Happy Monday Makings #17

Alrighty! It's Monday and I'm dead tired! That's not such a good thing seeing as it's only the beginning of the week. We're enjoying our Winter rain although it's bluddy freezing, I love the rain! The smell, the sound, the feeling of nostalgia… The need to get cosy and stuff myself with chocolates, delicious smelling, tasting hot beverages. When Dave comes home after work and says: "I'm making pancakes!" (not to confuse you but in South Africa we refer to crepes as pancakes). Anyway, it's the best!

Today I wanted to share with you my very first T-shirt Owl Buddy prototype. I designed this lil' guy for friends of ours' baby boy. I wanted to make him something special for his room. As the theme of his room is that of the most adorable forest friends and the main friend being an aspiring wise owl… I decided to make him an owl plush toy. When Mr. Owl was done, I thought: "wow! that went seemingly painless…" so I made another one. I now have two more waiting to be finished off and I received such awesome feedback from the proud mom, that I have decided to put pen to paper and will soon have diy kits available for sale on my online shop "in the making". So please tell me what you think, would you buy a kit like this? Would you enjoy making your own Mr. Owl? I might design Lady Owl as well, I think the girls would like that.

-Mr. Owl is made with 100% reclaimed materials! Recycled T-shirts and thrifted buttons. His inner is made up of fabric and yarn scraps that I have collected over the past year ~whenever I finish a project, I would gather all the off cuts of fabric, thread, yarn and even the fluff that comes from shaving down thrifted sweaters. I chuck it all into my "scraps baggy" and when there is enough, I use it to stuff plush toys with-  

-I hope little Christiaan enjoys his new friend, I made him with a lot of love-

I'm so looking forward to your comments, thoughts and advise on this little "big" project of mine.

Hope you had an awesome Monday!

xxx

  

Happy Monday Makings #15

Hiya friends, it's Monday again! Time for making pretty things…Today's HMM was inspired by the #randomgiftsoflove I gave my Mom. Her's came about when I was visiting to do some HMM sewing, I was looking for thread in her sewing tin and came across a handful of crocheted flowers. I snuck them home, made a lariat and gave it to her the next week. She wore it to a coffee date with a friend and she loved it so much that she asked what I would charge for one. Well now I have the challenge of designing a pattern, working out my costs and making samples. This is my first sample.

-It went quicker than it should've because I got lazy with writing down what I was doing. I get too excited about my projects and then all I care about is getting it done, fast! So this exercise failed, terribly! Hopefully I'll have more patients with the next one. At least it's good practice, working out the kinks, adding things, taking some away-    

-Piece by Piece: each flower motive done separately and the ends woven in.

-Colour Inspiration: I had just taken this top off the drying rack when I noticed that I have wool in the same colours, I then matched them up in the combination used on the top.

~this baby's mine~

Hope you had an amazing Monday!

xxx

Project a Day: #24 Itty Bitty Bunny

Earlier this year, Natasha (Bamboo Blossom) gave me this really cute Crochet book for making children's clothes, toys and accessories. This is the very first pattern I used from this book. 

 -BUNNY!-

 -I put the translation of the name of the book in the description on the photo above-

-the patterns in this book are really cute and will come in handy with all our friends having babies this year and the next. I sure have a lot of gifting to do-

-some detail shots, so you can see how cute this little bugger really is. This was a very quick and easy pattern to follow. I added the little furry tail, as the pattern didn't have one. And what's a bunny without a bushy tail-

Happy Tuesday

Project a Day: #21 Crochet Coral Necklace

Hey there, just a quick project. I came across this half finished crochet necklace when I unpacked my beads box recently. Thought it was high time I finished it, so I did. I used a simple crochet chain stitch for the beaded parts(having strung the beads onto my crochet cotton before hand). The pretty "border" part is from a crochet book Dave's mom and dad gave me quite a number of years ago called, Hekel - Die volledige handleiding vir Suid Afrika. This translates to Crochet - The complete guide for South Africa by Heidi Fuchs and Maria Natter. This book was originally publish in German. 

-it does kinda remind me of The Little Mermaid…what do you think?-

I love crochet, it's such a versatile technique! What's your favourite technique?

