360 Days of Doing -day 19

From Magic Circle to Flower Bookmark

360 Days of Doing-day 18 (the internet ate yesterday’s post)

A perfected Magic Circle. Happiness increases as the hole in the middle decreases!

360 Days of Doing -day six

Because there’s no such thing as too many bunnies 

Not the bunny I’d planned….

I thought this weekend’s post would be introducing you to our new addition…but it’s just not felt like right time to see if there’s a bunny out there with my name on him/her. I’m a little worried that the longer I leave it, the less right it will feel, but I’m trusting in kismet. Or trying to.

However, I do have a little chap to show you, courtesy of my newest follower, The Green Dragonfly, and you can follow her excellent tutorial here – https://thegreendragonfly.wordpress.com/2013/03/05/nibble-nibble-hop-hop/

I’m relatively new to crochet but am pretty pleased with my efforts…tho I had to make do with google eyes!

He has a fuzzy butt!

What I am thinking about, is that I could adapt it as a crochet wirework brooch….hmmmm.

What’s everyone else up to?

(Ps – still no baby partridges….but the eggs are moving!!)

My to do is almost to done

Aaaaarrrrgggggh. That is the sound of my impatience. Or more rightly, my impatience being shouted down by my “if you’re going to do it, best do it properly” muse.

As per my last post, I’ve now replaced the plastic beads with prettier ones….they do look much better but boy do my fingers hurt! Straightening aged end pins enough to get the tiny red seed bead off, not to mention the big round white and brown ones turned out trickier than I anticipated. As did bending them back into shape when I’d replaced said beads. But I think it was worth it?

And here they are in close up

I attacked the charms with brass cleaner and the hearts have come up particularity well I think. And I think this is the order I’m going to put them on, with the ank in the middle.

So why have I not finished?

Well, I decided to go with suede cord crocheted into chainlink to hang them from, as the one metal chain I had was too silvery and all my wire is either silver or green and I thought it wouldn’t look right against the brass charms and brown-toned beads. So I used my 4mm hook and chained a good length, trying as hard as possible to keep the cord straight and flat. But the natural stretchiness of the cord means I need to dampen it and flatten it overnight before I string everything on it. Like I said. Aaaaarrrgggh!

So that’s tomorrow’s first task – at least I know what I’m doing when I get up in the morning!

The Vanishing Lady

Yikes.

It’s been an awfully long time since my last post.

But that’s what happens when you work 12 hour days, with an hour commute at either end. We’re almost out of production, and as I’m possibly thinking about doing NaNoWriMo I guess I’ll need something to procrastinate on, so I’m going to try and do several short round ups every couple of days…

So, first up….

A crocheted cuff. I have to say I was so pleased with how this came out, even though its by no means perfect. But for a first attempt at crocheting with wire and using beads, I was really pleased. This is definately something thats going to be repeated and with some tweaking, I hope to be making it a regular on my shops when they’re up and running.

excuse the bad image, atop my mac, but better ones down the line!

I was worried how fragile it was, but wore it to work and it survived quite happily being leant on as I typed and squished by proofs, so I guess its tougher than I think!

Here it is at the start, to give you a better idea….

And another shot of the finished article

The pattern itself is pretty simply and it also looks really nice done in wool – I did a test run first, before I tried with the wire – so it may be that I knock up a couple of those too for little christmas gifts. Which is not happening for AGES. I dont care what the shops say.

More tomorrow – I promise!!

New skills

A couple of posts ago, I mentioned that I’d treated myself to some new crochet needles, as a spur to help me learn. I learnt to knit as a child, taught by my mum, but I’d never got to grips with crochet, probably because she didn’t either! I like to learn by doing so I trawled http://www.ravelry.com for easy patterns, and with the help of http://www.crochetspot.com set to. I can thoroughly recommend it, if you want to learn, but bear in mind one thing (which I didn’t realise at first, which caused a fair amount of frustration) the UK and US have different terminology for the same stitch; eg a UK double crochet is a US single, and so on. So I learnt US because the majority of online patterns are from the states. I think once I’m more familiar with it all them I’ll manage to switch between both, but for the meantime I’ll stick with what I (nearly) know.
So….I thought I’d bring you a little pattern. I was inspired by this pattern http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/flower-tales-bookmark but I couldn’t work the tail, so I improvised and made my own version.

So you start with a magic circle (still working on that, sometimes it works, sometimes not so much) and sc 10 into it. Sl st to join.

Chain 3, triple into next stitch, double into same stitch, sl to next. Repeat all the way round.

Then ch approx 50 (or the length of a specific book) then sc 3 into the second chain from the hook, 2 into the next, 1 into the next then sl st to finish in the next. Weave in ends and you’re done. I like the little “j” shape, as its my initial but also as it curls round your pages like its keeping it safe! You can also do the magic circle and 10 in one colour then switch before chaining, like this

I’m planning to stock some of these in my etsy shop when I get it going as they’re a quick and nifty little gift for people. I’m also looking at adding beads and sparkles and possibly doing them in wirework….which is where my next learning curve begins!