Edward's menagerie and an early snowman

I created this blog over two years ago but I have not been very actively posting much. Among the most early posts, the ones that are floating on the internet for more than two years, the cactus crochet tutorial has been clearly the most popular. This post pulls in a steady 20+ views per week (which is huge for me because most of my posts have not been viewed for more than 10 times in total).

Since I made my resolution to post more (first of September this year) I have only been posting sewing projects. Although I sew a lot  I also still crochet, but I have not posted about it. I hereby show you all my crochet accomplishments of the last one and a half month together.

In August I bought the book Edward's menagerie and I have been crocheting from it ever since. I love the book so much! I now have created six animals from it (the average amount of projects I make from a book is below one) and I will make more for sure. I did not post about them because my animals are not new, or different compared to the ones from the book. Sewing posts are different that way because you usually, at least, have some new type of fabric compared to all the other ones floating around on the web. Your sewing project is original if you consider the whole package even if you followed the pattern to the letter. Keeping that in mind I feel that I can post my six animals together, as a unique inspirational package (and one of them is actually different from the book).

The middle animal that has a head resembling a squirrel is actually a beaver. The favorite plush animal of my middle daughter is a beaver and she really wanted a crocheted version. I had to come up with a tail (which is the thing that sets a beaver aside from a squirrel), which would would have been relatively straight forward if the tail did not had to have different color on each side. When I started the beaver I tried to get away with a brown belly, but after six rows of brown belly my three year old pointed out to me that the white belly was missing. Her beaver has one, and she doesn't care that the ones in the wild do not. I therefor did not dare to make a one colored tail. In the spirit of the pattern I tried to make a continuous tail (not making two separate and sewing them together). This resulted in some color leaking on the sides. By adding an extra row of singles I could hide them quite well. If you are trying a beaver I do recommend to either choose one color or have two halves. Either way my daughter loves her extra friend.

The other part of this post is a recycling project. I cut up one of my husbands old white shirts and turned it into t-shirt yard and crocheted a potholder. I had seen these great coaster, but neither me nor most of my friends use coasters. But the idea does work great for a potholder I think. The snowman melting down due to the heat of the pot id much more logical right than being squashed by a soda, am I right?