Quick crochet coasters

Apologies for the brief break in posting. I have a little confession to make in as much as I've spent most of my blogging time recently playing with some free graphics software I found and making pretty pictures for my blog. I'm new to this sort of thing, but I'm quite proud of the results for a first attempt, although it's took me forever and I'm still not 100% happy with the results, but it's a start!

Anyway, back to the main point of this post! Earlier this month I happened upon a great guest post by LuluLoves over on Claireabelle Makes with a tutorial to make some cute crocheted coasters. At the time I was getting bored and frustrated with essay writing and revision, so I had a dig around in my craft cupboard and set to during my study breaks. A little bit of quick and easy crochet was just what I need to keep me sane, so thank you LuluLoves and Claireabellemakes!

I finished the last of the set of four last week, all bar sewing in the ends, but over the weekend I decided to make a couple more to make it a set of 6.

It's been so miserable here the last few days that it's taken me forever to get decent photos as opposed to instagram ones, but at last today the sun actually shone! I was so shocked I opened all the windows to let the fresh air in, declared it spring and then promptly sat and froze for the best part of an hour before giving in!

They were really quick and easy to make and the pattern was really easy to follow, so they'd make great gifts or just nice things to make for yourself. I can definitely see myself making them again in another colour way as presents.

Thanks again to LuluLoves and Claireabelle Makes for the tutorial!

Alex

Instagram round up: December 2012

At long last the mid-year assessment period is over, the essay has been handed in and the exams sat. Few, glad that's over! At long last after a Christmas spent revising and writing essays I can have a couple of days break at home with my parents before heading back to Uni for a new term and new modules (snow permitting!!).

So, now that I have a little bit of time on my hands, I thought that it was about time I got December's Instagram round up up here for all of you to see. Here we go...

Top: I indulged in a bit of Christmas cross stitching with my little reindeer. He's still being used as my bookmark at the moment actually - must remember to swap him over for something else! I also spent a couple of train journeys cross stitching on my travels between Sussex and Dorset. You can see the finished stars garland in this post.

Middle: I finished my job at a well-known high street fashion and home store. I was really sad to leave and am missing the lovely girlies who work there already. They spoilt me rotten and gave me this teacup Pandora charm to remember them by, seeming as they get through so many cups of tea a day! Church set up a stable in the quiet room for local schoolchildren to come and see and we decorated the dog's bed for Christmas. Hector ate the fairy lights about half an hour later.

Bottom: I made my mutant iPhone case that never quite got there and enjoyed our Christmas decorations.

Top: More Christmas decoration admiration and watching Hector rip open his Christmas Present. I started crocheting myself new, slightly more slimline iphone case, which I then posted about here.

Middle: I also started a cross stitched case using felt and waste canvas, although I haven't got all that far, and appealed to Instagram for help in choosing a button fr my crocheted case. I also crocheted a chunky hat for my cousin's beautiful new baby boy and met him for the first time.

Bottom: Finally to round of 2012 I had a Daddy daughter evening with Dad and played a rather lengthy game of Monopoly (Brighton & Hove edition!), Gloria did some posing, and I accidentally cut our Christmas cake into heart shaped pieces! 

As you can see I had a reasonably busy month which was surprisingly productive actually, considering I also did so much Uni work. I wonder what next Christmas will be like? Will it be quiet and filled with all the crafty things I wished I'd had time to do this year, or will I have a new job by then and be rushed off my feet?

aLittleBlonde

The iPhone case that is

So if you've read about my first attempt at crocheting myself an iphone case the other day, then you'll know it wasn't overly successful. Well, I wasn't going to let that get the better of me, so I had a quick trip into town on Christmas eve and came back with this King Cole Galaxy.

I was fully expecting it to be absolutely horrible to crochet with, but actually it's surprisingly nice! I started on Christmas Day afternoon, pulled all the sequins through to the right side, did the facebook and instagram button test...

... and come boxing day evening it was all finished!

I'm rather pleased with it actually - it keeps my phone safe, it's hand made and most importantly it's sparkly! It's stretched a little with use, so if I made myself another one I think I'd make it a little smaller to allow it to give a bit with wear, but with the button done up it doesn't make much difference.

In fact I so enjoyed making it, and Mum liked it so much that she went out and bought me this...

Here we go again!

Happy Saturday, 

aLittleBlonde

The iPhone case that wasn't

A couple of weeks ago I got a nice new shiny iPhone 5. I absolutely love it, and what an improvement it is on my old 3gs! The only problem is I am absolutely terrified of scratching it. It's so shiny and new and I want to keep it that way, so up until Christmas I was carrying it around in a sock. Yes, quite literally a sock. Well that obviously wouldn't do, so I set about making myself a cute wintry case from a pattern in cross stitcher magazine. It feels more like a chore than relaxation though, as it's stitched on felt using waste canvas and it appears that me and waste canvas really don't get on!