Project a Day: #20 Crochet Project Bag

So Project #20 is not quite finished yet, it's taking quite a bit longer than I thought. Also, taking into account that I left it lying dormant for more than a month. I started on it again this past weekend and will post the final result soon, I hope. 

 -apparently this motive is also called a Sunburst Granny Square, pattern found here. I really like how this motive looks and feels-

-The bag I'm using is from when I bought the fabric for my wedding dress. It's a sturdy Hessian bag with a plastic layer on the inside. Both the purple yarns are from a previously frogged project. I can't wait to finish this project as I would love to flaunt it around town-

-There are always ways to beautify old and ugly things, you just need to think on your feet and be on the lookout for ideas and inspiration. Which is all around us, we just need to observe and take note of those ideas that often fly right past us-

-Happy Creating-

Project a Day: #19 Sunburst Granny Cardi

It's mid-week AGAIN! I'm counting not only days but hours till we leave for Pretoria! This Project took me about a year and a bit to finish. Half of that time it was sitting in a bag waiting to get done. It seems to have become a thing for me, I go into a project with all my might and energy and then it's like I'm no longer intrigued by it and find something better more interesting to do. Then, for some reason the project sticks it's head out and says: "I'm ready to be finished now" and then I finish it. During the time I started on this project, I couldn't find any reference or patterns for what I wanted to do. So, I made up my own pattern and it's a real show-stopper!

 -I'm so happy with how it turned out! It's warn and lovely and an instant "pick-me-up". The Colours are so bright eyed and bushy tailed... -

-in the above picture, you can see the awesome maroon yarn that I found at a local charity shop! It' Acrylic but oh so soft... The rest of the yarn are from my very first crochet blanket which I decided to frog. I know, crazy right? I couldn't really use the blanket because (being my very first) it was crocheted so tightly that it was a stiff block of a blanket. My tension is so much better now, having about 10 years of crocheting experience. Wow, that's a lot, never thought about it like that... Anyway, I know I should probably block this project but I kinda like the texture it's creating. Also, I'm still deciding whether or not to add edging and buttons. What do you think?

xxx

Project a Day: #18 Flowers in the Honeycomb

Ah, Tuesday is gone! Had a great Social Media Training session at the Houw Hoek Inn today, hosted by BizXnet. Wow, my head is spinning! Social networking overload! I had no idea what one could actually achieve if you knew how to use all the social networking platforms effectively! It's a two day workshop, so I'll be learning some more tomorrow.

Now, I don't know if you'll remember, I started work on this hexagon blanket about two years ago. It sat in the closet unfinished for about a year and now it is finally finished! This is by far the biggest crochet project that I have ever done.

 -the main reason for this project's "storage" was that I didn't know how to put the motives together. I didn't want to sew then together, so I started experimenting with crocheting the motives together. Epic Fail! So into storage it went. I then thrifted a granny square blanket and noticed that the squares had been crocheted together. It took a while, but I figured it out by copying the pattern off the thrifted blanket. It was then that I took the box filled with hexagon out of storage and began to crochet them together-   

-I finished working in the ends in Feb of this year, forgot to take photo's of the finished project and forgot to blog about it. It has been sitting pretty on our couch for the past 6 months now. So at last, here it is! Blogged and shared with all of you. I must say I was quite chuffed with myself when I worked in that last thread! A gruelling process, but man, was it worth it-

Do you have a project stored away, just waiting to be finished? Please share by leaving a comment/link below. I'd love to know that I'm not alone in this "storing-my-project-for-a-year" thing.

xxx 

Project a Day: #14 Mori Girl Necklet

It seems our winter has only just begun. It is freezing today! Today's project was inspired by all the lovely Japanese flower scarves I've been seeing on Pinterest. Go to my love crochet board to see some of the pretty ones I've pinned. For this "necklet" I used this crochet flower pattern and then I kinda just made it up as I went along. So I guess you can say I just created a pattern.

