Flowers, a new book & fancy gadgets

The third craft book I was waiting for arrived in the mail yesterday :)

200 crochet blocks by Jan Eaton. It looks like a good book, there are lots of pretty squares with varying levels of difficulty. I think I'll use some of the patterns for my 2010 block-a-month afghan. The only thing that disappoints is that there isn't actually 200 different squares in the book, only about 130. The first section of the book has 100 squares, but the second part has about 30, with additional color variations that for some reason count as different squares...

I have made a number of flowers from Crochet Bouquet, and I naturally picked one of the advanced patterns to start with, the Poppy:

This was a lot of work, with about a million ends to weave in at the end, but it's a very pretty flower. My favorite in the book :) Then I made a pretty yellow rose:

I decided to felt it, but when it came out of the washing machine it had turned into a horrible green! 

I can swear the jeans had been washed thousand times before and should not do this :/

The other day I realized that I really needed a 4.5mm crochet hook, so onto the internet I went looking for one, because none of the craft stores nearby had one. I ordered a Clover hook from the same place as the last ones, and then I came across this thing:

It's a yarn-cutting thingy :) It's very practical, I don't have to carry scissors around with me everywhere I go (I'm not even sure it that's entirely legal), and there's no risk of cutting my fingers if I have to rummage around in my bag to find it. Unless you have very long fingernails you can not reach the razor blade in the middle:

I put the pendant on a green leather string and wear it around my neck as a regular necklace because I think it's pretty :)

Spring crochet-along!

There is a new crochet-along at PlanetJune, the creator of the cute groundhog you may have seen earlier this year. For this CAL you can chose between two different crochet patterns, a daffodil and a tiny whale. Both patterns are free! 

The CAL last until the end of May, so there is lots of time to make a bouquet of daffodils or an army of whales :)

Read more about the CAL on PlanetJune's blog or Ravelry group. There is also a Flickr group for amigurumi made from PlanetJune's patterns, where tou can add pictures of your finished creations if you don't have a Ravelry account.

Spring & other good things :)

Today I saw one of my favorite signs of spring: the bumblebee! Actually I saw two "bumbles" (yep, that's what I call them), different kinds and everything :) I didn't have my camera with me to photograph the little furry beasts, but here is a bumble that was sitting outside our window for hours last summer:

The poor thing was probably tired after nest-building and stuff, so we fed it a few drops of maple syrup. A few minutes later both the syrup and the bumble was gone :)

My mother called me earlier today and told me I've got a job for the summer, working in a  small shop at home. Yay :) And I hadn't even applied for it! I'll start in the beginning of June and will probably be working for a couple of months, so I won't be completely broke when school starts again in August. I am a little nervous, though, I haven't had a job like this before, I really don't like working with people. I hope there won't be too many customers... The good thing is that the store sells some yarn (the cheap kind I use for amigurumi), so I'll probably spend some on my pay on that :p

Finally, I got two new books in the mail today (and I'm waiting for a third) :)

Tasty Crochet by Rose Langlitz and Crochet Bouquet by Suzann Thompson. I can't wait to try out some of the patterns in these books :) The flower book probably looks a lot like 100 Flowers to Knit & Crochet, but it's really not. While all the flowers in 100 Flowers are supposed to be realistic, most of the flowers in Crochet Bouquet are elaborate fantasy flowers in lots of different colors and yarns, and embellished with buttons, beads and other cool things :) Tasty Crochet is full of cool amigurumi patterns for different kinds of food, arranged like a cookbook with breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert. Yum!

100!

This is post number 100, can you believe it? It's not even a year since I started this blog... Since then I've created a number of new ones, the latest is my Book Blog, where I post pictures and reviews of all my craft books, and some other hobby books as well. It's not all done yet, I have a few books left to post about, but I'll get there :)

Hooks & flowers

I have read a lot about these hooks, everyone has been saying how great they are, good for the hands and everything, so finally I decided to try them. I ordered my Clover Soft Touch crochet hooks from this Swedish site on Monday, and they arrived yesterday. Very fast shipping :)

I bought the four sizes I use the most, and I had to test them right away, so I made these flowers from 100 Flowers to Knit & Crochet:

Two daffodils, a narcissus, a sunflower and a camomille flower. My verdict is that the hooks are indeed very good, they are comfortable to hold, though the handle is a little bit short for my taste, and they are not soft at all. I mean, they are supposed to be soft touch, but the handle is made from regular hard plastic, with a little patch of slightly softer rubber. If I press my fingernail in the rubber it leaves a mark, but it's not really soft at all. I expected the whole thing to be made of rubber or something. But all in all, they are really good crochet hooks, I do recommend them :)

Look what I got :)

Harry Potter & the deathly hallows - in Arabic!

Three years ago I went on a foreign exchange trip to Cairo through the university, and luckily my boyfriend could come with me :) Anyway, since I studied Arabic I bought lots and lots of children's books, including Harry Potter. I bought the first six books, but then we left the country before the last book was published. A while after the seventh book was published a friend of ours went to Cairo, and I asked him very kindly if he could look for the last Harry Potter book in Arabic for me. He didn't find it, but later another friend went to Cairo, and I asked her, too, but she didn't find it either. A while ago the first friend went to Egypt again, to help some egyptologists with some fieldwork (yes, we are very jealous!), and he promised to look for the book for me. I had almost given up hope, because the one time we heard from him he hadn't found it. But then, when he got home again - tada! Surprise for me :) Now I just have to learn the language again, it's been a while...

Another friend of ours came home from Prague about a week ago, and he brought me this:

A Donald Duck magazine in Czech! I don't know the language, but that's not important. I collect Donald Duck in different languages :) So far I have magazines in Estonian, Swedish, English and Arabic. I hope to get one in Dutch from a friend of my boyfriend who lives in Amsterdam :) 

The new Donald Duck even came with this squishy black rubber skeleton:

Isn't he cute? He sticks to anything!

Ia, Ia...

... Cthulhu Ftagn! Or something like that :p

A pretty creepy Cthulhu, don't you think? But he's cute, too :) I've had plans to make a Cthullhu from this pattern for years, and I finally made it. It's not exactly tiny, because I used a 5mm hook instead of 3.75... Most Cthulhus are green, but I decided to make mine gray with black wings because I thought he would look more scary with the red monster-eyes.

He looks so funny with his tentacles pointing straight forward :D

April squares & other squares

Today is April 1st, but as far as I know I haven't been fooled yet :p The patterns for this month's squares is posted on Ravelry, the 6'' pattern is Friend Family Square. It looks a little complicated, I hope I can shrink the square down to 4 inches...

A while ago I found a picture of an afghan (but I can't remember where) that I liked, and the pattern seemed simple enough for me to make something similar, and I made up these squares:

If you are interested I have written a pattern/tutorial for these squares, you can find it HERE. I made nine squares and crocheted them together by slip stitching from the back, and crocheting in the back loops only, which I think makes a neat finishing. Then I added three rounds of edge around the whole thing and felted it in the washing machine. 

Along with the pillow cover I also felted these granny square bags, which have been finished for months, just waiting to be felted. The pattern for the bags is HERE.

The past month or so I have been working on the biggest project I've ever started, but it's already almost half-finished :) I wanted to make a granny square blanket that looks like a tetris screenshot, but now that it's half-done it's already the size of a regular blanket, so I guess it will turn into a bedspread instead. It's huge!

I used an extra large hook (10mm) because I planned on felting the blanket, but I've realized that it will be too big to put in our washing machine... I have to make two halves and felt them separately and stitch them together afterwards, and then I can only hope it will never have to be washed again :p