Made Marian: Oozing Crafty Goodness

I really need to buy another crochet pattern book, before I have to rename my blog “The Debbie Stoller Appreciation Blog”.  Anyway, in the meantime, here’s another one from the Bible. This time it’s the Boy Beanie. The yarn for the first one was donated from Lou’s stash a while back and I, er, forgot to return it!  The yarn for the second one is a Tivoli acrylic. The pattern was for a grown-up hat and I earmarked this pattern for some smaller people.  I made some huge mistake when I was trying to size it down I know that the smallest one is way too small for any of the smallies in my life, but I’m pretty sure that the grey one will fit one of them.

These were very quick and easy to do, I did them in one evening each, so if you’re looking for a possible christmas present for someone this is a great option.

Halloween is just around the corner and in an effort to put the crochet hook down for a while I decided to do some themed cross stitch.  I found the pattern in a craft magazine and once that was done I just dressed it up a bit.

I got some orange card stock and cut out a window big enough to see the pumpkin through.  I then attached the cross stitch onto the back of the window.  The orange was then attached to some black card cut to size, to give the effect of a frame. I picked up the little black bats in my local stationary shop and just stuck them on to add to the seasonal theme.

I have this in a frame as a Halloween decoration but it would make a lovely greeting card if you attached the orange paper to a black blank card.

Happy Halloween.

Catherine is organising a blogger charity book for the Christmas market.  The book will be called Homepages and will consist of submissions from Irish Bloggers.  The proceeds are going to Focus Ireland.  I submitted a craft project to the book. I wanted to do something that would be easy and would fit into the theme of the book so I chose a handmade Christmas card as they come in the letterboxes of every-one’s home at Christmas.   Here’s the finished product.

If you want to know how to make it, you’ll have to get your hands on the book when it comes out.  Keep an eye on the book blog for updates.  Huge thanks to Catherine for getting this together, it’s an amazing idea and I can’t wait to see it.

My latest commission was this snake scarf.  It was “inspired by” this one. The scarf is for Lette and/or Keith.  I started of by chaining 5 and continued as follows:

Row 1)  SC (single crochet) into the second chain from the hook and the SC across (4 SC)

Row 2) Increase by 2 stitches by doing 2 SC into the first stitch and the last (6 SC)

Row 3) Chain 1, turn, 1 SC into each stitch (6 SC)

Row 4) Same as Row 2 (8 SC)

Row 5) Same as Row 3 (8 SC)

Row 6 - 17 Repeat pattern above until you have 20 stitches across

Row 18 - 20) Chain 1, turn, SC across (20 SC)

Row 21) Chain 1, turn, decrease by SC2tog at the start and SC2tog at the end (18 SC)

Row 22) Chain 1, turn, SC across (18 SC)

Row 23 - 24) repeat row 21 and 22 (16 SC)

Row 25 - ?  Chain 1, turn, SC across (16 SC)

Basically keep going until the scarf is long enough then start to decrease again in the same way as Row 21 and 22 until you have to cast off.

The tongue was added on after - I joined the red yarn by Slip Stitching into the 4 original stitches in Row 1, so I had 4 red stitches, then chain 1 and turn, SC2tog, SC2tog so that there are only two stitches left, then SC2tog those two so that you are only left with 1 stitch, then I chained a few until the tongue was long enough.  Cast off and leave a tail of about 1 inch.  Separate the strands of the yarn so that the tongue looks as of it was two prongs.

The eyes are just buttons sewed on. I used 4 buttons as I wanted to have eyes on both sides.

If anyone tries this, can you please let me know how you get on, my pattern writing skills are extremely basic as you can see.