 -for this pattern, I used half a skein of Spice, Double Knitting. It's lovely for an Acrylic yarn, very soft on the hands while working it. Almost no yarn was wasted, the only off-cuts were from the finishing off(a few tiny pieces)-

 -At last this outfit is complete! I made this body con skirt last year but couldn't get an outfit together that "spoke to me". This year I found the forrest green tights at Fashion Express, the waterfall card at Meltz and now my Mori Girl Necklet has brought this outfit together perfectly-

xxx 

Project a Day: #12 Fillet Crochet Cowl

Wow, what a day! My Aunt Charmaine and her son Reynier are visiting with my parents from Pretoria for a few days, so I've been out and about with them. It's so wonderful to see them! They leave again on Sunday so our time together is very short.

This morning I had a few thing to do in town so of course I did my charity rounds. I found some lovely things which I will be sharing with you later. I also saw the first whale of the season! And tomorrow I'm going out on the Whale Charter with my family! Poor Dave has to be at work...I love having flexi hours! Only problem is, the last time I was on a deep sea boat I got sea-sick. I sure hope I'll be okay tomorrow, I would like to be able to enjoy it and take loads of photo's.

Okay... back to the project. Last year my aunt Leiro, gave me this awesome vintage crochet book. I've tried out a few of the patterns already. Then I found a lost skein of blue acrylic wool in a bag of thrifted goodies and thought to make a one-skein-project. Flipping through my vintage chrochet book, I came across a fillet crochet pattern chart. I started with it immediately and worked until the wool was finished. I added buttons and my cowl neck scarf was done. Easy as pie!

 -It looks quite interesting when it's on and it's such a soft acrylic too. Unfortunately, most thrifted wool don't have they're labels on anymore, so I don't know what it is if I wanted to get more-

 

 -What a lovely book this is. Above, you can see the chart I used was actually meant to be a bedspread. I only used a small section of the chart to make my scarf more appealing to the eye-

 

  -I love how it's casual and stylish at the same time. I added vintage wooden buttons which gives it a real nice touch. I hope that my shenanigans are at least a tiny bit inspiring to you and that you can see that things don't always have to be what someone said they should be-

Have a lovely Friday and then it's weekend!

xxx

Project a Day: Project #7 finished at last!

Hi friends, it's such a lovely Wednesday here in Hermanus. It's a bit nippy, but beautiful non the less! This month's Project a Day challenge didn't quite go the way I planned. Did you ever get so busy that you hit a complete blank? I have loads and loads of half finished projects just waiting be picked up but before I know it, I'm starting at least three NEW projects! 

Project #7  was started way back on the 7th of this month but it took much longer than I had initially thought. It must have something to do with the fact that each bobble stitch is a x4 repetition of "yarn over, pull-up yarn" this took quite some doing. I decided to keep this project close by. If ever there was a second to spare, I would crochet a few bobble stitches. So at long last it is finished and oh so cosy.  

 -what a wonderful feeling to have stuck it out and at last finished this snood-scarf-

-It so warm and funky and you can really play around with it. I must say, I'm quite in love with the snug-ness, hehe-

 

-In the top image, you can see that I made it quite broad and fairly long and then joined the ends to make it an infinity scarf. In the bottom image, I have wrapped it around my neck twice. This makes for a thick "wind-proof" snood. LOVE.love.LOVE-

xxx

A lucky find and a challenge

Oh my goodness! I do so apologize for my complete absence. My grandparents were visiting from Pretoria and I ended up playing chaperone. So for the full week I didn't even get to switch on my Mac. My parents just took my grandparents to the train station in Cape Town, where they'll be taking the train back to Pretoria. It was lovely having them here, we had them for the long weekend. I took my gran for a walk in our lovely area, unfortunately my grandad got the flue during his stay so he couldn't walk with us. Also it was my mom's 50th last week, so we had quite a crazy past ten days. 

Now I'm back! I would like to share this find with you. I was in town on business and a few minutes to burn. Off course I quickly ran into one of my favourite charity shops to have a look at what's new and there I found this bag with a massive crochet granny square blanket in it. As I was pressed for time, I didn't open it up or inspect it in any way. When I got home and opened it up to put it in the wash, this is what I found.

