and if you see a crocodile then don't forget to scream - Eeeek!

What do you do when your son gets invited to a 'Peter Pan' party and he decides that he wants to go as the crocodile?

After giving up on the idea of sticking a load of empty egg boxes all over him thought about trying to make some sort of hat, and because crochet is so lovely and structural I got some green yarn and my trusty hook and made a start.

To make the hat shape I bought a simple green peaked toddler hat and spent quite a bit of time working out how to make a close fitting crochet cover for it. For the peak at the front I made a separate piece (roughly a semicircle) which had an extra 'lip' around the curve so that it would stay fixed on the hat. After joining these two pieces together and tacking around the bottom of the hat I was left with one crocheted hat.

Next job was to try and make it look like a crocodile... so I needed to come up with eyes, teeth and nostrils - while remembering Sam's instructions that he wanted it to 'look like a friendly crocodile so I don't scare anyone away'.

After spending some time browsing crocodile photos online I made some very white pointy teeth to go down each side with one being slightly longer in the middle (real croc's teeth all seem to stick out all over the place). What to do with the eyes was a real conundrum... the photos online showed that crocodile eyes peep out from the top of their head... to try and get this effect I settled with sticking some felt eyes on the front with little crochet eyebrows over them to try and give the impression that they were raised up. I also made the pupils larger than a real croc as I thought this made it look 'friendlier'. Last to add were some little crochet dimples for nostrils and the hat was done.

I'm really so proud of how this hat turned out - Sam & Emily both love wearing it and it has been worn so much.

Spring time

Looking outside the sky is so blue and the garden finally looks like spring is here. I've been a very lucky girl recently and also received a few fresh bunches of flowers from good friends which is filling the house with a lovely scent :-)

One of these bunches of flowers is from a friend from one of the toddler groups I helped with back when we lived in London and it was sent as a thank you for the work I put into getting her mother's crochet blanket finished for her recently.

Sadly her mum died last year and while sorting through her belongings she found this blanket that her mum had started but never finished. She was keen to have it finished, but as she doesn't know how to crochet she asked around and I offered to do the work for her.

It was a real labour of love as so much needed to be done for it - including pulling out the occasional 'extra' hexagon which had found its way into the wrong place! Hopefully it'll be much loved, by both my friend and her daughter :-)

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter to all my lovely followers! 

I hope you get plenty of chocolate and maybe even a little bit of free crafting time :-)

My granny bunnies are from the fabulous free tutorial on the Green Dragonfly blog here

Getting back to blogging...

 I'm sorry for the very long blogging break, I can't believe it has been about 4 months since my last post! Because I decided to have December off I got out of the rhythm of doing posts and somehow we are now in March - oops.

I have been nice and busy though so there is plenty for me to catch you up with craftwise. First off I wanted to show off a couple of my tea related crochet projects - the weather has turned so chilly here in the UK that I thought some nice photos of mugs would warm us up :-)

In the photo on the left I've got the two pretty coasters that I made up from a kit that came in an issue of last year's Mollie Makes magazine.

The mugs on the right are my attempt at simple mug cosies... I wanted a quick project that I could work up as a couple of last minute Christmas presents and these were super simple to make and look so pretty. I also managed to use a bit of my yarn stash - this purple with silver yarn is pretty but so uncomfortable it was great to find a project that was suitable for it.

Now I think I'm going to get myself another cuppa - all these photos have made me thirsty!

Gruffalo!

A mouse took a stroll through the deep dark wood...

and wasn't scared at all by the tiny little gruffalo he met :-)

This little crochet gruffalo was made as a last minute gift for one of my lovely nieces and turned out so much better than I could have hoped for.

I used my Mini Panda pattern for the body, arms and legs, then added some different ears and horns before going all out with the embroidered details.

I love his simple body shape - I think if I had tried to come up with a proper head and body then it wouldn't have been half as cute. I also had such great fun with adding all the gruffalo details - the purple prickles especially :-)

This little guy was so admired by one of my friends that she has commissioned me to make one for her little boy, and because I love this gruffalo so much I'm very tempted to make one for myself too!

November's craft - Fail :-(

For this month's craft I wanted to try and make some simple tree decorations with a variation on salt dough that produces a white finished item when baked.

There is a great tutorial for making these on the woodside kitchen blog and the ones shown there look really lovely.

I mixed up my ingredients, cooked it on the hob until I had a clay and then cut out and baked my decorations which I decorated with snowflake stamps... all good so far, however after baking only half the recommended time they and dried out, bubbled up, cracked and fallen apart.

So either used the wrong ingredients (quite likely as I substituted cornflour for cornstarch and baking powder for baking soda) or I baked these too long.

I think I had best stick to crochet & felt to finish up the rest of the Christmas decorations I need to make!

Lest we forget

In memory of those who died to protect us in the 1st and 2nd World Wars.