Harry Potter House Knitting and Crochet House Cup: DADA Homework

I searched my soul and found my deepest desire to be peace. The end of war and strife, the lion lying down with the lamb, dogs and cats living together, oh, sorry that was Ghostbusters. Anyway, I tried to find a pattern for a Lion and Lamb, but nothing jumped out and screamed make me woman! So, I made then next best thing: a hippo and a monkey.

OK, yes, not a perfect analogy I know. They are both mostly herbavores, hippos don’t actually eat monkeys. But monkeys have a tendency to fling unmentionable things and hippos are rather irritable, so if they were to just lie down together and try to hang out and not fling stuff, it would be rather indicative of my desire for peace.

OK, OK, OK, they were just sooooo cute I couldn’t help myself.

Harry Potter House Knitting and Crochet House Cup: Charms and Potions Homework

For Charms my dear Daughter K, home for the summer and resting up for middle school next fall, designed and created her own Bellatrix inspired summer fingerless gloves. They are fingerknitted in black so her skin shows through, creating a rather cool light dark contrast. She thinks they are just the thing for the premier in November.

She is casting lumos with our Potions homework, a custom made wand, much like Harry’s Hawthorn wand, though this wand has a Bamboo core (think skewer. :) )

We had such fun on these assignments, though my dozen attempts are Ginny’s twisted wand were not good. I’ll figure it out one day. picks up hook with determined look

Harry Potter House Knitting and Crochet House Cup: Herbology Homework

Having searched the local yarn emporiums for edible fiber yarns and and found nada, except bamboo, which seems to be good for everything from food to flooring, I decided to go with my heart, or rather stomach and make what I was having for dinner. A lovely Aubergine, fried, and covered with pure maple syrup. Yum.

I can't wait for the house cup to start again! Seriously people, I'm losin' it!

I absolutely loved the Harry Potter Knitting and Crochet House Cup! I came late to the party, just a few days after the last round of signups closed, but they so kindly invited me to join a house and play in June and July. I was a proud though rather silent Hufflepuff. Go Badgers! We didn't win, those crafty Slytherins were amazingly creative, productive and downright enthusiastic. Congrats Snakes, you did a marvelous job!

K and I had so much fun looking through all the classes, admiring everyones homework, planning our projects and sitting, watching Harry Potter, of course, and playing with our sticks and string.

Here's everything we submitted:

In May, as a not quite first year, I submitted my tiny crocheted Mandrake to Herbology. Just for fun, it didn't count or points.

Same for my Mad Eye Moody dishcloth scrubbie. This was for DADA, to protect one from baked on food.

After I was sorted into Hufflepuff in June, I crocheted Professor Trelawney's favorite tea cup for Divination,

Knitted a cell phone cozy for Muggle Studies,



And some slub yarn for Herboblogy,

In July, I knitted some very simple wristies for Quiddich.

And then K got in on the act. She designed and crocheted a Wheeping willow belt for Herbology as representative of my wand: weeping willow, very flexible, 14 inches long, kneazle whisker core. Wonderful for charms and casts extremely good guiding spells. I helped weave in all the ends.

And we both finger knitted house scarves for Charms as demonstration of our skill with Geminio. Got 25 points for them!

I hope the lovely people how worked so hard to create and run this wonderful group, know how much we appreciate their time and talents and how much fun we had. Thanks guys! It was great fun!



September can't come soon enough.

HBP premier wear!

K decided she wanted us all to wear house scarves for the Half Blood Prince Premier. I must add, she decided this on the morning of the premier. :D As I am a squib, and even my knitting machine is not that fast, K took matters into her own hands.

She had just learned to fingerknit from a girl on her swim team this summer. (Remember me talking about how I showed up at practices with my sticks and strings and started teaching kids to crochet. Well, it went viral! Little girls and boys started showing up with their own yarn every day and by the last meet, there were wet children with yarn everywhere,... Brilliant! )

K designed her own scarves. Each is 6 foot long, two cords of the main house color and one of the accent color. The tree strands are then tied at 12 inch intervals with a bow in the accent color and the ends are tied together with the long strands left hanging for fringe. They looked Marvelous and were great for the 12 and under crowd during the more intense bits in the movie, perfect to bunch up and hide behind. :)

And we submitted them in the HP knitting/crochet house cup on Ravelry as our Charms homework. One down!

Royal Dalton in Red Heart

Just finished my Divination homework. Took a bit of experimenting, but K loves it so we are calling it a success!

Took quite a bit of rip and redo to get it the way I wanted it and it is a bit wonky in the picture, but, I think that adds to it's charm.

Speaking of which, my lil'cup charmed a bunch of kids at K's swim practice . I have had a small group of wet children, watching, asking questions and, just today, learning to crochet. Girls and boys!!! And their parents were thrilled!

Tomorrow I'm bringing as many hooks and balls of yarn as I can find and I'm going to create a new generation of yarn crazy people. Mwaaaahhaaahaaa!!

I'm evil, but in a creative way.