Crafty-----ness?

ok so i got bored and decided to re-invent an old song, can you guess what it is?

Craftiness, craftiness, the greatest gift that I posses
I thank the Lord I've been blessed
With more than my share of craftiness

To me this old world is a wonderful place
And I'm just about the luckiest human in the whole human race
I've got no silver and I've got no gold
Just a whole lot of craftiness in my soul

Craftiness, craftiness, the greatest gift that I posses
I thank the Lord I've been blessed
With more than my share of craftiness

Craftiness to me is an ocean tide
Or a sunset fading on a mountain side
Or maybe a big old heaven full of stars up above
When I'm in the arms of the one I love

Craftiness is a field of grain
Lifting its face to the falling rain
I can see it in the sunshine, I breathe it in the rain
Craftiness everywhere

Craftiness, craftiness, the greatest gift that I posses
I thank the Lord I've been blessed
With more than my share of craftiness

A wise old man told me one time
That craftiness is nothing but a frame of mind
I hope when you go to measuring my success
That you don't count my money count my craftiness

Craftiness, craftiness, the greatest gift that I posses
I thank the Lord I've been blessed
With more than my share of craftiness

Craftiness, craftiness, the greatest gift that I posses
I thank the Lord I've been blessed
With more than my share of craftiness, craftiness, the greatest gift that I posses
I thank the Lord I've been blessed
With more than my share of craftiness

To me this old world is a wonderful place
And I'm just about the luckiest human in the whole human race
I've got no silver and I've got no gold
Just a whole lot of craftiness in my soul

Craftiness, craftiness, the greatest gift that I posses
I thank the Lord I've been blessed
With more than my share of craftiness

Craftiness to me is an ocean tide
Or a sunset fading on a mountain side
Or maybe a big old heaven full of stars up above
When I'm in the arms of the one I love

Craftiness is a field of grain
Lifting its face to the falling rain
I can see it in the sunshine, I breathe it in the rain
Craftiness everywhere

Craftiness, craftiness, the greatest gift that I posses
I thank the Lord I've been blessed
With more than my share of craftiness

A wise old man told me one time
That craftiness is nothing but a frame of mind
I hope when you go to measuring my success
That you don't count my money count my craftiness

Craftiness, craftiness, the greatest gift that I posses
I thank the Lord I've been blessed
With more than my share of craftiness

Craftiness, craftiness, the greatest gift that I posses
I thank the Lord I've been blessed
With more than my share of craftiness

Starting point

I have these awesome tools to make things but to be perfectly honest, my means of storage is pretty appalling. For example, my desk isn’t just home to my laptop and TV, it also holds my makeup, bills, magazines, jewellery, piggy banks, lights, food and also my crafting tools just randomly scattered across the mess. I think the perfect way to start off crafting would be to create a pouch to store my crochet hooks in. I’m not following any particular pattern but I am using what’s called an extended double crochet (EXDC), which sounds harder than what it actually is. I appolagise for the poor picture quality.

 So for this I shall need my wool (yarn), crochet hook (size 4.00) and a pair of scissors, later I will need a darling needle.  This will be created by making 2 half’s, one slightly bigger than the other, and sewn together.

So I start off by making my slipknot and going on to make my chains. I insert the hook, wrap the wool round the hook, and then pull it through. I now have 1 chain. You can make as many chains as you require or to the specs of the pattern you are following, however for this one since it’s the beginning I’m not counting chains. Instead I’m going to chain slightly longer then my crochet hook.

So I start off by missing a chain and going to the third chain. I insert the hook; wrap the wool around the hook so that I have 3 loops around my hook. I then pull the wool through one of the loops leaving me with 2 on the hook. I then wrap the wool around again and this time I pull through both of the loops which should leave me with one loop left on my chain.

I continue this down the chain until I have completed the row and it should look something like this:

From here I turn my work and place the wool behind to make it easier to see. The chain that’s supporting the loop around the hook, this is the chain that we need to start on. It is a little tricky and requires some patience, but by keeping the remaining loop on the hook, slides the hook through the supporting chain. Wrap the wool around the hook and pull through the first loop. Wrap the wool around again and pull through both loops. And continue down the length.

Woopsy!!!!!! Looks like vie ran out of wool. A perfect time to show you how to add more wool or a different colour to your project. This technique is also tricky so take time to do it properly. In the picture bellow I have an unfinished sequence. With 2 loops remaining on my hook, I wrap the new wool round my hook to give me 3 loops. I pull the loop from the new wool through both of the remaining loops on the hook and I am left with 1 loop on the hook. I then use the tail end of the new wool to finish off the length as normal, trapping the tails of the old wool and the new wool inside the work.

I’m roughly working towards 5 rows, so when I’m happy I tie off the end and prepare for the other half of the pouch. I suggest 2 thirds of the length of the pouch for the second half.

I’m not particularly bothered about the colours used as this is just for practice, but lazy wee me already had black wool threaded through a darling needle, which is actually quite difficult to do, you need good eye sight for it in my opinion :P. But I use this to sew the sides and the base of the pouch together, fastening the ends of the black wool and then turning my work inside out.

And there you have it! A pouch to store your crochet hooks in, or pens and other objects of equal lengths. You can add buttons and Velcro onto it if you wish for it to fasten however the excess length has provided me with a nice little folder effect cover which tucks inside of it nicely.