Mini Mochi Flower Garden Scarf

I happened to go to The Yarn Lady in Lake Forest a couple of weeks ago (Dec. '09) -- really cute shop, friendly and helpful staff, with lots of natural fiber yarns. This was not my first time there, but I went there that day to pick up some Kureyon sock yarn to do a machine knitted scarf pattern that was in the last issue of Knitwords Magazine. Anyway, I saw a beautiful crocheted scarf on a mannequin right by the front door, done in Crystal Palace's Mini Mochi yarn and asked about the pattern. Turns out the pattern is free at Crystal Palace's website, http://www.straw.com/. It's the Flower Garden Shawl pattern. I purchased four balls of Mini Mochi in colorway 110, Jungle, guessing at how much I'd need to do the scarf. I was off by one ball; I only needed three. I made 30 flower squares, which after the edgings, brought the scarf to about 75 inches. You could add squares to make it longer or crochet less squares to make it shorter. This was such fun and almost addictive, crocheting these squares. I hadn't crocheted more than an edging or two in over 30 years, but one doesn't really forget the process. Fingers got a tad tired at first, but only the first night. After that, it went smoothly.

I finished all the squares in just a few nights and, then, attached them to each other with an overhand stitch in two evenings. The two rows of double crochet around the entire edge took a couple of evenings but, again, was fun just trying to guess as to which colors would end up where. Mini Mochi comes in a really wild colorway called "Intense Rainbow," which would really be fun to crochet up, just to see the color changes.

Kureyon machine knit and felted handbag

I found the cutest pattern in the latest issue of Knitwords Magazine to make a felted, ruffled handbag from Noro Kureyon yarn. It proved to be a tad challenging, requiring immense concentration but was so worth the effort. I finished the first side in one sitting and the second side the next day. Then I felted it in my front-loading washing machine and let it dry for a couple of days. Over the weekend I made a lining for it and attached the straps. I think it's cute as can be and am going to love using it. It was knit on my Brother KH-270 bulky knitting machine. Bulkies cannot automatically knit lace patterns, tho they can automatically do the tucking stitches, which were tucked for three rows and then knitted back. So the lace is hand-tooled. The ruffled borders are triple strands of Kureyon, which were hand-knitted back, a needle at a time.