Happy Halloween + free pattern :)

Hi! How are you all doing? Looking forward to Halloween this weekend? I've been really busy and stressed out these past weeks, but I've still managed to cook up a new free pattern for you! A crocheted and felted witch's cauldron, complete with lid :) 

It's a fairly simple pattern, and if you are just a little quicker than I am (which doesn't take much), you can easily make this up in a couple of evenings and have it done and filled with goodies by Monday :)

You find the pattern on my other blog. I would have posted it last night (to give you more time to make it), but I had trouble uploading the pictures, and in the end I had to go to bed. But now it's finally up (and added to Ravelry's database), and I can get on with my math homework. Have an assignment due Wednesday, and I'm clueless... So you probably won't hear more from me in about a week, when I might have another pattern ready. We'll see :)

Nesting lovebirds

This is a quick and cute little pattern I designed for Valentine's Day. I had originally planned something else, but halfway through that project I realized it needed some serious changes, and time was running out, so I decided to make something simpler that could be done in an evening.

In different colors these little birdies could be made for any season or holiday, and not just Valentine :) The pattern is available for free on my pattern blog. Enjoy!

Happy New Year & new Bugs :)

Happy New Year everyone! Hope you all had a nice evening last night :) We didn't really celebrate much, we just had dinner and some friends over for a Warhammer roleplaying session. At midnight we went out to look at everyone else's fireworks, froze our bums off and went back in and played some more :D

I use these sessions to crochet "boring" things, like the legs for Great Big Bugs or things that go round and round for ages, and I got quite a lot done yesterday.  Of course I ran out of yarn and have to go shopping on Monday (because everything is closed today)... Almost done with two new bugs that'll show up later this week if all goes well. Will try to do as much as possible before I start school :)

But here is my newest pattern - the last of 2010: Great Big Scorpion!

I hadn't planned him long, he just sort of happened because I wanted to make a scorpion for my sister-in-law for Christmas (she's a Scorpio). So he was finished on Christmas Eve, but the pattern wasn't ready until yesterday. Among other things I forgot to photograph some body parts before I attached them, and I had to remake them for the shots. Thankfully one of my next Bugs is going to have yellow legs as well, so I didn't have to make it just for one picture... Yeah, I know I'm lazy like that :p 

Anyway, the scorpion is based on the Deathstalker for those who are interested, and I chose this because of the colors. I felt it was time for something yellow again :) In difficulty, this Bug shouldn't be more complicated than the rest, except for a new stitch to make the segments of the body: back post single crochet. Plus, there are a lot of parts to put together... But I had fun making it, and I hope you like it too :) As usual, you can find it both on Ravelry and Etsy.

Merry Christmas etc. :)

In this house the holiday is practically over. People are going back to work tomorrow and I have biology to do. Looking forward to studying again :) Think I've forgotten to mention that I've actually been admitted into a college math & physics course this spring, which will give me the credits I need to apply for biology at the university :) So happy that I got in, I was so sure I wouldn't. Over 200 applicants and less than 80 available places. So from Monday the 10th I will be busy busy busy with math and stuff. Hope I'll do better than I did on my own this fall! Didn't even get past the first chapter in my math book :/

So did you get anything fancy for Christmas? I'm very pleased with my loot :) Mostly practical stuff like kitchen utensils and new trunks (our old ones are seriously falling apart and won't survive another trip), but I got two macrame bracelet kits + a gift certificate for the craft store. Can't wait to go shopping next week! I think there will be lots of new beads :D

From my mother I got a convertible cowl/hoodie thingy which I've used a lot these last days because it's freezing cold outside. It's really nice and warm around my neck (I never wear scarves because I feel they choke me) and I like it a lot. Problem is, though, that a few days before Christmas I just started crocheting one! Hmm... I just fell in love with the yarn and the colors and it's so cold around here I had to make something, but now I'm not sure what to do about it. I guess I can always use two of them :) Here's what I have so far, I think it's about half done:

Well, enough with the ranting. Hope you all are having/have had a nice weekend! Enjoy next weekend as well, and have a happy new year if I don't post any more this year :)

Christmas Dudes x 2!

