Spreading the Crochet Love

After the success of our school yarn bomb, and the interest we’d had from the other school mums, Sam, Andrea and I decided that we should arrange a crochet group.  A quick call on Facebook, and via the school network led to 15 of us meeting up last Wednesday in the function room of the local pub.

Many of the ladies were complete beginners to crochet, so the time was spent with the experienced crochet-ers teaching the others to make chains and trebles.

Look at those lovely bright colours of wool!


It was a really lovely evening, of socialising and, for many, learning a new skill. 

I’m already looking forward to next months meeting, and can’t wait to see what everyone has managed to make.

Crochet gifts

After being totally immersed in the crochet yarn bombing project over the last couple of months, for a change I decided to do … more crochet!  This time some gifts.

Firstly these wrist warmers:

I made a pair of these for my lovely friend Elisabeth, sadly Royal Mail have let me down & so far, over a week after I posted them, they’ve not yet turned up at her house!  Luckily I have proof of postage, so I can claim compensation, but I don’t suppose they’ll pay for the time they took me to make. I made them from a pattern over at Attic24, and they were so easy I made another pair for my daughter.  The gloves are just made from htr stitch and sewn together with a little pretty-ing up on the openings.  I made them with some cotton DK I had left over from another project (a little something I made for next months issue of Inside Crochet – are you excited to see what the project is?)

My cousin had a little baby boy a couple of weeks ago & so I decided that he needed a little pressie.  When I saw a pair of crochet high tops I knew I had to make some:

I found a pattern on Ravelry, and changed the colours.  They only took an evening each, and would have been a bit quicker but for the Great British Bake Off being on the tv the night I started, and as you surely know, you have to keep looking up to see what they are making.  These were made in a baby dk yarn, which hopefully will take lots of washing, and be lovely and snuggly on his feet.

I’m now starting to think about making some Christmas gifts, ideas anyone?

Sally

What to take when Yarn Bombing

With our first yarn bomb being dismantled shortly, I thought I’d share some tips and things we learned.

Firstly you will need:

A location – if it has a view like this then all the better, however wherever you choose should be easy and safe to get to.

Permission – we were lucky that the school saw this as a positive opportunity, and were happy to give us free rein.

A plan – Have a rough idea of what things will go where.

We measured the tree secretly before making the sock.  I’d read somewhere before that it is a good idea to make the sock smaller than the tree, that way you can stretch it round and it’ll stay up.  We were lucky enough to have a helping hand from mother nature here as the tree we picked has very rough bark – just perfect for keeping it’s sock up.

Things to take:

Several pairs of scissors – don’t take your best ones, as long as they’re sharp enough to cut the yarn you’re ok.  Several pairs because it’s guaranteed that you’ll put them down somewhere & not be able to find them and spend longer looking for them than putting up the decorations!

Yarn needles – again take loads for the same reason as the scissors, these are even harder to find if you put them down somewhere.

Cable ties – perfect for attaching tree/bench ‘socks’.

Wire cutters – to cut the cable ties – you really don’t want to be using your scissors on these.

Fishing wire – great to ‘invisibly’ tie things

lots of spare yarn – no need to explain why you will need this!

camera – to record your decorations

Optional things:

step ladder – helpful and slightly safer than actually climbing the tree to attach your yarn!

Sign – how else will everyone know what it’s all about?

A disguise or two

 

and finally a preparation tip:

Run ends of your crochet in but leave long tails on everything, we used these tails to tie the stars to the trees.  You can just cut them off if you don’t need them while you are there.

We also discovered that when making stripy covers that are going to be sat on, it’s worth doing a row of Double crochet around the edge of the cover.  This provides a little more strength between the rows and stops the stripes pulling apart so easily.  We used cable ties to attach the cover to the bench. 

And lastly, the most important tip - make sure you’re not caught!

Happy yarn bombing

Sally

Yarn Bombing Fun

 Well today I can finally show you the project that has taken up so much of my summer and has resulted in the severe drought in my blog writing!


A yarn bomb project for our local primary school, St John’s Primary school in Tisbury.  This tree has 100 stars attached, one for each child in the school, and was decorated to celebrate the start of a new school year.


Several of us got involved (you know who you are!) and not only did we decorate this tree, we also decorated other areas of the playground.


The nature garden.


The quiet area with the birds and balloons can only be seen by entering the ivy covered shelter.


The benches


The entrance to reception class (we can’t claim credit for the castle walls, they were there before we started decorating)



And a couple of close-ups of the reception entrance, and finally:


I think the school sign may need a little cleaning after the long summer break!

It was really lovely to see the reactions when everybody arrived at the school this morning, with us mingling among the other parents and denying all knowledge of who’d done it.

So here’s to the Tisbury Knitwits, well done ladies. My only question – what shall we make next?

Sally

Sewing World September Issue

I’ve been a bit quiet for a couple of months, but I have been madly crafting, and over the next few weeks I’ll be sharing some of the things I’ve made with you. 

Firstly however I have to show you the cover of Sewing World’s September issue – which is out now.

Is that one of my lunch bags on the front cover?  Why yes it is!  How exciting.

Cushion Competition

When the lovely people at Terrys Fabrics emailed me to see if I would be interested in their craft bloggers cushion challenge competition, I popped over to their site to see what fabrics they had.  As part of the challenge I got to choose 2 fabrics which were sent to me, along with an 18” cushion filler.
These are the two fabrics I chose:



and for those familiar with my blog, this next choice of fabric won’t really come as any surprise:



The fabrics were 100% cotton and were a heavier weight that quilting cotton, so were perfect for making cushions.

This is my entry for the competition.  A reminder that we all have the power to dream of bigger things:










I’ve used an envelope back so that the cover can come off and be washed, and I have added a couple of the front facing vans on the reverse of the cushion just to carry the theme on.



Lovely fabric and a cushion that is just perfect for my living room.

Sally
xxx

Why: Part 2

I’ve just looked back through my blog and realised that I never got round to posting the second part of my “just because” post – oops!  The first part of this post can be found here if you can be bothered to go back and look, but if you can't, here is a quick recap:

Sometimes I like to make things that serve no purpose other than to amuse me, and to challenge my making skills.  Well here is the idea that I was working on at that time, and yes they are mad & no they don't serve any purpose at all, other than to fill up my shelf of 'things that I have no need for', but they're fun!




My crocheted Pig Snout



And my crocheted mouse nose, beautifully modelled I think you’ll agree by my daughter Daisy.

So, why did I make them? Just because.

Sally
xxx