Lariath- Live a Little.

I saw some bear rug coasters on the Internet and couldn't resist trying to make a crochet version. I made up the pattern as I want along, just making a circle for the body adding some arms, legs and a tail then sewing the head on. For the head I used the same head as for the Crochet Bear  that I made last year. The only issue I had with these was that the arms and legs did not lie flat which really annoyed me. A search the interweb showed me how to make yarn projects lie flat through a process called Killing . Killing sounds very dramatic but it's quite easy to do however done wrong and you will literally "kill" your project. I was a bit skeptical of the method but gave it a try anyway. Really, I should have tried the method on a swatch of crochet first but I was running out of time. Another worry was that the coasters would curl up again after time or after being folded for a period of time. I pinned the arms and legs down so that they were lying fla...

A group of friends and I meet up every two weeks for a catch up and board game night. Every year we have a Christmas night and have a Secret Santa and mini buffet. This year I decided to make some cakes. They are vanilla cupcakes with buttercream icing, the recipe I used can be found  Here . I have used this recipe many times now and always get compliments, it hasn't failed me yet! I decided to do green buttercream icing to try to make the cupcakes look a bit like trees...not sure they do but i tried. I didn't have any green food colouring so I added some yellow to the buttercream and then added blue gradually to get the colour I wanted. (This took me ages as I didn't want to add too much blue and cause the colour to go awfully wrong). Eventually when I got a colour that I liked I piped the icing onto the cake. Now, I don't actually own a piping kit for icing so I had to DIY this by using This Method  it works and it's useful if you have no other means of ...

To help get into the Christmas mood I made these Cute Mini Christmas Snowmen: For these snowmen I used this very easy to follow Pattern . I had no safety eyes so I used black yarn for the buttons and eyes and I used a small orange bead for the nose. I think the one on the left looks slightly evil with his horizontal eyes and top hat... I also added tassels to the scarves and made a mini bobble hat for one of them as I am now obsessed with mini bobble hats!  I followed  This Pattern  for the mini hat.  Enjoy this post?

My posting is slacking a bit at the minute but I am ridiculously busy with work, making gifts for Christmas and being sociable...Christmas is a busy time! But I have recently made quite a few things so I've got quite a few posts to come.  Here is my latest project, Mini Santa Minion: For the minion I followed this  Minion pattern . The pattern asks for blue yarn however I didn't have any blue yarn left so I decided, as it's Christmas, I'd make a Santa Minion.  I followed the pattern as linked above but instead of blue yarn I used red yarn and made a little Santa hat. The Minion pattern was very easy to follow and didn't take very long to make. The pattern says to use felt for the eye however I decided to crochet the whole eye and I added a mouth as I did for my Crochet Minion Mug Cosy . For the hat I followed this  Mini Santa Hat pattern  but made it slightly bigger so that it would fit the minion nicely. The pompom on the top i...

To make this bridge I used all natural Jute string a 5.5mm crochet hook. I made the stitches  VERY  tight so that Tims little paws wouldn't get stuck in any gaps, this took quite a bit of effort as the Jute string is very stiff.  SC- Single Crochet Chain 14  (or as many needed to made the bridge wide enough)  Row 1: SC in each chain along, turn Row 2 - 35: SC in each stitch along, turn (add or decrease the amount of rows to create a longer or shorter bridge) Finish off.  Tie a length of string to each corner of the piece to make supports and hang securely in the cage. To make the supports stronger I used two pieces of string in each corner and tied the pieces together all the way along.  Safety! Only use materials that are safe for a hamster. Make sure there are NO gaps for little feet to get caught in. Don't hang the bridge too high from the ground and make sure there is lots of soft bedding beneath the bridge in...

Just a quick post about the squares that  lilangelsg2  and I have sent to Knit a Square  recently. We can't send too many squares at once in the post because the post cost increases after a certain weight. This mean it's cheaper to send a few at once rather than loads. So here is what we sent a few weeks ago:  Picture taken by  lilangelsg2 Click  Here  for more charity blogs. 

As promised here is my pattern for the Minion Mug Cosy  I made. All mugs are different shapes and sizes, they are all very unique therefore no mug cosy is going to be the same size. I will give my exact stitches and try to explain in brackets how to make the cosy fit whatever mug is being used. For mine I used a 5mm hook however I crochet tightly so a 4mm hook is probably better.  I also used DK/8ply yarn in yellow, blue, a little bit of grey and a little bit of black. Abbreviations:  SC - Single Crochet SS - Slip Stitch In blue chain 44 and join. (chain as many as needed to fit the mug comfortably, not too loose) Round 1: SC in each chain around, join with SS to first SC Round 2: SC in each stitch around, join with SS to first SC (if the first row it a bit too loose or tight then increase or decrease as needed in this row) Change to yellow yarn Row 3: SC in next 40 stitches, turn. (Crochet as many stitches as needed to leave a gap big enough for th...

