Friday finishes

Just a couple of recent finishes I haven't shared yet!

My first amineko! I love these - more toys with character!

You can see that Merry the cat soon found a friend, although he insists they're really cousins!

I also made some tassels recently for a parcel I was sending on a long journey!

The tassles in this photo worked out particularly well and I'm in the process of writing up how to make them, so come back next week to find out how to do it!

February motifs

Well, now that I've writted about my plan, I feel kind of obliged to stick to it! Thanks for your comments, they make me feel like I've got something to live up to now!

Here are the motifs from Beyond the Square that I crocheted in February. Just 2 of them as Iona's got a bit of a cough and interrupted my evening's crochet!

This is motif no. 11. I'm not so keen on the colour combination on this one now, but I'm not going back to change it!

It's also not a great photo as I'm doing a bit of playing around and testing with my new iPod to see if it's worth using it for photos at all as it'll save time for formatting and uploading.

No 14 now. This one has a couple of extra rounds as I was having fun with the front post dcs! (iPod pic again.)

Writing this up, I'm finding it funny how easily I slip between UK and US crochet terminology these days! I think the pattern probably calls them front post dcs, but you might want to call them trebles.

You can see the motifs everybody else has been crocheting here on Barbara's blog. Alternatively head over to Tami's!

Hi there!

I’ve been having a bit of a rough week at work, so I’ve been away from my blog for longer than I intended – why does it always work that way? See that real life – nothing but a distraction from the Internet! LOL!

Anyway, I’m in the mood to ramble today, as you might notice, and thought I’d share a few crochet odds and ends I’ve been doing recently.

Firstly I’ve joined Barbara’s challenge to crochet motifs from Beyond the Square by Edie Eckman. This is one of my fave crochet books – I do love motifs! I’ve randomly crocheted some of the motifs in the time I’ve had the book, but only odd ones here and there, for various reasons, so that I have no idea where they are now or what I used them for.

So I’ve joined Barbara’s challenge and am challenging myself to make 30 of them this year. That’s 6 months of 2 motifs, and 6 months of 3 motifs. I sat down last weekend to get started. I just started at the beginning of the book and crocheted the first motif that I liked the look of (number 2) and, having enjoyed that so much I couldn’t put my hook down, I then did number 3 too.

Later on that night, being unable to sleep, I then did number 4 too.

So that was January, and already I feel like I’m getting ahead of myself!


Most of my January was taken up with what you could call my first commission! A friend asked me to crochet something for her and her granddaughters, and even offered to pay me! WOW – imagine being paid to crochet! I’m not sharing pics at the moment until the parcel has arrived safely with her.

At the start of January, I was wondering whether to set up an etsy shop to sell patterns for some of my own designs, and the odd amigurumi toy too. I kind of like that idea, but the idea of having to treat it as a proper business and think about the tax implications scares the hell out of me! I just want to do something small scale and see what happens.

But I have no objections if anyone else wants to pay me to crochet …


A final discovery is something I did yesterday evening. Most of the crochet I did in January was probably done with a more ergonomic hook – I have a nice set of Prym hooks I treated myself to at one point, which are wonderfully comfortable – almost as comfortable as my one Clover soft touch hook.

But the point is, none of the January crochet bothered my sore elbow at all! Yay! I was even starting to think my elbow might be getting better. Except, of course, I hadn’t thought too deeply about the sort of hook I was using.

Forward to last night, and my 3.5mm Prym hook is snuggled away with my Beyond the Square motifs. Now, when I have a project on the go, I prefer to keep all the bits together, along with the hook, otherwise I’ll forget what size hook I’m using. So last night, I reverted to one of my old basic metal 3.5mm hooks for something else. Later, as I was going to bed, I was aware that my elbow was a bit more achy than it had been and this morning, it was even worse!

So was it the hook? It looks a real possibility, although it does puzzle me that I hold my hook in my right hand and it’s my left elbow that’s the problem! I was also aware yesterday, while crocheting, of the difference in the feel of the hook, but I was also aware that I was holding the hook fairly loosely.

Who knows … But it looks like a good excuse to invest in some more ergonomic hooks!

Christmas crochet redux

I haven’t been able to keep up with these Christmas crochet posts in quite the way I’d intended, but before summer arrives, here’s a final catch-up!

I really wanted to share my Christmas dinner table with you. 2011 was the first Christmas we had the family Christmas at home plus visitors. We’ve done the family bit on our own before, the visitors required that just a
little bit more effort be made!

