30 Days: Crochet - Day 30

The last day of the first challenge. Again we spent a lot of time on the city wall. I was able to finish the wiener sausage and also make the bread bun for the hot dog. So I can relax for the last few days of the vacation. I’m actually quite happy that it went so well and that apart from some unfinished parts I really got a lot of pieces finished.

I will give a detailed summary of the challenge in a few days as soon as I’m home again and I will also start to plan my next challenge. There will also be a group picture with all my finished pieces. For more details on the individual pieces I refer you to the blog Beatritsche's KreAKTIVität where I will quest blog my work during the coming weeks. My posts will appear every saturday so if you need information on any piece you can look it up there or you can write me an email or leave a question in the comments below.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 29

A day at the beach again. Finally I finished all of the sushi pieces and also started on my piece for today which is the wiener sausage for a hot dog. It isn’t quite finished yet, since I have to stitch on the ketchup and mustard, but I think that I can bring the challenge to a good end.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 28

Today I relocated the naps to the city wall of Lucca. The city wall is a broad dam around the inner city lined with trees and parks and you can walk around the city center on it. It is about 4 km long and there are benches and lawns everywhere to sit down and enjoy the view of the city and the green parks. I caught up on my plan and finished two of the pieces of sushi so now I’m only one day behind.

Slowly the challenge is coming to an end. Although I have more time now during my vacation it seems quite hard to make up for the lost time. Only two days to go and still one day behind.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 27

Finally time to catch up. We spent the whole day at the beach of Viareggio. Basically I did nothing all day but go into the sea, crochet a little and take a nap. After repeating this cycle several times I was able to finish at least 8 of the french fries and complete the box. I will stop on the french fries now and make the last few later.

The next thing I started on was the sushi. Today and tomorrow the plan says to make two more pieces of sushi, so together there will be three of them. One with salmon, one with tuna and one with egg. 

30 Days: Crochet - Day 26

Going to Lucca, Italy. We were in the car all day long for the ride of over 900 km to Lucca. Half the time I was the driver so I used the other half of the time to start over on the fry box. After checking a lot of youtube videos on how to crochet in rounds, especially on the subject of where to make the first stitch after closing a round with a slip stitch I was finally able to get it right and make some progress on the piece.

I still have to finish it and since today the plan said that I should make a piece of sushi I’m now two and a half days behind on my plan. Again I give you another picture from our trip to Lucca.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 25

Today I should have made 18 french fries but since we go on vacation tomorrow I had to make everything ready for our trip to Lucca, Italy. There was absolutely no time for anything else, not even to take a picture. Since I had to undo the started box for the fries from yesterday I’m now two days behind on my schedule and because there is no picture I will give you a picture from our trip to Lucca.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 24

On Monday I will go on vacation, so today was the last day to finish all work and shop anything still needed for the trip. I have my wool ready but I wasn’t able to get a lot of work done. Todays project was a box for french fries. I seem to have made a mistake while crocheting in rounds and now the basically oval box is twisting and rather helical. I checked on youtube where my mistake is and I think I have to undo the piece and start over. So I call it a day and hope that I will catch up some time next week.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 23

Another day, another cookie. Today a chocolate-chip one, which is basically made using the same instructions as the Oreo cookie. You only need two sides though instead of three and you have to stitch the chocolate pieces onto the sides.

During the work on this piece I pondered on the idea to make a whole play-shop for all the grocery I already made. To have more stuff to play I will buy original packages of cookies, sushi, olives, etc. and then after emptying them, I will fill them with corresponding crochet pieces. Within this challenge I just try different pieces and different instructions so that afterwards I will be able to perfect them and make more, because one cookie is fine, but a whole box full of them will be awesome.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 22

A cookie a day. Todays piece was an Oreo cookie. 3 small round discs which got stitched together. Nothing special and easy and fast to make. Only problem was, that the black wool I used was thinner than the white one for the middle disc so I had to compensate by making the white disc one round shorter then the outer ones. This made the stitching together more difficult because the number of stitches was not corresponding. But overall the piece fits the original cookie quite well, as you can see in the picture.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 21

My project for today was to make two maki rolls. One with salmon and one with cucumber. I have a book with instructions for them but I didn’t really like the instructions so I made them up myself. After several pieces the concept seems to be getting clearer, so I tried two different approaches and the piece made according to the second one looks quite good I think.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 20

Great News! I just took a look at my plan and realized that I have estimated one day more for the popcorn. So today I just had to make a few more popcorn pieces to fill the bag. That was easy. Two thirds of the challenge is over and there are only a few pieces left to make.

