New pattern, Barbie clothes, BizyMoms Contest.

CrochetandKnitting Newsletter
Thursday, January 15, 2009

Hello Everyone,

I have a new slipper pattern, "Crocheted "Knit Look"
Slippers. They have the knit look even though they are
crocheted. It's hard to tell in the photos, but as you complete
a few rows you can easily see how it resembles knit. You
can find that pattern here
http://crochetandknitting.com/croknsl.htm

Over Christmas I kept myself busy working on Barbie
clothes for my grand niece, Keeley. She even loaned me
one of her Barbies so I could do fittings. :) She was
thrilled about the new Barbie clothes I made for her.

I didn't design any of my own patterns because I found
some really nice ones online that I wanted to make. Here
are the links to the patterns I used.

http://barbiebasics.tripod.com/
This one is great, they have a PDF file to download with
many Barbie clothing patterns! I made most of the Barbie
clothing that is in the crochet patterns PDF file.

I found this cute knit Barbie dress and made that also.
Barbie's Lacy Pink Party Dress
If you don't want to do the lacy part on the bottom,
she also has a version called Barbie's Basic Tube Dress
I made the lacy one as I couldn't resist, it's so pretty.
This is made with yarn instead of the thread and I
even had some of the fine sparkly white yarn here!

I had never crocheted Barbie clothes before so I had
trouble at first in finding the right hook. The steel hook
sizes were confusing to me. All my steel hooks are in
"mm's" and all the patterns online called for sizes such
as No. 5, 6, 7, etc.

So I did some searching online and learned that the sizes
of steel hooks vary with each manufacturer and some have
even changed their sizes over the years! No wonder this
can be confusing.

I found this site that has a conversion chart.
http://www.geocities.com/nornsneedlework/crochet/hookchart.htm
I posted on my Crochet and Knitting Forum at
http://crochetandknitting.com/cgi-bin/iB_cgi/ikonboard.cgi
about my endeavor to make Barbie clothes and Shaddy
and Barb helped me out. Barb gave me this link to
another conversion chart.
http://wheatcarr.com/crochet/steel-crochet-hook-cross-reference.php
In the end, I found out that a size 2.00 mm hook and size 10
thread works well for me. According to the conversion
charts, I should of been using a 1.75 mm hook, but the
manufacturer of the hooks I had was not listed so their sizes
must of been different and it would also depend on my tension
and gauge. So I just had to try some different hooks and then
do a fitting on Barbie until I got it right for me.


BizyMoms is having a contest called "Bizymoms Choice
Awards"

It's about websites that you really like. You can even
nominate your own website. Here is the information
they sent me about their awards.

Bizymoms Choice Awards
http://www.bizymoms.com/choiceawards/

Do you have a favorite website? A site that makes your day?
One that is informative, useful and definitely one that should
be appreciated?

Well here's your chance to show some love for a site that
is your choice, your kind of place to visit on the big
world-wide-web!

Nominate your favorite site for the 2008 Bizymoms' Choice
Awards.

Voting will continue through March 31, 2009. The top
winners will be announced on April 6th. You can nominate
as many sites as you'd like, then send everyone you know
to vote on their favorites!

All our nominated sites will all be featured right here:
www.bizymoms.com/choiceawards/
so that everyone can vote on their favorites.

If you have your own website or several of them, nominate
them all! And ask your friends & family to vote!

For more details and to submit your favorite site to become
Bizymoms Choice Award winner visit:
http://www.bizymoms.com/choiceawards/


That is all for today. Happy crafting!

Sincerely,

Sue Norrad
CrochetandKnitting.com - Free Patterns, Craft Supplies
and much more.
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