Halloween Blanket

I wish I was still young enough to trick-or-treat

Greetings folks! I'm back to give the skinny on my latest project!

If any of you read my Red Heart yarn review, then you may remember I mentioned that the reason I took the plunge and bought the yarn was because I wanted to make a blanket for my son. When I wrote my review on the yarn, I was a few squares in to the blanket, and I'm happy to say that having completed the whole thing, I'm still every bit as in love with the yarn as I was then. Phew!

So to get right down in to it, first I'll give you the basics of the blanket design (I'll link the pattern below for anyone who wants to have a crack at it themselves) it's a fairly simple layout - 9 squares and a border around the edges. Obviously there are varying colours and such, I'll get to that further down.

The squares are solid granny squares, and I have to say I really like how these are constructed. Usually in a granny square - solid or traditional - you increase when you get to the corner space where there's a chain2 gap, and into that gap, you put two double crochet, chain two, two double crochet. With this method you always end up with a little gap in the corners, so it's never completely solid.

there ends up being an X shape across your work

However, using the method in this pattern you get a completely solid, and in my opinion, much neater looking square. The difference is that when you get to the last stitch in a side you do two doubles and one treble in that stitch, then one treble and two doubles in the first stitch on the next side, which makes the point in the corner solid, while also increasing the number of stitches in the next round. 

Each round ends with a slip stitch and the next round starts with a chain3 and continues as before, the only thing you need to watch out for is that you don't accidentally skip the slipped stitch when you get to the end of the next round, otherwise that side will be one stitch short. Because of the way each row is almost fastened off before the next one begins, it made changing colours very easy, and the join between the colours is seamless.

The squares worked up quite quickly, I would be able to get a whole one done while I was sitting watching TV in the evening. Once the squares were done, it was time to start the faces.

The many faces of Halloween

As you can see in the picture above, four of the squares have assorted faces, and one says 'Boo!'. The faces were easy enough to make, although I found with some of them there were still a lot of gaps showing between the stitches when they were finished. For example, the triangle eyes and noses were quite 'gap-y' and so were the oval shaped eyes on the second face from the left in the picture above. The instructions tell you to leave a long tail after you fasten off, so I left an extra long tail and used a yarn needle to weave the yarn in and out of the stitches to fill in the gaps.

The 'Boo!' was slightly more difficult, to make. The two letter 'O's were fine, as was the exclamation mark. The 'B' was slightly trickier, and it ended up looking like a number 8. It took a fair amount of manipulating it, when I was stitching it to the square, to get it to look like a 'B'.

Once all the faces were done, it was just a matter of stitching them on to the various squares. One thing I will say is plan carefully when you're putting the face pieces on to the squares - I'll go in to a bit more detail about this further down. I found the easiest way to get the faces right was to lay the square out flat and then pin the pieces down before sewing them on. It would be extremely rare that I'd pin anything in crochet. In fact, I don't think I've ever done it before, however it was the best way to keep all the pieces in the places you want them, because I found that even the piece I was working on tended to move around a lot as I was sewing it - I'd leave the pins in right until I had the whole piece pretty much sewn on.

Never have I been happier to finish seaming a piece together

Next step was sewing all the pieces together. It said on the pattern to sew the pieces together using the back loops only. It didn't specify what sort of stitch to use, so I used a mattress stitch to give as seamless a join as possible. Mattress stitch is a fairly strong stitch - it's also used to sew sleeves and seams in sweaters, so I figured this would be a good robust stitch which would be capable of standing up to a vigorous toddler.

Sewing through the back loops only was a bit of a faff, to be honest. There ended up being a gap where 4 pieces intersected, which I had to go back and sew tighter when the whole thing was completed. The way I put it together was I sewed the top three squares together, then the middle three, and then the bottom three, so that I ended up with three long strips. I then sewed the strips together. 

I mentioned earlier about planning the layout of the faces carefully, the reason I say this is because when you're sewing the pieces together through the back loops, it's hard to weave in tail ends of yarn neatly. When you lay out your face pieces, do it so that when they're sewn on, the yarn tail from the square will be pointing towards the outside of the blanket. Similarly, when you're sewing the pieces together, rotate the multicoloured pieces so that their yarn tail is pointing towards the outside as well. Obviously, you won't be able to do this with the 'BOO!' square, because it's in the centre. The first round of the border is just double crochets, so the yarn tails from the squares can be woven in neatly and securely with those stitches.

