A new venture?

My regular followers are possibly getting tired of seeing photos of baby booties - I seem to make them a lot. In fact I make them so much I even designed my own pattern for them (which is currently available through the CrochetMe website but hopefully will be moved over to Raverly later this year as the CrochetMe page is getting heavily spammed).

Last year I was finding myself very frustrated at not having any of my own earnings coming in and I wanted to try and find some sort of flexible/part time money making venture. I did a basic "how to start your own business" course and after that registered as a Phoenix trader and started selling their beautiful cards.

I also started crocheting booties - lots and lots of booties. I've simplified and fine tuned my crochet bootie design, sampled a number of different yarns as well as stocking up on some of the lovely hand dyed buttons that paper-and-string sells. So now I have quite a pile of booties made up and after I've worked out how to set up an Etsy shop as well as draw up a logo I'll be able to start selling these too!

Crochet updates

Life in our temporary home has been quite hectic recently but I have managed to find the time to do a little bit of craft while here. Before posting about those though I thought I would show off the two crochet pieces that I completed just before moving out of Tea Towers back in May.

Firstly I came up with this crochet pot cover for a friend who was keen on learning crochet and thought she would start straight out on something like this herself. Because I find working with thread to be quite tricky even for me I discouraged her from having a go and instead got her to come along to my 6 week crochet course where she picked up all the basics really quickly - hopefully she'll be able to make me one some day :-)

The star/flower in the centre is based on a cushion cover pattern in "Crochet gifts in a weekend" (read my review) which I then added some extra points to round the edge with glass beads crocheted in to add the necessary weights.

Last up is yet another pair of crochet booties from my "Simple bootie pattern". On making these booties up I finally noticed the problem in the pattern that has caused so many of the crocheters who have gone on to make them such difficulties. I can't believe that it's taken me two years to notice the problem but when I get a free minute I'll try republishing the pattern here for you all.

I'm also going to be slowly removing my free patterns from the CrochetMe website. The pattern pages get a huge amount of comment spam on them and as the support team have ignored my requests to do anything about it I'm going to take back control of them. So don't panic if patterns start disappearing, I'll be putting them all up here and will link each of their Ravelry pages to their new location.

So many projects...

...and so little time. There has been some manic crafting going on here at Tea Towers and I've got about 5 different projects on the go right now, but getting anything finished seems to be causing problems.

Take this beautiful baby dress (pattern from Inside Crochet issue 9), making this up was so quick and easy that it fooled me into thinking that I would get through my to-do list in no time. However, trying to make up a pair of matching booties has been a real struggle and has taken me over a week to do - which is quite shocking really when you consider that the dress took me only 4 days to crochet!

To start with I tried out a lovely free pattern that used 4 ply yarn and a size 5mm hook. But using such a large hook with the finer yarn felt very strange to me and I didn't like the loose fabric it created. So I decided that adjusting my 'Simple booties' pattern would be the best option. The adjustments to the original pattern were pretty easy so that isn't what took me the time - no that would be trying to keep a consistent gauge. For some reason recently this has become a bit of a problem for me, not sure why though but I really hope it sorts itself out!

So now I finally have two slightly mismatched booties (due to the colour changes in the Wendy Happy yarn I ended up with two booties in two different colours - well at least they go with the dress!) and though they are very cute I don't feel that they are quite 'finished'. I want to add some sort of extra decoration to make them look more of a pair - any suggestions?

New arrivals

Just a quick post to show off a couple of crochet bits that are on their way to yet another new baby (for some reason there seems to have been a baby explosion recently so keep an eye out in case it starts raining babies too).

Orinoco is here again to show off my handiwork, you can see him wearing a deep ribbed crochet hat and some cuffed booties both patterns from the "Crocheted gifts in a weekend" book by Nola Theiss.

The pattern for the hat was meant for an older child but after substituting the chunky yarn for a much finer yarn and using a smaller hook the hat should hopefully fit a newborn okay. The ribbing on this hat is lovely and adds a real thickness and warmth to the hat - this will definitely be a pattern that I try again in the future.

Sadly the bootie pattern wasn't nearly as good. The cuffs were supposed to be knitted so the whole pattern was designed around that and required lots of sewing up of separate pieces. They have also turned out to be a little bit flat looking - not nearly as cute as they did in the book.

Back in the crochet mood

Thankfully my craft block seems to be clearing and to help get back into the swing gently I decided that crochet was what my hands were wanting to do.

I really love making baby bits, they are so quick and satisfying, just a couple of hours of work and you end up with a gift ready to send to a mum who usually is just as excited about it as you are. The hat shown here is from another "Happy Hooker" pattern, this time part of the Sejia set by Bev Ireland. I had to add an extra increase row in this hat though as my hook size was too small (I really must get round to buying a size 4mm hook one day...) and thus the hat would have turned out tiny. I also just worked the hat in two shades of purple as that's what I had to hand, and I'm glad I did too as it matches the little two tone booties that I also made.

The booties are from "Crochet gifts in a weekend" by Nola Thesis and though I've made up the basic bootie a number of times this is the first time that I've had a go at making the ballet style version. Orinoco the octopus also loves the hat and booties and wanted me to show here how good he looks in them. Sadly I haven't got the energy to make another 6 booties for Orinoco so his other feet have had to go cold.

As well as doing crochet I've also been folding these pretty little stars from some cheap Ikea gift ribbon that I picked up last week. They are fiddly and time consuming but strangely addictive.

These stars are called Frobel stars and I first came across them years ago in an old girls activity book that my mum owns. You are supposed to make them from strips of paper and depending on what thickness you make the strips you end up with a large star or a tiny one. These are smaller than a British 10p piece and now I've made them all I'm not too sure what to do with them... too small really to use on the top of presents. Any suggestions?

Quick crochet

I'm doing well with the granny square cot bed blanket that I've been busily working on, but yesterday I decided I needed a bit of a break from cranking out squares and so I made up a little pair of booties.

These little shoes will be a present for a baby girl who is due in April. I've decided not to do my usual pink as her mum prefers other colours, but I've tried to keep them looking girly by trimming them with lilac and adding little heart buttons. The pattern is from "Crocheted gifts in a weekend" by Nola Theiss which was the first crochet book that I owned. The pattern itself isn't very well written, but once you've made it up a few time then you get the hang of it and it does make a very cute little baby bootie :-)

Some exciting news

I am very happy to announce that I am just gone 3 months pregnant! This has been one of the reasons why I've not been posting as much to this blog as I would like - I've needed to spend any free time sleeping instead of crafting.

However, I still have grand plans to craft lots of cute baby related items, clothes, booties and little blankets so any time that I'm not dosing off on the sofa I will be diligently making pretty things. Like these very sweet little crochet booties from the "Kyuuto! Lacy crochet" book.

I love the look of the projects in this book - such pretty items which look so simple. Sadly the instructions that go with them are hideously complicated - it took me three separate attempts before I successfully finished my first bootie. I love the idea of the clear crochet diagrams, but perhaps because this is thread crochet the detail on the diagrams is really very small and difficult to make out at times, especially with the crochet that is in a round - it is so difficult to make out which row you need to be working. There are also written instructions, but these have obviously been translated from Japanese and are quite basic as they rely heavily on the diagrams to give you all the detail you need.

Lastly - these booties are made in two separate pieces, the sole and the sides which are joined together with the second colour thread at the end. Why on earth would you want to make them this way? Surely you could do them all as one piece and then add a nice colour edge round the bottom which would have exactly the same effect.

I really do love the finished look of these booties - but I can only hope that I have a boy as there is no way on earth that I will go through making these again.