Granny square purse

Its been another busy week here in amigurumi land.

My lovely hedgehogs have gone on their jollys to Simply Crochet magazine.

Dot the dragonfly is flying all the way to America to be in a book :)

I've had my tiny crochet hook out again for a project for Inside crochet magazine and on Friday a very exciting commission from Craftseller magazine.

I can't say much about the project but its gonna be colourful and cute.  I'm using the rico cotton I used for the project that will be in next months craftseller. I didn't have quite enough colours so I had to go on a bit of a yarn shopping spree, which was such a shame ;)
 I love this rico yarn it comes in such a fantastic range of colours and has a lovely finish. Its prefect for amigurumis. I'm trying to get the full range of colours so can will be my go to choice when I get to writing my first book. (maybe if I ask nice enough Rico will send me a few balls as I'm struggling to get all the colours even online in the UK)

In other news I have finished the little granny square purse I was taking about in my last post 

First your gonna need a good granny square pattern and for that I will direct you to this brilliant tutorial on Little tin birds blog.

You will need to make 4, 5 row granny squares in your choice of colour.

Then sew them together as below

Then fold on the blue lines. Sew up the edges but leave the top flap loose.

Then sew your flower on the flap.

When I get a few spare minuets I'm going to line this bag with some pretty fabric but for now here's how it looks :)

Well its handmade monday time again I'm looking forward to seeing what my fellow craft bloggers have been up to this week :)

Mollie makes vintage button flower motif

I have a weakness for craft and lifestyle magazine. Mollie makes is one that tempts me every month. This months issue has a give away of some very pretty vintage style buttons as a cover giveaway.

 Now anyone who knows me knows I have a bit of a thing for buttons. I do work at the biggest button shop in the UK and have a collection myself that is nearly as large as my yarn collection. I didn't want these pretty freebies to be forgotten about and lost forever to my many boxes of buttons but I couldn't think what to do with them.

I'd been working on flower motif for another projects and ended but with lots of pattern ideas that were rejected. I though it might be nice to rekindle and improve one of these abandoned flower projects and use the Mollie makes buttons in the centre.

Well this is what I came up with :)

After the photos is the a free pattern for the flowers so you can make your own too.

Mollie makes vintage button flower motif.

This pattern is written with UK abbreviations as Molly makes is a UK magazine. When I get chance I’ll write it up with the American abbreviations as well 

You will need

Dk weight yarn in your choice of colour

4mm crochet hook

Vintage look button

Wool needle

Abbreviations

ch: chain

sl st: slip stitch

dc: double crochet

tr: Treble crochet

dtr: double treble crochet

sts: stitches

This pattern is worked in a spiral. Use a stitch marker to mark the beginning of the rnd.

Start with 5 dc in to magic ring

Rnd 1 - 2dc into each st to the end.

Rnd 2 – (ch3, skip the next dc, dc in the next st) repeat to end.

Rnd 3 – (dc, 8tc, dc) in each ch space the end

Rnd 4 – working behind the petals created on the last row- dc in the next unworked dc from rnd 2, (ch5, dc in the next unworked dc from rnd 2) repeat to end, sl st to join

Rnd 5 – (dc, 4tr, 2dtr, ch2, 2drt, 4tr, dc) in each 5ch space to the end.

Fasten off leaving a long tail of yarn.

Use this tail of yarn and a wool needle to sew your vintage button into the centre of the flower.

You can add a brooch back to make this into a corsage but I’m going to make a little granny square bag and use one of these as the clasp. I share the pattern when it’s made J

Happy crocheting!

Cartoon time

Following on from yesterdays post which you can find here

I thought I'd share some more of my pictures.

These are drawn free hand in pencil the gone over with a fine liner, I then use the Specturm noir pen to colour them in.

 First up is the first portrait cartoon sketch attempt. This is my friend Boo. Its a silly thing to say and I know that she won't mind  but I'm really pleased with the colour work on her boobs. There was a bit of bleeding of colour round the face, I could do with a better quality of paper to overcome this problem but that will have to wait till I get a bit better.

 This is a cartoon I did of Richard after meeting him the other night. I don't know why hes got one leg longer than the other but I had had a couple of glasses of wine so I'm blaming it on that. This might also explain why I forgot he wears glasses, oh well. I'm happy with the hair and beard colour work and this if one of my favourite line drawings to date. The expression in the face has worked really well.

 This is a self portrait. It really hasn't worked but I like the line drawing so much I had to share it. I don't have the full range of pens yet so its quite hard to get the shading right on all colours. I have tried a few times to mend this picture but in the end made it worse.

