More Christmas crafting

Okay - so my pattern alteration hasn't been posted yet, the good news is that I'm happy with the adjustments but I'm still working up a few example to photograph before posting about it properly... it seems that it is going to have to wait until after Christmas now.

I have been busy with a few other projects though, both of which got started during my recent hospital stay. Both of these are Christmas presents but the recepent's don't read this blog so you can all have a preview.

First off we have a blue totoro from the fantastic studio ghibli film "My neighbour Totoro*. The pattern for this guy is freely avaliable from Heavens_hellcat's LiveJournal here. I love this little guy and I'm sorely tempted to make another one up for me as well as one of the little white totoro's to keep him company.

My other handmade Christmas gift (sadly I didn't manage to do the handmade Christmas that I had hoped for everybody... maybe next year?) is this little pooh bear book mark for a friend who is also a huge pooh bear fan. Before starting it I had managed to forget just how long it takes to do a cross stitch piece and I really couldn't quite believe just how many hours this little bookmark sucked up. Ah well, it still looks lovely.

Christmas crafting

My little boy is still taking up most of my time but things have started to settle into a more manageable routine in the last few weeks giving me time to get back to my usual crafty ways.

My first proper piece of crafting since having the babe has been this little Santa hat that turned out just how I had pictured it and was surprisingly simple to make. I've even gotten round to writing up the pattern for this and you can find it on the CrochetMe website at: http://crochetme.com/patterns/baby-santa-hat. Doesn't he look like the cutest little guy you've ever seen? Hopefully this hat will still fit him for Christmas day, but if not I can always make him a new one!

My second bit of crafting is a couple of little crochet candy canes from a PlanetJune free pattern (http://www.planetjune.com/blog/free-crochet-patterns/candy-cane/). These little candy canes are lovely as tree decorations and so quick and easy to make, perfect for the mum in a hurry!

Now I'm off to try and finish off an adjustment to one of my early patterns which hopefully I'll be able to show you the results of soon.

Crafting delay

Gosh - it's been almost 3 months since my last post, you all must have thought that I had disappeared off the face of Blogger never to return. Don't fret as I'm back now though I may not be able to quite keep to my promised weekly blog posts as I am very proud to announce that I have a baby son!

My little boy has been keeping me very busy these first few months but as I'm starting to get to grips with looking after him I'm also getting a little bit of last minute Christmas crafting in. To keep you all happy I've put in some photos of pre-baby crafting which are the presents I made/partmade for my sister's Birthday.

The softie cake on the right is from the lovely "Softies Kit" by Therese Laskey. I really loved the softies shown in this kit especially the cute tree softie which on the one day I get to do a little crafting for myself I'll be making first. Putting together that sweet little cake softie was much harder than I had expected it to be. For some reason the pattern didn't include the circle for the top and bottom pieces - so you had to spend a good while fiddling with a number of different sized circles to get the right one. Joining up the scalloped icing piece at the back was also a bit of a mission and I didn't manage to get mine to meet neatly at the back. Has anyone else had similar problems with this?


Next up on the left is a photo of where I am currently up to on the second part of my sister's present - can you figure out what it is yet? Gold stars to anyone who guessed "Galaxy Top" by Katy Westcott (a free pattern from the CrochetMe website). This is hopefully going to be a lovely top accented by pretty crochet circles ... but right now it is giving me grey hairs as it is so very labour intensive to make. Just making all the circles and winding in their loose ends took me about 40 hours of work... joining them up with the top is also a bit of a nightmare and there are pins everywhere. If my sister is very lucky I'll have this finished in time for Christmas, if not then who knows when.