How to Make a Star Jar

These look really pretty sitting on a shelf or on a table ready to be tipped out and played with when you feel blue.

First of all, Assemble your materials!

You will need
Paper (I like it best if there is a selection of colours but single colour jars could work)
A jar or bottle or your choice (smaller ones are easier to finish but bigger ones look very impressive) Charity shops can sometimes yield real gems for these so keep your eyes open (the bottle I use here came from from an Oxfam shop for 99p).

A pair of scissors (optional but I think you get a better look using them)
Glue (again, optional. It can be any sort but I find the tippex mouse style dry glue dispensers work best here)

If you don't know how to make origami lucky stars this video is good (it's not in English but there is subtitles)

For my bottle I used two sheets of A4 printer paper cut into 1cm and 1.2cm strips which I then coloured in with promarkers.

The 1cm strips worked well when cut both length and width ways whereas the 1.2cm strips worked best when they were cut length ways but were manageable when cut width ways (It is good to remember with this is that the wider they are the longer your strip will have to be).

Fold your paper strips into the stars and 'puff' them up (you may want to have a pin on hand in case some don't puff up and instead crush themselves into oblivion).

like this!

Fill your jar with the stars but make sure youhave room for the lid if you are using a cork. Sit the jar in a place where you can see it and feel proud at what you have done.

A lot of the time I dislike simple origami as they tend not to look very good but the lucky star model is very simple and looks very nice.  I got the idea for this after seeing it online and I wondered if it would work as well in real life.  I think it did but what do you think?

Please consult with your dentist before continuing with this post

When it comes to making accessories for Lolita outfits my favourite is sweet. Gothic is a difficult to get right and I sometimes find Classic styles a little bland to make but sweet gives me licence to encrust whatever I am making with as many buttons, ribbons and such things as I like.

For example this head bow I knitted to go with my milanoo skirt:

cavity inducing isn't it?

I have two fat quarters of different pink fabrics that may be turnd into acessories yet o(^v^)o
Head bow knitting pattern from Innocent World in the english G&LB.

Products of a productive week

I made the skirt and mini cape that I was talking about in the last post.

I love it bits I'm not entirely sure that the pattern in G&LB is correct. The only usable clear picture they have with a model wearing it is useless as she is sitting down! grrrr.

 Here's a quick reminder of the fabric used (just in case you missed its cupcakey awesomeness).

And here's the finished skirt

It's also fully lined. This adds to the volume and protects the seams from fraying.

The minicape

Front

 Back

 Inside

It is finished enough to wear but still needs to be given a going over with an iron to set the shape and the small gap at the back of the neck stitched up.

Can you tell I had fun arranging the ribbons for the pictures?

I'm now on the hunt for translations for the patterns in the Japanese G&LB vol 37 (autumn 2010) specifically the BABY, Angelic Pretty and Peace Now patterns if anybody knows of a website or even has translated them I would be very grateful for a link or message.

Knives Chau scarf update: 1.39m so far (that's about a yard and a half for the people who don't use metric)

New toy!

I got a new bit of kit in the post today.
A flower loom!

it's from clover and the instuctions are a little confusing (read: not there) for the more complex bits like borders for the square and hexagonal looms.
all that aside the results so far are really pretty (I'll post some pictures when when I have made some more)

 Picture update!
I have a pile of these somwhere but I accdentally invoked murphy's law by looking for them so theres not as many pictures as I would like.

these were made with DK weight yarm on the largest circular loom the mesuring tapes are in inches at the top and centimeters at the bottom to give an idea of proportion.

these were done on the medium circular loom the one in the middle is made from aran weight yarn and the others are made from curling ribbon.

Knitting

Theres an image missing at the moment as I can't find the scaf to take a picture of.

I got a Beta!(A dyslexic beta but a beta at any rate, β) So any mistakes that would have been are probably now gone, but if you do see anything don't be afraid to point it out or offer ways of wording that would make more sense. 

Knitting is a very big part of my fascination with cute things.  

Despite the fact that I have only been knitting since last June my love/hate (lol) affair with knitting began when I was very small. My mum has been knitting since she was younger than me and decided that my big sister and I were going to learn how to knit, never mind that we were barely old enough to understand what we were doing. Making bulky knitted bookmarks (I remember a purse! β) that are more suited to holding a book open than marking the place obviously had very little appeal for a child who had yet to start reading books that required the use of a bookmark (yes, I was that young!) so I just stopped knitting. There was probably a bit of jealousy in there too as my sister was learning the second type of knit stitch(purl) when I was struggling with just plain knit stitch. 

Several years later this was attempted again but instead of chunky bookmarks it was this (knitting with two strands is a little too complex for an 8-year-old)
(picture goes here)

In April/May last year I saw a ball of bright red wool hiding in a cupboard and decided I wanted a huge long scarf in that colour. So I convinced mum to let me buy two 100g balls of red wool from a charity shop, (she was very hesitant when I showed her the colour), lend me a pair of needles and show me how to knit.

And it all went downhill from there.

In the time since completing the giant red scarf I have knitted and knitted and produced a whole load of stuff.

Such as...

Another scarf but this time with one ball and in green

A beret, 

yet another scarf,

A blanket with a Tetris design,
this took months to do

Accessories for Lolita outfits!

or just generally cute stuff

I even had a table at D-con with my sister selling these accessories!

I have started a scarf styled after the one worn by Knives Chau in the Scott Pilgrim series

 

It’s taking a while...

Mug Hugs
This particular design is my favourite but there are many other patterns that I have seen.

Then, I found a super quick knit online a couple of weeks ago
here's a pile of them

Knitting is not only a fun thing to do but it keeps my hands busy and I can do it while reading, either online on my kindle or a magazine. I don't recommend knitting while reading a print book, can you say lost page? Perhaps you could knit one of the chunky bookmarks that put me off knitting all that time ago to keep your page :p it's also good for stress relief in that it gives you time to calm down and think about things or it can also distract you from the problems that are bothering you at that particular moment in time.

If anybody has any questions about patterns, yarns and needles I’ll answer them to the best of my ability.

One last thing: Ravelry. To all knitters (and crocheters): if you are on here tell me! If you are not on Ravelry then get an account and then tell me! (I'm shirotuskino here too) It’s free to join and has a large number of free patterns but there are some that you need to pay for.