07 Wednesday Dec 2011
Posted in Other people's crochet, Pattern
The Lily Sugar’nCream newsletter has a free pattern for this very cute Snowman Gift Card Cozy. I love that his hat and scarf is removable!
You can find the pattern (in .pdf format) here.
03 Saturday Dec 2011
Posted in My crochet, My ramblings, Pattern
Behold our christmas tree in all its crochet glory! Doesn’t it look christmassy, colourful and wonderfully crochety? (On this blog, crochety is a word okay?)
You will recognize the granny stars from previous posts. After selling one star at the market and giving 30 away, the rest went onto our tree. Now I’m actually glad they didn’t sell at the market because they look every so cheery on our tree.
The round decorations are rounds 1- 3 of Attic24’s hexagons and the christmas star at the top of the tree is this Super Mario Invincibility Star pattern. I left an opening between two of the points, and also ironed on fabric interfacing to the wrong side before sewing the two halves together so that it would keep its shape on top of the tree. It worked a charm.
All the decorations are done with Rowan handknit cotton in Bleached, Rosso and Gooseberry.
The stars even look good as part of the christmas wrapping!
Have you made crochet christmas decorations? Have you decorated your christmas tree? I’d love to hear from you!
11 Friday Nov 2011
Posted in Other people's crochet, Pattern
Source: accessorize.com via Natasja on Pinterest
I’m especially loving the stripey triangle scarf. It looks like it’s done in rows of shells. Very easy to recreate. In fact….. you can probably get the same effect with a pattern called Sezession I by Rodger Murry, available on Ravelry as a free download. 134 Of these Sezession 1 triangle scarfs have been made already! You’ll just have add a fringe for it to look like the one in Accessorize. Result!
09 Wednesday Nov 2011
Posted in My crochet, My ramblings, Pattern
Tags
No, not the old Tudor song:
but a crocheted green cotton sleeve for my Starbucks cup at work.
I whipped this one up with a no. 6 hook and Drops Paris cotton yarn. I used the “House Blend Cozy” by Lion Brand yarn pattern as a base. In the end I had to almost double the foundation chain and as I didn’t do mine in stripes, I ended up doing it in Amigurumi style where you just keep on going in the round without a definite start and end to the row. I basically just used their pattern to get the shape of the sleeve right.
All things considered, quite a thing of beauty me doth thinketh.
07 Monday Nov 2011
Posted in Markets, My crochet, Pattern
Twelve days to go to the W.I. Maple Village Christmas fare and I am done crocheting things to sell. Finito. Kaput. Oppela.
Nine fleece blankets with crochet edges, 48 granny stars (yes, 48!) and 18 of the cutest little birdies. (Of course, there will be clocks as well but I haven’t made any new ones for the market.)
I really really really enjoyed making the birdies! They are so adorable!
They start off as Pac-Man shapes…
grow a pair of eyes, a tail and two wings. Of course their tummies are filled with lots of fluffy stuffing…
and lastly I have to add a triangle of orange felt so they can chirp tweety tweet like any flock of birdies would do.
Adorable aren’t they?
I’m sure you will want to make a flock of birdies for yourself now wouldn’t you? Yeah, I knew you would 🙂 Who can resist these cuties?!
You can find Bitter Sweet’s “Birds of a Feather” pattern here. My birdies are done in Rowan Handknit Cotton, Stylecraft Cotton Classique and Drops Paris with a 3.5mm hook. The eyes are 6mm safety eyes.
As one of my fans on Facebook said, I hope these birdies “fly off the shelves”. Then again, they look so freakin cute on the windowsill I might have to keep a couple for myself.
Feel free to comment to this post with links to your blog, or post photos to my crocheTime Facebook page, of birdies you make. I’d love to see them!
18 Tuesday Oct 2011
Posted in My crochet, My ramblings, Pattern
My husband and I visited Hampton Court palace on Sunday and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. My handbag of choice for the day was my Larger Than Life crochet handbag. Looking back at the photos of the day I realised, once again, what a thing of beauty it is. Seriously. I’m not even afraid of sounding vain because I’m just totally in love with my crochet handbag.
In this photo I’m wearing a Green Velvet Travelling Cloak, courtesy of Hampton Court Palace. Its soooo much fun and it really gets you into the spirit of (Tudor) things, but what stands out in this photo, is the handbag.
Now that I’ve whet your appetite, you probably want to know a bit more about this bag. It’s official name is the Larger Than Life Bag by Cecily Keim. Mine is done in Rowan Handknit cotton, the blocks are “Willow” from Jan Eaton’s book 200 Crochet Blocks, and instructions for the construction of the bag, as well as the Willow pattern, is published in the Interweave Crochet magazine – Spring 2007. You can see more of these Larger Than Life bags in the Flickr group.
