Crochet Fox Basket

A little while ago I made Donald a little basket to keep all his stuff in on our side unit so it wasn't as cluttered. I've been trying to carry less stuff around in my handbag lately, as I already have a baby to be carrying, so that means a lot more of my stuff has been getting dumped around too.

I decided to make myself a basket too, though maybe a bit of a bigger one as I have more stuff! After a search on Pinterest, I found this awesome fox basket, which you can get the free pattern for on Raverly.

I already had the right colours of wool to make it so knocked it out in a couple of evenings.

Because you had to work the pattern with two strands, I actually ran out of white halfway through as it ate the yarn a lot faster than I thought it would. So I made this with half Caron Simply Soft white and half Robin Bonny Babe Aran white, with Stylecraft Special Aran in spice and Caron Simply Soft in black.

I had never done so many colours changes in crochet before, so even though it's quite obvious where I've done them, I'm still really happy with how they turned out. This was marked as an intermediate pattern and I managed it no problem, so I definitely feel pretty confident about my crochet skills these days.

You can check out my Raverly project page for the fox basket here.

Cross Stitch Christmas Cards

After the success of my "sort of cheating" Christmas gift tags, I decided to tackle another Christmas free kit I've had for ages *cough* four years *cough*. In 2011 and 2012 I bought the Enjoy Christmas kit, which come with a magazine and a massive free kit to make lots of things. I made both sets of tree ornaments from these kits, but had never got around to making the cards. Again the thought of tackling them totally put me off, so they sat unloved.

Well this week I decided to tackle them, and stitched 6 in one evening and 6 in another. Go me! This time I decided to use only patterns in the magazines I got with the kits, but I made them a bit simpler than they should of been. Sometimes I left out the backstitch, sometimes I did only the backstitch, and other times I just picked a small element of a larger pattern and stitched that.

The kit also comes with stickers and ribbons for decorating the cards, so I got a bit glue happy with these beauties. I also used some Christmas scrapbooking paper I had to decorated some of the cards, as a lot of the stitched designs were quite small.

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

Mario Baby Blanket

When we found out we were having a baby, I was pretty excited by the thought of all the crafty things I would be able to make for it. There's so much awesome baby stuff out there, the choice really was endless. Something I knew for sure I wanted to make was a crochet blanket (or two). If we have more kids, I want to make each of them their own blankets, so they will always have them to keep.

I'm in the process of making the second blanket for Mini Morrison right now, but the first one is finally finished.

While looking through Pinterest for geeky baby things, I came across this amazing Mario blanket, and pretty much knew I had to make it.



It turns out the Mario-ness is just an addition to an already existing pattern, The Starry, Starry Night Blanket, which you can get the free pattern for here. The Mario version sort of gives you details on how she made it looks like the Mario star (mainly just how to make the eyes on the big star), but you really just have to look at it and make it up to get all the details right. I'll detail what I did below to get my blanket looking the way it does, but first for the fun part, the photos!

First up I did something I've only ever done once before, I blocked this bad boy! I've only ever done that on my Beta Knit sweater kit (which didn't really work), so for this I bought some blocking mats and everything, even though they were cheap, kids playmat versions. I blocked it because it was sort of bubbling up in some places, and I wanted to make it lay as flat as possible before I stitched on the little stars.

The blocking actually worked amazingly this time, so it lies nice and flat now. So here it is all finished.

Guys, I don't mean to toot my own horn, but how bloody cool is this blanket!? I am so jealous of our future child, it's just fantastic.

Here's how I made mine to make it look the way it does, with some things a bit different from the two blankets I referenced, and some of them are the things I added to make it look like the Mario blanket, which I'm sure you could have worked out, but I thought I would be nice and tell you anyway.

• I replaced the last round of the yellow with black to make the star really stand out. 
• I decided not to do the cloud part of the pattern, so just went with a white border. This was because I ran out of blue a couple of rounds quicker than I should have, so swapped to the white early, and also because I didn't think having the clouds part was as important when it was Mario based and not night based.
• For the little stars, I used a different pattern to the one you are instructed to use, which is the gapless star appliqué pattern. I just could not get that pattern to work and I got really angry with it so I decided to swap. Instead I used the Twinkler Star pattern from Sandra Paul at Cherry Heart. These just looked so much better when I was finished with them. Because these were all the one size, I made the 12 I was supposed to, but decided to only use 9 so it didn't look too cramped. I'm thinking I'll use the three spare little guys as Christmas present toppers r something so they don't go to waste.
• I did a row of slip stitch in black around each star to make it stand out, and then stitched on some eyes in black too.
• I used the same oval technique for making the eyes as the Mario blanket lists, but made the pupils by just doing the first round in white before stitching those on.

And that's it! Finally finished! To make this I used Caron Simply Soft in lemonade, cobalt blue, white, and black. You can check out my project page for this on Raverly, which I just discovered you can link several patterns to one project, which excited me greatly!

It's such a lovely smooshy blanket, I can't wait to use it in the pram for the no-doubt very chilly winter days when our baby arrives in December.

Cross Stitch Christmas Gift Tags

Sometimes you might have a craft kit or project, which in principal you know you want to do, but a huge part of you does just not want to do. For me, it was some cross stitch Christmas gift tags. I managed to get three free sets from Cross Stitcher over the years (because why mix up your Christmas gifts eh?), and after making one kit, I just didn't want to make the other two for a number of reasons.

