Busy Little Bank Holiday Bee

What a busy little bank holiday weekend I've had this week.  Crafting away, working on a few different projects, and it has been a thoroughly enjoyable four days!

First up, I've been rushing to finish two little softies for a lovely family I have been working with for the past few months.  I diagnosed the little baby boy with a hearing loss when he was just a couple of weeks old, and so have been seeing the family almost weekly for the past 4 months or so.  Over that time, my colleague and I have built up quite a friendship with the mum, and spend lots of time playing with older sister who comes along to every appointment.  Mum is such a nice mum to work with; she even treats us to sweets and cakes the few times we've squeezed her in over our lunch break.  The little man will be heading off to the cochlear implant centre soon, not to be seen by us again, and so I thought it would be nice to repay mum's kindness in the only way I know how; crochet cuddlies.  I made a little blue dinosaur for baby boy a few weeks ago, but, knowing the family had gone on holiday dawdled a bit on making something for big sister.  When mum telephoned last week to arrange the first appointment after their holiday, I knew I needed to get the second toy finished or I might not get it ready before they move on.

Fresh Stitches has been running a crochet dog club for a couple of months now and as soon as this months pattern, a cute little Maltese, came through I knew it would be just right for older sister.  I scrambled around in my yarn stash to find the right aran yarn and got to it. It's a really quick pattern, I don't think it took more than a couple of hours to complete but I'm delighted with how she turned out:

Look at those cute little loop stitch ears!  Don't they just work perfectly?!  I can't wait to give these little gifts when I see the family this week.  It's the best part of making things.

I've of course had several crochet projects on the go all at the same time!  As well as poodling along with the Crochet Club (new patterns out this week - eek!) I made another Fresh Stitches club toy, a felted Chicken and Egg.  When I first opened the box at Easter time, I have to admit I was a bit disappointed.  I'm not keen on those turn inside out type of things as I never think it works too well. But I was wrong.  This worked out rather well, and I'd definitely make one again.  The secret part of this project was the felting.  Once I'd made my pieces I was a little hesitant to chuck them in the washing machine and see how they turned out, but in for a penny, I went ahead and threw them in with some sheets and boiled the heck out of them!  Actually, I rather liked how it ended up a little fuzzy and less defined, the only problem was that the feet and beak got stuck in the drain of the washing machine and so didn't actually felt (or shrink) so they are slightly out of proportion to the rest of the body.  But hey, I guess this gives him character.  

In just a flash the chicken...

is turned inside out to become an egg!

Last of all, it definitely seems to be that time when everyone I know is having babies.  Literally, everyone.  So it's important for me to get cracking on the gifts asap! The first thing I've started is a beautiful little crochet blanket.  I love love love these colours of Rico Baby Classic DK available at The Homemakery.  The picture doesn't really do it justice  the 'orange is actually a lovely watermelon colour, and the green is a beautiful teal.  The yarn is super soft to work with, and not at all splitty.  I'm really enjoying making this blanket whereas often I get bored a tiny bit of the way through (I know we're all collectively thinking of my stripey granny blanket right now).  

Whilst on the subject, have you tried The Homemakery?  It's a lovely website and the delivery is outstanding.  I ordered around lunchtime and the package was with me before 10am the next day (and it was a Saturday, perfect).  It even included a little handwritten card and some adorable 'made with love' ribbon.  I can't praise this website/haberdashery enough.

I've also been trying out some baby bibs from Love Sewing Magazine.  It's a new one just out  in the UK, and despite some initial delivery problems (i.e. it wasn't delivered at all) I was pleased when it finally arrived and I got the chance to read it.  Now here comes the disclaimer, I know pretty much nothing at all about sewing, but to me it's seems like it's a nice modern mag full of the kind of things that I want to be able to make.  It's not totally aimed at beginners (although many of the designs are suitable for beginners) as it assumes some level of knowledge/skill already in sewing.  I decided to practice my straight line sewing by trying my hand at a couple of different baby bibs.  

 I was so impressed with myself as they turned out pretty much like the picture!  Ok, so the bandana bib is just a triangle, but it still looked like a triangle by the time I finished with it so it means I was doing something right!  I just need to work out how to neatly finish up the unstitched part left for turning the work inside out.  I am not well practised in hand sewing, and my last few attempts have been pretty bad.  Luckily, my mother in law is an extraordinary seamstress, and so I am hoping to persuade her to show me how it's done (possibly on both bibs just to be absolutely certain, tee hee).  

Do you see how the spots run right down the middle of the bandana?  The Great British Sewing Bee would be so proud!  Once sewn, I'll need to add on some poppers and they'll be all done.  I think I'll invest in some fancy pants material and make some more now I know it's within my ability to make them and for them not to look completely homemade.  I've got some John Lewis vouchers that I've been saving up for just such a task...

