30 days of Christmas. Day 1: little crocheted heart

So, today I started a little project. Or is it better to call it a journey? A journey through one of the most unpleasant months of the year to a beautiful Christmas tree... I like how it sounds.

First of all I found a box at home. It even looked like a Christmas box which is ideal. Hopefully in 30 days this box will be full and I will be really proud of myself. Then I searched for some patterns and inspiration. I decided that I won't be supertraditional and really anything as long as I like it and it has appropriate size can be a Christmas decoration. It can be bunnies or any other animals, snowmen, little houses, hearts, apples, angels or any other dolls, balls, trees and so far. The best places to search for inspiration are Pinterest (look at my "Christmas decoration ideas" board there), Google images, any craft magazines like Mollie Makes... There are lots of great ideas in the Internet using all kinds of materials and any skill levels, the most important part here is the creativity.

Now shall we start with the first Christmas tree ornament I made. Today the weather was awful, cold windy and rainy and I could sit in my living room and hear that rain and wind outside. Probably that's why I wanted a bit of romance and choose a little crocheted heart by Taube Skywalker as a first project.
I had that "pattern" for a while and never had a moment to try it out. The way it's written may seem a bit confusing especially for beginners, bud don't worry - I will explain :)

Ok, that is how I did it (not totally followed the instructions, but who cares after all). First of all you need some DK yarn (about 200 m in 100g), a bit of stuffing and a 3mm crochet hook. When I made the solid colour heart I was crocheting in spiral, so no slipstitches in the end of each round were needed, but when I made the stripy heart I was working by rows and each row started with ch1 (I didn't count it as a first dc), dc into the same space, and ended with slipstitch.

We start with two heart "tops":
Round 1: Make a magic ring and make 5 dc into the ring
Round 2: 2 dc into each dc of the previous round = 10 dc
Round 3: 2 dc into every second dc of the previous round = 15 dc
Round 4-5: dc into each dc of the previous round = 15 dc
First top done! Cut the yarn leaving a tail and make the second top using the same instructions, just don't cut the yarn in the end. Now we'll need to join these tops together.
Round 6: dc into each dc of the previous round of the first top, then dc into each dc of the second top = 30 dc
Round 7: dc into each dc of the previous round = 30 dc
Round 8: *crochet 8 dc, crochet 2 dc together*, repeat from * to * 2 more times = 27 dc
Round 9: *crochet 7 dc, crochet 2 dc together*, repeat from * to * 2 more times = 24 dc
Round 10: *crochet 6 dc, crochet 2 dc together*, repeat from * to * 2 more times = 21 dc
Round 11: *crochet 5 dc, crochet 2 dc together*, repeat from * to * 2 more times = 18 dc
Round 12: *crochet 4 dc, crochet 2 dc together*, repeat from * to * 2 more times = 15 dc
Round 13: *crochet 3 dc, crochet 2 dc together*, repeat from * to * 2 more times = 12 dc (start stuffing your heart after this round)
Round 14: *crochet 2 dc, crochet 2 dc together*, repeat from * to * 2 more times = 9 dc
Round 15: *crochet 1 dc, crochet 2 dc together*, repeat from * to * 2 more times = 6 dc
Round 16: crochet every two dc of the previous round together = 3 dc (I found this round most annoying and difficult as it is not actually that easy to pull the hook through the last two dc).
Now cut the yarn leaving an end, hide that end using either your crochet hook or a tapestry needle and you're done!

Hopefully my explanation is ok :) In fact I enjoyed making that little hearts and I'm now thinking of making some more one day. But for tomorrow we need a new project and I'm thinking about birds perhaps... About something like this one:

 

And I should make normal daylight pictures of the hearts tomorrow.

Gooseberries

Well, Little Man is getting better and can play in the yard (still no contacts with other children until this weekend). So he has a lot of fun in his sandpit - sitting there with a big smile and covering himself with the sand. After that all this sand ends up on our living room carpet, but at least Little Man is happy and not screaming :)
Today he had some fun with his dad picking the gooseberries from our little gooseberry bush.

 You can notice that Little Man still has that chickenpox spot marks, but they are disappearing slowly.

We bought it last year and now it looks twice bigger than it was, and there were much more berries than last year, of course.

Sadly they are not sweet at all. May be it was not enough sun for them... So now I'm thinking that I should probably bake a pie with them.
Oh, we have a raspberry bush too! With one raspberry on it:

And I treated myself a little bit and made a little bag for my new phone.