For the sake of simplicity (and not spending too much money), I had a red paper table cloth and also found a paper tablerunner in the supermarket (I love table runners but, other than the paper one, have never owned one!) As a finishing touch, I had the idea of crocheting some white lacy motifs to look like white snowflakes on top of the red.

I was very pleased with the way they looked – my longer term plan is to crochet all sorts of motifs like this and to make them into a table runner. However, I rather suspect it was these that killed my elbow!

Finally, I think you’ve seen all these before! I just feel the need to summarise these designs again as I don’t think I’ve always given full details of where things came from or whose patterns I’ve used. So, if you’ve seen them all before, you can ignore this bit!

1		Cedric: My own design based on photos I’ve seen around the net. Christmas present for nephew C in Manchester.
2		Momster & Baby: Uses Momster & Baby pattern from Demonstrative Crochet, but with my own mixture of yarn. Christmas present for Niamh. Niamh calls Momster Monkey!
3		Viktor: Based on Momster pattern from Demonstrative Crochet, but made with chunky yarn and a bigger hook. Individual coloured spots in dk yarn were added later (I don’t know that you can see them so well in the photo). Christmas present for nephew L4 in Manchester.
4		Fleur: My own design based on photos I’ve seen around the net and with my own mixture of yarn. Christmas present for a friend.
5		Knitted monkey: Uses Monkeemaker’s pattern. Christmas present for nephew L1 in Manchester. This one was a definite hit!

When Billy and Belinda came home

Hi everyone!

So, Billy and Belinda finally arrived home at the end of last week and we were all delighted to see them again!

There was a bit of this -

(By the way, my little Neevie-noo has renamed Billy as Billy-Boo! How cute is that?)

And a bit of this –

And, for once in our house, there was peace!

No shouting, no screaming, howling, fighting or arguing. And no tears.

Just two happy little girls and two happy, home-at-last, crochet bears!

The Christmas Crochet Marathon, part 1

And this is the one I'm most pleased with! Even my Mum said she thought it was the best thing I'd ever made!

So here she is -

My Topsy Turvy Princess, made for my own little Princess Iona, and she adores her! In fact, the two princesses go almost everywhere together - I even had to warn Iona not to drop her in the toilet the other day!

Isn't she gorgeous? (I mean the doll, not Iona.)

Of course, Iona had to customise her by adding a bobble and some hair clips!

As usual, she's partly someone else's pattern, partly off the top of my head. My inspiration includes Jullie Teo's wedding dolls and Carolyn Christmas's Topsy Turvy doll, but I think the original seed was planted a long time ago by Julie who make have knitted, or at least blogged about, a Jean Greenhowe doll (which I can't find now). I stored this little seed away at the back of my mind, and this year, I actually did something about it!

I really really love and admire the way Jullie Teo dresses her wedding dolls and wanted to try something similar. So, on this side of the doll, I've crocheted on some layers of lacy trim. On the other, I've crocheted the trim too.

I'm not entirely certain that the neck is strong enough, with all that hair, but that's my only (slightly) bad point - I really am delighted with her as she is.

I'd like to work on the pattern a bit more, elbow and time permitting, and then publish it.

Oh - and Iona now wants a Prince to go with her!

Grrrrr - frustrated - crochet injury!

I have to declare myself currently injured and only fit for the lightest crochet activities. After what I am officially naming my Christmas Crochet Marathon, I am now suffering with what I suspect is probably a touch of tendonitis in my left elbow.

And I am so incredibly frustrated!

I have lots and lots of wonderful ideas for crochet creatures buzzing around in my head that I'm so excited about, but there's very little I can do about them!

I am rather assuming it's the crochet that's causing the problem - there certainly was rather a lot of it in the run up to Christmas, but I was loving it so much!

However, I was talking to my brother who recently had a tennis elbow, and he thinks I've probably got the same as him - in my weaker arm (I'm right handed) caused by repetitive small movements - and that could very very easily be crochet, I can see that I constantly rotate my left forearm slightly in manipulating and creating crochet fabric.

So, I've had a full week off crochet, which has helped a bit, and I'm starting again slowly, only doing the odd 5 mins here and there and wearing an elasticated bandage on my elbow and supporting it on a pillow while I crochet. I have a good stock of ice cubes in the freezer for my elbow too.

Hopefully that'll help improve things, but I'm wondering whether it might be useful to change my crochet technique to limit or stop the movement in my left arm.

Anyone have any tips? I'm open to anything that will help me back to normal soon!

After all elite crochet and stitching athletes like us all have to take care of ourselves, don't we?

When is a design mine?