 

 -The blanket was riddled with holes. It was a bit of a bummer but it had only cost me R15(+/- $1,50) so I saw this as a challenge-

-I started Frogging (unraveling) the blanket with the intent of fixing it up. As I continued, I found that there were way more smaller holes and that simply fixing it wasn't an option. I then decided to Frog everything with holes, use the wool for something else and the blocks without holes I'll used for quick projects. I've still got quite a bit of frogging to do-

Have a lovely Wednesday

xxx

Project a Day: #7 Crochet Infinity Snood

It's weekend again! It's really getting cold here where we live and I thought to add a scarf to my winter collection. I bought an infinity scarf last year which is positively awesome! I wear it every other day. It's the same colour the sky was today, like a stormy, cloudy blue. It unfortunately doesn't go with everything so I decided to make a similar one in an emerald green(a colour I'm favouring this season). The day I decided to start the scarf I found a pattern I thought would be perfect but it wasn't. So I used the bobble stitch from that pattern and started my own. Click here for that pattern.

 -I've been working on this scarf half the day now, I didn't think it would take so long to finish. Maybe it's because I made it so broad. I had to though, for it to have that snug snood effect. I'll be working on it little by little everyday and will post the finished product soon, hopefully-

...Stay tuned :))

xxx

Project a Day: #5 My Little Capelet

Another week at it's halfway mark! I sometimes feel like someone has accidentally sat on life's remote and now we're stuck on Fast-Forward mode. I hope you're all enjoying your week so far, mine hasn't been great but it's getting better. Oh yes, I almost forgot! Project #5! This one was inspired when I was digging my old scarves out of my storage crates. I found my very first Mohair and Merino wool scarf. My Gran had given me a baggy full of bits and pieces of Mohair and Merino wool. Off-cuts of her last knitting project. It was a merry mess of a tangle and it took ages to get it sorted. I knotted every last piece together to make up a few balls of continuous yarn. This was my very first experience working with natural fibers of hand spun wool. As I wasn't very experienced in crochet back when I was still studying, my little scarf turned out quite stiff. I only new one stitch, the double crochet stitch and my tension was terribly tight. So, I decided to frog it! And make something new, this Capelet.

 -This to me about a day to make, I had to change the pattern a bit because it was very small around the neck. It's still a little tight, but it's okay. The Mohair and Merino wool make this a warm little capelet. It will be perfect for Spring-

 

 -Above you can see my old scarf and the frogging process-

 -This is a very cute pattern, if you would like to try it for yourself, click here to find the pattern on Ravelry-

xxx

Project a Day: #2 Crochet Aviator's Hat

What a mission to find cute patterns for baby boys! I had to improvise with this one. It was quite difficult to find the right sizes for babies and as I hadn't met my cousin Christa's little boy, Lucian yet, this was no easy task. I came across this(puppy dog hat pattern) pattern but I wanted to make an Aviator's hat because his baby shower theme was Little Traveler and they themselves do a lot of traveling. So I used the base of this pattern and instead of adding the ears and face, I added a little flap and sewed it up with a couple of buttons.

 -these earthy tones suited my idea of a Little Traveler. Once again, I used a mix of acrylic yarns both from my stash and thrifted-

 

-For the added flap I literally just added sc rows until I was happy with the length. I then folded it up and sewed it in place with these cute boyish buttons. When I was just about finished, I thought "oh, crap! this looks way too small!" I told my Cousin she can always give it to Alandra to put on one of her dolls and then I'll make Lucian a bigger one. My parents thought this was hilarious, I didn't think it funny at all! It took quite some doing to make this little hat-

xxx

Project a Day: #1 Crochet Poncho

And here we go again! My new 30 Day Challenge is one filled with projects. Gifts made for friends and family, half finished projects to be completed, new stock to be made and so forth. In this challenge I will share patterns found on the web, patterns I wrote, quick DIY's and simply the things made a day.

This first project is a crochet poncho for my Cousin, Christa's little girl, Alandra. She turned three last week Thursday. When I found this pattern on Pinterest, I new I was going to be needing it soon. If you want to make this easy little poncho, just click on the links provided for the step-by-step tutorial. This project took me about six hours to complete which makes it perfect for a weekend project or even the long road. I found this pattern to be quite clear and easy to follow, no funny business.

