A DOUGLAS ADAMS INSPIRED BABY MOBILE

It has taken me way longer than it should have to finish off this mobile. And, if I'd have known it would help our Oscar sleep, I sure would have finished it a lot quicker! But it was just so hard to decide on what mobile to make him. You guys, there is SO many cute mobiles out there, so much amazing inspiration. I wanted something cute, and simple, and was really drawn to clouds for some reason. Or stars? Or geometric shapes? Or mountains, or woodland creatures, or sea creatures, or, or... Sometimes I find it really hard to narrow down my inspiration and decide exactly what project I want to spend my energy on. Actually, that's not sometimes, that's all the time.

Anyway, I went through various prototypes in various materials before eventually making something I was happy with, and as a result I also have a good stash of unused felt and jersey that I'm not sure what to do with. Eventually though, I crocheted some clouds that I liked, and while searching for raindrop patterns found a cute whale one. I thus decided to scrap my cloud-and-raindrop plans, crocheted the whale instead, and decided to add a bowl of petunias and turn it into a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy mobile. I reckon it goes pretty well with this banner that's also inspired by Douglas Adams and hangs on the opposite wall right by his changing table (as a bit of a reminder when we're changing the worst diapers, ha!).

To make the whale I used this pattern, and to make the clouds I used a variation of this pattern, as I wanted my clouds to not be completely uniform. The pattern for the bowl of petunias I just made up, and added a coin to the stuffing to weigh it down and balance with the whale (though you can see it's still not perfectly balanced). I then hung all the elements on an embroidery hoop, and covered the embroidery hoop with the same white yarn I used to crochet the clouds and hang the other elements with. And done!

"Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the Universe than we do now."

- Douglas Adams, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

CROCHETED MINI HEARTS

Happy Valentine's Day!

Graeme and I don't actually celebrate Valentine's Day on the 14th of February. Instead, we celebrate it on the 14th of March. It can be a little bit trickier because you don't have all the lovey-dovey window displays to remind you (I completely forgot the first time!), and most shops don't really stock Valentine's cards anymore.

So why do we celebrate it a mont late? It's got nothing to do with anti-capitalism or anti-communism or anything of that sort. It's cause the 14th of February is also my birthday, and a few years ago I was complaining to Graeme about how i NEVER get to really celebrate the day. Most likely, I had probably been looking at lots of cute Valentine's projects earlier that day, and felt a bit robbed of the occasion.

I have no idea how people born on Christmas cope with these situations.

Step 1: Start off with three chains to create a foundation ring. On this ring, chain three, and then add three double treble stitches. Step 2: Add three treble stitches. Step 3: To create the point of the heart, make one slip stitch, one double treble stitch, and another slip stitch. Step 4: Finish off the other side of the heart like the first. Add three treble crochet stitches, then three double crochet stitches. Chain three stitches, and finish it off where you started with a slip stitch. And that's it done!

Now go make loads!

WHAT I'M WORKING ON - CROCHET BLANKET

Yes, another crocheted blanket. As I left the hexagon one I was working on in Glasgow, I decided to start a new one here. And since it's been so cold recently (it was -12 the other day!), it's been nice to have this to work on inside in front of the TV! It's so easy to get yarn here as well. Whereas in Glasgow there would be a handful of shops selling good quality yarn, I picked up this 100% wool yarn at my local groceries shop. You know, in between the milk and the frozen section.

On a completely different note, yesterday I managed to drop my laptop down an entire set of stairs. It bounced on every single hard wooden step, and then landed on the stone tiled floor at the bottom. Screen popped open and everything! I spent a few moments standing at the top of the stairs with my jaw open, holding my breath. Amazingly, everything seems to be working fine though! Managed to pop in the screen again and it made some annoyed noises at first when I turned it on, but so far I've had no issues with it. Phew!

CROCHET STARS

Yay, another crochet project! Today I have been playing around with crocheting five pointed stars and thought I'd share the pattern I've ended up with. These are super quick to make, and perfect for the season. They'd look great as a Christmas ornament hanging on your tree, or as a garland, or as my friend just pointed out on my instagram, as a mobile! Or could you imagine how cute it'd be with a bunch of these all joined up as a giant starry blanket? Clearly, the possibilities are more or less endless. Get crocheting!