I suppose this one of those old chestnuts that comes up every so often. I’ve been madly crocheting away, every spare moment I can get, to make Christmas presents for the Children in my family. Often, I start from a pattern written by someone else and wander off on my own doing what I think will work better, or making it into the thing I want to make. Sometimes, I’ve seen a photo online and tried to make something that looks like the photo. But when do these designs become my own?

I suppose, of course, there’s no simple answer. It all comes down to when an item becomes substantially different from the original design, and the crossover isn’t clear.

For example, say I want to make an amigurumi doll. I already have books with patterns for several which I will look at before I decide exactly what I want to do. The end doll that I make may have elements from several designs from my books, none of which include all the features I want in my doll, and there will also be elements that I’ve thought up from scratch. There may be a significant amount of trial and error involved in putting all this together. The overall doll may be my own ‘vision’, but individual components may be copied from elsewhere. When does it become my own design?

And what if something’s copied from a photo? Cedric is the perfect example here – he is based on this photo, but I have no idea what the pattern for it is like, although I suspect I have one ‘significant’ difference.

I would like to start writing up and selling patterns but I’m just struggling a bit with this cut-off point. To date, I’ve been thinking more of publishing the patterns here on my blog with reference to my sources of inspiration, but if my pattern is based on someone else’s what right do I have to publish the directions for the bits I’ve copied?

And anyway, how many different ways are there of making amigurumi heads, arms, legs or bodies? If you want something roughly the same size, you’re likely to end up with a very similar pattern.

And where does Petal fit into all this? Her pattern is a translation with one or two tweaks.

I have a doll I’m making for Iona (and I’ll have to make one for Niamh sometime too), it’s based on a pattern by someone else, but I’ve done some of the basic body parts slightly differently. However, I’ve gone completely off at a tangent, influenced by someone completely different, in embellishing the doll and in the techniques I’ve used to do so. I’m really excited about her (Iona will LOVE her) and I’d love to write it up as a pattern, but I don’t know that it’s sufficiently different to count as my own design.

Anyone know any answers or advice?

Spot the cute monkey! Too busy crocheting to get decent photos these days!

Petal: from Russia with love

It all started on Pinterest here and here. You can see more pics in here gallery here, but this is my absolute favourite.

Aren't they completely adorable? I love dragons, so I just had to track down a pattern to make my very own. And I landed on this!

See that? There's a pattern!, Downside - it's in Russian and my knowledge of Russian is absolutely zilch!

But I didn't let that stop me - the Russian translation was actually rather fun! (And how geeky is that? Well, problem solving is something I do a lot of at work.) I picked up a translation of Russian crochet terms from a couple of sites online (which I can't find any more), then I used an online Russian keyboard to type in various mysterious bits of text and copy them across to Google Translate to get an English version. Luckily, the original pattern's in a fairly standard layout and uses Arabic numbers so it wasn't too hard. Anyway, all I wanted was enough of a pattern to at least get a rough method to work on.

But I'm so delighted with how Petal's worked out!

Some of the translations were a bit odd - Alexander really wanted to see me put the 'handles' on (arms/hands). And I still haven't worked out what it means by 'One eyelet knit head 5 dc' - I think it's a nostril!

I already have plans for more dragons and once I've fine tuned the pattern a bit (Petal has a slight problem keeping her balance!), I'll write it up for sharing!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To all those who've offered me positive words and encouragement over the last couple of weeks - Thank you so so much. It really is appreciated and I certainly don't feel quite so isolated and invisible for now.

Ideally, I would like to make you all a little Petal to send you, but speaking from experience, that would probably take me until the middle of next year and I'd never want to look at a dragon again - not sure how constructive that would be!

But I just want you to know that I really do appreciate every word.

Petal says thanks too!

To blog, or not to blog, that is the question

Not sure whether I feel like blogging today or not, but here goes anyway. I want to share a couple of finishes, but just don't feel like saying much.

So let me introduce you to Cedric ......

(I made up the design myself, but he's based on photos I've seen around the 'net. He'll be going to one of my nephews for Christmas.)

....... and Celebi!

I'm a real softie when it comes to my kids - I said I was making Celebi for Alexander's Christmas or birthday (in 2 weeks), but when he came home from being away on a school trip for a week, and asked (not expecting a positive answer) whether I'd made Celebi yet, I couldn't lie! But I'm grateful to Alexander for helping motivate me to finish him - I was finding all the small fiddly bits rather frustrating.

Celebi's very cute and Alexander is very pleased with him. Celebi has even inspired Alexander to a bit of crafting himself as he had to make Celebi a sleeping bag for his bed!