I am so happy to have not one, but TWO new patterns to share with you! The past two weeks I've been working very hard on some Cute Little Dudes patterns for the holiday, and last night they were both finally done and listed both on Ravelry and on Etsy. Here are all the Dudes together:

Set one is Santa, Reindeer & Snowman; set two is Angel, Gingerbread man & Gnome. Most of these Dudes are a little different from the other sets I've made as I've never done humans/humanoids before. It was fun! More animals to come later, though :)

In terms of difficulty these Dudes are not more complicated than the rest, but some of them do have a lot of details. The angel's hair can be a bit tricky if you're not used to putting hair on dolls, but I've explained things as best I can and I hope it makes sense :)

I wanted to have the patterns up by December 1st (which is today already - yikes!), and I did! Very pleased with myself for that :) Now, however, I kind of have a little problem. I should be finishing up two new Bugs (really not that much left to do), but I seem to be stuck in Dude mood... It's been so long since last time that I want to make more right away! What to do, what to do...

PlanetJune Christmas CAL

There is a new CAL going on! Anyone who's been following my blog for a while knows how much I love CALs. Love to watch lots of people make the same things and see how everyone makes it different, plus it gives me extra motivation to make something that's not my own. A kick in the butt, you might say :) Now it's time to make Christmas stuff. Yay, my favorite holiday! 

June has been somewhat disappointed by all the people who's taken advantage of her CAL discounts and then never finished anything, so this time it will be a little different. She has several Christmas patterns, some of which are free, and we are free to choose which ones to make. One or all of them :) Then, after the CAL ends on Christmas Eve, the participants can win prizes! Gift certificates and/or free patterns, I think :) Read more about the rules HERE.

I plan to make a Christmas tree or two, as soon as I've finished a few holiday patterns of my own :)

Back in town

For a little while, anyway.. Just enough time to let you know I'm still alive, upload a bunch of photos and write a few posts :)

The past week or so I've been staying with my grandmother. The plan was to help out with a lot of gardening and stuff, and to paint all the garden furniture white (we're tired of a very boring green), but the weather's been bad most days, so very little of this has actually been done :/ On Tuesday we did manage to dig up some stone tiles across the lawn that just didn't look good anymore. I carried the tiles away and used them to make a path and a small step up to my gran's new tool shed. Bollan and Glyptodon tried to reach the door, but even together they are a bit too short. Fortunately my grandmother is a little taller :)

Carrying all those tiles were hard work, and the next day I was so stiff and sore all over I could barely move! But the work was worth it. We dug up a new flowerbed and used the turf to fill in the gaps from the stone tiles, and voila - the lawn is all pretty again AND my gran has a new place to put even more flowers :)

Then it was rainy again for several days, until Sunday and yesterday, when I could finally start painting a couple of garden benches. There are lots more to paint, so I'll have work to do all weekend when I'm not preparing for the fair. Have I told you about that? Hm.. Well, it's a fair. Don't know what else to call it. There will be food and drink to buy, an art exhibit by local people (paintings, sculpture and photography), crafty people selling their stuff, and there will be some entertainment. Among other things there'll be a play, which I have two different parts in. Very scary. Thankfully we're not supposed to speak, because everything's been recorded beforehand :) Most of this will happen outside at the harbor on Sunday (want to keep some privacy, so I won't tell you excactly where it is - it's where I come from and it's a pretty small place). Since I haven't been outside much I've had plenty of time to finish the stuff I'm going to sell at the fair :) Here it is:

I don't count on selling all these things, but it's good to be prepared :) I have have so many different things that even if I only sell one of each, I'll still be half-way to a new laptop! Yay :D Tomorrow afternoon I'm going back to my grandmother's again and I probably won't return to civilization until the fair is done on Sunday evening...

The beginning of my summer holiday :)

I know I've been ranting a lot about how busy I've been the past week, so I thought I'd make a little post about it :)

On Thursday last week my mother came to visit me and my boyfriend in Bergen. The next day I had my final exam in an Egyptology course. I think I did well :) Afterwards we went out to celebrate with fancy dinner at one of our favorite places.

Saturday I baked a ton of bread while my mother went shopping, and we had bread, cheese and wine while we watched the Eurovision Song Contest finale in the evening. 