Directions: I used a size 3.5 mm needle for this, but I'm sure pretty much any size would work. Start off with six chains to form a foundation ring. On this ring, chain three, and then add fourteen treble crochet stitches to form the inner circle of the star. Then for each of the five star points, follow the steps below.


Step 1: Chain eight stitches, and double crochet a stitch into the sixth stitch from the circle (i.e. two from the hook). Try to make your eight chains a bit loose, so that you wont end up with squinty star points because one side is tighter and shorter than the other. Step 2: Do a half treble crochet stitch into the fifth stitch on the chain from the circle. Step 3: Do two treble crochet stitches in the fourth and third stitch from the circle. Step 4: Do two double treble crochet stitches in the second and first stitches in the chain from the circle.

And that's your star point done! Attach it three stitches from where you started it, and repeat for the remaining four star points. Secure your thread and you're done!

DIY CROCHET JAR LANTERNS

This is actually a project I finished off right before I left Glasgow, but couldn't find the time to blog about. Seeing as it pretty much starts to get dark around three in the afternoon now, I've been lighting candles to make the place feel a bit cozier. I'm one of these people who really like candles, but I always forget to burn them. So I decided to get into my candles a bit more by making these crochet jar lanterns. I love the cozy vibe they give, and how they look almost like little igloos for your candles. Did you ever make snow lanterns out of snowballs as a kid? These are a bit like the crochet version of that. Not to mention it's a super easy beginner's crochet project and can easily be finished while watching TV. Hello winter coziness!

Instructions for the pattern on the larger jar:

Steps 1: Using a size 5 needle, make a foundation chain of five stitches. Step 2: Work a slip stitch into the first chain to create a loop. Step 3: Work a chain of three stitches to act as your first treble, and then add two more trebles to form a cluster. Step 4: Work a chain of three stitches between each cluster all around your foundation loop. As my jars were quite narrow, I started out with three clusters, but if your jar is of the thicker variety then feel free to add another cluster.

Step 5: Start the next row by making a chain of three stitches to form your first treble. Step 6: Add two more trebles to the cluster, work a chain of three slip stitches, and then another cluster of three trebles. Step 7: Continue around the circle adding two clusters of three trebles into each space, and separating each cluster with three slip stitches. The result should roughly be able to cover the bottom of your jar. Step 8: Crochet the next rounds by adding a cluster of three trebles in each space, and separating with three slip stitches. Repeat this until your cover is long enough to fit your whole jar. My jar was quite tall, and I ended up doing thirteen rows like this. Once you're done, loop off, pull it on the jar and tighten.

Instructions for the pattern on the smaller jar:

Step 1: Start off in the same way as the first jar (steps 1 and 2) to form a foundation loop of five foundation chains. Work a chain of four stitches. Step 2: Work a treble into the foundation loop. Step 3: Continue the round by adding trebles to the foundation loop and separating them with a single slip stitch. In other words: treble, slip stitch, treble, slip stitch, etc. Again as my jar was quite narrow I did a round of six trebles. If your jar is a bit larger you might want to add another two. Step 4: Do the next row by doubling the amount of trebles. Work two trebles separated by a slip stitch into each space, so that you end up with twelve trebles in total, all separated by a slip stitch (or sixteen if you started out with eight trebles for your first row). This should roughly be the size of the bottom of your jar. Continue the rest of the lantern by crocheting a treble in each space and separating each treble by a slip stitch until it's long enough to cover your jar. Once you're done, loop off, pull it on the jar and tighten!

Now light some tea lights and pop 'em in!

WHAT I'M WORKING ON - CROCHET HEXAGONS

The weather has been absolutely horrible recently, and the sun has started to set far too early for my liking. Rain, rain, wind, rain, darkness. The cold is setting in and the weatherman keeps threatening/promising snow, so I guess it's pretty safe to say that winter is here. To prepare myself for what lies ahead, I've started crocheting a blanket. A very summery, completely out of season blanket. Surely the colour scheme won't affect its warming abilities, right?

