Pumpkins!

Here are two pumpkins I've made over the last few days. The small one is for PlanetJune's Fall CAL, and the big one is for Itsy Bitsy Spider's Pumpkin Patch CAL. 

I almost couldn't finish them because of wrist pain, but I only had the stems left, and I decided to do them anyway. Carefully, and only one stem a day :) I think the pain (beginning tendonitis) is because I've mostly been tatting for a long time now, and the sudden and intense crocheting was suddenly very straining on my wrists...

PlanetJune's pumpkin is crocheted with a lovely soft acrylic yarn (Idena Twins, now unfortunately discontinued) and crochet hook 4.5mm. The pattern was easy to follow and the pumpkin could easily be made in a few hours :) I had plans for making a couple of the Pocket Amis as well (the witch and ghost), but because of my wrists I think I'll be satisfied with just the pumpkin. I would really love to make more of those and line them up in the window for Halloween :) We'll see how it goes... The big pumpkin was crocheted with the same bulky wool yarn I use for my Great Big Bugs, also with a 4.5mm hook:

This pumpkin could easily be mistaken for an ordinary pumpkin, albeit a very pale one... Let me tell you that he is not :)

This is Archie. He is a very special little albino pumpkin who needs glasses because his eyesight is a little poor. He feels like all the other pumpkins are looking at him and teasing him for his glasses. Not cool! If anything, glasses make you smarter, and your nose doesn't look so naked :) Archie is a really sweet little guy who's going to be an ophthalmologist when he grows up. He has one really good friend, and they stick together like - well - pumpkins! 

Have a good weekend, and don't make fun of people (or pumpkins) with glasses! :) (In case you are wondering - yes, I was inspired by this post..)

CALs and give-aways and stuff

First of all, I really need to thank Greenpixey for the lovely prize I won from her give-away in July. Thank you! What I won was a little heart shaped tin of mint candy to give to my boyfriend :) 

Also in the package was a surprise that I decided was just for me :p A yummy bar of milk chocolate! It was gone within minutes, hihi :)

The package arrived several weeks ago, but I waited to post about it since the mints were going to be a surprise, and I'm not sure whether my bf reads my blog or not. And then, of course, I forgot... I remembered to post about it now because my boyfriend came home from the library the other day and gave me the empty tin to keep little treasures in :)

I'm currently participating in another give-away that (hopefully) has not ended yet. At Artikaur's blog you can enter to win a ball of pretty blue crochet/tatting thread:

I think the give-away will end in a few hours (some time after midnight in my time). Hope I win - my thread stash is not big enough yet! Perhaps it never will be...? :p

So, the CALs... Well, I never got any further on my alpaca for PlanetJune's summer CAL :( I feel really bad that I got the pattern cheaper than I normally would, and then I never had time to make it... The CAL has now ended, and you can see all the finished alpacas and violets HERE.

Finally, there's a new CAL that's just about to start - a halloween themed fall CAL at Itsy Bitsy Spider (who also hosted the Great Owl CAL earlier). This time we're making pumpkins :) 

We are to decorate the pumpkins however we want, and at the end there will be a contest with a prize. Whoever makes the coolest pumpkin wins! I have to concrete ideas for my pumpkin yet, but I'll come up with something as I crochet along :)

Happiness is a new tatting shuttle - or seven :)

My mother has been visiting us since Sunday. Today we went shopping together - among other things for more yarn for a new Great Big Bug :) Just because we had time we stopped by another little yarn store to look at fancy yarns. I have no money right now and had no plans of buying anything, but when I suddenly came across tatting shuttles, I just had to get them! There were even two kinds, and I naturally had to get both :)

The shuttle on the right is a pretty blue Milward with a crochet hook on the front and a removable bobbin. It came with an extra bobbin, but I'm not sure if you can buy more bobbins separately like you can with many other brands. The post sticking out the back is originally for putting the bobbin on when winding thread on it, but - as with many other Aero copies - the bobbins don't fit on there... So it's pretty useless and only in the way when tatting. I think I'll try to "neuter" it, i.e. cutting off the post and filing the end smooth. Maybe I'll even decorate the shuttle with decoupage, I've seen people do it and it looks really cool :)

The one on the left is a very plain purple shuttle by Prym. It's just about 2 inches long, fairly narrow and very thin. And you can actually take it apart, something I don't really see the point in, except maybe to remove thread easily when you're done using it. It tends to make the two sides slide apart, though, and the tips aren't very tight anymore. Plus it is difficult to wind because you have nowhere to hold :/ I've seen somewhere that these are recommended for beginners, but I don't know why. Perhaps they are good for practicing adding new threads to your work, because the post is so short you can only load it with a little thread at a time...

If I were to recommend any shuttles to a beginner, it would have to be the Clovers, of which I got five in the mail yesterday :)

You can get them both with and without points. They are pretty small, just a little more than two inches long. They definitely hold more thread than the Prym :) The only "problem" with the Clovers is that those points are seriously pointy! I've almost drawn blood more than once since yesterday :p However, the points are great for joins and or unpicking stitches.

 

Other shuttles for beginners would in my opinion be the Sew Mates. 

They are just like the Clovers, only bigger and therefore holds more thread. They also come both with and without points. Here is a picture comparing the two brands:

I've sort of become used to the size of the Sew Mates, but they are still a little big for my hands. Plus the tips are a little uneven (cheaper plastic, perhaps), which makes them unsuitable for picking out mistakes as it tends to frizzle the thread. However, it makes them better for joins. You could easily fix them by filing them with a nail file or something :)

Now I'm waiting for a few more shuttles and a couple of books in the mail, so fingers crossed that the mailman (mailwoman in this case) brings me goodies tomorrow :)