Sunday we visited the botanical garden for a little while before we went to see the new Robin Hood movie. I liked it a lot. It's definitely not "men in tights", but it's also very different from the Kevin Costner version. Darker, dirtier and with more chaimail armor :)

Monday was the day we'd been waiting for. The Guns N' Roses concert in Bergen! We warmed up with lunch/dinner at the best burger place in town, and then we went to the show. The warm-up band just left the stage as we arrived, and then we waited for two hours... It was so hot in the hall that I was nearly extatic every time someone walked past me and created a little breeze! My feet and back hurt really bad, but when the band finally came on stage it was all worth it! :) 

They kept going for a little more than two hours (which was a little short compared to the other shows on this tour), but it was still great :) The show ended with fireworks, confetti, and this is how the floor looked after it was all over:

I spent most of Tuesday packing up my stuff to go home. And I have a lot of stuff! This time I only packed clothes and no books or other stuff, but I still needed to bring a lot of yarn and two bags of stuffing, since that is practically unavailable where I come from. I filled a small bag with finished amigurumis to be sold this summer, and half the rest of my luggage is just yarn! It's a little insane :)

My boyfriend stayed behind in the apartment, and my mother and I took the bus home on Wednesday morning. I slept most of the way, and didn't do half the crocheting I had planned. When we arrived home I discovered that my mother has killed my cactus! :( Poor Gustav... Another cactus, Carl, is on the floor behind the couch... (In case you wondered, they are named after the Swedish king!)

Yesterday my mother and I went to get new tattoos! Yay :) My mother got a tribal thingy on the back of her neck. I got a small one on my wrist of three Egyptian hieroglyphs meaning "Life, Prosperity, Health", and a larger one on my leg of Bollan! I thought this was a great opportunity to combine two of my favorite things, so I drew her knitting, with two balls of yarn and a crochet hook :D 

I drew Bollan myself, and the knitting and yarn I adapted from some clip-art I found online. I'm very happy with it!

I've talked to the lady who's going to be my boss this summer, and I don't have to start working until next week, so now I'm just enjoying the holiday and doing nothing except amigurumi :D

Hooray for Norway!

Today's the national day of Norway, our Constitution is 196 years old :) It's celebrated by parades and people wearing nice clothes and eating lots of good food (= hamburgers, sandwitches & hot dogs) and ice cream. All the kids run around and blow in whistles and toy trumpets that make horrible sounds, and then some inmportant people and the king give speeches. To finish the day there is usually fireworks in the bigger towns. This is what that looked like tonight from the Oystercatcher's view (the picture is black&white because it's dark outside):

I haven't really celebrated it for years, it's too noisy and crowded and the weather is always bad. We did celebrate a little, because Bollan and her family wanted to. Click HERE for the whole story :)

I just take it as a good day to relax, watch TV and do nothing useful, except crocheting a lot :D

Weekend visit & shopping

This weekend we've had a visit by my boyfriend's parents. They brought LOTS of chicken/turkey hot dogs and chicken filets, our freezer is now completely full :) The mother's birthday was just a few days ago, so I made a cake, and I finally got to use my dinosaur sprinkles!

We went out shopping one of the days, the mother was looking for an 8mm crochet hook to make the Olympic hat, and we ended up getting new yarn for me to make more hats :) 

After I tried my first Olympic hat I fell in love with the yarn (DROPS Eskimo) and the spimplicity of the hat pattern, and I wanted to make lots of them to sell. I have now developed a pattern of my own that I'm happy with, and I'll add it to my pattern blog later :)

I also got the biggest Easter egg I've ever had, it has room for both Bollan and all my candy!

Happy Paddy's Day :)

Not a holiday I normally celebrate, since I'm neither Irish nor Catholic, but I take it as a good reason (or excuse, if you will) to drink lots of beer and make green stuff :) Not that I actually drink beer, I leave that to some other creatures in this house... By the way, dyeing beer green with food coloring makes the beer flat and according to my boyfriend also makes it taste funny :/

I've crocheted a leafy scarf for Piggen, and a Leprechaun top hat for Iggy.  Pattern for the hat is here, and the leafy scarf pattern will be posted later :)

The hat turned out to be a bit floppy, so I felted it.

