Sunday, 27 September 2015

Making this month - September 2015

When I restarted the blog I promised some crafting-type posts about making 'stuff'.  I've not really covered much of this yet, so I though I'd start posting a regular update on what I've been up to.  I did think about doing something once a week, but I know this will last for about two weeks before I fall behind, so I'll start with aiming at once a month!


For this first entry I'll do a bit of a catch-up, posting some things I've made over the past few months, including some works-in-progress.  Hopefully this will give me the motivation to actually finish things!  Most are baby-related in some way, given our recent arrival, and it's mainly crochet at the moment since the polymer clay and jewelry making boxes are hiding away in the cupboard gathering dust.

Here's a little corner of the granny square crochet blanket I made to match the colours in our baby's room (he has stars to match on his wall):

Granny square crochet blanket

This is (I think!) 96 granny squares in size and took a few months of sporadic work to complete.  I actually did some of this while I was in labour, so it's a very definitely baby-related blanket!

Next I made these for our new little boy to play with:

Crochet Katamari

I love the Katamari video games, where you use a sticky ball to roll up everything from paperclips to planets, so I was very excited to find a Katamari crochet pattern (here) and made one - complete with magnets to pick things up - for a friend's birthday.  The two pictured above use the same pattern but I left out the magnets, packed the bumps with polyester filling instead and added chimes and rattles in the middle.

The same friend also had a baby due, so next I got to work on presents for their cute new little girl.  I made *another* baby-safe chime Katamari and then, knowing that my friend loves Star Wars and her husband loves rainbow unicorns, these:

Princess Leia crochet lovey and rainbow unicorn amigurumi
Princess Leia crochet lovey and rainbow unicorn amigurumi
I love that little unicorn so much, I may have to make another!  (Also that's an action shot of the granny square blanket from earlier.)

Somewhere along the way I made this little amigurumi owl (pattern here) to cheer up another friend:

Amigurumi crochet owl

Then I moved on to a mobile for the baby's room.  It's a combination of bits from four different patterns as I wanted something that went right through the sky into space. This is *still* in pieces, but the individual bits are assembled and I have planned the layout:

Space-rainbow-sunshine mobile!

I need to do some shopping for appropriate hardware and get this put up before our baby is old enough to leave home...

Having lost our NFL fantasy football league in the final, I then had the job of stitching up part of the trophy for my new arch-nemesis!

NFL American football crochet
I'm not bitter.  No sir.

Embroidery is clearly not my forte, but the little football was cute!  And it squeaks.

Then last week I headed to The Handmade Fair where I started work on this rocket, my first ever cross-stitch (more for the baby's room!)

Bobo Stitch cross-stitch rocket pattern

Here's an update on that - although progress is minimal:

Cross-stitch rocket work-in-progress

Still a long way to go there, but I've been told not to start another one until I've finished the first so I'd better get stitching if I want to start anything for Christmas!

The last thing is this little guy, made whilst trying out an amigurumi octopus pattern for Pam to see if it would be a good starting point for her crochet adventures:

Amigurumi crochet octopus
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagi fhtagn...

The pattern worked out fine after filling in a couple of gaps in the instructions and adding some kawaii cheeks, but my poor colour choice means that mine looks a bit more like Cthulhu than anything else!  I may have also added a squeaker - because everything is better with squeakers.

I mentioned Christmas back there.  Yes, I know it's still September, but these days it takes me so long to do anything that I have to plan ahead!  Hopefully next month I'll have some Christmas works-in-progress to share, and maybe I'll have finished off everything outstanding in this post.  Yay for Christmas-themed making!

Christmas reindeer crochet
Only 88 days to go!