Still not sure if I like it or not as I wanted something feminine and this one looks too girlish for me. Or may be it's not girlish and looks fine. Really can't decide.

Hope you are all doing great and having a lovely time!
xx

Just some squares

Yesturday I mentioned that I wasn't really in the mood during the last couple of days. It was not only about blogging, it was about everything including my craft work. So I stopped working on my current projects. They just didn't bring me the joy they used to... But I just can't sit on a sofa not doing anything, I need to be busy, otherwise I start to feel worried, annoyed, bored and so on and so far. That is why I grabbed some yarn leftowers for my charity crochet, found an easy pattern online and here I am - crocheting granny squares for two days allready.



The pattern is Bullseye Squares from Little Tin Bird. It is really easy and I like working on it.



This squares will be sent to the ladies in Russia who make charity blankets for orphanages. I mentioned them before in my blog and allready sent them a parcel with tiny knitted socks, crocheted hats and booties and a couple of bunnies.


Made 12 squares so far. Not shure if I will make the whole blanket or just send the squares, but that is how they look all together:



Not bad, yes?
Probably I would need about 80 squares to make the whole blanket, but this amount of work just scares me at the moment... So I will just continue crocheting the squares till i get complitely bored with them without thinking too much about the future.

How are you all doing? Hope your weekend is great :)
xx

Infinity scarfs

After making a couple of infinity scarfs as gifts using a super easy video I accidently found on YouTube (you can find it here) I thought that I would like one for myself too, but as I've already made three scarfs using one and the same pattern I wanted something new. Well, you just get bored when using one and the same pattern again and again. So I made a little research on the Web to find some more interesting patterns. Sadly, there are not so many of them. Most infinity scarfs I found were just made using trebles in a round. But I wanted something more interesting, something really special and free. And finaly I found three free patterns I liked. Here they are:

1. Chunky circle scarf:

2. Blue infinity scarf:

3. Edie infinity scarf:

Now I only need to decide which one I like most. I allready have the yarn - James C. Brett Marble Chunky in shade 14, which is red and changes the colour a bit. Not shure which of this tree scafs would look better with this yarn...

Do you have any new projects in your mind?
Hope you do as it's allways fun and exciting to start something new.

Have a nice evening and see you all soon :)

52 Weeks of Happy (1/52)

If you haven't heard of 52 Weeks of Happy you can find more info here but basically the main idea is to post four pictures of the things that made you happy every week. I thought it's a good idea and something that really suits me as sometimes I feel depressed or sad for no reason and by making pictures of some happy moments I will be able to look back at this pictures and remember that there is no reason for being depressed.

Ok, let's start.

 Things that made me happy over the last week:

1. a pot holder and dish cloth that came to me long way from USA from my swap partner (I've participated in a pot holder swap on swap-bot.com)



2. Little Man started playing with a ring stacker.



He made this and brought it to show me. I was so proud and happy at that moment!

3. My narcissus. When my husband brought them I thought it's green onions ore something like that, as they were completely closed. Now they are opened to show me how beautiful they are - like little yellow suns on my window.



4. Some lovely crochet I was working on.



This had to be a baby blanket for a baby shower. Unfortunately I had to unravel almost all of it yesterday as I understood that I don't have enough yarn. But I still enjoyed the process, the colours and this picture. I will tell you a bit more about this blanket later as I going to put some rows of white between this colours and some white border.

Hope you had a great week too!

Little booties and some news about my patterns

You know, I'm really happy today. Despite the fact that the winter is back and a nice sunny day suddenly turned into a snow storm I'm sitting here and smiling. And I've got several reasons for that.
First of all, yesterday for the first time in my life I've posted a pattern to Ravelry. My tiny newborn socks. And today I've discovered that 47 complete strangers added it as a favourite and one lady already knitted a pair! Wow!
Then yesterday in the evening while Little Man was having a nap I translated the same pattern into Russian for the lovely ladies in Russia who knit and crochet charity blankets and clothes for children in Russian orphanages. Send it to one of them and she posted it into her blog so ladies could use the pattern for their charity projects. And again - almost 40 complete strangers re-posted it to their blogs.
Someone would say that 40 is not much and even 80 (if I would count all of them together) is not much too, but for me it means a lot. Really a lot. And first of all it is so important to me because I don't know this people and they don't know me, so they liked my pattern not because they like me and want to be nice and polite, but because they all like what I did. And it makes me feel happy and proud of myself.
The other thing that made me smile was a response from the lady from Canada who received my pot holder, that I crocheted for her participating in a Pot Holder Swap on swap-bot.com She loves it and it was nice to read how talented I am and how perfect the work and the colours are.