1. So much back stitch! I left it out in the old tags, but I usually hate that I know things would have looked better if I had done the back stitch.
2. So much time and effort for such a small project. I spent days on these things and just had tiny tags to show at the end.
3. I'm pretty sure everyone probably just binned them when I put them on gifts, which is fair enough, but I spent ages on them guys!

I was thinking about giving the kits away, when I thought I could just rework them. I decided to find as many simple back stitch patterns and use metallic thread to make them so they looked extra festive.

So yesterday morning I sat down to this.

I made all 16 tags in one sitting! I was so much happier about that, as if I'd done it the old way I'm pretty sure I would have made one if I was lucky. I say 16, but I only have 15 to show, as there was one which I wasn't very happy with anyway, and I cut the edge too close and split it open. Oh well, it was the only one I would have been happy losing.

So these are the 15 I ended up with. I'll post the links to any patterns I used beside each photo.

Joy and Xmas - Created using this awesome cross stitch writing tool.

Four snowflakes - all four patterns from Nuts About Needlepoint.

Star and heart gift tag -  I took little elements from this Christmas pattern for these tags.

Heart tag - heart cross stitch pattern. Stocking tag - stocking perler bead. Star tag - I used part of this star motif. Reindeer tag - reindeer cross stitch pattern.

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

Girl Power box by Geeky Little Stitcher

I love Instagram so much! I'm not sure how I end up following some people, but I follow some awesome crafty people. One such person is Jess, or the Geeky Little Stitcher, who I started following recently. Her Etsy shop sells monthly crafting boxes, which are similar in style to a monthly subscription box, except you can buy them all one by one each month, so no signing up for something you're not sure you'll like.

Jess posted details of her newest box, a girl power themed box and I was sold. Crafty goodies teamed with feminist cross stitched statements = one excited Kim! And each box was only £9.99, so I had no reason not to give it a go.

My box popped through the post at the start of thing week and I'm so over the moon with it I thought I would share some photos of it.

They come in little boxes like the Lucky Dip Club ones, so they fit through the letterbox with ease. Even the outside of my box was personalised.

I was very excited when I opened it! It's just so lovely to look at, with lovely little details like some sweets and cute stickers.

The main bulk of the box is the kit part. You can one pattern and everything you need to make it, including fabric, thread, needle, and hoop! This was the pattern Jess posted on Instagram that made me think I defintely needed to buy it. Cute food and sassy sayings, yes please! I cannot wait to make this. I'll probably pop it in my kitchen as I have so much cute food themed stuff in there already.Also look at the colours of the text, so lush!

Also look how cute the little thread seperator is. I love all the little touches in this box, they just make me super excited to get started.

Alongside the main kit part, Jess promised two other patterns, plus some stationery.

How awesome are these patterns? Girl power and ovaries before brovaries! I love both of them, and definitely want to make both of them. They both look super easy to knock up as well (look at that lovely lack of backstitch!), and perfect little hoop sized, so they may be gracing my craft room walls very soon.

I also got a fries before guys sticker and postcard!

All patterns come with the finished picture (as shown), the pattern, and the thread key, so you're all good to go.

I cannot say enough good things about this box! I love that I want to use everything, and you can see how much care went into putting these boxes together. I would definitely buy another one!

If you're interested in Jess's other boxes, keep an eye on her Instagram. Her new one launches soon I believe, so I'd get in there quick!

Thanks so much Jess for such an awesome box, I'm so excited to get started on my fries before guys pattern.

Embroidered Pouches

In August I have a couple of friend's birthdays quite close together, and while I was searching for some inspiration for things to make them, Mollie at Wild Olive posted about these awesome zipped embroidered pouches. I thought they were really cool because they are lined, have a zip, and you can embroider anything you want on them.

The first one I made was for my friend Griz, who really likes cats, so I decided to use this lovely free pattern from The Pink Samurai I had stashed for my embroidered duvet, but have yet to use. Though there's still another three cute cats, so they might make it on to the duvet.

I used the stitch over tracing paper technique, which I don't like as I can't seem to stop it stretching my stitches when I pull it away, no matter how careful I am, but I couldn't find another way to get the pattern on to the felt successfully enough.

Here's so details of the zip and the blue heart-print lining I used.

Then I stuffed it with some sweets!

For the second pouch, which was for my other friend Tiny, I wanted to do something Disney (as she's Disney mad), and after finding out her favourite movie was Pocahontas, I used this lineart image I found on DeviantArt as my embroidery pattern.

I think she turned out really good, and I'm glad I used the lineart version as sometimes faces can go a bit odd when you embroider them.

Again I stuffed it with some goodies before I gave it to her.

I really love these pouches, and I like how easy they were to pop a zip in even though you were stitching by hand.

Scooby Doo Perler Beads

Friday was my mum's birthday, and I wanted to make her a little something to go in with her main present. I looked at a couple of perler bead patterns, but everything was turning out huge when I went to make it, so I eventually decided on this Scooby Doo one.



My mum has always been a Scooby Doo fan since she was wee, and it's something I've always loved too, so I thought it was a pretty good pattern to pick. However, because all the characters were joined together, I was pretty convinced I was going to break this when I tried to iron it. The fear was so strong that I even took a pre-ironing photo, just in case it didn't make it.

It took a few ironing attempts, and I definitely had to iron it a lot more than usual to make sure it all stuck together, but it made it! Phew!

Shaggy's back leg is a bit fat due to all the over-ironing but overall I think it looks pretty cool. It's now sitting proudly on my mum's kitchen window. You're never too old to make handmade gifts for your mum!