Crochet elephant

After crocheting booties for my best friends baby, and a blanket that I forgot to take photos of, I was still on the crochet buzz and had been seeing heaps of cute crochet animals. After trawling through pinterest for inspiration I decided to crochet a cute little elephant.

I freestyled it, adjusting it as I went, and at one point taking it all apart and starting again when I felt it was not the right shape. I started at the trunk with about five stitches in the round, and simply increased and decreased as I went, over the head, the body and right through to the tail. As the tail was closing it off, I had to stuff him as I went as well. I just stuffed him with the innards of an old pillow I no longer needed.

The legs and ears were made separately and sewn on. And as a final touch I embroidered on some eyes using black and white yarn, and pulled some of the gray yarn through the trunk firmly to give it a cute little tilt and bend.

Baby booties

My best friend is having a baby! So I thought I'd put my crafting skills to use for her baby shower.

I've recently (over the past year) learned to crochet, so I thought I would try my hand at some crochet booties. Being the over ambitious person I am I thought I would just work off a couple of inspiration pictures from my pinterest and a basic sole chart that you can see here.

Using the sole chart and this page for inspiration I tried my hand at some baby crochet Nikes. That link has a tutorial on it, but I found it did not match the pictures. Nevertheless, with lots of practice and redoing after mistakes, I think they turned out quite well:

 I crocheted the tick separately and sewed it on to the bootie. After crocheting the white sole, I crocheted up in two pieces, one on the side and round the back, and the other for the tongue. Afterwards I sewed them together to keep the shape, but this method gives a great looking tongue to the shoe to make it look much more like a sneaker.

The second pair of booties I made are more like little boots, based very closely on this blog post. There is actually a tutorial there, so I would recommend checking it out. But I don't really know how to read crochet patterns so I freestyled it.

These were great fun and gave me the crocheting bug. Looking forward to my next baby shower!

Macrame hanging planters

After a few long months studying, then a couple more painting the house of a friend, I'm finally free for a while. Yesterday was my first day off and today I was ready to get a project done.

I had bought these tea light candle holders a few years ago thinking I would do something to them to make them more interesting. But I looked at them today and started thinking how cute they would look with succulents in them and how I had seen stacked macrame pot holders on Pinterest a while back. I couldn't find the pin I remembered but found some simple tutorials and came up with a design I thought would look good with such small containers.

     

So, here's what I did. The string was just something I had picked up cheap and was sitting on my craft table. I think there's nothing more satisfying than working with what you've got; taking what may seem to be totally unconnected, unspectacular resources, and making something worthwhile out of them. This project took me around 3 hours.

Now of course you can put anything you want in your containers - paper, plastic, or real flowers; plants; even pens/knick-knacks.

But I wanted to put succulents in. They are so easy to grow from cuttings, simply break off a piece from an already growing plant, chuck it in some soil, and water it little and not too often. This also means they are low maintenance, which is good for someone like me who tends to kill plants.

I can't wait until my cute succulents are more established! 

Happy crafting :) 

Red-Riding-Hood Coat

My cousin told me a while back that she would love me to knit something for her little girl. I had this red yarn in my basket that I'd been staring at for a while, and saw an inspiration Red-Riding-Hood style baby jumper on Pinterest, so I set to work on this. I worked without a pattern, more of a general idea of where I was heading, but I think it turned out pretty well. I requested a few measurements and worked from that. I've been thinking about putting together a pattern of it, so let me know if you're interested and it will likely motivate me to actually get it done.

My gorgeous little second cousin is only four so it's a small coat and I knitted the whole body piece in one (so there are no seams down the sides) and only knitted the sleeves separately. They live in the South Island (of New Zealand) so I had to take these photos quickly before handing the coat off to my uncle to transport down. Anyway, here is the finished product.

I used simple crochet to attach the toggles and make some loops. I'm not a strong crocheter so just did my best and kept it simple.

It's a bit tricky to see (the close-up photo didn't turn out well) but I also put some elastic thread through the waist. It really gave the coat more shape.

And here is the photo my cousin sent me of the stunning wee model. Great fit me thinks.

Bath mat with sheet yarn

I used my sheet yarn (see here for the tutorial) and used three colours of sheets create a striped bathmat. 

I used a simple knit stitch so that one side is plain stripes:

And the other side has cross over small stripes.

I intend to make a round the toilet mat, and a door mat using sheet yarn.

No sew sheet yarn

Sheets that are ripped or have a localised stain become unusable on beds but are ideal for making sturdy yarn.

Firstly, the hems need to be unpicked or ripped off so that all the edges look like this:

Next, cut slits into one edge, about an inch apart (or whatever size suits your project).

Pull on a tab will create a rip that can be continued for the entire length. By ripping rather than cutting it the strips will be an even width.

Each strip will look like this:

There will be some loose threads that must be separated from the strip so that it looks clean, like this:

And you'll end up with leftover thread like this:

To join the strips first make a hole in each end, about 2cm in length:

Thread one end through the other:

Fold the end that had been threaded through back onto itself:

And thread the strip through the hole on its end:

Pull it all the way through:

And pull it tight:

Repeat over and over, adding all the strips and then roll them into a ball:

Using inch thick strips I knitted it together with 6mm needles, this was a bit tricky but made a nice thick knit:

Happy knitting!  :)

New Watercolours

Well, it's been far too long since my last post. I've been so caught up in university work that although I have been doing some crafts, nothing much had been completed, and I didn't have the energy to update this blog. Nevertheless, university is practically over and I have celebrated by diving headfirst into crafting. It's been bliss.

Over the past couple of days I worked on these two paintings. A black robin:

and a hedgesparrow:

They seem to make my house look so much more cheerful. Would be nice to try and keep these ones. My paintings always seem to get sold or I give them away. It's all good fun though.