May the FO be with you

 

FO Friday - Bees

Back in April last year, I made a couple of amigurumi bees for Jamie. We hung them up on the edge of the stairs and they had a merry old time getting in everyone's way as they walked in and out of the living room. When we moved to the new house, there wasn't a similarly irritating place to hang them, so they found a home on the light fitting over the dining table.

The only photo I could find that showed the bees
was this one from my amigurumi comic strip!

The light fitting has space for four bees, however, so recently Jamie has been saying that we need more bees. As the weather has been far too hot this week for working on any of my other WIPs, I decided to dig out the black and yellow acrylic and make some more bees.

I have run out of white though, so these bees have natural coloured wings. I think that's ok though, as it means we'll be able to distinguish between the original bees and the new bees! They haven't yet found their way up to the light fitting yet, because I don't know where my invisible nylon thread has gone. It's been "put away" somewhere during the move I am sure.

Nothing quite like small amigurumi for a quick crafting fix!

Something different...

Search 3KCBWDAY5 to see what everyone else has come up with for today's "Something Different" theme!

Emergency gift

Crochet is great for emergency presents. On Wednesday, when we realised that we were actually going to be in Wales for Mothers Day, I decided we needed to bring more than a card, as we don't see each other that often. Crochet to the rescue!

I have a fairly large selection of colours in acrylic DK. I knew a small amigurumi would be the ideal quick project to get done, so I searched through the Ravelry database for a free pattern. After putting together a shortlist, I gave Jamie the final choice (after all, it is his mother I was making this for!) and he picked Caity Cat. While I love the colour scheme originally used in the pattern, I didn't have all the colours to hand. What I did have, was all seven colours of the rainbow.

We deliberated for a while over which shade of pink (of three) would be best used for the violet stripe, but I let Jamie make the final decision. It was really quick to make; I did all of the crocheting on Wednesday evening, and all the sewing together on Thursday.

I waited until this morning to take the photos, expecting to be able to go out into the garden to take cute photos in the sunshine. But it rained.

I made very few modifications, other than colour scheme. The main change was to crochet my green chains directly onto the body, rather than crocheting a chain then sewing it on. The leaves were sewn using the ends of the green yarn from the chain stitches.

One thing I loved about the pattern was the flower on the back. A cleverly placed chain of green hides all my wonky colour changes!

Countdown to Christmas

I finally got around to finishing my advent calendar last night. After much deliberation, I opted for Chrissy's suggestion of a candle.

These two have gone straight in the box for the surprise drawing each morning

The white candle went straight on the wall, to fill the gap we'd left on the 8th

We're being fairly random about how we choose which ornament goes up each day, but as I have 8 different designs, and there are 8 pegs on each string, it seemed logical to have one of each design on each string! So on the 8th we left a gap to fill when I made the final three pieces.

This is how it looked yesterday evening

I really like it now that it's starting to fill up. Such a lovely use of an otherwise wasted space, as the wall on the side of the stairs isn't secure enough to hang a painting from.

Also, I realised I showed you last years video of us putting up the Christmas tree, but haven't shown you the additional decorations which are now traditional (you do something twice, it becomes a tradition, right?).

See how the tree completely blocks access to my stash

The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed there are amigurumi peeking out of the branches. As soon as the tree goes up, the various creatures from around the room migrate to the tree and live there throughout the Christmas period.

All of the amis from the shelves are here. The Cyoot Sad Eyed Dragon, and his friend Sir Tiny Knight (not made by me),
both crabs, both lobsters, Yoda, R2D2 and the tiger. Oh, and I've turned some random swatch motifs into ornaments.
And my cuddly Gruffalo and Reindeer come along for the ride too.

Of course, I wouldn't want my snake to feel left out, so we decorate George, the dragon tree, as well. Just tinsel this year, but in previous years he's had baubles and lights too.

It's some sort of tropical Christmas out there.

Bees!

The nice sunny weather brought out this little fella yesterday. He found himself a cosy spot with the only flowers in the garden.