For the particular design I decided on, I have calculated that I need to make a minimum of 289 hexagons, consisting of 5 yellow, 5 orange, 5 pink, 5 dark pink, 5 blue and 264 white. So far I have made 58 hexagons, so only 231 left! Yay!

Who knows, chances are this won't be finished until next summer anyway!

DIY RAG RUG

Flat 3/6 is a pretty small flat. There's not a lot of storage space, so in order to keep a pretty basic level of order in the flat I do genuinely try to limit my hoarding, difficult as it may be. For example, we have far too many bedsheets. Even after haven given a couple to charity, we still have about six or seven left, which is way too many when we only have one bed. To add to it, we also recently received a king sized duvet, which means these six or seven duvet covers won't even fit our duvet. I've been looking for ways to recycle all these sheets though, as I feel it's a bit of a waste just binning them or giving them away to charity. I mean it's a lot of fabric, just aching to be used for something.

So when I saw the idea of crocheting a rug and using old bedsheets for yarn on Meet me at Mikes's, i got pretty excited. I ran out and bought a giant crochet hook straight away (I had been waiting for an excuse to get one anyway), and went home and started ripping up one of my bedsheets.

This is an extremely simple project, so the list of supplies is pretty short. You'll need fabric. In my case, I used old bedsheets, but you could easily use any fabric, maybe a set of old curtains or a table cloth or something. Or of course just regular old fabric. Other than that, you'll probably need a pair of scissors to cut the strip, and then of course a crochet needle to crochet it all together again. I used a 9 mm crochet needle.

First you'll need to make your fabric rag yarn. There's loads of tutorials online on how to do this, but the gist of it is that you cut a ginormous continuous strip of fabric, which you then roll into a ball of fabric yarn. A lot of tutorials recommend doing all your cutting first, but I prefer cutting and rolling as I go along to limit knots and tangling. I also prefer tearing the fabric rather than cutting. A little less control, but it's a lot faster and the strips turn out pretty straight. Plus, I quite enjoyed tearing up my bedsheets. It made me feel a little bit like a the heroine of a story who's tearing up her bedsheets, tying them together and escaping through the window. Yes, I probably need to get out more.

Once you've got your ball of fabric yarn, the remaining is just crocheting. Of course, you can chose to follow a number of crochet patterns for this. I decided I wanted my rug a bit different, so instead of just doing a big circular rug, I decided to make several circles and join them all together. Each circle started out with 10 hoops, and then I just added on circles using a treble crochet stitch until the circle was as big as I wanted it. Once I had enough circles in different sizes, I joined them all together. One bedsheet resulted in four bigger circles and three smaller circles, i.e. a nice, irregularly shaped rug for the hall.

Any other suggestions of what i can use my extra bedding for?

NEON PINK BLANKET

I've been doing a lot of crocheting recently, both making this neon pink blanket and another project I've been working on which I'll probably post about once it's finished. In fact, I've been crocheting so much recently my hands are sore. Of course, I've been up to other things as well, like cooking this amazing soup, listening lots to this wonderful album, and watching a lot of episodes of Nigella on the Food Network. I've also been drawing lots, but I'll probably post about that later too.

I'm a pretty slow crocheter though - still in at the learning stage really, which to be honest, is the main reason why this ended up being a blanket for Bo. After having made two trips to the shop for more yarn, I decided that this final ball of yarn would dictate how big the blanket would be. And In stead of aiming for another blanket for the couch, I'd aim for a new blanket for Bo's bed.

And then again, I very rarely make things for Bo. And after spending all week in a cone, I thought she might appreciate a new blanket. She is a snuggle bunny after all, and one of her favourite past times in the world is to nap, be comfortable and to snuggle. Some dogs might enjoy being outside rolling in the mud, but Bo prefers being rolled up on the couch watching TV. She definitely shows signs of city dog syndrome, as she refuses to go outside when it rains and has been known to jump at the smallest of things, like that time a bird's feathered that was lying on the ground was caught by the wind and unexpectedly tickled her belly while she was out on a walk and she squealed like she'd been stood on. Yep, Bo definitely enjoys a good snuggle in a cosy blanket.