Today I finally packed everything for my charity package to Russia. Hoped to send it today, but had to stay at home because of the snow. Anyway, I promised to show you the booties I was making for orphanage babies. Here they are:



The yellow ones were made using a pattern found here which actually is not a pattern but a Japanese crochet chart (the chart itself can be found here ). It might look a bit confusing but after you figure out what they mean in the chart the booties turn out to be quite easy. I used 3mm crochet hook and some DK yarn and the finished size is about 3-6 months.



The blue ones are actually my favourite. For them I used a pattern I found on Pinterest but I had to modify it a bit as I just could not understand the pattern in the end. Little crocheted star pattern can be found here and I used 2mm crochet hook and a bit of 4ply for them.  For the booties I used 3.5 mm crochet hook, not 4.25 as in the pattern as I just didn't have one, and DK yarn leftovers. The size I was making was 6-9 months, but I ended up with a really tiny pair, 0-3 or even newborn size... Was it my crochet hook that changed the size so much?
But I still love them



Hope are doing great too :)
Have a nice evening!

Hat mood, charity and some Scrap buster hats for babies

Since my last post I had a great crocheting period. I've been in a hat mood. First of all because I noticed that my Little Man's hat, a gift from his grand grand parents, was sliding over his eyes all the time he was outside, so it was obvious that he needed a new hat, the one that would fit. I've searched my stash, found some yarn and grabbed a crochet hook. In the first evening I had to remake it, starting all over again for about 5 times, but after all of that and one more evening the hat was finally finished.



As you can see Little Man likes it. It has a big metal button on a side and fits perfectly. Every mum knows that babies are not big fans of hats and if they can pull that hat off, they will. Well, no chance with this one, Little Man was trying really hard but had to give up without even moving it away.



Sadly I wasn't writing down the pattern while working on it. May be I will try to recreate it later as it might be useful for some other babies too.

After finishing that hat I realized that my husband needs a hat too (it was snowing and freezing outside), so from the same yarn in the same evening I made a hat for him. That one was so easy, that I will make a pattern for it and crochet one for myself. Sadly, no pictures of it this time.

Then last Sunday I bought a knitting magazine and found an article about knitting for premature babies there. It was good to know that there are ladies here in England who knit tiny little clothes for premies and give them to the hospitals. While reading this article I felt that a big need for some charity work was growing in me. I wanted to help someone too. But I wasn't sure, that our hospital would take my knitting as I don't think they are dealing with premature babies. So I was thinking about orphanages. Went to the Internet and soon discovered that there are no orphanages in England. Makes me proud of this country again.
And then I remembered that in 2011, when I was pregnant with Little Man I took part in a charity project for orphanages in Russia. I crocheted a blanket for them. Why not to make something like that again? I found one of the project coordinators in the Internet and started crocheting.
Here are three little Scrap buster hats I made for babies:



The pattern is A Scrap Buster hat from A Dog in a Sweater. When I saw this pattern for the first time I immediatelly wanted to make a hat like that but wasn't sure that I would wear it. It felt like something too childish, so perfect for babies, not for grown-ups. So when I decided to crochet for an orphanage it was a perfect chance to try the pattern out.
What should I say about the pattern... It's easy. In fact it's super easy and written so good that it's easy to follow even for beginners. The only thing you really should think about before making them, except the size, of course, is the colour. The original hats looked a bit strange to me. No, they were fine, they just looked scrapy. And I wanted to make my hats funny, colourfull, but stylish in the same time. This are still scraps, but it doesn't feel like something that's made from unwanted leftovers.
I've changed the design a bit too as I didn't want to make the long braid like on the original hat, and I wanted mine hats to have a bit of gnome style. So I made following changes: after row 18 I repeated rows 17 and 18 two more times and then crocheted every two together in the next row. As one of the hats was Little Man's size I asked him to be a model and you can see how it looks on babu head:



Now I'm working on two pairs of baby booties from my scraps too for the same orphanage. Will show them to you when they are ready.

