April Showers

Today it is wet and miserable here, not so much April showers as April down pours. Bleurgh. It did remind of a lovely little decoration I'd been inspired to make after seeing a similar one.  A simple cloud, which I felt simply needed the addition of raindrops.  So I immediately got to work.  I used:

• some thick beading wire
• my heart punch 
• some white paper
• some insulation tape
• some thin white cotton
• some normal sticky tape

I shaped the beading wire into the cloud shape I was after and then wrapped it with the blue insulation tape to make it stand out a bit. Next I punched out several hearts and used those to create the rain drops (cut in half and slightly shaped).  I tied the cotton onto the cloud shape and added my half heart rain drops to the cotton and that was it.  I was finished.  Tah Dah.  A nice easy peasy craft that still looks super effective now.

I think you could possibly make this work as a coat hanger too, a flat bottom to the cloud, without the raindrops, and then add a hook to the top.  That would make it into something useful, as opposed to just looking pretty.

Another Little Flower Pattern

Imaginative title, I know.

I just wanted to create another little pattern for a flower.  The reason was exciting, I was off on a spa weekend with some friends.  Squeal.  Whenever I'm in a spa (every weekend - in my dreams) I'm always worried I'm going to end up with someone else's robe.  I don't think you'd even know until you tried to open your locker and discovered you couldn't because the key in your pocket isn't yours!

Last year, for a similar trip, I made everyone the flowers I made for my brother's wedding.  The pattern for those is here.  I think for me one of the highlights of our spa trip this year was that several people had kept and remembered to bring, the flower I'd made for them the previous year.

This year's flower is a more pointy affair.  It wasn't based on a particular type of flower, I just liked the idea of playing around with the petal shape.

Pointy Petal Flower Pattern

US terms.  Hook Size can be anything but I made these using DK yarn and 3.5mm Hook

Round 1: Chain (Ch) 4 and slip stitch (sl st) together

Round 2: Ch 2 and 12 double crochet (dc) into the circle, sl st together.

Round 3: Ch 1, 2 single crochet (sc) inn each stitch, and sl st together

Round 4: Ch 4, skip 3 stitches and sl st into next stitch, repeat to end

Round 5: sc, half double crochet (hdc), 2dc, 1 treble crochet (trc), 2dc, hdc, sc and sl st into each loop and finish off after the final petal.

Alternative Round 5 (for when you have very little yarn leftover!): sc, 2hdc, 1trc, 2hdc, sc and sl st into each loop and finish off after final petal.

To create the flowers for the spa I used tiny little scraps of yarn from my stash so I used the alternative round 5.

I am lucky that people know how much I love yarn and so I get some as presents.  This means that I have enough colours so that everyone can have a different coloured flower.  I simply added a safety pin to the back of the flower and then you have your very own robe marker!

Easter Egg Doodle

I wish I could call this an Easter Egg Zentangle, but I think that would overstate this little doodle of mine.

Each year the kids enter an Easter Egg Colouring Competition, and I don't like to feel left out, so I photocopied one for me to have a go with too.  Obviously I didn't enter mine into the kids competition, tempting though it was it would have been a little embarassing to lose against the kids!

I hope everyone has a lovely Easter holiday, we're aiming to find as many Easter Egg hunts as possible to complete, but so far we've only managed one.

Crochet Cross Bookmark

A while ago my daughter was invited to a Confirmation Party for a friend.  I was not sure what the drill was for a confirmation party, as we're not religious.  However I did decide that it would be nice to make a little something for the little girl who was getting Confirmed.  I decided to do something more in keeping with the occasion than either a hat or a bag like I would normally do.

I searched the web and found this lovely pattern for a crocheted Cross Bookmark.  I thought it was perfect.

I found the pattern easy going once I'd understood the meaning of the long single crochet stitch (basically reaching further in than the standard stitch, but still using a single crochet stitch to do it).  It was probably the first time I'd tried working in anything other than DK yarn, so I was really pleased with how it turned out.  I still am if I'm honest!

I think this could make a lovely addition to my Easter Tree/Easter Decorations.  I'm just hoping that I'll have some need to make another one in the future as it was a fun pattern to complete.