March's decoration: Gingerbread house

This tasty looking gingerbread house makes me smile so much. It will have to stay as mine, all mine as I can't bear to give it away.

Very simple to make, a little fiddly to cut out the circular sweeties for the roof, but everything else was easy to do. Annoyingly though I only had enough of the gingery coloured felt to make one decoration so unless I get some more felt supplies in this will be the only one I make.

This is yet another of the decorations from "Fa la la felt", this book is fast becoming my favourite craft book yet!

Meet Terry the Terrier

Terry is one of the Aranzi Aronzo characters (his pattern is from the Cute book)

"Terry is a wire-haired Fox Terrier. Because he's a terrier, we call him Terry. His real name is Terrible, which sounds real strong and cool, but he's not really strong at all. Terry works fro Aranzi Aronzo. His little beady eyes are so cute."

Terry has wandered off with his new proud owner and left me with a couple of requests for felt fish, bye Terry, take care!

Bootie pattern version 2

Some of you may know of my pattern for Simple booties - it's my most popular pattern on Ravelry with 147 projects made from it to date. The only problem is that it was also one of my first patterns and when I wrote it up there was an error that has confused and baffled crocheters around the world.

Sorry.

To help make it up to you all I've spent quite some time rewriting the pattern, adding lots of photos and hopefully removing all the pattern errors. I've made the pattern available as a free Ravelry download (if you have a ravelry account then the bootie pattern page is http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/simple-baby-booties-4)

I'm also posting the pattern up on this blog (http://www.loopyjess.co.uk/p/simple-bootie-pattern.html) so that even people without a Ravelry account can access it. However, I'll be taking it down from the CrochetMe website where I originally hosted it as it's pattern page there has been spammed to death.

Happy bootie making all!

Crafty weekend

We've had a lovely weekend here at Tea Towers, baby Emily & I spent Saturday morning having a go at making a pretty flower corsage at the wonderful Traders Outlet store in Sale. One of the new friends that we've made since moving up north (JanJan) has turned out to be a very crafty lady indeed - she has her own range of beautiful handcrafted cushions that she sells along with a number of other lovely handcrafted bits.

If you are at all local to Sale then it is well worth checking out the Traders Outlet store. There are so many beautiful hand crafted items to buy that I can guarantee you won't go away empty handed. JanJan & Jane Moran are going to start running a regular Saturday afternoon (1pm - 4.30pm, £20 per class including tea, coffee & a baked treat!) craft session with the first session being on 17th March making needle books & corsages.

Mmmm - magazines

This little lady was made using a kit from last month's "Mollie Makes" magazine. Mollie Makes is causing quite a crafting stir here in the UK, and for good reason - it's a simply beautiful magazine with a wonderful mix of enchanting photographs, lovely projects and interesting articles. Each month it comes with a little something to make or use in a project so if I'm organised I'll be able to share my little projects with you here.

I'm also subscribing to "Handmade Living" magazine this year and so far I'm really enjoying their mix of craft projects, recipes & interesting articles about UK locations. So far I've tried a few of their recipes with mixed success and I've picked out a good few projects that I want to have a try at.

So "Mollie Makes" & "Handmade Living" are what I've got coming through the mail box this year (anyone else out there subscribing to these?) because of this I've had to drop my subscription to "Inside Crochet" which has been pretty painless. "Inside Crochet has been getting increasingly repetitive with the patterns it publishes (every issue now seems to have some sort of beret, some sort of wrap, some sort of scarf and an ugly toy), the articles have been getting less interesting and I may be mistaken but I think the paper & print quality have also gone down hill.