Before your boder is on, the blanket should look like some sort of Halloween amoeba 

Once the pieces were sewn together, the border was a piece of cake. The first round was just double crochets using the grey yarn, then the second round was 'shells' using the black yarn. A 'shell' is when you make a single crochet, skip two stitches, put 5 double crochets in the next stitch, skip two stitches, then repeat all the way around.

So there you have it! The Halloween blanket is finished and my little boy is delighted with it. He's been sleeping under it every night since I gave it to him. I think overall it took me about 10 days to finish it. I really like this pattern, and I think it's something that could be adapted quite easily to be used for a different occasion, like Christmas, Valentine's day, etc.

Yarns: RedHeart.com

2 x Red Heart Super Saver #312 Black

2 x Red Heart Super Saver #254 Pumpkin

1 x Red Heart Super Saver #356 Amethyst 

1 x Red Heart Super Saver #400 Grey Heather

1 x Red Heart Super Saver #672 Spring Green

Pattern: Pumpkin Face Throw

Stitch-cation Super Afghan Challenge

Greetings readers! Once again, I have been absent for a while, however I have not been idle, oh no! I've been churning out projects by the barrel-full so I should have plenty of posts coming up with the various things I've made.

Today's post is about my first ever full size crochet afghan/blanket. I made it for the Stitch-cation Challenge on the The Crochet Crowd.com. If you haven't visited their site, I'd really recommend you check them out, it's like a massive community/encyclopedia/educational resource all mashed in to one, and it's AWESOME! They run challenges all the time - you can see details of current and previous challenges on the site - but this is the first one I've actually participated in. 

I started it on the 3rd of July and honestly, I was doubtful I would get it finished in time for the September 1st deadline. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it actually came together quite quickly, I think that was due to the fact that it's made up of smaller squares so you don't end up with this behemoth of a project where it gets to the point that one row can take almost an hour to do. With some of the squares I would finish a whole one in an evening, while watching TV.

This project consisted of squares, each made of one of the following 10 stitch patterns:

Popcorn Stitch
Back Loops Stitch
Cross Stitch
Double Crochet & Slip Stitch
Front Post Double Around Single Crochet
Front Post Double Crochet
Front Post Treble Crochet
Granny Square
Raised Trebles
Front Post Double Crochet With Shells 

You had to make two of each square. I decided to do one out of each pair in a solid colour, and the other in mixed colours. The rules were that you had to use a minimum of 8 colours, and that your border had to have a minimum of 4 rows. I'll list the colours I used in the blanket at the bottom of this post. The border I made had 9 or 10 rows. The border pattern I used was from the Red Heart Holiday Striped Throw, I just changed the order of the colours so that it would suit the layout I wanted.

The instruction e-book said that the aim of the project was to learn more about how to use different stitch types and I definitely learned lots! In fact there are quite a few of these stitches that I've got in mind for future projects. Getting the hang of the patterns was easier than I thought, and there were the step-by-step YouTube tutorials to fall back on if I got stuck. Probably the most difficult bit of the entire thing was trying to decide the placement of the different squares. I must have done at least 10 different arrangements before I was happy enough to crochet them all together. 

The border did take a while, and was slightly awkward because the blanket was fairly big by that stage. Working on it induced a mild form of heat stroke because it was covering my lap while I crocheted around the edges, although at least I know it's going to be nice and warm when the colder weather rolls around. In fairness, although it was a bit of a slog getting around the whole border, it wasn't as tedious as it could have been because I was so excited that it was getting closer to being finished (although I did almost have a nervous breakdown when I had to rip out nearly an entire round because I messed up) Then FINALLY on the 19th of August, I finished weaving in my ends and........TAH DAH!!

I'm delighted with how it turned out! I love all the different colours and textures, and it definitely has given me a wider range of options for other projects in the future. Not saying I'm going to be starting another one of these blankets next week, but I wouldn't rule it out for the future. A lighter weight yarn and lower gauge hook (this was made with Aran weight yarn and a 5mm hook) would make a smaller blanket that would be great for kids or a new baby.