 -These colours reminded me of Autumn back in Pretoria, such rich and warm colours. Perfect for winter in South Africa. I used a mix of acrylic yarns from my stash and the maroon yarn is thrifted. As these are of different thickness, I used the DK yarn according to the pattern, the thinner yarns I added a dc stitch(making it 3 dc stitches per chain space) and the maroon I held double throughout- 

 -Project #1 is done and dusted! I will try to get my Cousin to take a picture of Alandra wearing her lovely new poncho, so I can post it here for you guys to see how cute is looks on-

xxx

30 Days of Dresses: Dress #22

What a huge disappointment! I took some before photo's of this crochet dress I bought at the Hospice shop. It was cream with orange detail, it looks like the orange yarn wasn't colour fast when the original owner washed it. The cream part was full of orange stains. Naturally, I though, "awesome, I'll just dye it" and so I did. Now when I started editing my photo's for this post, every image I took on the day is there except the images of this dress! All this effort and now I can't even show you what the dress looked like before I dyed it! Sometimes technology really sucks!

 -above are the images of the dye I used, all the instructions are on the back of the container. Dying fabric is much easier than most people think.

1. soak the fabric that you want to dye in clean water, make sure that it is wet all over(this will insure that the dye will distribute more evenly). Squeeze out all the excess water and place in the prepared dye-bath.
2. follow instruction as to how long your fabric should be emerged in the dye-bath, stirring regularly.
3. drain dye-water, rinse thoroughly and hang out to dry. (I put my fabric in the washing machine with a cup of salt water and put it on the rinse&spin cycle)

 

 -it turned out so pretty, considering I'm now the only person who knows what it looked like before I dyed it-

 -The polka dotted pussy bow blouse is of pure silk and vintage in design, I found it at a charity shop-
-So this is the AFTER photo of the dyed crochet dress revamp-

 

xxx

 

30 Days of Dresses: Dress #16

okay... so I cheated a little. It was just too cold this morning for just a dress, so I put on my jeans and added my vintage coat. It can go through as a dress if I button it up, don't you think? Well at least I was warm.

 -man, I love this coat! It was one of my first thrifty finds back when I was still in high school.

It's a perfect fit, like it was tailor made for me. The brand is Riastar Tailored and the style seems 

to fit the 1950's era-

-As the weather grows colder, I'll probably be wearing this coat a lot more. Oh, it looks even better when I wear it with boots-

xxx

Lucky Friday Finds #7

A very quick browse through our local Animal Welfare and I came home with this really lovely crochet blanket. I was just about to throw it in the was when I realized it was damaged. So I decided to trow it over the bed to inspect the extent of the damage... it was quite bad. A was would have been disastrous!

 -this poor blanky has been through quite an ordeal with what looks like a burn-hole and on other places someone tried to fix it, but not very successfully-

 

-so what I started doing, is to unravel the poor dear, take out the un-fixable blocks and put it back together again. Just like Humpty Dumpty, only I'm sure this one will have a happy ending-

xxx

Happy Monday Makings #2

Happy Monday friends! What a crazy-crazy year this has been...and even crazier past week! Through all the madness and having my posts heaping up like, I don't know what... I just had to share this quick post with you guys. I made this with the scraps I had left over from making my first ever crochet jacket (I will post this as soon as I've worked in all the ends:)) I hate wasting anything! I make full use of everything I work with... and I almost never throw anything away. I've been told that I'm a hoarder, but then you can't be an artist and not collect things... Just imagine this pretty necklace would've been in the bin had I not been a collector of "trash".   

-this was so easy to make-
-it took a bit long, though, the french knitting part-

-the pictures are pretty self explanatory, don't you think?-

-love my French knitting doll, an old school friend gave her to me-

-Thank you Katinka, I'm taking good care of her-

  -hope you like it and that you had a nice Monday-

xxx

Another prezzy for Leia...

Dear little Leia,

This lovely cushion was handmade just for you for your 2nd birthday. I used all the colours of the owl and bunting flags I made you, they should all look quite pretty together now. These handmade gifts are all little additions to your room, so that even though we can't see you that often you can know that we love you and think of you always.

Your aunt Chane' and uncle David<3 p="p">

-crochet pattern from Ravelry, by Penny at Create, found via Pinterest-

xoxo