A new year

A new year and hopefully an increased interest in crafting because to be honest it's been lacking for the last month and I don't know why! I had visions of lazing away the holidays on the couch, crocheting, or getting in some good sewing time, but as it turned out I really didn't want to do anything crafty at all. I made a crochet necklace for my mum and then somehow ran out of steam. It's weird. Has anyone else had this happen to them? From being enthusiastic to complete lack of interest in a couple weeks? No blogging, no reading blogs, no Instagram. Maybe it's a virus... or the summer heat...

Anyways, I've been feeling stirrings of interest in the last couple days, and although I don't know how far it will go, I thought I'd post about a couple of things I made for presents.

As I mentioned, I made a necklace for my mum, from the Knot's Itoami book. I realised when I went to get a photo of it that I'd only taken an 'in progress' shot, so that'll have to do.

It's done on a .65 hook with #20 mercerised cotton and I found it very hard to do in anything but good lighting! I also realised, much to my chagrin, that if I want to keep doing this very fine stuff that I'm going to have to bite the bullet and buy some cheapy reading glasses. I don't need them for reading but I do for this stuff. Well I don't technically, but it's not fun sometimes and my eyes hurt a bit afterwards! Frankly I'm annoyed, crafting shouldn't remind you of your mortality.

The other Christmas present I made was a tea cosy for my friend Jess, who has been using her Xmas one year-round. I used the pattern for the cosy in a book she gave me called Cute and Easy Crochet. I then spent a fair amount of time on Pinterest looking at pretty flowery cosies and then made my way through the various flowers in 200 Crochet Flowers, Embellishments & Trims to end up with the garden on top. Oh it was fun! But eventually I had to stop and put them on the cosy. I defy any heat to escape this baby!

Luckily it fits Jess's tea pot better than mine, and I'm determined to make myself one that suits my pot. Although the pattern is really easy, it clearly suits the rounder-bodied 'Brown Bettie' type best.

Crochet flowers

It's so much fun making flowers, I've been having a ball! And I think it's definitely the best way to use up your little scraps of yarn. I've been working my way through a book I have called 200 Crochet Flowers, Embellishments & Trims, making whatever takes my fancy, and thoroughly enjoying myself!



I borrowed Mini Motif crochet pattern from my friend Yumiko and it has some neat flowers to try out too - but in small!
 

Hazel had a quick look through it yesterday and instantly fell in love with the little icecreams and shoes, as well as the colourful flowers (monochrome is so not an 8 year old girl!).



There are quite a few motifs done in fluffy yarn which isn't really to my taste so much but if you google ISBN978-4-02-190416-5 there are quite a few photos of other pages in the book. Sorry mine aren't that great, but hopefully they'll give an idea of what's in the book. The designs are all charted so there's no issues with it being in Japanese.

The Little Tree

My next Christmas project is going to be crocheting a couple of little trees to go with Sarah's very cute book The Little Tree. I love that you can get the pattern to recreate Little Tree and bring the story to life in a way. I'm going to do two for my niece and nephew and they can share the book. I'm not so naive as to think they'd share a tree :)



You can buy the book and see some more images at Sarah's Felt store.

I need to find a good brown for the trunk still, which means another trip out to Spotlight - when I popped in last week they were reorganising and it was so radically different that it felt a bit surreal and I couldn't quite focus on what I was meant to be doing and came away with a totally wrong brown! Sad when a craft store revamp sends you into a tizz.

Christmas comes early

It seems much too early to be sending boxes of Christmas presents off in the mail (and not just because it's early summer here!) but I've already missed the economy post Xmas deadline so it can't be. I missed it because I suddenly realised that I'd bought all this fabric to make bags LAST year and hadn't, so I had better do it this year or be totally disgusted with myself. I made 7 bags over about 5 days and pretty much wore myself out, I'm not very good at doing lots of the same thing over and over again, I get bored quickly. I'd like to make a few more though, but not for a couple weeks!



The pattern is the Lined Drawstring Bag pattern by In Color Order. The link goes to a free tutorial but I bought the actual pattern with a bunch of different sizes. Highly recommend it!