Here's the list of the colours I used, and where I got them:

Pink: King Cole Bounty Aran Shade 133 (from Springwools)

Purple: King Cole Bounty Aran Shade 117 (from Springwools)

Tan/Wheat: King Cole Bounty Aran Shade 113 (from Springwools)

Baby Blue: Robin Bonny Babe Aran Shade 1877 (from Springwools)

Yellow: Tivoli Eurospun Blockbuster Double Knit Shade 566 (from Springwools)*

Grey: King Cole Comfort Aran Shade 313 (from Springwools)

Green: King Cole Comfort Aran Shade 319 (from Springwools)

Mint: Stylecraft Baby Aran Shade 1234 (from Home Focus at Hickeys)

Cream border colour: Stylecraft Baby Aran Shade 1245 (from Home Focus at Hickeys)

*I'm aware the yellow is actually double knit wool, however it was actually the same thickness as the aran wools I used. The aran version of the Eurospun Blockbuster was more like a chunky weight, and would have been too thick for the project.

Amigurumi Unicorn

 

Hello again all! Today's blog is about this adorable little critter; the Amigurumi Unicorn. No prizes for guessing who I made this for :-) My little man loves the Despicable Me movies, and we saw a toy of Agnes's fluffy unicorn in the toy shop but it was giant and pink, which I thought might be a bit weird for a two year old boy. So I had a search online and found a pattern on Ravelry - incidentally, if you're into yarn related crafts and haven't already checked out Ravelry.com, you really should because there are tonnes of free patterns and some of the pattern creators have YouTube channels and have put up tutorials so you can knit/crochet along.

Now the pattern I used suggests 'Light Weight' yarn, (double knit weight is used in the video tutorial) and a 3.5mm hook. I wanted the toy to be a little bit bigger so I used chunky yarn and a 4.5mm hook. It also suggests 12mm safety eyes, but I only 9mm and it was around midnight when I realised I needed a different size so I just had to make do with the 9mm eyes. (Unfortunately my local 24 hour Tesco doesn't stock knitting supplies, which is just as well because I'd probably never leave otherwise) I think the 9mm eyes look fine though. 

Aside from the yarn weight, hook size and eye size, I did deviate from the pattern slightly in some other ways, also. On the pattern it doesn't say to stuff the hooves, or feet, or whatever you want to call them. However, since mine were larger I felt they needed a bit of bulk so I put a very small amount of stuffing in just before I worked the tube of the leg. I didn't stuff them firmly or anything, like you would for the head and body, I just put enough in so that they wouldn't collapse in on themselves. If you are making this and decide that you want to stuff the feet, I'd recommend putting in your stuffing before you crochet the narrow leg tube because it can be a bit awkward trying to push the stuffing down through the legs.

                        

For the mane and tail the pattern suggests using the contrast colour (the yarn you used for the hooves and mouth) and making the mane using chain stitches. I thought I'd make the unicorn a bit more colourful though, and I cut segments of rainbow coloured yarn and chained it with the blue to make the mane. Then for the tail I mixed the strands of yarn and plaited it, as the pattern suggested.

                             

I did use double knit weight yarn for the horn (and a 3.5mm hook) because when I first made it with the chunky yarn it came out huge and I didn't like how it looked, so I went with the lighter weight yarn. I didn't follow the pattern exactly when it came to crocheting the horn, I left out a couple of rounds so it's a bit 'stubbier' than the pattern would have it and rather than working a small bit of stuffing inside it before I attached it to the head, I just left the long tail from the starting magic loop, and tucked the excess yarn inside instead.

This was a nice simple toy to make, the pattern is good and very easy to follow. There is also a YouTube video where the designer makes the toy from start to finish, so if you get stuck you can watch it to see what to do. It took me about 3 hours from start to finish. The fiddliest bit was the mane, but once I got the first few bits in I got the hang of it. Other than that everything was pretty straightforward, and I'm very happy with how it turned out (most importantly, so is my son!)

Pattern: Amigurumi Unicorn by Eden Dintsikos

Main Yarn: Hayfield Baby Chunky from Winnie's Wool Wagon

Coloured Yarn: from Aimee Rose Store

Stuffing & Safety Eyes: from Springwools

Angry Birds!!

Twas the week before Christmas, and I was seriously stuck for something to get my son. Ok, Santa was all sorted with his gifts (he started with Amazon pre-orders back in June, the super organised fella that he is!) but I wanted something for under the tree for baba from my hubby and I. As any reader has probably already guessed, I love making stuff for him, so with that in mind and the fact that he was going to be getting tonnes of other toys between the jolly old St Nick and our extended families, I decided his present was going to be home made. Now, as I said, twas the week before Christmas, so I wasn't going to have time to make garments, but I figured I'd be able to knock out a decent toy for him in under a day and chose to make an Angry Bird.