Anyway, my cross stitched case is progressing so slowly that just before christmas I decided to have a rummage around in my room looking for some suitable wool to crochet myself a case. It was all coming along nicely and choosing such chunky wool meant it crocheted up incredibly quickly in just one evening. I even got as far as choosing a button to keep my phone nice and safe. Thankyou to those of you on facebook and instagram that gave me your opinions vis a vis which button to pick by the way, it was much appreciated!

I checked the size before crocheting the sides together and it looked good, I was on a role! I crocheted it all together and then came to the horrible realisation about just how chunky my chunky crochet was. What's more it appeared to have grown sideways when I crocheted both sides together. Apologies for the poor quality photo, it's somewhat problematic to take a photo of your phone when your main camera is, well... your phone.

As you can see, it's not one of my more successful crochet projects! I'm undecided whether to frog the lot and make in ipad case instead or not. The wool was a bit splitty so might not take too well to being completely frogged, but it's nice and easy to work with, so we'll see. It's made in Sirdar Big Softie which I've since developed a bit of a soft spot for, as you may have seen on instagram, but I'm saving that reveal for another day.

Anyway, the failed case has been hidden in shame somewhere in my bedroom and I have since successfully made myself a new case which I'm off to photograph for you now. Until next time...

Happy Friday,

aLittleBlonde

Returning to Cross Stitch

Today I'm starting off a new cross stitch project, but I'm afraid that's about all that I can tell you! You see it's a present for someone who could potentially end up reading this post, so I need to keep it under wraps a bit until it's all finished and has been given to the person in question.

It's been a little while since I did any cross stitch as I've mostly been crocheting recently and my current crochet project isn't exactly the most portable. In the grand scheme of things I've been cross stitching for much longer than I've been crocheting (years as opposed to months) and I did a lot of the little Mouseloft cross stitch kits last summer and a couple of the Christmas ones, not that I've ever done anything with the completed kits. I've started myself a camp blanket which I will tell you about at a later date which has various cloth badges stitched onto it, so until I can find a good home for the mini stitches or untill I get any more cloth badges maybe they'll find a home on there.

Anyway, I'm excited to be starting this new project today after a quick trip up to Pauline's Patchwork up at Poundbury to get these to get me started.

Love these colours!

I hadn't realised quite how much I've missed cross stitching until I started again a few days ago by attempting to stitch this little Strawberry kit that came free with a magazine. Sadly it didn't come with enough red thread to finish it, which I didn't realise until I got halfway through. A bit annoying I have to say! So for now this is as far as I can get with it until I work out what on earth to do. I wonder how close a match the suggested thread colours are with those provided in the kit? Not close enough I'm guessing, but we'll see.

I also started this after lunch as something small I can work on when the person in question who is receiving the big project is around. Not that it will keep me working for long given it's size!

Can you tell what it is yet? I'm afraid you'll have to guess. There may even be a small prize for the first to work it out...

Happy Friday, aLittleBlonde x

L is for ... Lemon

Just a quick post this morning to tell you about the little unexpected bit of making I got up to on Wednesday night. You know sometimes the projects that are the most fun are the ones that you weren't expecting - a real case of make do and mend!

So my house mate was invited out for her friends birthday after she finished her exams on Wednesday. However, the invite also came with the stipulation of being fancy dress - anything beginning with the letter L. I love this kind of fancy dress because you never know what everyone is going to come as and people generally get to pick something they want to dress up as, rather than potentially being forced into something they don't want to wear by the theme. The problem is, L is quite a difficult letter and the obvious ideas of 'lion' ad 'leopard' had already been shotgunned. So, what did that leave us with? Librarian? Luna Lovegood? With a couple of hours left she decided on a lemon - stick a yellow top on and we're sorted!

I had planned to pick up a bit of green felt to cut into a stalk, but forgot with all the excitement of buy one get one free at costa, so that plan failed a bit. So, with about an hour to go before she was supposed to leave I had a little brain wave involving some green wool and crochet hook and whilst my housemate was upstairs getting ready this little project was born. I hope you like it!

A spring project

At last I can tell you about my new project!
Last summer I taught myself to crochet using this book, which I'll tell you about in a future post and got completely hooked (sorry awful pun I know) on crochet and amigurumi. Cute as the little creatures and stuffed food (again, I'll tell you about it another time) were, I decided I wanted to make something that actually had some kind of use to it. Not that I'm saying cutesy crochet animals and ice cream sandwiches aren't cute!! They make me smile and that's important in life, but at the end of the day what can you actually do with a crocheted piece of chocolate cake? One day I have aspirations to crochet an entire picnic set for children to play with, but short of having the time or a suitable child to palm all the squishy loveliness off onto, what should I make?

