Hello and welcome to a non-bookish post. Having had my Operation Find Hobby Series, I found a hobby I love and I want to continue to share with everyone here. I have decided to post once a month to update you all on the projects I have finished and the ones I am working on. I know it is something different, but I love sharing these parts of my life as well and I hope you enjoy looking and reading my updates. Now, onto my current projects!
The first one is a temperature blanket I have been working on since July 2019. Pretty much each day I pick a color yarn to complete a row of the blanket. This color is determined by the temperature of the day of my location. I first mentioned this project in my post: Crochet Projects | July 2019. Here is its current state.
This second one is a swatch for a baby blanket I might me making. I think I am just going to continue this swatch and make it into a baby blanket, this pattern is created by Daisy Craft Farms, it is called the Navy Gingham Crochet Blanket Pattern. They also have a youtube channel under the same name as their shop with a lot of fun tutorials and helpful tips. Anyway, here is the swatch and possible scarf.
Do you crochet?
Do you have any other hobby outside of reading? I would love for you to share, I love trying new things!
So, I recently realized I have a ton of enamel pins, but they are all sitting in the bottom of a drawer or in a cup of some sort. I love pins and have since I was young. I started my collection when I was in 3rd grade…. so it has been a LONG time. I personally really enjoy collecting them because they are small and compact since I don’t have a ton of space. But, at this point I hide them away. I would prefer to display them and have the ability to look at them.
The main reason I would love to look at them is because I only buy them when I am visiting a new place or on a special occasion. I would love to be able to walk into my space and look at the happy memories. So, I went to google and typed in “Enamel Pin Display” and found the following inspiration.
This turns out to be from the Etsy shop PinnyslugDesign. So, if this DIY does not workout for me, I will be buying them. But, I am hoping it does work out because I can actually say I have everything I need think I need to make these myself! How often does that actually happen?
Materials needed
Embroidery Hoop
Fabric
Exacto knife
Optional
super glue
needle
thread
Progression Images
I am so happy with how these come out. I ended up leaving the ends raw until I fill them up until I am satisfied. When I have all the pins I want on them I am going to sew the edges in with some embroidery floss that I have laying around as well as put some glue around the edges so they don’t shift to much when I sew them.
I love how simple and cute these are and how I can easily add different sized hoops as my collection grows. I also don’t have to worry about finding the exact same frame or whatever. Raw hoops are always around and don’t really ever change.
It has been a little bit of time since I have shared a DIY with you all, but I have been seeing sprayed edges all over the place the last few weeks. I have been seeing it pop up in my youtube feed quite a lot. Some of these videos were talking about how they liked it, some talking about how they hate it, and some of them are DIYs on how to create this book on your own books. I finally got to a point where I needed to try and do this to one of my books.
I ended up seeing two types of methods being used. The first is using acrylic paint from a tube and painting it onto the book with a sponge or paint brush. I really liked the details that can be made with this option. Then I saw another method where you can use spray paint and acrylic paint. I think a year ago I saw Little Book Owl try this with Nevernight, you can see the video here: PAINTED PAGE EDGES | Defacing Nevernight. While I really like this idea I wanted to start off simple. So, when I came across the following video I wanted to give it a try.
So, for this DIY I needed a few things, some I did not have and did not want to spend a lot of money on. I didn’t have an airbrush, but my Boyfriend does. So I asked him to help me out with this DIY. I did like how in the video he talks about how you can just use a spray can, but I thought it would be fun to try my boyfriends airbrush. I also needed paint, tape, and a book. My BF supplied the thinner needed for the paint, the airbrush, and a bunch of effort!
The most difficult part of this entire process was getting the airbrush to work, but it turned out the one by BF went to use first was actually broken. Thankfully he was gifted another one and on day two… yes day two we were able to complete the DIY. We did not finish the first day because we were trying to use the first airbrush and we ended up using all of the daylight trying to fix the broken one.
Also, just like in the video using less stick tape so you don’t damage the book is great, but sometimes it did not want to stick at all. That was a little aggravating at times, but well worth the effort so random parts of your book aren’t painted. I am glad this video gave you a few tips to help with it and gave me a few idea how to cover the book without using a TON of tape.