I picked Red Bird because his basic shape would be the easiest to figure out - he's essentially a ball. The beak and stuff were going to be slightly more complicated because I didn't have a pattern. Now there are hundreds of Angry Bird crochet and knit patterns out there in internet land but honestly, none of the ones I looked at really jumped out at me. Some had elements I liked but then other bits that I hated so I figured I'd wing it (no pun intended) and see how things went. 

For the main body I just made one big sphere, now for this I did use a pattern - it's one I found on the internet a while ago on how to make a perfect amigurumi sphere, and it's amazing, the results are perfect every time. It's from Ms Premise Conclusion and she's actually got it as a free download on her site, which is really cool because she must have put an INSANE amount of effort in to figuring all of these out. I used the largest size pattern which was a 30 row sphere.

I wanted the body to be fairly substantial in size, about the size of a small football as opposed to maybe a baseball or tennis ball, so I used a 4.5mm hook and also two strands of yarn at the same time. This made the fabric nice and thick and also ensured that I could stuff it nice and firmly without having to worry that the stuffing would be visible between the stitches. When making the sphere, I find it easiest to crochet until you've got about 2 or 3 rows left, then stuff and continue crocheting. If it's starting to feel a bit loose as you're about to close the sphere you can work in a tiny bit more stuffing as you do the last round. NB: if you're using 'safety eyes' you'll need to attach these BEFORE you stuff and close your sphere.

The whites of the eyes were fairly straightforward, they're just plain circles. I used white DK weight yarn and a 3.5mm hook, then I made two circles with 36 stitches around. To attach them I firstly positioned them on the body before it was stuffed and then applied the safety eyes going through both the 'eye' and the 'body' fabric. Then, after I'd stuffed and closed up the body, I took some black yarn and the same 3.5mm hook and worked a row of single crochet around each eye and then took a tapestry needle and used the black yarn to secure the edges of the eyes to the body. The eyebrows were just two pieces of 14 double crochets, and then I did another row of single crochet halfway along each of them to give the 'frowny' expression. They were also made using the 3.5mm hook.

To make the 'tummy' of the bird, I got some beige coloured yarn and just made a flat circle. To figure out how big to make the circle, I checked how many stitches the body had at the widest part and used that as a rough guide. My bird had 59 stitches around it's middle, and I wanted his 'belly' to be a bit smaller than that so I worked until my circle had a 54 stitch circumference. I attached the tummy after the body had been stuffed because it made it easier to hide the stitches holding it on.

The beak was a bit of a challenge, I couldn't figure out whether to do it two dimensional or three dimensional. I checked a load of patterns online and there seemed to be a fairly even split between both, so I actually made one of each and held it up on the bird to see which one I preferred. In this case I used the 3D one (as you can see) but I actually held on to the 2D one also because I'm planning to make an Angry Bird hat for my son and the 2D beak would be perfect for that. The 3D beak is basically just a cone shape, which I stuffed and then attached on with the yellow yarn. I got some black yarn and sewed up along each side to give it the illusion of being more pyramid shaped. I also did a bit of sewing at the top of the beak to improve the shape between the eyes.

For his weird little doo-dads on the top of his head I again used the 3.5mm hook and crocheted two 'tubes' that tapered off towards the end, one slightly shorter than the other. Then I put a teeny bit of stuffing inside them before I sewed them on.

The tail was the finishing touch, and it was news to me that Angry Birds even had tails but that's another story. Don't laugh, but the tail is actually a shamrock, I just used black yarn and sort of smushed it about until I liked how it looked.

And that's it! One Angry Bird! My son loves it and has a great time throwing it around the living room while yelling 'angeee birds!'. Thank god it's not made out of anything harder than yarn!!!

Sphere Pattern from: Ms Premise Conclusion

Stuffing from: Springwools

Safety Eyes from: Springwools

Yarns and hooks from my own stash.

Piggy Knapsack

 

  

I was browsing around in Hickeys yesterday when I came across a load of little felt craft kits. Most of them were for purses and stuff like that, but then I noticed a selection of adorable little kiddie backpacks. There were four different designs - pig, cat, panda and a thing that looked a bit like a cross between a fox and a raccoon. As you can see, I chose the pig.

 

 

The pack cost EUR15 and is supposed to contain everything you need to make the backpack. It even has a little plastic needle so it would be something that young kids could make with some adult help (not the under threes though, due to small parts). The one thing I noticed was that the back part of one of the ears was missing, but by the time I noticed I'd already started putting it together. Luckily, I was able to improvise by tracing the shape of the ear onto a thin piece of cardboard and I used that instead. 

