Giveaway: Felt goodies

 Drum roll please!

I'm very happy to announce that this blog has just recently gained it's 50th follower and to help celebrate I thought I would bake some cakes.

However, as I am still trying to tame the old gas oven we have inherited in our new home I thought it would be better for us all if I used felt and a needle instead of real baking ingredients!

For this give away all you have to do is leave a comment (no need to become a follower of this blog - but if you are new here then it would be lovely if you did!) on this post with some way for me to contact you. I'll use the random number generator to pick a winner on the 3rd September - so that will make the closing date for entries Friday 2nd September.

The prize is simply one of those yummy looking cupcakes or one of these donut keyrings - you can choose which you would prefer and what colour you would like me to send.

This giveaway is open to any of my readers worldwide - so feel free to enter where ever you are :-)

If you don't manage to be the lucky winner then not to worry - these tasty looking treats have all been made with the lovely kits avaliable from the very talented paper-and-string. Some of you may remember my winning these kits back in November last year.

Between moving home twice over the last month I've finally managed to make up all the items from these kits and I love how they have turned out. The kits are very clear and contain everything you need to make up the items apart from a needle and thread. The felt comes in beautiful vibrant colours and is good quality, so it's perfect for hand sewing. Seeing as my favourite item from the three kits I won was for this lovely owl ornament I am going to be keeping him out of my giveaway - but can you blame me as he is so cute?

Good luck to all who enter and if I ever manage to get to 100 followers I'll do another giveaway then!

Mini turtle - mini post

Just finished this little guy up this morning using some of the yarn scraps I have kicking about. The pattern is from Brigitte Read's "Super-super cute crochet". He is really very tiny - only about 6cm across including his little legs.

Not having my main amigurumi yarn stash about has been quite a problem... but I have good news - after a lot of searching I finally found the box it was hiding in so I can do lots more Amigurumi again!

Because I'm now a very happy crafter and also because I have just gotten my 50th follower it's time to do another giveaway. I'll try to get that sorted in the next couple of days and let you all know soon what will be on offer for the winner :-)

Tea Towers mark III

After 3 months of living up in Yorkshire with family we finally have a lovely new home in Manchester. Though it has been a very stressful journey to get us into our new home we are so happy to finally be here and able to start settling into what we hope will be our home for a good many years to come.

You may remember me telling you about this little plaque I made on my Birthday - I've been meaning to make one for years so when it came back from the kiln last month I was so happy to see how it turned out as well as relieved that it survived. It's now hanging up proudly in our front porch to help welcome all our visitors to our new home.

While our house sale was completing I also found some time to do a bit of paper stamping and made up a stack of these little notecards to send out as new address notices.

The stamp set I used is one that my mum-in-law got free from her card making magazine (Quick cards, issue 90, August 2011) and I completely adore. Because I made such a fuss over her set she went out and bought me my own copy so hopefully I'll be making some cards using these lovely stamps soon.

It's been just over a week since we moved in but we already have most of our belongings out of boxes and are working steadily through an impressively long list of 'to do' jobs as well as trying to buy new furniture to fit our new home. Once piece of furniture that we have just bought is already made up and stacked full of my precious tea things.

Though moving in has gone brilliantly well there has been one disaster - my most used wool stash bag that contained most of the yarn I use for making up Amigurumi has gone missing. We've done a thorough search and it is starting to look like it is gone for good. I really hope it shows up as there are tons of things I want to start making and can't - however if it is definitely gone then I'll need to try to replace some of it, do any of you have recommendations for cheap online (UK based) yarn suppliers?

Baby crochet

While browsing through the freely available patterns listed on Ravelry I came across the pattern for this little beauty (Pink baby sweater by Nélia Botelho).

Seeing as I had a ball of 4 ply wool sitting in my mini craft stash I thought I would give the pattern a go, and I'm so very glad I did. The cardigan is made up in just one piece so no fiddly joining and only 2 ends to work in. The pattern works up in rows and once you get the hang of the increases for the chevrons you can quite happily crochet away anywhere.

I managed to complete the whole cardigan in just 3 days and I'm very pleased with the result. It's a lovely light and lacy little cardigan and will look fantastic layered over whatever baby clothes I choose to put our new little girl in once she arrives.

Does anyone have any other suggestions for crochet girl baby clothes - I have a little Amazon credit left over from my Birthday so would love to invest in a new book if anyone can recommend to me a good one?