Draw Once a Month - February

Drawing always freaks me out a little bit. My main style of drawing has always been copying cartoons. I've discovered I'm quite good at drawing things like flowers and insects, but cartoons have definitely been my favourite. While I was doing this month's drawing I was just wondering how you can look at something, and move your hands in a way that makes it look like the thing you're drawing. It's weird how your brain works!

So for this month's drawing, I found a cool drawing of Mike from Monsters, Inc. as a rather scary looking monster, instead of the cutey he usually is. You can see the original image here.

He's so cool, I'm very happy. I went back to old faithful with Mike and just used normal colouring pencils.

This project is a step towards completing my New Year's List for 2015. You can check out my progress here.

Granny Tissue Box Cover

Guys! I have a confession to make. Something I just realised today. I think I've been triple crocheting wrong. For how long, I could not tell you. I know I was taught how to do it properly in a class, but somewhere along the way I seem to have gone wrong.

I was watching a tutorial video on Twinkie Chan's blog the other day, and realised that her way of doing it (the complete correct way I might add) had a step less than mine. Of course, now I'm thinking about it so much, I'm not sure how much I've been doing it wrong! Do I do it all the time, or have I just done it recently, and now this way is stuck in my head as the right way? Or have I done it the right way all the time and I'm just being daft?

Basically after you've done yarn over and pulled the wool through your work, I think I've been doing yarn over pull through one, and then yarn over pull through two twice. Obviously you don't need to do the pull through one, as it still leaves you with three loops on the hook, so all you're doing is making your stitch longer.

None of my crochet looks wrong (I don't think), but it perhaps just has longer stitches than it should have. I'm glad I'm not halfway through anything just now, and I can just make sure I start doing it right from now on!

Now on to the thing I made (possibly with the wrong stitches, but I'm honestly having a mind melt about how I ever do a treble!).

Sometimes while browsing Pinterest, I see something so cute that it automatically get added to my "If I had the time" board. This is a private board (because I doubt people are bothered and I delete stuff from it once I've made it) where I keep all the things I eventually want to get around to making.

The other day I stumbled across this cute granny tissue box cover (free to download on Ravelry) and decided to whip it up. We have tissues on our coffee table all the time, and usually buy the square box kind anyway, so this was perfect.

I chose these nice green and grey colours I used in my Nordic Shawl, but decided to brighten them up a bit buy using this neon orange/pink wool I have for the opening.

I had adapt the pattern slightly as I was worried it was a little baggy on the box I was making it for. I did a couple of rows with row chains in between the treble groups, and then the last few with only two trebles instead of three. Finally I did a row of single crochets in the bright pink I started the first two rounds with, instead of the bow method mentioned in the pattern, as I was worried about it sitting flat. I like that I feel confident enough with crocheting now to just change things up a bit in order to make the finished object work better for me.

I think it turned out super cute, and just brightens up our coffee table a little, which is never a bad thing.

Sausage Dog

This month I cracked out my sewing machine to make the little sausage dog plushie kit I got free in Mollie Makes. Two birds one stone eh?

After having a rake through the magazine to find the instruction to make him, I couldn't find any, but I figured that was because it's pretty much just a case of stitching him up (either that or I'm stupid ha ha!).

So here he is, he was super fast to stitch together.

After I stuffed him, I stitched his butt up with the smallest stitch possible so it was neat as I wasn't sure my hand stitching would do it justice.

And here he is, hanging out on the shelf with some other random things I've made!

This project is a step towards completing my New Year's List for 2015. You can check out my progress here.

Pretty Glitzy Shoe Clips

I was on a bit of a free kit streak this week and actually did two in the same night. The second of these was the pretty glitzy shoe clips kits which came free in Mollie Makes.

I've wanted to make myself some shoe clips for a little while now, but never had the clip on backing to make them, so I was pretty keen to make this kit.

I sometimes feel I just get a mental block when it comes to some of the Mollie Makes free kit instructions. Like I just cannot get them to work! With this kit I could not get my netting to form a circle like shown in the picture. I tired about 10 times before I settled on the bow shape it was forming natrually.

Bows or circles I think these are super cute. I am in love with those green gems in the middle too. I would love to make myself a pom pom pair of these, so I'll maybe have to track down some more clip on backs.

This project is a step towards completing my New Year's List for 2015. You can check out my progress here.

Scandi Bird Kit

Another free kit and another Christmas kit at that! This time it's the super cute Scandi bird kit by Lucy of Attic 24, which came free with Simply Crochet.

I feel a bit more confident in my crochet skills these days so I was confident I could knock this little guy up in an evening. The wool that came with the kit wasn't the nicest wool (but hey it's free), but the little pattern did knock up super quickly.

I love all the little details on this guy, like the running stitch round his body, or the buttons on his wings. I'm sure he'll be super cute on my Christmas tree next year.

I think I did pretty well with this little guy. His tail and his beak are maybe a little squint, but making up the body pieces was very easy and he looks almost exactly like the photo!

This project is a step towards completing my New Year's List for 2015. You can check out my progress here.

Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day dudes! While I'm not very into the commercial-ness of Valentine's Day, it's always fun to have an excuse to plan something awesome with your other half. Me and Donald enjoy making each other handmade cards, so I made him one inspired by M.I.A.'s song Paper Planes (though I saw the joke on Tumblr, it did not come from my brain.

While I did buy him a little something, I decided to make him something as well. He loves the TV show Arrested Development, so I embroidered some hankies with quotes from the show. Donald is the only person I know who still uses fabric hankies, and I've had a whole bunch left over from when I first started embroidering and made him a Tom Servo one. I thought it might be a good idea to use them up and destash!

I used an air erasable pen, and just free handed (which explains the wonky writing) the text onto the hankies before stitching over them in backstitch. Donald loved them, and I'm happy that I got to make a pressie without buying an extra supplies.

And in case you're interested, here's the card he made me.

Pussycat Socks

One of the things I wanted to learn to make this year was socks. I feel my knitting and crochet has come on quite a lot, but socks are still something that seems quite complicated. I want to knit and crochet a pair of socks this year, and as I thought the crochet ones would be easier, I went with them first.

I picked the pussycat socks pattern from Simply Crochet issue 20. They are made using thin cotton yarn (Rico Essentials Cotton DK) and look very cute because they have ears and a face.

I've been making them for a few weeks now (I definitely had a bit of second sock syndrome), but I finished them last weekend and I'm super happy with them!

It's quite hard to photograph these socks when they're not on and make them look nice. I think the way the cotton yarn works makes them lie quite unevenly. Also when I lie them on their sides, it's looks like the two faces are in different places, even though they look even when they are on.

Mostly these were quite easy to make, and my only issue perhaps was with the sizing. I made the medium pair, but I still felt like I had to stretch them quite a lot to get them on, however again this might be the yarn type. They're a lot softer when they are on than I thought they would be, but I'll still probably just wear them as bed/around the flat socks as opposed to wearing them in shoes.

If you're thinking of making some handmade socks, but the knitted ones give you the fear, I would definitely give some crochet ones a shot. These were really easy, even adding the heel wasn't too stressful.

Now I've completed one set of my socks, that just leaves the knitted ones to go! Let's see how those ones go eh?

This project is a step towards completing my New Year's List for 2015. You can check out my progress here.