One of my DIY toys for Tim is the Suspended Tunnel-Bridge: Equipment: Natural String Thick cardboard tube Screwdriver (or anything to make a hole)  Scissors I bought my thick cardboard tube and natural jute string from my local pet store, they were both pretty cheap. I think the thickness of the cardboard is quite important as it needs to be quite sturdy, a toilet roll would not be suitable for this... no hamster injuries! Also natural string is a must because hamsters love to chew and 'normal' string is full of icky chemicals which cause upset tummies.  My tube was waaaaaay to long in length so I cut it down to a suitable size. (I say cut... I ended up using a saw due to the thickness of the cardboard.).  Then I used a screwdriver to put two holes into the top of the tube near to each end.  I knotted my string at the end making sure the knot was big enough so that it couldn't slip through the hole in the tube.  ...

As it's nearly Halloween I though I'd share some horrific cupcakes that I made. They turned out to be more horrific than expected... These are Broken Glass cupcakes that I made a long time ago so excuse the terrible picture: So they looked more awesome than they do in the awful photo...well they did until the next day.... I was chuffed with my cakes because I didn't know how they would turn out and they looked pretty good, if I do say so myself. After making them I kept checking on them every hour to make sure the 'glass' was still stood upright etc. It was so I was extremely proud of my cakes. I came to look at the cakes the next day (the day I was giving them as a present to a friend) and the 'glass' had all bent over and turned white instead of clear and the fake blood was PINK! Now if you know me at all you know that I absolutely detest pink, so not only were my awesome cakes now not so awesome but they were pink....horrified. I was even too h...

I haven't blogged for a while but I have a really good excuse. I have been to Canada! What an amazing place it is, and absolutely massive.  I did so many things and got so little sleep that I feel I need another holiday. Just thought I'd share a snippet of Canada, this is the Niagara Falls from the Rainbow Bridge (on the left) to the Niagara Falls (on the right).  I need to go back to Canada, there is so much to see! 

What is now called the Road of Remembrance was originally called Slope Road. This was the route millions of soldiers marched down on their way to Folkestone harbour, on to the trenches in France and Belgium in WW1. The community around the Church that I grew up in is joining many others in making hand knitted poppies to line the Road of Remembrance. As well as sending poppies to the Road of Remembrance St Gabriel's Church in Blackburn will be making a big poppy out of many small poppies to place outside the church on Remembrance Sunday. Here's the lady who started it all on the  BBC News . As I have never actually knitted anything, I had completely no idea how to knit, this was a big challenge for me. It took me a very very long time to get the hang of knitting. I found casting on rather easy but after that everything just went wrong. After trying again and again and getting very fed up of casting on I managed to get my knitting to actually look like knitting (I think)....

Here's a quick and cheap toy I make for Tim quite regularly. Equipment: Toilet roll tube/kitchen roll tube Natural String (important see 'Safety' below)   Scissors Hamster food/treats I save all my toilet roll tubes and kitchen roll tubes etc to make toys for Tim. This is the best toilet roll tube toy I have made so far they seem to keep Tim entertained for a while and only takes me 5 minutes to make. All I do it grab a tube fold in one end of the tube and place some food/treats in the tube.   Then I fold the other end of the tube so that the treats cannot fall out.   I then use the scissors to make two small holes as the top of the tube, thread the string through the holes and tie to the top of the cage.    Voilà! The first time I made this toy Tim ignored it completely because he couldn't smell the food that was in there. To make him more interested I pulled open one of the ends a little so that he could smell t...

I finished the Solomon's knot shawl which I think looks nice as it is but I wanted to see what it looked like with a bit of a fringe or tassels or whatever you wish to call them. The fringe was easy and quick to complete. I'm not going to try to write down how I did them just watch this Youtube Video  it will give you the right idea. I only wanted thin tassels so I used two strands of yarn for each tassel which makes 4 strand tassels. This was enough for the look I wanted. Click  Here  for shawl without the tassels and a link to the shawl pattern.  Feel free to let me know if you think the shawl looks better with or without tassels.  Enjoy this post?

Not blogged in over a month! Busy busy busy. Haven't had time to craft but I've been trying to squeeze bits in here and there.  The second piece of clothing I have made, if you can call Slippers  clothing, is a shawl. I wanted a thin breezy shawl for spring/summer wear so nothing very warm. After looking at many crochet stitches I decided to give Solomon's knot a go. I'd heard this wasn't an easy stitch to complete but I wanted to give it a try. The good thing about this stitch is that the knot can be as big or as small as you want.  Here is the beginning of the shawl:  At the beginning I  found it quite difficult to keep track of where in the pattern I was, especially as this was a new stitch for me. To help with this I tied a piece of contrasting yarn to the point of the shawl (as seen in the picture). This was especially useful if I stopped crocheting and went back to it later on. However as the shawl got bigger I found it easier to pick up fro...