Hope you all have a nice day :)

Infinity scarf and other stuff

Yesterday was a quiet day at home as we decided not to go to Little Man's baby group. It wouldn't be great to share our illness with other little ones. So we stayed at home, played with Little Man's garage and all of his cars. It's so much fun now when he is trying to put one car inside of the other.
In the evening, searching for something in the Internet, I accidentally found a wonderful round scarf tutorial on You Tube. Probably I'm just really lucky as I often find something useful or beautiful by accident while looking for something else or just browsing the Internet for no particular reason. But, back to scarf - it looked so beautiful and easy that I immediately wanted to try it. Then I had half an hour inner fight with my rational part who tried to tell me not to start another new project while I have so many unfinished ones, but my impulsive part was stronger and I started the scarf. And it was finished by midnight! Just in one evening!



I'm sooo happy with the result! It will be a present for my sister who lives in Denmark. It's quite cold there at the moment and I hope this scarf will keep her warm. Plus all the nice thoughts of her I had while making it.



For this scarf I used a ball of James C. Brett Marble DK, shade MT9 and 6mm crochet hook. It's 100% acrylic, but I love this yarn for it's gorgeous colours. One ball was enough to make a 16 row scarf. And it turned out to be really warm.
So, are you excited and want to make a scarf too? OK, guys, here is this wonderful video with all the explanations:
 

The author uses chunkier yarn and 6.5mm crochet hook, but as you can see on my scarf DK works too. Go watch the video and make a scarf for yourselves as it is sooo easy!

After a nice evening yesterday this day just had to be good. And it was especially because we all felt better and the sun was shining, so we even had a short walk out.
Little Man was asking for freedom and straight after he was given what he wanted he fell into snow with his face. And he didn't like it :)



But he enjoyed all the trees and bushes in snow and I couldn't resist to make a picture.



We've seen the ducks and geese to. Last year I was mentioning them a couple of times and we went to see how are they going in this cold weather. Well, they're just fine in the middle of the pond looking really funny when they try to walk on ice.



If you remember, last spring the swan couple had babies there and now I was really surprised to see how big this babies are grown.



And here is me with the Little Man just before we went back home:



We do have quite funny faces. Probably it's because we spent more than a week stuck at home and were a bit confused to be out for the first time :)

Hope you all had a nice day too. See you all soon.

This is going to be a blanket...

It was a nice day today. This morning was the first morning in a really long time when I woke up and felt HAPPY for no reason. And it was such a nice, light feeling! Hope I will have more mornings like that in 2013 :)
Today I will show you a sneak peak of a project I'm working on and probably will be working on for another couple of weeks.


This is going to be a blanket. A special blanket for my dad in different shades of blue on a grey background as blue is his favourite colour. And when it's finished it's going to be the biggest blanket I made so far. At the moment I've got 17 finished granny squares (12 rows each) and need another 18 to start putting them together. Hope he likes it when it's finished :)

And now it's time for a bit of evening knitting - I'm finishing a pair of socks for my grandpa on his birthday.

Hope you all have a nice evening too :)

First little projects 2013

Hi everyone! Hope you all had a lovely Christmas and New Year!
This is my first post in 2013 and the first post after quite a long silence over here. I had the reasons for that silence, but hope not to do so again. In fact I really hope to post more often in 2013.
Anyway, I've started this year with a crochet hook in my hand and allready have two little projects finished. The first project was a set of coasters as a gift to one lovely lady.
 

In fact I saw a wonderful picture on Pinterest and was immediatelly in love with what I saw, so I wanted to make the same. And then I found the original pattern with a picture and was complitelly shocked about the fact that they look soooo different. Which made me thinking of how our choice of material and colour can change the look of our finished works. Honestly, if I saw just the original pattern picture I wouldn't probably even look at it and wouldn't like to make something of the same kind for shure.

So you would understand, here is the thing that inspired me:

Source: lululoves.co.uk via Darja on Pinterest

 

And here is the picture in the original pattern:

See the difference? Well, that is why I wanted to show it. The material and colour can really change the look of your work and make it beautiful, modern, professional or it can make your work boring and unattractive.
By the way, my coasters are made from mercherised cotton (DK) using 3,5 mm crochet hook.

Ok, finished with the first little project and now it's time for the second one - my super funny granny socks.