Pattern: Bazzil the Buzzing Bumblebee by Amy Dianna

Yarn: Sirdar Bonus DK (yellow and black left over from the Granny Rectangle, white left over from the Tiger Stripe Starghan)

Hook: 3.5mm

I made the eyes by attaching some black yarn where I wanted the first eye, then I did a chain and a single crochet in the same spot, before pulling my yarn through to tie the stitch off. Then I used a tapestry needle to thread the yarn through the head to the other side, and repeated the process for the other eye. Then, without cutting the yarn, I thread it back into the head and out to make the mouth. For the antennae, I chained seven or eight stitches (can't remember!), and pulled the yarn through, leaving a long-ish tail. Then I threaded the chain through the top of the head till it was halfway through, then arranged them to face in the right direction and trimmed the ends till they looked about right.

When I have more spare time, I'll make him some friends.

A very special FO Friday today

A little late today with my FO Friday post, but I couldn't post earlier on today as I hadn't taken pictures of it yet!

Drum roll please......

It's the Clown Fish!!

Yes I finally finished my clown fish amigurumi this week. I actually finished him on Saturday, last weekend, and have been excitedly counting down to this post all week.

Here he is in all his glory:

I decided against putting a mouth on him, like the pattern suggests. I think he looks just fine without one. It'd make him look too cartoony.

So, the project details. The pattern is from Mausica's Magical Menagerie, and can be found on her blog, or in pdf format as a free Ravelry download. The yarn is Sirdar Bonus DK, the same orange, black and white used in the tiger starghan. I used a 4mm hook for the main body of the fish, and a 3.5mm hook for the fins.

Now, here's where it gets interesting. The fins are four different variations on a similar theme, coming out in different sizes. The ridges are done by crocheting into the back loop only, which I didn't have any trouble with (although my first few attempts with the 4mm hook came out really loose, hence the switch to the smaller hook). What stumped me, was the fact that instead of having a lovely fan shape like I was expecting, halfway along the fin it was switching to fan in the opposite direction.

I eventually figured out the problem - in the Dorsal/Pectoral fin section (which is the first fin section), the pattern is wrong. The rows go ss, sc, hdc one way, then hdc, sc, ss the other way (so all the ss height ends are at the bottom of the fin, and all the hdc height ends are at the top). But halfway through the dorsal fin pattern, are two rows going ss, sc, hdc one after the other. For some reason, the rows have ended up the wrong way around. Once I had my epiphany, I started ignoring the pattern stitches, and just paid attention to how many stitches I was supposed to have in total, following the basic alternating pattern laid out above.

Worked like a dream. I can't believe, now, that it took me so long to realise what the problem was! Once I'd worked it out on Saturday evening, I was determined to finish it as quickly as possible, so stayed up watching Interview with the Vampire while I made all the fins and attached them.

The small fins underneath the body have been attached kind of wonky. Which is fine, if you don't look too closely!

I need to get on and finish my Tiramisu Baby Blanket this week, as the baby it is now intended for has been born a whole 2 weeks ahead of schedule! So I shall mostly be concentrating on that this week; who knows, maybe it will be next Friday's FO.

Done with my fish? Head on over to Tami's Amis to see some other awesome FOs.

FO Friday again

I'm quite excited about FO Friday today. For I have two things to share, and one of them *gasp* is from WIP Wednesday last week!

Yes, I've finally put a face on my amigurumi tiger and he's ready to meet the world.



Isn't he cute?

I used some black embroidery thread I have hanging around from an unfinished cross stitch I've been working on. I think he looks quite sweet, and I'm very pleased with him.

The other thing I finished this week was a new project, started and finished on the same day (last Friday, in fact, but waaay to late to be included in last week's FO Friday post). I mentioned on Wednesday we have a few babies arriving over the next six months or so; I started my gift-making with an experiment in baby hats:

This is the Popcorn Crown hat by Paula Dean Nevison. It's that yellow Top Value DK again, until I buy any more baby-things yarn everything I make will be this colour! Using a 6mm hook, my hat has come out with a circumference of 14 inches, which according to this chart makes it suitable for a newborn. But as I have no experience with babies and their heads, I have no idea if this is accurate or not. Does anyone have any idea? If it is possibly too small, then I will follow kelbeldesign's advice and add two more dcs to the starting round and making it longer. I also really like the effect she gets with using two colours (see her other project here).