 Another self portrait. I'm not keen on this on. The colour is fine but I don't like that the drawing is front on. It doesn't look natural. Think it'll be a while before I do one of me I'll be happy to have as my facebook profile pic :)

Up last is an omnipom. This took ages to do and its not finished but I wanted to get this post written in time for handmade monday. I'll go try and finish it now :)

Indulgence

The title of this post couldn't better describe the week I've had and I'm sorry but this is a very wordy post but indulge me ;)

I have come to the end of a long stint of overtime at the day job, which was tough but means I have quite a bit of free time now so all my crochet deadlines are achievable with ease and so much in fact I actually gave myself a day off.

Last night I actually had a night out. When your short on funds nights out are the first thing to go to the back burner. I have had only a few nights out in the past few years and they have mainly been works dos but last night I met up with someone I haven't had the opportunity to see for 3 years.

You forget when your an at home craftier, that there is a world out there. If there aren't other people around you tend to live in your own head space and one projects leads to another and you've been very productive but you haven't spoken to another human all day. If you do this too often like I have a tendency to you can become a bit of a hermit.

So with some true free time on my hands it was lovely to finally get a moment to catch up with an old friend. With my whole world bending on its axis twice since I last met him last we had an awful lot to catch up on.  It was a strange but lovely night. To be meeting a guy alone who wasn't Andy kinda felt like I was doing something wrong and that's a feeling that will take long time to get used to. Still it was lovely to have fantastic conversation and great laughs with an good old friend again. Drinks after work led on to me nearly missing the last bus home so that goes to prove how much I can rabble on as I think we only had about 4 drinks.

Also on the plus side while waiting in the bar for Richard to arrive I managed to write 2 and a half new patterns that I'll be making up tomorrow and I warn you the are gonna be cute.

In another sheer indulgence I will share with you something I am very proud of, Bubblebun one of my favourite patterns was features in the brand new look Craftseller magazine

b

How fab does she look :)
 I was in the madness of writing the many patterns for the book when Craftseller told me they wanted bubblebun. With little to no time and I had to re-make Bubblebun as the original had been sold via my esty shop. I love craftseller mag so much I managed to pull out all the stops and get her to her photo shoot on time and I'm so glad I did as she looks wonderful. Get your hands on this months issue to get an exclusive discount on patterns in my etsy shop also.

In other indulgence, today I had a true duvet day. Like every other day, I was woken a 6am by the cats misbehaving. Instead of giving in, getting up and getting to work, I got up fed them and when back to bed. I slept till 11am, made a cup of tea took it back to bed and read a book and napped till 1pm.

At this point my other indulgence this week was calling so much I couldn't ignore the need to craft anymore. For a long time now my drawings for my amigurumis have been a shameful secret in my ideas book but I wanted to try my hand at real illustrations. With a few penny's of spare funds I got some lovely Spectrum noir pens and had a go.

This is the result - bubblebun in 2d. Its my first attempt so be nice :)

Tommorow I'm having a big crochet day as I can't wait to try out my new pattern ideas. I am still wondering what colour the fluffly baby owl should be though. Please comment if you have any ideas :)

Black out

This week I've been working overtime at the day job so there hasn't been much time for crafting. With only one full day to crochet I didn't want to start anything new. So I decided to revisit some of my older patters and see if there was any way they could be changed or made better.

The bobble bunch are small round animals and things they take about 10 minuets to make so I figured it would be good to remake them and play with the patterns.

At the end of the day I had a basket full of limbs, bodes and bits and a work book full of new patterns. I was just ready to start sewing them all together when I was plunged into darkness.

Panic moment. I couldn't see any other house on the street with their power out so the first thing I did was ring the power company

Inserting the only photo I can find of my home phone. Ignore me, the phones behind me. Its a nice phone, oldy fashioned, bit cool. However in an emergency it is the most useless thing in the world. Needles to say me and my lovely phone had a bit of a falling out that night but we go there in the end.

It wasn't a problem with the power company it was a problem with the power grid. A lovely Scottish man calmed me down and explained the situation then I had to wait for someone to come and fix it.

Trying to keep myself awake waiting for the guy to arrive was tough. Keeping the cats off the candles was tougher. It all go sorted in the end and I was able to go to bed at about 3am.

 Sleep deprivation and me don't go well and dragging myself to work the next day was difficult but I managed it, only to have every other customer tell me I look tired.

I had to wait till today to sew up all my little amigurumis and here are the results

First up are a new group of patterns called the water babies. I'm really happy with this group and this whale is my favourite. Hes so cute I love him :)

Next are a few stand alone mini patterns this mini owl, duck and mouse

 

 

Not a bad weeks work to say I've had so little time. All these patterns are now available in my etsy shop from as little as £1

Its that time if week again so I'm linking in with handmade monday