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?

Felting

Okay, I admit it, I am easily distracted and easily excited. Every time I see some new craft I kind a have to try it, and own all the things that are needed (I have a feeling more of you share this problem). A few weeks ago I came across felting crafts. I spend some time searching the web and found both needle felting (dry) and wet felting. The second type can be done in several ways, but the way that intrigued me the most was knitting wool and then wash it in a regular washing machine. I bought a small starting kit for needle felting and bought some felting wool.

The needle felting I used to spice up some crocheted ester eggs (this had been the original plan) but it was not as fun as I anticipated. I had read that you should not watch television at the same time while needle felting and this indeed seems a good idea. I of course tried it and hit my finger (a few times) with the needle. I also understand the appeal to watch tv at the same time because  the felting takes much more time than I anticipated. I did not fell in love with the craft.

I did use the material again a few weeks later when I bought my daughter a shirt of which I cut of a bow that I did not like. It turned out that the one that had sewn on the bow has not that great with the machine and had created hole while applying the bow (all shirts had the same bow so probably it was not put on to conceal the hole). I therefore ended up with a hole on her shoulder. I needle felted her initial on the place of the hole (I had seen on Pinterest that they directly needle felted on shirts to create an application). The T now perfectly conceals the hole, perfect.


The second felting project I tried was knitting myself a pair of slippers. It was a fun and quick project, I immediately bought a small package for a friend. If you have smooth floor like us (wood) then you will need to add some rubber patches on the soled of the feet to avoid slipping.

Christmas angel

Yesterday I received one of the new crochet books that I ordered. Christels Christmas book. The book contained several very nice projects. I simply had to immediately start my favorite: an angel sitting on a Christmas ornament. I have no special connection to angels, but this cute girl immediately stole my heart. The pattern explanation was clear and I even learned two cool new tricks for creating bending shapes!

I once heard that the best camera is the camera you always carry with you. This is so true. Although we have a great photo camera I definitely prefer taking pictures with my phone. It is so much easier to transfer the pictures onto my computer. I will try to be less lazy in the future, for now it is almost time to go to bed and a post with a bit blurry pictures is better than no post right...

In the book the angel really sits straight on the ornament while the ornament hangs in mid air. I either used a very heavy kind of stuffing or the picture is photoshoped a little. Based on basic physics knowledge I presume the second. My angel looks much less comfortable on her ornament when floating in mid air. She seems to need a firm grip to avoid slipping. Although it might look a bit tiring, she seems to enjoy it, because she keeps smiling ;)

The original pattern in the book used black beads for eyes. My non existing supply of beads forced me to use an alternative for the eyes. While searching I came across a perfect set of eyes. in an Etsy shop. Besides gorgeous eyes, these dolls are really amazing and great inspiration for the future.

Crochet snowmen heads

I finally made the snowman head that set me on the path of crocheting. Last year around the same time I came across this awesome Christmas ornament.

from an equal cool site . Unfortunately I did not posses any crocheting skills. My mother had tried to teach me the basics on several occasions but this had always ended in much laughing (mostly from her side) and no results.

At the same time that I spotted these great snowmen I also spotted ornament knitting with Arne and Carlos. Which ignited my current creativity wave. The child sweater that I knitted after Christmas re-acquainted me  with the art of  crocheting. After knitting the ornaments and the sweater I got a been-there-done-that-feeling with knitting for a few months. I seized the opportunity and decided that I had to change my lack of crochet skills and started to search on you tube for patient teachers. I found a bunch of them with one particular favorite . The lady in these movies explains very clear and the image quality is great. I was wondering if I could recommend these movies to a non-dutch speaker by using the automatic capture button. The results were very funny but far from useful. In the first few seconds you tube came up with word suggestions like "hike" and "holocaust". After having a quit productive crochet year filled with several cactus and stuffed animals, yesterday I finally made a snowman!

The nose is a bit to low which resulted lacking some space for a happy smile but all in all I am quit satisfied. I will keep you posted on the development of some companionship for my lonely friend.

Knitting tree ornaments with Arne and Carlos

Chronologically this was not the first post I wrote, but I consider the content to be the match that lit up my creativity.

When I came across this book I was immediately intrigued. And started to think for who I could buy this book. For myself quickly came to mind... This blog is slightly back dated and at the time I saw this book I was far from creatively productive. If I started something at all, I usually did not finish it. Therefore I did not feel that I "deserved" this book just for fun. In present time by the way I have no trouble at all to treat myself to a new creative book or pattern (although maybe I should).

Back to the question who to give it to, I decided that I could give it either to my mum or to a friend (who did not knit, but could always use an very cool book on her shelves about knitting gay guys) to whom I was her Secret Santa. But when the book arrived, and I took a sneak peek my self resistance caved  in. I simply had to have this book for myself! Judging from my enthusiasm you would almost think I get commission on the book because besides giving it to both my mum and my friend I have been promoting the book ever since. Just browsing through the book puts you in an instant happy holiday mood even if you can not knit.

I had learned knitting from my mother but I would never wear the sweaters that I knitted, because I was not ready to reveal my knitting skills to the world (a very common teenager thing at that time when knitting was far from cool). As some of you might know, knitting sweaters takes a relative long amount of time and you have to have quite some perseverance to finish it. These Christmas ornament took me about two evenings each, which makes them a great condensed project to start up knitting again. I say start up knitting again because if this is actually your first knitting project these balls can be nerve racking. The balls start out with a very small amount of stitches over four needles and for the beginner this might be hard to handle. But two of my friends that did not have much experience tried, succeeded and loved it (not the friend who got the book though, she prefers to keep these guys on the shelves, but you never know for the future..)

Most of the balls I made I gave away as presents. Where I have some pictures of a few that I kept.