I feel I ought to apologise to my non-knitting/crochet readers. A lot of the links here are Ravelry-based, so you'd need to be a member of the site to see them. I presume everyone who's found their way here from Tami's blog is on Ravelry already, though.

I also promise to blog more about the other stuff, not just my crochet! I'll make a real effort to start on the other photography challenges soon, and I'm in the middle of a huge Games Workshop audit in the house to find out how many miniatures we have that need painting, so expect a large Warhammer related post in the next week or so too.

Have a good weekend, and don't forget to head over to Tami's Blog to check out the other FOs posted today.

WIP Wednesday 3

Another Wednesday already! I am happy to report I have a new WIP to show you this week, hopefully to make up for any lack of progress on the amigurumi front.

Lets start with the WIPs from last week:

Granny Rectangle

No pics of this one today, as it doesn't really look that different to last week. I've done maybe four more rounds since last Wednesday (mostly at the end of last week), and I'm starting to look like I'm going to run out of some of the colours soon. So a trip to Hobbycraft will be in order at some point this week!

Clown Fish

I'm afraid I have to report no further progress on the clown fish. I did try, but I have to admit the pattern is defeating me. I just can't get the dorsal fin to work! I think I know what the problem is, I just need to wait until I'm not likely to throw it across the room in frustration again.

and finally.... the new WIP for the week:

Tiramisu Baby Blanket

This week I learned another friend was expecting a baby. That makes three babies due between now and August. I'd best get busy! I already had a couple of items in my Ravelry queue. The Lion Brand hooded baby blanket is one, but I want to use Sirdar Supersoft Aran for that, which means a trip to Jacksons, where they sell it quite cheaply. I needed things I could start immediately, and use the pale yellow Top Value DK I was given for Christmas.

The Tiramisu blanket pattern (Ravelry pattern link here) looks really cute in all the FO pics on the site, plus it's free, which is always a bonus (don't think I've paid for a pattern yet!). However, a quick glance over it showed me straight away that my yarn was not the same as the recommended, so a test swatch was definately needed:

After a couple of goes, and a bit of a head scratch as I worked out the maths behind the pattern and how to scale it, I finally settled on chaining 121 stitches instead of 91, with a 6mm hook. The rest should follow on from that neatly enough.

After a couple of days working on it, it now looks like this:

A whole nine inches done. Out of 32, so I've a bit to go yet before I can get excited about the border! I'm not sure what colour ribbon to go for, although of the three babies it could go to, one is definately a girl and one is definately a boy, so I could go blue or pink and get away with it. Guess I'll see what's in the shop when I go to get it.

That's all my WIPs this week, head over to Tami's Amis to see the others!

FO Friday

So if Wednesdays are for WIPs, Fridays are for FOs! (that's finished objects, for anyone out there not 'up' on the lingo). As time goes on, we'll get a nice trickle of projects developing through WIP Wednesday posts, to eventually appear in a FO Friday post (hopefully to much fanfare and delight).

Unfortunately, I'm rather new to all this blogging about stuff, so for today, I shall just show off some of my favourite FOs so far. (for those on Ravelry, you can of course look at all my projects there)

This was my first ever attempt at crochet. I'd dabbled with knitting, mostly scarves, but never seriously. Then the future MiL sent me a crochet pattern for a bag she thought I would like. She'd tried to buy me one already made, but it was sold before she could return to the shop. So sending me the pattern was the only other option, really. I dutifully thought I might as well have a go, since she's gone to all this trouble.

Well we can all see where that led! I am, pardon the pun, totally hooked.

That was back in May; I finally got around to showing her the finished bag last week, when we saw them on the day after Boxing Day. She was very impressed. Very neat, she said. And I think she is right.

