In March of 2016 I crocheted and embroidered a Roman military helmet with face guard for my sister, who teaches ancient history.
I did not record my sources, so am not sure what specific style I was emulating, if any. It did amuse me greatly to make it.
In October 2015 I was volunteering at my kids’ elementary school library. They had stacks of old dust covers for books and we had the idea of making a library sign using the colorful printed paper. I selected portions of book covers with coordinating colors and made each letter of the word “library” a different color of the rainbow.
I did write on the back of each letter the names of the books that went into making up the color. The owls were made to coordinate with a backdrop of a collection of owls that was already displayed at the library.
In August of 2015 I was assembling cube shelves and kept whacking my fingers with the hammer driving in tiny finish nails. “Necessity is the mother of invention” and I came up with a different way to hold the nails to have less swearing. I felt so strongly about it I made graphics and probably shared it on social media. Here the public service announcement is again today: how not to hold a small nail.
In either case, if you completely miss the nail head, your fingers are going to suffer. Another alternative is to use a needle nose pliers to hold the nail, keeping your fingers completely out of the way.
In July 2015 I was making custom wire baskets for a shelving unit in the house. I would draw out the size needed in chalk on the patio, flatten out 1/2” welded wire hardware cloth, and cut it with metal snips.
When I cut the hardware cloth, I left one side of the corner seam with a vertical wire, and the other side with horizontal wires free for a half inch. When I folded the sides up, I used needle nose pliers to loop the horizontal ends around the vertical wire.
I experimented with ways to keep the hardware cloth from scraping the wood shelf. I sewed fabric to corners as one solution, and ran hanger wire on the bottom like sled runners on other baskets.
Here is a cute teacher gift: crocheted pencil bookmarks. They make up quickly, use just single crochet, and use up yarn scraps, or those cute tiny skeins. I made these in May of 2015 using this pattern from LittleOwlHut on Ravelry.
Important note, as you crochet these curl. To get them flat, steaming them works well. You can also iron them between two thin layers of cotton. If you choose to do blocking (getting them wet and laying flat to dry), pin them down well.
Critters and Craft 