Janie Crowfoot's Crochet Club 2014 - February

At last I have time on a Sunday to sit down and show you the first part of Janie Crowfoot's 2014 Crochet Club.  Unfortunately, the reason I have time on my hands is because I am sitting at my mum's hospital bedside, occupying myself whilst she sleeps, so there may well be a few mistakes littering this post, as my mind becomes preoccupied by other things.  

The observant of you will note that these are photos from the February pattern, which I've got round to writing up on 30th March, so I'm sure you can imagine how far I am along with the March parts of the pattern - hardly at all!  However, this in no way reflects my enjoyment of the club; whilst initially I was a bit worried about the whole tension thing (amigurumi allows me to have the free reign to use whatever hook I like with no consequence other than  larger or smaller toys at the end of it!) it was nice to actually push myself to use the right hook at the correct tension to go forward for an end purpose.  

I was surprised by how many pattern pieces there were to make.  I've done a few kits and CALs and am usually underwhelmed by what you are given to do, but not this time.  Oh no, this club could easily fill a good few weekends if you want to do a nice job of it all.  Here are the first few (sorry about the colour overload):

This presented another challenge - blocking.  I don't think I've ever really blocked anything, I perhaps have half-heartedly attempted it on a couple of things but this was the real deal; making sure things were the necessary size and shape for when they finally come together as one big piece.  I scoured the Ravelry Group looking for advice and decided to try a hot steam iron hovered about 1 inch above the pieces and luckily it worked out very well.  

There was one part of the pattern that I was particularly hesitant to make a start on, the Quant Flower.  Partly because I hate working up and down the stems of flowers (chains, how I hate you) and partly because it looked almost lacy (slip stitches, I hate you too).  Eventually though I made a start and eventually ended up with a curled up, scrumpled looking colour ball.  But, with a little bit of blocking...

It looked just like the pattern picture! 

March's patterns involve bead work which I am very much looking forward to.  Now just to find the time to make a start...

Mrs Many Projects

I am one of those annoying people who starts lots of different things without getting round to finishing any of them.  Rather like a magpie, I get easily distracted by anything remotely cute/shiny/new and need, yes need, to start it right then and there and it will be all consuming, if only for a short while.  

Now I know that this is how my brain thinks, so I do try to work against it, but there are some things I find it hard to resist.  And this is exactly what happened with embroidery.  I've considered it for a while (you may remember that my parents helpfully brought me back an embroidery kit from Australia over Christmas) but my Twitter feed has been full with the buzz of Wild Olive's Spring Stitching Club over the past few days and I thought that it would be rude not to take a sneaky peak to see what all the fuss was about.  

So I looked... and there was the cutest little bunny design staring back at me!  It looked like a fairly simple pattern, running stitch I think, and I started to hear my brain whisper  "Doesn't that look like the perfect starter embroidery pattern?"  "How hard could it be, surely it's worth a try?" "It's just a few dollars, what great value it is for 12 patterns."  Well, how could I fight my own well argued logic?!  So I signed up, but the official patterns don't start until March and I'd really started to get excited about my adventure into embroidery so I thought I'd just perhaps have a little look on Wild Olive's Etsy page to see if there was anything that might take my fancy.  And there was:

A cute set of crafting designs including a crochet hook, yarn ball and lots of other things with happy little faces!  I downloaded the pattern and then headed off to my local curtain shop to buy some supplies.  Yep, curtain shop.  I don't really understand either.  It's predominantly a curtain shop but luckily for me, also has a small section of yarn and needlecraft supplies which included some embroidery hoops, threads and needles.  I spent a while choosing my colours - grey orange and teal green were scooped up without hesitation - and hurried home.

The next hurdle was what to embroider on.  The most appropriately thick fabric I could find was some Clark and Clark (gasp) semi expensive stuff I had stashed in my little craft room.  Justifying that this really was an emergency, I cut off some of the beautiful fabric turned it over to use the back (gasp) traced on the design and stretched it over the hoop.  

I was surprised by the simplicity of embroidery designs.  No guidance on stitches, no real guidance on colour or how to move around the design, just a black and white line drawing of  my smiley little yarn ball.  Still, as someone who has absolutely no drawing skills whatsoever, it was just what I needed.  I read over Wild Olive's embroidery basics series and decided to do a bit of running stitch for the face and split stitch for the yarn bits (check me out using the lingo like a pro!) 

It turned out much better than I expected for a first attempt.  A few too many stitches bottom right so it became a little squared off, but overall, I was pretty pleased.  The back is less neat, and I understand that a good embroiderer (embroiderist, embroidologist?) has as pretty a back as front, but I guess that all comes with time.  

Have I caught the bug?  Absolutely!  I think embroidery will be a nice little addition to crocheting without straying too far from the path.  There's lots of really cute designs out there and I've flooded my Pinterest  with ideas, examples and designs.  Hop over and take a look :)