helluva good and quick way to piss off a parent >.<) and asked the mum what the birthday girl would like. Turns out she's a very girly girl, and constantly loses her hair elastics (quelle surprise. Mine do the same), so the suggestion was some hair elastics from the $2 shop. I though about this for a minute or ten, then figured that instead of buying her some elastics/clips, etc I may as well make her a scarf. But scarves are boring, unless they're decorative. And I can't be bothered making a scoodie in 3 days (I could, I just don't want to). So, I decided to think for a minute. An infinity scarf is great for kids, because they don't end up with it tangled up, and it's easy to use.

I'll update with the birthday girl wearing her scarf after the weekend, but in the meanwhile, here's the pattern (written in UK terminology).



Using 8ply yarn and a 5.5mm hook, chain 19
*Treb into 4th stitch, and 1 treb into each stitch.**
Repeat * to ** for approximately 50 rows (or to length).
Twist scarf once, and single stitch both ends together.
Voila! You are done!

A new Etsy listing...

I have a new item listed on Etsy.
Yes, there are similarities to the one I made for Isabella, but this one uses a slightly different pattern - one I designed myself.

Have I ever mentioned how much I love shoes?

No, really. I do love shoes. Every outfit I have should have a pair of matching shoes. Most of them don't, of course, but they should. And one day, I'll be able to afford to have shoes made for me that exactly match everything. So when I came across UpperStreet.com, I squealed in delight. Okay, I didn't quite squeal. But I am delighted. So I decided to play.

Here's the finished result

Only problem is the price, though for completely custom shoes, I suppose one can justify $345. I just can't justify it today :/

Home made laundry detergent

For those of you who don't know, I have some allergies to all sorts of thing - commercial laundry detergent being top of the list. I had been buying hand crafted laundry soap from the lovely Jodi of Heart J Creations, but after I bought 3 pounds for the shipping price of 1 pound and had it stopped by quarantine because it smelt like fruit (coconut mango scent) and then it got slashed open (likely because it's white powder...) I decided to start making my own.
So, I looked around for a recipe and found Julie of Towards Sustainability.

Just so we're all clear, this is Julie's recipe, not mine. I need you to understand that all I have done is add some scent to it (2 teaspoons vanilla bean paste and 2 teaspoons of coconut essence).

I started with grating 1 bar of generic brand pure soap (did you know that that stuff is actually scented? I did. I had to learn all of this stuff when Ducky was put on an elimination diet). 1 bar makes around 2 cups of grated soap.
I then added 2 cups of nappy soak, 2 cups of Borax and 2 cups of laundry crystals.
I've now washed 2 loads of laundry (using 1 heaped tablespoon per load) and it's coming up unbelievably clean.
I'll be making it again, and adding more scent - it doesn't seem to have much in the way of aroma to it - to help cover up the gods awful smell that kids clothes and hubby's work clothes get.

The Fibonacci scarf

My 14 year old boy, Mouse, is kinda obsessed with patterns. He's also almost a maths geek - I'm working on making him more so. And since he's always cold in winter (yes, I may be in Australia, but this town gets bloody freezing) I figured I'd make him a mathematics based scarf.
I present to you, The Fibonacci Scarf.

You probably can't see a Fibonacci sequence in it, so I'll tell you how I've done it.
Chain 25.
Change colour, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end of row.
Change colour, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end of row.
Change colour, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, turn, ch3 treb into 1st, treb to end.
Change colour, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, turn, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end.
Change colour, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, turn, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end.
Change colour, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, turn, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end.
Change colour, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, turn, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end.

And now it gets tricky. I could either have done 21 rows, then 34, or I could reverse it. So, I reversed it - like so...

Change colour, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, turn, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end.
Change colour, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, turn, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end.
Change colour, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, turn, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end.
Change colour, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, turn, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end.
Change colour, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end, turn, ch3 treb into 1st, treb to end.
Change colour, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end of row.
Change colour, ch 3, treb into 1st, treb to end of row.

Then I finished off by single stitching into each stitch.

For this one, I used 3 different yarns, each 8ply. I used two together (red, yellow and blue yarns, combined into red and yellow, blue and yellow and blue and red), alternating the three. My hook is a lovely electric blue aluminium hook in size 6.0mm.


A note on my crochet, by the way. I'm in Australia, and as much as I can read and use both US and UK patterns, I write mine in UK terminology.

Also, I'll be updating on a new "recipe" I tried today. It will on this blog instead of The Balloon Whisk because it isn't food. I'm trialling it at the moment, so will let you know how it went after I'm done.

A type writer...

...or at least, it's kind of a type writer...

For those of you who've either just started reading or those who've been reading, but live under a rock, I'm kind of obsessed with typography. And for this reason, I love the following poster :

And then I came across this typewriter. I'm vaguely curious to know what it would look like if I typed up a beautiful poem, like Desiderata. Then, I'm also curious to know what would happen if I typed out a non English poem, then typed up the English translation. Would they appear the same? (And there's the part of me that's interested in linguistics...)

What does everyone else think?

A note on netiquette...

Netiquette is a very peculiar thing - as far as behaviour goes, we haven't really developed correct etiquette for internet use, blogging etc. Having said that, there's something we should all be aware of.

Credit where credit is due, peoples. This is particularly important in design blogs.
Tonight, I was reading a design blog, and came across a photo which was credited incorrectly. I know it was credited incorrectly because I know where the photo was taken.

I have since messaged the owner of the area photographed, and also contacted the blogger with said owners details (blog name to be precise).
Yes, the blogger credited it, but she credited it to a design and style magazine. That's fine if you didn't also know that the article credited the designer (the person who owns the view).