Computer Woes

Yes, I’ve been crocheting and knitting up a storm so that I have a nice quantity of hand-made gifts to give away this Christmas. What I haven’t been doing is blogging, for a couple of reasons.

1) My blog was hacked by seven people who posted about 25 spammy posts. I deleted them as quickly as possible, but not soon enough because the traffic to my blog plummeted. But it’s slowly starting to rise again.

2) My computer died on me about a week ago due to a short circuit in the motherboard which I’m told is too expensive to fix.

So I’ve been using my daughter’s compute when she isn’t using it, but until I can purchase a new one, I don’t have access to my files. But I’ve decided to not let that stop me from posting as much as I can.

Crochet and Knitted Christmas Gifts

That has meant more time to crochet and knit. I found a really cool pattern for an iPhone/iPod purse, and I’ve made at least five of them as well as a larger purse for an iPad.

I love the pattern stitch and it’s pretty easy to do: one row of single crochet in the dark color and one row of “half double crochet, slip stitch” in the light color.

I discovered a knitted pattern that I thought was absolutely ingenious. It’s a knitted “soap cozy” which you sew a bar of soap into. As the cozy is used for bathing, the wool felts. Don’t let the cable stitch scare you away. It’s easier to do than you think.

This is another easy pattern that takes me about 90 minutes to knit. I haven’t sewn any soap in this one yet, so I’ve left the bottom edge open for when I get some soap to fill it with.

Hope you try these patterns because not only are they fun to crochet and knit, they don’t take long at all to make.