And this is my first attempt at amigurumi. Deciphering the pattern was tricky, as English was not the first language of the lady who wrote it. But I got there in the end. I also learned valuable lessons about avoiding the necessity for sewing bits together - I could easily have crocheted those legs direct onto the body and saved myself a lot of hassle sewing them on afterwards. A lesson I followed with my second amigurumi project, the blue lobster.

Well those are the FOs I'm sharing. Hopefully next week I'll have a current one to show you (maybe that tiger will get a face!), but for now, head over to Tami's Amis to see the other FOs posted up today!

Wednesday is for Crochet blogging

For my first foray into blogging about my all-consuming crochet habit, I present:

So the point here is to post up every Wednesday with my current works-in-progress. Happily, I have three to share today.

First up, a small amigurumi Tiger, from this free pattern on the Lily Sugar'n Cream website. I started this on the 18th December, the start of my drive to use up my bright orange Sirdar Bonus DK yarn (more on that later). I finished all of the crocheting, stuffing, sewing together in one evening. But I didn't have beads for eyes, and it was too late by the time I was done to be embroidering on the face. So it has been put to one side, and ignored in favour of other projects.

I've got as far as adding black beads for eyes, but not the nose/mouth/whiskers bit. Hopefully he'll turn up in a FO Friday post before too long!

Secondly, my clown fish amigurumi, from this free pattern on Ravelry. I'm sure you'll notice again that this is a project using predominantly bright orange yarn! I'm probably about halfway through, having completed the body and eyes, I just have many fins to make and attach.

As you can see, at the moment it looks more like a demented Vermicious Knid. I started this on the 20th December, but got annoyed with the pattern for the fins, so put it to one side and haven't picked it up again yet.

Lastly, my current favourite project, although I intended it for a fall-back project to do when I didn't have any amigurumi to work on. But I've been working on it almost non stop since I started it! It's a rectangular granny square, using this pattern from fellow blogger Erin Lindsey.

No bright orange in this one! But only the green and purple are new yarns for this project, all of the other colours were needed for my Christmas gift to the future MiL, a holiday penguin (free pattern from FreshStitches.com).

So why am I desperately using up bright orange yarn, I hear you cry. Quite simply, because I have too much of it! I bought it for my tiger striped starghan project, which was a gift for a friend's new baby:

Now before buying the yarn for this project, I searched high and low through all the FOs listed for the pattern on Ravelry, trying to get an idea of how much yarn I might need. Not helped by the fact I was substituting the Sirdar Bonus DK for the recommended Red Heart Sport Baby Pompadour yarn (my first real foray into substituting yarn properly). I got really frustrated because the pattern simply states "keep going until it's big enough for you", and all the FOs on Ravelry don't have the details of how much yarn was used, or how big the finished item is. So I had to wing it.

I really had no idea how much I would need, but reasoning that my white stripes were thinner than the orange and black I got less white than black. In total I bought three skeins of black, three of orange and two white. As you can see from the finished project on Ravelry, I used up just over one of the white and orange, and about a skein and a half of black. White and black leftovers didn't bother me, but what the heck was I going to do with pretty much two whole skeins of bright orange acrylic!

Luckily it didn't take too long searching the pattern database to find a few amigurumi projects to use up the yarn with. I've still got loads left, so I may have to make a few more orange things and give them away (otherwise I'll be drowning in small cute animals, which wouldn't be good).

The trouble with projects to use up yarn, though, is you end up having to buy more yarn because you need a different colour to finish something off, and then you're left with a whole new skein of yarn to use up somehow! It's how I've ended up doing my granny rectangle. I had to buy red and yellow and pale blue to make Howie the Penguin (I didn't think the orange would work on the beak and feet), so while I was in the shop getting those I picked up the red and purple, knowing I already had the granny rectangle in my pattern queue that I could use them on. Hopefully, I will be able to finish off that blanket at a point where I have very little of the yarns left, so I don't end up in this position again!

So there you go. Happy WIP Wednesday!