As my feet were freezing for a while and the floor in our living room, dining room and kitchen is really cold I was dreaming of a pair of socks for myself. But between October and December I knitted so many socks (2 pairs for my husband, 4 pairs for my little man, 3 pairs for sale), that I just felt sick thinking of knitting one more pair. I needed a break. But I needed some socks too. And then just by accident I found a video on YouTube about how to crochet socks from granny squares. I thought it could be a nice option for me and after a little search on-line I found a webpage with all the information I needed: the patterns for squares and a super long video showing how to crochet it all. Sadly, it's all in Russian, but if you can read the crochet charts I'm shure you can make it.
But! It all looks easy, and it is easy in fact, but takes a while to make. My socks took 5 days (the usuall knitted pair would take 2-3 days to finish) and you will need about 150g of yarn, or may be a bit more (mine took 160g).
Still it's a good option for those who can't knit or for crochet beginners. May be I'll even make an English tutorial on how to make this socks... We'll see how it all goes.

Have a nice day with lots of sunshine!

Baby Phoebe blanket and some news about my Little Man

Well, here I am again this Thursday morning to show you a baby blanket I made for a lovely baby Phoebe on her first birthday. Little Man was invited to her party but was ill that day (had a real Niagara waterfall from his nose) so we cold not go. And then it took me more than a month to actually meet Phoebe's mum Jenny and give her the blanket. And as I didn't want to show it before the little owner gets it I'm showing it only now despite it was finished in September.



Sorry for the picture quality, had to take them in the evening right before I gave the blanket away. I really wanted to make a picture of it outside, but the weather just didn't let me do it.
Here is a little close-up to show you the edging. I was using the tutorial from Attic24 for the edging and must say that it's a good way to finish a blanket. Looks nice and feminine, but not too feminine if you know what I mean.



For the squares I used a Squaring Big Circle tutorial from Signed With An Owl and I'm totally in love with this granny square. It's bright, it's fun and it looks really good. So no wonder I really like the result.
When I was crocheting this Little Man was trying to steal the blanket from me and ewerything I said about it beeing pink and girlish, so not for him, just didn't help. So I guess he liked it too.

By the way, if you are interested in Little Man, he is just fine and started walking two days ago. It doesn't mean that now he is walking all the time, as he is choosing between walking and crawling and since crawling is easier and faster he still prefers to crawl mos of the time. But when he is walking through the room hugging a teddy bear it just looks sooooo sweet! The only problem with taking a photo of it is that the moment Little Man sees a camera he goes back to crawling. Is he shy? Not shure about it yet but will try again and see if I can manage to make some pictures.
Here is how he looks now, little smiling boy:

Two blog project. First square.

If you remember, we, me and my friend Kristina, started a two blog project. You can read about it here. The main point was - Kristina makes a photo and I use this photo as an inspiration and make a crochet square. Later this squares will be joined in a blanket.
Today I'm ready to present my first square.
So, Kristina's photo was this:


And here is what I made:



A close-up for you to see how I made it.



Of course I had to make it much more simple than the original picture and as my husband said it doesn't look exactly like the picture, but the main idea was to use the picture as an inspiration, not as a pattern, so I think I made it quite good. And I like the result. Do you?

Ta-dah! Green fields blanket finished!

I finally finished my "Green fields" blanket! I started it just before Tte Little Man was born. Remembering the day in the hospital, when we had to wait for six hours (I'm kidding you not!) to get some doctors attention as I wasn't the urgent one and I was sitting there and crocheting... And then the nurse brought all the equipment to monitor the baby and it did show that I was actually having contractions, just didn't feel them! Oh, this memories are the ones that probably allways will be with me as the sweet ones, also all the rest 9 hours were full of pain, but in the end The Little Man was born and it was one of the happiest moments of my life.
Anyway, back to the blanket. It took me almoust nine months to finish, but now I'm proud to present it to the whole world :)



The edging is my favourite scallop edge:



So now it is given to my mum as a Birthday present, newer mind her Birthday is the 10th of September. I just couldn't wait for so long! And I'm really glad she likes it :)

What was my inspiration in choosing the colours? Well, I could say that it's England, the green fields in all different shades of this wonderfull colour and the grass, that stays green even in winter under the snow. And my little garden too. That's why I took some photos of it to show you.





Isn't that inspiring? Looking at this pictures I even want to start another project in green... And what usually inspires you?

Hope you are all having a great weekend!