The scarf was originally intended for Bollan, but it looked more like hair than a scarf, so I gave it to Piggen instead :) It can also be used as a really big bracelet :p

I have even made cupcakes for this occasion! Like the rest of my baking, they're not pretty, but they are at least tasty :) And green! Pistachio and yoghurt cupcakes with green sugar frosting. Well, almost green.. Almost half a bottle of food coloring and all I got was this horrible minty green :/

The weird shape is because I crammed too many cakes onto one tray, and then I overfilled the cups because I wanted to use all the batter instead of making a second tray... I never pays off to be lazy :/ Anyway, in the oven the batter of course rose over the cups, and when finished they looked like this:

Yay, am I a baker or what...

Valentine's and stuff :)

It's Valentine's Day, and for that occasion I sat down and crocheted a couple of hearts. I know I've said that I'm not that into pink and hearts, but I think these are pretty cute :)

The big one is made from the free Pop Heart pattern by Diana Prince (MyGurumi). I wanted to crochet it in black, but I need all my black yarn for another project... The little red heart is my own creation, the pattern is as usual added to my pattern blog :)

I have also had time to finish the Praying Mantis I wanted to make for my boyfriend, and he was very happy when he got it today :)

Today is also Mother's Day here in Norway, so I've made something for my mother, too. She fell in love with the owlet keychains I made earlier, so I made her a pink and white one to go with the wristwarmers I've made for her birthday. Right now she's at a hospital/recovery center after a little brain surgery, but she's doing just fine and will be going home in less then a week. Then there will be a few presents waiting for her at the post office :)

Groundhog Day!

Today, February 2nd, is the day when the groundhogs come out of their burrows and check out whether spring is coming soon or not. If they can see their shadow, it will be six more weeks of winter. If there's no shadow, spring is upon us :)

My crocheted groundhog for the Groundhog-along went out in the snow this morning, and there was only the teeniest hint of a shadow, so his prediction is an early spring. It has to be said that if he hadn't been in our backyard, he would have had a big shadow, since the sun was shining everywhere else. So, what to make of it, I wonder? I think I'm hoping for an early spring anyway :)

The picture looked okay on my computer at home, but on this library computer it's very dark, so I hope you can se anything... Here's a picture with flash, just in case, but it gives him a shadow and messes with the prediction, so it doesn't really count!

The holidays

There hasn't happened much this Christmas, so there isn't a lot of fancy stuff to blog about. I did promise to write a little about my presents, but I have nothing exciting to show off, as I only got practical presents this year, and nothing craft related at all. I/we got a radio to have in the kitchen (baking/cooking is more fun with music), a new bread knife, an apron with wine glasses printed on (perfect!), a pair of knitted socks (I wear wool socks all year if the temperature allows it), a book about archaeology, a new external hard drive and some foreign coins (which I of course collect). Pretty happy with the outcome this year :)

For my birthday I got (and will get) some money to buy whatever I want, and I think I'll spoil myself with some fancy yarn and a few Tunisian crochet hooks when we go shopping on Friday :)

We spent New Year's Eve with some friends, eating turkey for dinner and playing boardgames and Warhammer RPG. A few days ago I went to see the new movie Avatar in 3D, and it was amazing! The plot itself is pretty predictable, but the 3D technology really works, and the movie is visually stunning, so all in all it was an awsome experience :) I'm definitely going to buy it and watch it again, though I'm not sure how the movie works as a regular dvd. Some of our friends was very disappointed when they saw it in 2D... Yesterday we saw The Imaginaruim of Dr. Parnassus, and that's also an awsome movie. Totally weird and crazy, but I liked it. And Tom Waites rocks as Mr. Nick :) I would recommend both movies to anyone who likes going to the theater.

The weather has been freezing the whole time since we got her. I'm not used to temperatures this low for very long periods, but I like freezing winter a lot better than melting away in the summer. On New Year's Eve we went for a walk on a frozen lake right by the house, and the ice was 20cm thick. You could drive a car on it. Tomorrow we'll walk over to the other side of the lake :)

The luxury of flying...

It was going to be so quick and easy and practical... Just figure out the travel date, my mother-in-law said, she'd pay for the whole thing :) Only where I come from the bus connection sucks, so the trip to my home turned out to be only two hours shorter than it would have been if we'd taken the bus all the way (like I usually do when I'm alone), and a lot colder and more expensive..