Celebi is based on this pattern, although I went my own way a bit with some bits, like the feet and wings, and I kept changing between a 3mm and 2.5mm crochet hook.

Since I finished these two, I've been sewing up my monkey, I've started crocheting something for Niamh's Christmas, and I've been having a bit of fun (and yes, I do mean fun!) with a spot of Russian translation!

As for not blogging much, I'm starting to feel like depression probably plays a much bigger part in my life than I realised, and when I feel depressed, I know I turn in on myself  and avoid sharing things with other people, so hence I don't blog either.


And on another frustrating topic - I still can't comment on Blogger blogs!

Blah blah

I'm suffering from a nasty case of the blahs at the moment and not really in the mood to say much, but I wanted to share pics of some bangles I made 2 or 3 weeks ago.


They're all crocheted over cheap supermarket bangles using 4 ply cotton yarn, perle cotton and a 2mm hook. The charm one has some small celtic silver charms and swarovski crystals.

Oh - and I've FINALLY got hold of Inside Crochet issue 23, complete with my Billy Buttons pattern in it! Yippee! Although I'm a bit puzzled - if I send Billy and Belinda off to a photographer, why have they used my own photos to illustrate the pattern? Not that I'm complaining, it's not every day that you have your first crochet pattern published!


Ugh - and now I can't even comment on blogger blogs either - I just get an error. So to Natalie (pinkundine) - I really love the solid cosiness of your blanket! To Sam - I love your stripy mouse! To Hazel - I love the colour and texture of your WIP Wednesday cushion too! To Richard Rose - love the Chrtistmas trees - is that a kind of wiggly crochet?


And guess who managed to wear odd shoes to work all day yesterday?

Not that anyone noticed - or if they did they didn't tell me!

Well, that turned into a longer post than I expected! And now I feel a bit brighter too.

See you next time!

Rainbows

Hi everyone!

We seem to be having a lot of rainbows around here at the moment, often very vivid double rainbows which I don’t remember seeing so much of before.

And then, I was lying on the kitchen floor last week with Niamh sitting on me, when I happened to look out the back door and see another rainbow curving around the edge of a cloud just overhead.

All these lovely rainbows have reinvigorated my love of rainbow crochet, so here are the pics of my current rainbow WIPs.

This first one is a prototype for something – I just love the shell pattern! And I love shell patterns in general – but has anyone come across a pattern for a circular shell? Or a shell-type granny square? Or am I going to have to work out my own?

And here’s my third time lucky blanket which is creeping along. I was taking this pic yesterday evening when I noticed a potential disaster right in the middle – was I going to have to frog it all over again?

See that? I’m not quite sure how this has happened - paranoid as I am, I usually leave lovely long yarn tails – so why is round 1 unravelling on its own?

Fortunately, I think I caught it just in time as only one of the round 2 treble clusters had lost its anchor.

I took a needle and some red yarn and ran the yarn around the bottom loops of all the treble clusters which were anchored in round 1.

Problem solved – phew!

See you next time!

Hairem Scarem

Remember the hairy things I was making back in July?

In the end there were 5 of them and over the last week or so, I've finally put them to their intended use.

Please welcome the coolest, newest rock group to hit blogland - Bearded Monkeys.

Featuring 007 and Titch on drums, on keyboard, Lily the Pink .....

... and Tipsy, and on guitar, Zero-X1 (alias Bluebeard the Monkey) and Captain Monkeypants!

They're currently wowing all the hippest venues around the house playing various smash hits and covers. Think 'Angels' by Robbie Williams but substitute the word 'Monkeys' for the Angels ..... I'm loving monkeys instead .....

Or ??? Anyone have any special requests for our Bearded Monkeys to perform?

Perhaps surprisingly, Miss Bertha has turned out to be one of their greatest fans...

In between gigs, the monkeys have taken to careering around the garden on 'their wheels' and discussing cookery!

Hairy Biker Monkeys (have you heard of the Hairy Bikers?)

I think they also have more hairy, geeky and intellectual ambitions too - I recently caught 007 and Zero-X1 huddled over a laptop arguing over the exact dimensions and definition of an Infinite Monkey Cage, or was it preferable to remain free Uncaged Monkeys?

I think they may be getting a tad confused - perhaps all that fresh air and exercise has been too much for them. Do they really think beards like those necessary to join the ranks of sexy science types like Simon Singh and Brian Cox?

- Composed using BlogPress from my iPod & finished off on a pc!


P.S. Anyone fancy a game of Words with Friends? I promise to be completely useless!

P.P.S. We have a new member of the monkey family - meet Chirpy next week!