a christmas challenge...

click here to read all about the Christmas Challenge at my new site

an extra little something

click here to head over to my new site

a new website for me!

Come and see my new home:

www.laughingpurplegoldfish.com

things that make you go... ewwwww!

Today was hot… and I don’t cope well with the heat.

By the time that the kids came home from school, I was ready to find a nice quiet corner and have a quick snooze before heading out to the school picnic.

Just as I was getting myself settled, I hear Master Ten calling out from his bedroom:

“MUUUUUUMMMMM… I think that LIZARDY has escaped!”

Usually Lizardy doesn’t stay in the bedroom. But today there was a crochet meet at my place, and I thought that he might be safer away from toddler fingers. So Master Ten had hidden the pet box away in his room.

Which seemed like a good idea at the time…

And I was really puzzled about how the lizard could have possibly escaped…

So the questions began:

mum – “Where did you leave his box?”

boy – “On my bed”

mum – “How do you think he got the lid off?”

boy – “I didn’t put it on”

mum – “Why not?”

boy – “I didn’t know that I had to”

Well, after much searching, we finally located the the little creature INSIDE my son’s pillowcase! Glad he was discovered BEFORE bedtime…

those earrings...

So, here are those DIVINE earrings that I was telling you about earlier. The ones I like to wear them ALL the time.

They are my first effort at making earrings, which was surprisingly easy once you see how it is done. I have used new wire and hooks, but the beads are all recycled from old pieces of jewellery.

personalized christmas stockings

I volunteered to be a Swap Angel for the Christmas Swap over at Crochet Lovers Victoria. A Swap Angel takes over when one of the participants isn't able to follow through on the committment of sending their gift. Otherwise, someone who had sent an item, would miss out on receiving one. And that's not nice!

Anyway, it meant making a few decorations on fairly short notice. So I decided to stick with a 'tried and trusted' pattern... something that I had made successfully before, and knew wouldn't take too long. It kind of defeats the purpose if I don't get it made until after Christmas!!!

These Christmas Stockings are a Jean Greenhowe pattern. They're from her Christmas pattern booklet. Jean also has this free online pattern for a slightly smaller version (you'll just need to scroll down the page a bit to get to it) I've raved enough about Jean in the past... so I'll keep this one short, and just go on the record as saying... SHE IS A LEGEND.

Instead of just making a generic stocking, I wanted to make them personal. Cristina is the founder of the Crochet Lovers Victoria group, so I wanted it to be special. If it were not for her efforts in setting up the group, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to meet so many wonderful crochet friends in real life.

So, I know that Cristina loves hand-dyed yarns. In fact, she has just set up her own online shop, selling yarn indulgence packs... click here to take a little peek. Anyway, I decided to hand-dye some reclaimed yarn to make her stockings.



The pink coloured one I dyed using some concentrated raspberry cordial, and the green one was made using leftovers from a food dye experiment I did a while back. I used most of it to make this dragon for my nephew, but there was a small ball left in my stash.

So I had the hand-dyed thing going on, but I wanted to add something else. Something special that would jump out and say I MADE THIS JUST FOR YOU.

At one of our recent crochet meets, Cristina brought along some beads and wire so that she could show us some of the basics of jewellery making. I made the most fabulous pair of earrings - I wear them ALL the time - they are divine with a capital D - recycled beads of course - but that's a post for another day!

But it gave me the idea of incorporating wire and beads into the stockings...



I wired the beads, shaping them into letters... with the initial of each family member, and then sewed them onto the front of the stocking with a small piece of fabric in between. Four stockings in total, green for the boys and pink for the girls. I had been aiming for red when I dyed them, but the yarn turned out suck a pretty shade of pink instead - that I had to use it anway.

Now I know that Cristina isn't planning on putting up her Christmas Tree this year, but I'm hoping that she can find somewhere else to hang these stockings - to help with the festive spirit.



Now before you all bombard me with comments about the fact that I KNITTED the gifts for a CROCHET swap... it's a crochet group, but we could use any craft for our decorations. And Cristina is such an avid NON-KNITTER (we don't even say the K word around her)... that I couldn't resist sending her something knitted!

christmas bat

Okay... before you start thinking that we must have some weird Christmas traditions here in Australia... let me just say, that the Christmas Bat is not something you would commonly see here. In fact, I'm pretty sure he is a one-of-a-kind!

I made him for my swap partner. She received him yesterday, and got a wonderful surprise.

Usually when I am participating in a swap, I like to make the gift as personal as possible. Do you remember the crochet hook holder which I made for Daphne? Well... she adores (and I mean ADORES) all things peacock... so, it was very easy to choose a theme for that one. Click here if you haven't seen it before - I'm really proud of the way he turned out.

Unfortunately, I haven't ever met Wendy, so I was starting with nothing. I decided to do a bit of a rav-stalk (you know... where you check out someone's profile on Ravelry, in the hopes of finding some useful personal information). I discovered that she is MAD ABOUT BATS... which I already suspected, since her avatar is a bat, and her rav-name is batwing57.

So now all I had to do was combine the bat theme with the Christmas theme... easy enough to do, right???

Into the planning stages... I had visions of Holly Bats hanging on a Christmas Tree - that's HOLLY bats, not HOLY bats!

Can you imagine little bats, with their green holly leaf wings and red berry bodies?

Nah.. I was having trouble with that one, too! I couldn't see them coming together, without looking like mutant holly, assembled by a three-year-old child.

So I decided to make a regular bat, and give him a Santa hat for the Holiday Season. The hat is only pinned in place, so that he doesn't have to wear it all year 'round.

I remembered that bats can be a bit hairy, so I crocheted the body using a strand of dark grey yarn, and a strand of black eyelash yarn worked together. As you can see, he looks pretty boring at this stage...


Then I assembled some embellishments... I cut some wings and ear pieces from a couple of felted jumpers, and added a few buttons for the nose and eyes.


Everything was hand-stitched in place.


By this stage he was looking very much like a bat... but not very festive... so along came the Santa hat.


And here he is, ready for Wendy...