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 :)

Halloween Dudes

Anyone else getting ready for Halloween? I plan Halloween patterns every year, but this is the first time I have actually managed to get a pattern ready in good time before the holiday. Not much use making a pattern if no one has time to make it...

So here they are, an all new set of Cute Little Dudes: Trick or Treat vol.1. The pattern is available both from Etsy and Ravelry :)


There is a scarecrow, a vampire bat and a cute little imp. The bat wings require some shaping (i.e. counting), but other than that, these Dudes are on the same difficulty level as all the others. Hope you like them :)

Ps.: I have another set planned, but time will tell if I can get them ready within reasonable time for anyone else to make them. Have lots of homework to to as well...

Weaving

Look, I have a loom!

I used to do a lot of tapestry weaving about ten years ago, and recently I've started to miss it a lot. Unfortunately the frame/loom is stashed at my grandmother's house, and it's way to big and unwieldy for me to keep here, so I went out and got this little one instead. Remember making lots of tiny rugs with wool yarn in kindergarten, it was so much fun :D

I know I can't really make fancy tapestries with this thing, but small motifs and potholders and stuff. So far I've made this little test strip with scrap yarn, but I want to get more shuttles (or really long needles) and work with several colors at a time. But honestly, the shuttle that came with the loom is horrible, so I need to find alternatives soon or I'll go crazy... Any suggestions? :)

More Dudes!

Silly me - I forgot to mention a whole set of Dudes! Forest Dwellers vol. 4 :) These were also made this spring, and if I remember correctly they were actually finished before the Alien Dudes. Yeah, I've had a lot on my mind lately, important things slip away...

The mallard and the bald eagle had been in progress since last summer, but the owl was made this spring to complete the set, which this time consists only of birds. The bald eagle was a request/challenge from a friend :)

Little buggies

Last summer my aunt who works in a kindergarten asked me to make her two little bugs, a bumblebee and a beetle. She liked my Great Big Bugs, but she wanted something smaller to illustrate a song or something, so I started these two. I didn't have time to finish them completely before the summer was over, so I brought them back to my apartment to give them eyes and legs and then mail them back up to my aunt. 

Well, that didn't happen... The bugs managed to get lost on the bottom of one of my yarn stash boxes, and I forgot all about them. I found them again when I was packing up my yarn to go home this summer, so I brought them along to finish so I could finally give them to my aunt.

I did it, but only just! I sewed the legs on the last one late at night the day before I was leaving again... But they were finished, and my aunt is very pleased. Haven't heard anything about what the kids think about them yet.

I wrote down the instructions as I went, but I've discovered that I didn't take very good pictures, so I'll need to make them again if I'm going to publish the patterns. For the new ones I want to use safety eyes, but I don't have the right colors (in the right size), so I'm waiting for a shipment of eyes before I start remaking them. Hopefully they're here by the end of this week :) I'm thinking about making these little bugs in sets of three, and so far I have ideas for four sets. Either that, or I'll publish a gazillion of single bugs, with a discount if you buy more of them. What do you think, would you be interested in the patterns?

Three Great Big Bugs at once :)

I finished three Bugs this summer, a wasp, an aphid and the male firefly. I started the firefly shortly after I finished the female last fall, and the other two I started some time around Christmas. The bodies and most of their body parts had been done for months when I finally sat down and finished them. You'd think that assembly is the easy part... :P

Anyway, here they are:

The wasp is modeled after the Common wasp (Vespula vulgaris), and it's my most complicated pattern so far, with all the color changes on the body. I tried to keep it as easy as possible, though, with the patterning and the decreases/increases on separate rounds :)

The aphid is modeled after the Rose aphid that I've seen on my grandmother's roses. They are mainly green, but they also come in red/pink or black, so feel free to experiment with the colors on this one :) There are a couple of rounds of front post single crochet on the body of this Bug, but apart from that, it's not a complicated pattern.

The firefly is the same species as the first one (the common glowworm), but the male and female look very different. The male is a fairly ordinary brown beetle with a glowing bum, while the female stays more like the larva her whole life, and never develops wings.

The patterns for the wasp and aphid are available on Ravelry, and I'll be adding them to Etsy soon. I'm still not quite finished with the firefly pattern, because I've been so busy with my exam lately. Things should calm down soon, so I hope to have it ready before the weekend :) I've thought about listing the two fireflies as a set, though I'm not really sure how this would work on Ravelry. Do they allow you to post the same patterns twice, in different combinations? I'll have to do a little research and get back to that. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the aphid and the wasp :)

Craft store sale!

The craft store had a sale today, 70% off on lots of stuff, and I got a whole lot of different beads for less than a dollar per pack! :D I bought five boxes of 15mm wood beads in all the colors they had:

Wax beads in two sizes:

These really heavy long beads, one in lead gray and one in black:

This awesome bug pendant that I intend to make into a necklace:

And a set of small plastic containers for odd beads or other small things:

Yay for sales! :)

Alien Dudes

In May I released a new set of Cute Little Dudes: Alien Invaders!

It all started when I heard the song "Purple People Eater", and I immediately needed to crochet one :) I then thought I'd make two other alien dudes, and my next choice was fairly easy: Cthulhu! I also considered an alien from the Alien movies, but that's a trademarked character, and I don't want to get onto trouble, so I had to do something else. Then, suddenly it occurred to me that I should make an alien with three eyes, so that I wouldn't end up with singles from the People Eater. Clever, huh? :p

The pattern is available both on Ravelry and Etsy :)