Granny square pin cushion

Some more blue and white to show you this week - as I loved the colour mix in this month's Christmas decoration so much I couldn't resist trying it again in my latest crochet project.

This little pincushion is made using tiny thread granny squares. It's inspired by the beautiful pin cushions that Emma Lamb makes (www.emmallamb.blogspot.co.uk) and I'm delighted with how well it turned out :-)

I also tried a new 'join as you go' technique for joining the squares and really enjoyed doing it this way - check out Attic24's tutorial for how to do it too.

This post has been shared as part of Lakota's Ta da Tuesday.

Butterfly crazy

Butterflies are beautiful - they flutter and flitter and as far as I can tell are only there to be admired. 

It's partly because of my love of butterflies that I've not been able to do much blogging this month. I'm in the middle of organising a 'Butterfly tea party' in aid of 'Together for short lives' a wonderful charity that supports children and their families who aren't expected to reach adulthood.

These little butterfly hair clips are going to be included in the prize raffle I'm putting together  - aren't they lovely? The 'Butterfly grace' pattern is available as a free Ravelry download and is well worth having a go at.  

So things may well be quiet for the next couple of weeks here while I madly dash about trying to organise my first proper charity function - don't worry too much though as I fully intend to do some more butterfly related crochet which I'll share with you properly once the craziness is over.

Roses are... blue?

Well they can be if they are made out of crochet thread!

My latest issue (number 12) of Mollie Makes included a little kit and pattern to make up a crochet flower brooch which I finally got around to having a go at last week.

The pattern results in a lovely little rose that holds it's shape beautifully and straight away I wanted to have a go at making some more. So the crochet thread came out and I made up these much smaller roses to add to hair grips as part of a present for a young friend of mine.

These worked out as the perfect last minute gift - I may have to make up a few more for the Christmas box...

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.

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.

New Years resolution - number 1

One of my crafty New Years resolution is to finish off some of my UFOs that I have been meaning to do for years. These little thread crochet stars were one of the first things that I ever crocheted, back when I was teaching myself at around age 14 (14 years ago now - yikes!).

I borrowed a lovely book from my local library called "Country Crochet" (I think - it was a long time ago now) and the beautiful fillet crochet and simple white thread items really appealed to me. Sadly this book was out of print at the time and I never found a copy that I could buy.

However, I did make these little stars - but because each one had about 11 loose ends to work in I never got around to finishing them off and starching them with PVA glue. I found them again a few weeks ago and decided that they had been waiting long enough! So after a few hours of working the ends in and then dunking them into some diluted PVA this is how they turned out. I really love them, and they will definitely be making an appearance on next year's Christmas tree.