So, after Christmas when I browsing a well known high street bookshop to find something to spend a voucher I was given on, I stumbled across this book...

Cute & easy crochet, which makes you smile and actually has a use once you've made it! Crochet, cuteness and practicality all in one - I'm in love!!

It was written by Nicki Trench, who you can find on her blog here or on her website here, and is full to the brim with gorgeous and useful projects. There were so many things I wanted to make straight away, including the cafetiere cosy, knickerbockerglory bunting, any of the cushions.... the list continues. And I wanted to make it all. Right now.

However, I'm still rather annoyingly in the midst of my summer term at uni, so with 1 coursework deadline and 6 exams to go, time is short and money is low. Never a great combination when you want to start a new project, no matter how lovely it is.
So I decided to work backwards and collected together my wool first, picking out the colours from my bedspread...

...so whatever I was going to make was going to be for my bedroom and had to be easy to pick up and put down again whenever I had a patch of free time. I still had trouble deciding which project to pick, but in the end I decided to go for the springtime throw - something that's easy, portable at least until it gets to the sewing up stage and has a bit of variety in it as much as there are 20 different colour combinations for the mini Granny squares.

So here we are, I started last Wednesday and by Sunday look how far I'd got!

Little baby squares of granny goodness

Since then I've done 2 more squares and written a 2000 word essay, which I personally don't think is bad going really - that's progress of roughly 1 square per day! They're easy to do, I'm getting to know the pattern off by heart, every square I do seems to be taking less and less time and the colours seem to be gelling really well (with the exception of the turquoise which I'm still trying to find a reliable source for so have left out for now).

So if that's 8 squares I've done so far, by my calculations that only leaves me with... hang on, how many? 424 more to do? In which case at my current speed I should be about ready to start stitching the thing together by about July 2014. Hmmm.

In reality I'm not actually intending to make a blanket quite as big as the one in the book (approx 162 x 223 cm), instead I'm planning on making mine more single bed sized, at around 120 x 200 cm, which by my rough calculations means I'll only need 286 squares, a slight improvement on my previous estimate, plus as my speed picks up and I have more free time I'm sure I'll manage an average of a couple more than one a day.

I knew my maths A-level would come in useful one day...

Even if I get bored and decide I've had enough, the beauty of a Granny square project is that you can always make it into something else - a cushion, a bag, a smaller blanket. At the moment I've only got one ball of each of the colours which won't last me long, but I've deliberately chosen brands and colours that are easy to source so that I can buy more as I progress and if I can't get a colour for whatever reason I can get another similar one and simply mix it in, or at least that's the plan anyway!

So there you have it, my new project. What do you think?
I'll keep you posted on my progress as I work my way through this mammoth (for me anyway) project. I mean, the finished thing will be bigger than me! Or at least that's the plan for now anyway.

Waterfalls and Wool

Today has been one of those days were it gets to about half 7 and you have to make the decision - Do I soldier on and try to achieve what I meant to today? OR Do I mark today as a write off, give in and have a bit of time off? Quess which one I picked?

Today started with me declaring that I could not possibly be getting a cold and should therefore get up and have a nice long hot shower and all would be right with the world. An hour later and I'm downstairs having done the mountain of washing up that I had left festering from the night before and, hmm... mysterious dripping noise, where's that...OH!

And so it continued, with drip turning to puddle, turning to full on waterfall. So you can see why I didn't get much done today, what with the new inbuilt water feature in the living room requiring large portions of my day spent emptying the various receptacles I had strategically placed, mopping up the mess and performing a spot of minor ceiling surgery to burst the newly formed water balloon before it exploded.

On further insepction it appears the living room falls had nothing to do with my shower (or at least we hope so!), thank heavens, but is actually due to a dripping pipe which I have since shut off - woo go me! Today fixing a kitchen tap and learning what to do with a stopcock, tomorrow the world!

Anyway, today wasn't all doom and gloom, despite the destinct lack or uni related productivity. I did at least manage to get my room back in order so that I an ready to make a good fresh start tomorrow with revision, even if I now have the distraction of Dad arriving to fix the offending pipe tomorrow morning!

On the way to my lecture I stopped off at the Martlets Hospice shop and found that they sell wool, and cheap reasonable quality wool at that! In the dimly lit corner of the shop it was rather difficult to tell the exact colours, but either way I liked them, they were cheap and the profits go to charity, so who cares if they're not quite right and they just sit in my stash? But when I got home, much to my delight, it appears the random assortment I chose are in fact the exact colours I have been looking for unsuccesfully for so long. Result! So at last I have all the colours I need, and what's more I know exactly where I can get more when I run out.

So, which of my various projects to start with first?
I've got a little quick filler project to be getting on with for now whilst I make up my mind, but more of that another time. For now, I'll leave you with this, can you guess where I got my colour choices from?