If you can guess what book I spray painted please write it in the comments I am curious to see if anyone can figure it out. I will give you a hint, it has been released in 2019.
Anyway, I really loved doing this DIY and I plan to do it again in the future now that we have a working airbrush. It was pretty straight forward and I was very worried about over saturating the pages and cause them to ripple, I didn’t have that problem at all. The pages are still unaffected and sit as intended, with the added bonus of being personalized a bit. It was also great fun with the BF to sit and do this together. It is wonderful when your hobbies overlap!
If you are new to crochet or have done it for some time you may know the that having a dedicated project bag to throw everything in is a great help with organization. In the past I have used reusable shopping bags or old work bags, but my latest one was starting to break and I started looking into a way to use the materials I already have to make my own project bag.
I was googling and going on ravelry and I ended up finally settling on a pattern to work off of. I came across a post called, sadly the author does not want it posted anywhere on the internet so I can’t share it with you. I will admit this confuses me that they don’t want it shared, but put it on ravelry and other places on the internet. But, to eat their own. I had quite a lot of thick yarn laying around and I though that the thickness was very similar to Plarn, aka plastic yarn, which was used in the pattern. If you don’t know what plastic yarn is, it is when you recycle old plastic bags and you cut it down into strips and sting it together to make yarn. It is a great way to reuse materials, but I am getting off topic.
I ended up following this pattern for a majority of it, but edited to make the shape work better for fiber yarn. I am very happy with how it came out and I am also happy that this project gave me a bit of confidence in my ability to crochet and edit patterns. A few months ago I would have just followed one to a T, way too afraid to change anything and thing I would mess everything up big time. Anyway, here are a few pictures of my process and the finished product.
-In Progress-
-Finished Project-
It took me about a total of 4 hours to make this bag, I am really happy how it came out. I have never made anything with handles before so this was a very interesting experiment when I got on to that section. I am going to add a liner in the next few weeks so my projects don’t “stick” or get caught on the wool. Also, the colors are closer to the true colors in the in progress pictures. The picture below the lighting over exposed it a bit.
-Materials Used-
10 mm hook, US N15
2 – Lion Brand Wool-Ease Thick and Quick Stripes, Size 6/Super Bulky in the color Hudson Bay. 5 oz and 87 yards or 140 grams and 80 meters
Thanks for reading about my hobby, what do you think I should try to make next? I have been looking at cute cactus plants and slippers.
Hey everyone, this post is going to be a little different than my normal. In the next few months there are going to be quite a few changes in my life, hopefully all for the better. Since I will be busier because I am working towards something that is a huge goal of mine. I am going to be cutting back on my blogging from 3 times a week to 2. Maybe this will temporary or last forever, only time will tell. But, I wanted to just talk about it a bit and explain why there is a sudden change in my posting.
I have been blogging for some time and I have met some amazing people and I really love talking to everyone. I have found such awesome books since blogging and really opened my eyes to a lot. I don’t want to lose that connection and experience because I am working towards something else, but I need to be realistic.
Chances are this new project is going to take a ton of my time and I will be stressed out of my mind. Who knows if I will even have much time to read, I really hope I do. Anyway, when I decided a change needed to be made I posted a poll on my twitter and on my instagram to have your input.
-Results-
Hey all, I need your help. My life is going to get busy so I am going to change my blog schedule and would love your input. #blogger#poll#bookblogger
So, according to my twitter poll, the most popular choice was Sunday/Wednesday and the same went for my instagram poll as well. So over the next few weeks I will slowly start to make a change to this new posting schedule. Thanks for all the input who saw the polls and voted, it really helped.
Thanks for reading! I hope in the next few months I will get to share really exciting news with all of you.
So back in August I made a post listing all of the audiobooks I owned and have yet to get to for one reason or another. If you want to check it out, you can find it here: Lists | Un-listened to Audiobooks. Well, since it has been a few months I wanted to update you on my progress. I will openly admit I have acquired more since August, it has been nearly 5 months, but I have also listened to quite a bit more since then as well. I am hoping it will kind of even out, fingers crossed!