The other thing that was annoying was that there wasn't enough thread either. I ended up having to get more of both the brown and the white thread. However, despite that, I really enjoyed making it. It took me around an hour or two and the instructions were nice and straightforward. In spite of the cardboard backing on one ear, I'm happy with how it turned out and my little boy loves it, he's hilarious toddling around the sitting room with it and it's nearly as big as he is!

Snuggly Baby Blanket

This is a really simple baby blanket I knitted while I was pregnant with my son. At the time I started knitting it, I didn't yet know if he was going to be a boy or a girl, so I went with a multicoloured wool in soft baby colours. 

The pattern was a free one that I found online, but I can't for the life of me remember the site where I got it. It starts out with casting on 5 knit stitches and then you use a yarn over increase every row so you gain one stitch each row. You keep going until the blanket is as wide as you want, and then start to decrease. The yarn-overs on each row make a border around  the blanket, and when you decrease each row, you actually decrease two stitches and still do a yarn over, so your row ends up being one stitch shorter.

The pattern showed a blanket that was blue and white, knitted using two balls of wool at the same time. The wool weight was Double Knitting. As I said, I ended up using two balls of multicoloured wool, which I think gave a nice graduated stripe effect, and the colours would be suitable for either a boy or a girl.

I made this blanket to be moses basket/pram size, which was about 160 stitches by 160 rows or thereabouts. In total I used four balls of wool to make it. Basically, I knitted increasing until I got to the end of the first two balls, then I started the decreasing. The number of wool balls you need will vary depending on the meterage of the wool. The link at the bottom shows the wool I used. I also used 4mm x 150cm circular needles. 

I think overall it took me about a three weeks to knit this, however I was working full time so could only knit for an hour or so in the evenings and then longer on weekends. It's definitely a nice straightforward project, and the best part about it is that the size of the piece is completely up to you. The pattern can be used for anything from a dish scrubbie to a king size bedspread!

The pattern goes like this:

(k = knit, yo = yarn over, k2tog = knit two together)

Cast on 5 stitches

1st row: k3, yo, k2

2nd row: k3, yo, k3

3rd row: k3, yo, k4..... 

4th row: k3, yo, k to end of row. Continue until desired width is achieved.

To decrease: k2, k2tog, yo, k2tog, k to end of row. Continue until there are 5 stitches left on your needle.

Cast off

Wool from: Go Woolly - Cygnet Kiddies Couture Prints DK

Needles from: Amazon 

Dogs need jumpers too......right?

Ok, so anyone who knows me will know that I'm certainly not opposed to dressing my dogs in fabulous jumpers. Some people (namely my husband and my father) may argue that said jumpers are ridiculous, however I vehemently disagree. Some dogs are very style conscious, and just love to look their best, well, either that or they're too passive to bother trying to chew their outfits off. 

My Cocker Spaniel, Bella, already has a variety of jumpers, a coat, and a bathrobe (laugh all you want, that thing is damn handy when she's just had a bath and is soaked). Last August, we acquired a new canine friend in the form of Lola, a half labrador - half bulldog, and she's grown up to be quite large, so there's just no way she and Bella will be able to share outfits. To that end, I went on Amazon and purchased the book above, so I can knit her a funky sweater. I ordered it today, so I can't wait for it to arrive! It'll be a nice side project to my log cabin blanket, and doubtless my husband will have hours of fun slagging me about knitting for dogs, so really it'll benefit the whole family!

Patch The Puppy

I knitted this for my son for his first birthday. It really was a labour of love because it took AGES!! The needles you use are tiny, like about 2.5mm so it’s like knitting on toothpicks. Also there were LOADS of increasing stitches, which I found quite difficult to knit because this particular wool has no stretch in it at all. That being said, the smaller bits like the arms, legs and ears knit up quite quickly. The head and body were a bit of a slog though.

I had a good laugh when I ordered the stuffing, because it's sold by weight, so I accidentally ordered enough to make about ten teddies! (If you're ordering the stuffing from my link below, one bag is more than enough to make this project)

This was the first thing I’d ever knit using a proper pattern and in retrospect it might have been wiser to start with something simpler, however I was really pleased with how it turned out in the end. And, most importantly, my son loves it!

Pattern and wool from: Go Woolly

Stuffing from: Springwools