So far the whole challenge thing is really going well. I managed to finish stuff, to blog about it and this is already more than I did ever before on any of my projects. I admit that the quality of my blog posts can improve a bit because looking back at them I seem to ramble on about how bad I feel quite often. I will try to improve and be more positive and uplifting. But all in all I'm very satisfied with my progress so far.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 19

I was awfully sick today. I wasn't at work, my head was aching horribly and I was not able to really do anything. My piece for today was a pretzel and since it is rather small and easy I could finish it the next morning so I think this still counts as finished.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 18

Second day of the popcorn-bag and popcorn. The bag was rather easy but small. But then again this means that I do not have to make that many pop corn pieces. I have the bag half filled and made some more pieces but I guess it will need another 6 pieces of pop corn to have it filled.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 17

It seems that productivity is really going up. Todays plan was to start on the hot dog but I still couldn’t get the right colors of wool even though I drove around a lot to find some. On my list there is one bigger piece left for weekends, which is the popcorn-bag filled with popcorn. So I started to make pop corn. The pieces are small and look really realistic but you have to make a lot of them to fill the bag.

I finished the top bun of the burger, too and I got some rounds done on the beanbag for my phone. My finger still hurts but it is getting better the more work you do.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 16

I still experience some wool shortage. Therefore I had to jump ahead on my list of things to make and made a radish. The instructions came from this website . I liked to make it. It was rather easy and there was not much to be stitched except the loose ends of the thread.

So far this was my favorite piece to make. It had the right size the right difficulty for my skill-level and the result is really lifelike.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 15

Halftime! The first half of the challenge went past very quickly. Overall I have finished quite a lot of pieces so far. I still have to finish the burger and I gave up on the asparagus but all the other pieces got finished.

Until today at least. Today the plan was to start on the hot-dog for which I have planned to use two days, but I noticed that I didn’t have wool in the right colors at home, so I postpone the hot dog and instead started on the next piece on my list. A beanbag for my mobile phone. This piece is also bigger then the ones I usually finish during weekdays. Because of the intensive work on my pieces yesterday my finger got sore rather quickly. I worked for about 1,5 hours but had to stop.

Well the next weekend is in sight so I will hopefully finish it then.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 14

Today I finally had one day in the week where I got home early. Early means shortly after 6.00 PM in my case. Todays plan was a corn-cob. It was rather easy even though I had to learn some new stitches. The instructions also showed some leafs to be stitched to the cob, but I think it is better to leave them out, so you can „serve“ the corn directly on a plate with other pieces.

Since I had time left I finished the toast from yesterday as well. I didn’t follow the instructions through to the end but the result was quite good nevertheless.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 13

Unfinished business. The toast seemed to be a rather easy piece and I thought that I got along well, but you need at least two pieces to finish it and I only made one and a half. I was to tired to finish it. Weekdays are only good for very very small pieces like olives, cherries and the like. But overall not much is missing from that piece so maybe I can finish it tomorrow.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 12

Today a small piece which is good for a weekday, a stuffed olive. Overall it were easy stitches but the piece is so small that it gets actually very hard to hold the thing while making the stitches.

Tomorrow there will be toast.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 11

Weekends are much better for hobbies. It is usually rather easy to fit in an hour or two to get a piece done. Today’s piece was a lemon, which turned out to be rather small. I had my crochet stuff with me today and made most of the piece in the morning and during brunch with friends. At home I just had to finish it up so I still had a lot of time to get some other work done.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 10

Wow, these 30 Days are passing really fast. Already a third of the challenge is over. Today the plan was to make a green pepper, but the instructions were from the same source as the asparagus and after reading them I wasn’t convinced that this would work out. So I decided to make another piece from one of our instruction books.

