Kitchen Flowers

For Christmas I wanted to make something more 'sophisticated' for my mom and my boyfriend's parents. They all like to cook and I'd always wanted to try making some potholders, so I scoured Ravelry and found these flower potholders. With the pattern in hand I figured out the color schemes of the kitchens and bought some cotton yarn. FYI: it's important to use 100% cotton yarn for potholders because acrylic melts. Plus cotton is sturdier.

For my mom:

The yellow apparently didn't want to be photogenic.

For my boyfriend's parents:

All together now!

A tip if you want to make them: connect the petals at stitch 9 (counted down from the stitch at the tip of the petal on either side).

I was VERY pleased with how these turned out. They look complicated but are actually very easy.

Flower Beads

I was cleaning my room recently (I know, big shock!) and came across a bunch of old jewelry, including these anklets.

Now I've had these since I went to Mexico when I was in grade school and I always thought they were really cool so I thought, hey, maybe I should try to learn to make them.

Above is my first attempt! Pretty good I think, although a lot larger scale than the originals.

I figure it's initially easier to work with larger beads in order to fully understand the pattern. That way, when you have to work with seed beads you can actually know what's going on without straining your eyes too much!

I think that the larger flowers will probably become a key chain because I'm personally not that into chunky jewelry. I am working on a bracelet with this style right now and so I'll post that when I finish! And since this bracelet is pretty cool I'll try to write a pattern of sorts to share with y'all on the interwebs.

Update (8/20/12): Here's my completed seed-bead sized bracelet!

Full bracelet

Close-up of the pattern

Close-up of the clasp

A special thanks to my friend for whom this was made: she gave me all the materials! The beads were strung on beading wire and the clasp is a clip clasp (I believe that's correct). It took about 3 hours, but it takes less and less time as you get closer to the end. I would not recommend using beading wire though because it was very difficult to start the bracelet because the wire was too strong. I haven't had time to make a pattern yet, but I will put it up as soon as I have!