In December 2012 I discovered crocheting. I started making dolls and I was over the moon happy with my new found hobby. Next I discovered Pinterest and Ravelry and lots of crocheting blogs. A new world opened to me, a world of creative people sharing their projects with the world. I was happy that these people decided to publish their projects online - it was so easy to learn from them the tricks of the trade. And so I decided to do the same: wrote on this blog about my hobby's and new found love for yarn. And of course, share my patterns and ideas for free. After a year I am happy to have invested my time into this blog - I received such wonderful messages from people that felt inspired by my projects and that was a reward in itself. So to all of you who dropped by and left a message, thank you! And come back again, I would love to share with you what I do :)
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Following up on our cat house on the balcony I was busy these days with making cozy stuff for the inside. One easy project was to transform an old plastic litter box into a sleeping basket. I used left over yarn combined into a bulky thread which I crocheted to make a cover. Turned out very nice I think and based on how the cats were busy testing it, I think they liked it a lot :) If you feel inspired by this simple recycle-DIY-project, I took some photos to illustrate the process :) This is the story of our last family DIY project: a cat-house for our male Maine-Coon, who discovered that his hormones are functioning well and so he started to mark his territory in house. Bad idea :P that territory is already owned by me. So, to make everyone happy we decided to make his own outside (in our case that means on the balcony) space with his own house in it. We used cheap materials, I admit, we only need the house to survive a year or two and most of the effort went on making the boards water-proofed. By now the house is functional, although not yet finished. I still need to crochet him some nice warm baskets, caves, other stuff to crawl in :) Some time ago I posted a brief tutorial on how to transfer a drawing on fabric for needlepoint work. I said then that it was part of a secret project I was working on :) Well, the secret can be revealed! Yesterday my mother in law celebrated her birthday and the fact that she participate the 4th time to the 4Daagse marches. For those who do not know what 4Daagse maarches are, check this link . In my opinion is a kind of insanity and the same time a remarkable deed - walking 30 km every day for 4 days like my mother in law did is not something that I could do! To celebrate those 2 events I made her a special present: an IPad sleeve specially designed for her :) I used crochet, tatting (for the first time actually), needlepoint and I sew the pieces by hand. The design theme for one side was a "To do list" for her with two goals: finish the 4daagse 2013 (which I checked 'done' since yesterday was the last day of it) and holiday in Romania (which I left un-checked because that is still to come). And on the other side I draw a whimsical picture of her dressed in the colors of the 4Daagse marches - green and orange :) The crocheted flowers are just random patterns I found on the internet and that I saved on my Pinterest boards. I save there quite a lot of free patterns and diagrams, so if you are looking for inspiration it is a good place to start :) I also tatted a butterfly (not very good I must say, but it was my first try at tatting). The pattern is from a free video tutorial , but the catch is that this video tutorial is in Italian. But, if you understand the language and you want to learn tatting, this is a very good way to do it, especially that the butterfly tutorial is from a series that start with the basics and goes on demonstrating a lot of interesting tatting projects. Enjoy watching the pictures I made with the "making of" and let me know what you think of my little project. I am curious to know what you think of it :) Just a little update with the stuff I made until now :) I like so much how they turned out and my cats agree that all the nests and baskets are good to go to Romania :)
Renji - just checking the perimeter...
Finally it is done! Our new kitchen curtain. The old one was terrible - old and full with dust and hair. From the cats. For some reason cats like to stare out the window, and our cats are no exception. To maintain the problem (lets face it, is not that I can do anything to stop the cats doing what they want) I made this slightly shorter curtain in three colors: brown, green and orange. The pattern used is very easy (I already posted the diagram here), works very fast, watching television is not a problem :) To complete the curtain for this window measuring 1m20 cm wide I needed to make 4 double and 4 single pieces each measuring 1m10 cm in length which I hand sew,alternating the colors. To hang the curtain I used the hook-and-loop fastener from the old curtain. To be able to sew the fabric strip to the curtain I crocheted an edge by using double crochet stitch. Washing was the next step - luckily with the weather it was dry and ready to hang in a couple of hours. The end :) Oh no, there is something else: I also used a simple garland I had around to make the window even more cheerful. I m not very happy with the result - that garland needs some color accents. So... to be continued... PS: Sorry for the quality of the pictures - the sun was shinning that side of the house. Just an update and a diagram that I use for one of my projects. A very simple pattern only using triple crochet stitch and chain. I wrote down the diagram for you, I hope it is clear enough but if not, let me know. And then I made some photos of how the pattern looks in three colors - the electric orange is so bright, I love it!
Some random photos of my new projects :)
The last couple of weeks were very busy for me: work, work and some more work. That's why I did not have too much time for my crocheting #sadpanda :(
However, this does not mean I did not do anything: I am working on a couple of projects and I have some photos to prove it :) Just that they are quite ambitious projects so it will take a while to finish them. And patience is not my strongest point... but I do find a lot motivation when receiving positive feedback on my work. And lately I received quite a lot of nice messages - I am very grateful for those that took the time to write me. And then there is the appreciation of fellow bloggers that find my patterns worthy of mentioning on their blogs. For instance my moss stitch laptop cover that was featured on Best of crochet blog. I could not be more proud and happy that people appreciate and like my work. And with this said, back to crocheting, my projects await me :) The fight to organize my house continues! My last project: hanging baskets to store scarfs and gloves. I don’t have a pattern for the two baskets you see in the photo because there are already so many nice patterns on the internet. I used double yarn to match a size 7 hook and it took me two evenings to finish these two. |