Two slices of bacon. This comes in handy because they fit the cheeseburger so you can make a bacon-cheeseburger. Some weeks ago I made a fried egg and the bacon can also be added to make a healthy breakfast.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 09

Cherries! They were rather easy and fast to make which was a relief after a hard week of mostly unfinished or failed pieces. They were also quite similar to the strawberries but even easier to make since you didn’t need to stitch any pattern onto them.

If you wonder why I never show pictures of the finished pieces I will post them separately as a guest blogger on Beatritsches KreAKTIVität, where you will find them. My posts are published there every saturday so it will take a while until every piece is shown. After the challenge I will share a group picture of all my finished work here also, so keep on looking for my further progress.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 08

Tried the asparagus again. This time I used single crochet stitches but it seems that I have the wrong wool, the wrong needle and the whole instructions don’t work out. So I will call the asparagus piece as a failure and go on with the next piece.

Tomorrow I will make cherries. They are small like the strawberries, so I should be able to complete them. Thank god it’s the weekend again so maybe I can make up some time on the burger.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 07

I was soooooo tired. I failed completely. No work done. Maybe I cancel the asparagus completely and start with the next project. Hopefully the challenge will get better. I would hate to fail after half a week.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 06

I hate it, I hate it, I hate it!

Today I tried to make an asparagus according to an instruction that my wife got from a craft shop. It was also the first time that I had to do double crochet stitches and this working in rounds in only a few f***ing chain stitches to start with. I hate those stitches. The double crochet stitches are a lot softer and more fuzzy than the single crochet stitches and therefore it is much harder to find the right spot to make the next stitch in the first few rounds.

And then the whole piece is looking irregular and far too big for an asparagus. It was also very late and I had a bad day so I had very little patience. I stopped halfway through the piece. I have to decide if I try it with a different approach or if I use the time to finish the burger. Well we will see tomorrow.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 05

On a normal workday there seems to be little chance to get more than a small piece done. Today was the last day I planned for the burger but I didn’t even manage to get the top bun finished.

Halfway through my finger started aching. As you can see in the picture the thread made a red line on it already. Because I was dead tired as well I had to stop after about an hour.

So for the Burger I have finished the meat patty, the lettuce, the cheese and two thirds of the top bun. What is missing are two slices of tomato and the bottom bun. Tomorrow I will start on the next piece so I can only finish the burger if I find the time later in the challenge. The plan for the next 3 days will be 6 pieces of asparagus so you can make a nice bundle out of them.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 04

the half finished bun

I felt horrible today. My head ached and I was tired. I have only got half a piece done, the top bun of the burger. I start to fall behind on my schedule and now I have to decide if I keep on with the daily plan or if I finish the started pieces first.

At the moment I’m more in favor of sticking to the plan because maybe with some pieces there is some time left and I can squeeze in the finishing of the started ones. If there are some unfinished pieces left at the end of the challenge I think it is very likely that I will finish them but if I miss a piece completely I will probably never start it at all.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 03

I started early on a piece of lettuce for the burger. Finished it before lunch. In the evening I made a slice of cheese. All that is left now are two pieces of bun and two tomatoes.

After the third day I can say that so far one piece per day, as long as it is a small one is manageable but making more or bigger pieces is rather exhausting. Even though it is weekend I’m already slightly behind on my schedule. I made 3 out of 7 pieces for the burger and I have already reached half-time.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 02

For the next 4 days the planned project is a Cheeseburger which comprises 7 separate pieces. I found the instructions on the internet. There were several different styles of burgers to be found, most of them either making the whole burger in one piece or making several pieces but with rather simple not very realistic looking fillings. The one I chose has also separate pieces because I think this makes more fun to play with it later, if you can put the parts together as you like and i also think the instructions I finally decided on make rather realistic looking pieces.

I planned to make 2 of them today but I also had to attend a funeral and therefore had very little time and energy left. Still I managed to finish the meat patty for the burger.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 01

I have started early on my first pieces. According to plan I should finish three strawberries today. They are rather small and easy to do but the sewing together of the berry and the leaf takes up some time. I cheated a little and made one already yesterday evening.

Right in the morning before leaving for work I quickly made two leafs. This was really rather easy and took only about a minute each.

After a long day I finally got to make the last two strawberries. I finished them much faster than the first one and so day 1 was a success. And it isn’t even midnight yet.