I loved, loved, loved crocheting the blocks and playing with the colour combinations. I was very scared of the sewing involved in turning the crochet blocks into a proper handbag. Luckily I have an amazing husband who helped me every step of the way. We finished the bag on 7 March 2010 and I couldn’t be prouder.
If you want to make a crochet statement and scarfs are not doing it for you anymore, have a go at this bag. You can’t go wrong!
11 Tuesday Oct 2011
Posted in Other people's crochet, Pattern, Terrific Tuesdays
On a Monday I can still remember the fun I had over the weekend, Wednesday is the middle of the work week, on Thursday I start getting hopeful and on a Friday I can taste the weekend. But what about a Tuesday? It’s so…. just there. Weekend memories are too far away and the upcoming weekend might as well be a year away.
What we need is a bit of colourful inspiration to get us going on a Tuesday, don’t you think? A pretty picture, beautiful scenery or colourful imagery. Yup, that’ll liven up Tuesdays and turn it into a terrific day!
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Today’s colour burst comes from Karen M. Andersen’s blog. I just love love love this colourful photo! It’s part of her brilliant tutorial on how to make crochet hangers.
I’ve always wanted to replace all the plastic hangers in my cupboard with colourful crochet ones, but there just always seems to be something else on the hook – notably stock for my Etsy shop or a craft market. I’ll just have to add this brilliant project to my Ravelry queue with the seven hundred and forty nine other projects. Okay, not 749 exactly, but it does feel like it sometimes.
Have a happy hooky Tuesday people!
05 Wednesday Oct 2011
Posted in Markets, My crochet, Pattern
I’m hard at work making stock for the WI Christmas Fayre in November. That means every spare minute I’m hook-in-hand, including on the train to and from work. This morning while I was hooking away (entertaining the people standing in the aisle pretending to read the newspaper *if you don’t turn the page I know you’re watching me*), I did some Market Maths.
If I want to make eight sets of six granny stars, I need 48 granny stars. I managed to do four stars this morning on the train. I do two train journeys per day. That means eight stars per day. 48 ÷ 8 = 6. Just six days, or 12 train journeys, and I’ll be done with the christmas decorations for the market!
I couldn’t resist hanging the stars off the gladioli that I bought for my boss who is coming back from maternity leave tomorrow. Christmas trees are so last year. Gladioli are the way to show off your decorations!
02 Friday Sep 2011
Posted in My crochet, My ramblings, Pattern
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Okay, so I have this blanket that I’m working on….. since November 2009! It’s coming up for its third Winter as a WIP. That’s just wrong man! The blanket is meant for a our double bed. Double Bed. No baby blanket or even single bed blanket for me to try as a first crochet blanket. Nope, I go big! Double bed big!
The blanket has gone through some life changing events in its lifetime. I started off using Lion Brand Yarn’s Spicy Delights Afghan pattern (you will have log into their website to find the pattern) and I used Biscuit & Jam’s Random Stripe Generator for the colour sequence. The pattern is very easy to do – just shells of 5 dc, with no chain in between the shells. Later I realised that the omission of the chain between shells sort of pulls down the rows into each other so it doesn’t grow as quickly as you would expect. If you look at the slideslow below (a.k.a. timeline of the life of the Identity Crisis blanket) you’ll see what I mean.
I did 72 rows of the blanket in its first Winter and gave up. I was hooking and hooking and hooking but it just looked like a very big scarf. So I packed it up and started again in May 2010.
This time I planned on doing a granny square version of the Babette blanket in the middle. I made up loads of 2 round, 4 round and 6 round grannies. I attached a row of 4 round grannies to kick off the Babette and then I packed it all up. Again.
Last week – year no. 3 – I got the blanket out again and decided that I actually like the look of 4 rounds grannies neatly arranged in a row. By this stage the poor blanket started off as a proper Spicy Delights Afghan, had a brief spell as a granny square Babette, and now it’s actually going to end up as 97% Spicy Delights blanket and 3% granny squares. Can you see where I got the name “Identity Crisis blanket” from?
So here is what I will be doing. No really. This is it:
72 rows of Spicy Delights pattern, a row of 4 round grannies, 20 rows of the Spicy Delights pattern, a row of 4 round grannies (that’s where I’m up to now), 20 rows of the Spicy Delights pattern, another row of 4 round grannies and then end off with 72 rows of the Spicy Delights pattern.
Then I have to weave in all the ends.
And add a border.
This may take a while….
crochetime 