Now, that was going from our apartment and home to my mother. Going from there to where my boyfriend's home is, is another thing. It's almost twice the distance, making the bus totally impractical. It would take something like fifteen hours, and we would still have to be picked up for an hour drive home. So plane it was. After taking the bus for an hour, a boat, and then another bus, we got to the airport, checked in our luggage and had dinner in the cafeteria. Our plane would be half an hour late, but that wasn't a big problem. We were supposed to land in another airport and get on a second plane home, but we'd have enough time there to catch it even with the delay. We thought. The plane was in the air for half an hour longer than planned because of fog and snow (remind me never to wish for a white Christmas again..), so when we landed we were ten minutes late for the next plane. Which of course was about the only plane leaving the airport on time. So we stormed out onto the runway in 13 degrees freezing, into the terminal hall and ran for at least half a mile to get to the right gate (on the other end of the airport, of course). Painful, and not very good for my asthma/bronchitis-thing. I'm still a bit wheezy today :/ When we finally landed, about 45 minutes late, our luggage didn't. We were told that it would most likely arrive with the next plane, which would be about two hours late. We were tired and cold, so we just reported our bags missing, bought new toothbrushes and went home. We had most of what we needed anyway, and our luggage would be delivered to our house the next morning. (And it did :) Yay!)

When we eventually got home, the mother (what I call my mother-in-law) felt sorry for us and made milk and honey, and then we got presents :) (The ones that weren't mailed to us because we would have to bring them with us here anyway..) I think I'll make another post about this year's presents. Anyway, I don't blame the airline for losing our bags, I think the luggage people were actually more in a hurry than we were. They had to get all the bags out of the plane, drive for half a mile, and then load them into the next plane. We just had to run.

 

Today we'll have some friends over for some roleplaying (Warhammer, in case that sounded totally weird), but I'm not feeling very good, so we'll see how long they can stay. Anyway, we'll spend the evening sitting down, and I can crochet some more mushrooms :)  The patterns will naturally be posted when they are done.

Merry Christmas! :)

The presents are all finished, wrapped and placed under the tree, the dinner is cooking, the final project of my Advent calendar is posted, and there's Disney cartoons on TV... Everything is how it should be. Even the snow that came a few days ago has stayed, so for once we actually have a white Christmas :) All that remains is to wish a Merry Christmas to all my readers.

Merry Christmas from me, Bollan, our families and friends! :)

Oh, Christmas trees...

Here is my grandmother's fake Christmas tree. It's actually quite nice for a plastic tree, and it's so much easier to deal with. You don't get your house full of nasty creatures, and the needles stay on forever. Plus, you save a lot of money :)

We'll be decorating it tonight, we always do the day before Christmas eve. It probably sounds a bit late, some people start decorating in the beginning of December, but we decorate for Advent instead, and purple and red don't exactly match :p

Here is another one that I helped decorate on Monday. Thankfully I didn't have the honor of making it stand up straight. Because it certainly doesn't. I laughed quite a lot when I first saw it. Some guys tried to straighten it, and failed miserably...

I also have a plastic tree, it's tiny and is totally perfect for Bollan and her family and friends :) I don't have a picture of it yet, but I'll add some later when it's decorated.

Cookies :)

We made cookies today :) My grandmother has made several other kinds before I even got here, but these I just have to make every Christmas. My favorites :) The first ones we call "flat toads", because the first time we made them the dough/paste was much too soft and runny, and the result was very flat and sticky cookies. I loved them, of course, I'm not a fan of crispy food. The name "flat toads" stuck, and is much better than the original, which would translate as "almond blobs". I like almonds, but blobs are not tasty :p

These are called chocolate sweethearts, basically the same dough as the previous cookies, but somehow different. (They look pretty much the same this year, because we made a mistake and put chocolate in the toads, instead of just on top.) The sweethearts are supposed to be glazed with chocolate, but we never do, it's too much work. They are also supposed to be all hearts, but we use other shapes as well, like bats, squirrels, frogs, people and pigs :)

This last kind is something my mother usually makes, and I tried to crochet one that turned into a Ferrero Rocher :) They consist of crushed oats, cocoa, butter, coffee and sugar, mashed into a paste and rolled. Easy and delicious :)

The Boll helped, as always :) She felt there should be a hedgehog cookie shape, but I'm not sure... I don't think we'd be able to eat them, they'd be way too cute! :)