Lariath- Live a Little.

I wanted a dark blue crochet salvia but couldn't find a pattern I liked. So I used a pattern for lavender instead. This pattern is very easy and quite fun to make. Definitely a good pattern for a beginner. It is a video and easy to follow along. I have noticed that a lot of crochet flower patterns are videos as it's easier to show how a flower is made rather than following a written pattern. You can find the video  Here . As salvias have leaves along their stems I added a few leaves to my flowers. For this I used a leaf pattern found  Here . I used leaf pattern number 5- long and narrow leaf.  Hook off!  Enjoy this post?

I love plants. Infact I have a slight obsession with houseplants. That being said, they do have to be alive; buying flowers that are destined to die, just to display them for a few days, doesn't sit right with me. Not when you can buy a plant that can thrive for a long time. I do understand that they can look gorgeous and add interest and a pop of colour though.  This got me into thinking about fake flowers, there are some lovely fake flowers to purchase now but many are made using plastic, again this doesn't sit right with me. So I decided to use things I already had around the house (and garden) to make some decorative flowers.  I used some stems from a Crocosima in my garden that had died back for the winter. I think they give a nice natural look, they are quite sturdy and will last quite a long time. To add a bit of colour I chose three shades of purple with pop of yellow to make small crochet lilac flowers.  I think they look nice and simple by themselves but would a...

In the past I have had to re-purchase and re-purchase chargers because they get borrowed or moved and never returned, be that at home or not. So I wanted to customize my charger so that, 1 its easer to find and 2 nobody can mistake it as their own. So I had a quick peruse on the internet and found that there are a few good crochet cable customisations out there but, as I am OBSESSED with plants, it had to be a vine. The problem now is that I want vines everywhere not just on my charger. I have a plant problem.  Find the pattern I used  Here . Hook off.  Enjoy this post?

My mum asked me to replace her very old doily style coasters which she uses for her ornaments. She only wanted some plain, simple and discreet coasters. So here they are:  Crocheting circles in rounds usually ends up with a hexagon shape rather than a perfect circle. To get the perfect circle shape crocheting in rows is better:  End the row with a slip stitch into the stitch at the beginning of the row, chain 1 (if doing single crochet; chain 2 for double crochet ect) do the first crochet stitch into the same stitch as the slip stitch, continue with the next row. There are many tutorials online it just requires a quick search.   This is how the coasters turned out. I blocked the yarn, using pins and an Iron, which worked well to get rid of the curled edges. They worked up nice and quick, hope my mum finds them useful.  Hook off.  Enjoy this post?

After finishing our Biomedical Science degree my friend and I wanted another project to do together (like we hadn't done enough projects already). We found an amazing website devoted to making gorgeous blankets. The site has a large variety of different blanket patterns, the yarn used to make the blanket is sent out in the post in a lovely sheer drawstring bag. The patterns are very well written and the yarn is good quality with a beautiful array of colours. My friend and I each chose a pack and a pattern to crochet and updated each other on our progress which made crocheting this blanket even more fun!  As I have a habit of mashing things together I chose the blanket with the colours that I loved and then chose the blanket pattern that I preferred. It took a bit of preparation before I could start the blanket as I had to decide what order I wanted the colours in and then transfer those colours into the written pattern. I had to make an excel document so I could follow the colour p...

I have recently become a little obsessed with plants. Mainly houseplants at the moment with a mini jungle that I have started. Here's a small section: As my plants have got bigger and created 'pup' or baby plants I needed somewhere to put them and I wanted it to be somewhere decorative and pretty. Who doesn't love to show off baby plants?! I had three glass pots that were previously dessert pots. I keep a lot of glass jars ect because I prefer glass to plastic for storing things and these glass desert pots were dinky and cute, don't judge me. So i decided to use these as small plant pots for the baby plants. Yes I know plants should all be in pots with drainage holes but these are just temporary pots whilst the plants establish themselves a little before being placed in their permanent pot/position. Now, I'm slowly running out of windowsill space for plants thus needing to find somewhere else for the babies. With my crocheting skills I crocheted some ha...

                                                     My partner and I recently bought a house. The previous owners liked open spaces so they knocked down a wall to create a larger living space and removed a door that was not longer required. However, instead of filling the door in completely they installed a window. This window is between the hallway and the living room so people entering the house can see into the living room when entering the front door. Being a person who likes my personal space, this window is a pain. I don't want people at the front door looking in at me sitting on the couch minding my own business. I'm not sure what the thought process behind the window was, it's an interesting characteristic but not really practical. Anyway, instead of getting rid of the window and filling in the wall I decided 'cover it up'. Using homegrown ba...

After giving a C2C graph blanket a try for  60 million trebles  I fell in love with the ability to make any pattern possible with a little bit of thought and planning. I also find the C2C graph fun, interesting and slightly challenging to make. The wolf blanket is the biggest blanket I have made so far and it took me about a year to make in between work, uni, buying (and doing up) a house and what little life I manage to squeeze into all that. The worst part for me was all the ends I had to sew in and I mean ALL the ends, so so so so many ends and I HATE sewing! Putting that part aside I loved making this. Just to put the size of the blanket into perspective here is a terrible picture of my double bed:  Hook off. Enjoy this post?

I had a quick try at Tunisian crochet a while ago for my  Afghan stitch charity square . I wanted to give afghan crochet another go for something small. I came across some lovely Tunisian crochet feathers that I had the urge to try. When I made the Tunisian crochet square I wasn't happy about the way the square curled upon itself when finished, however a feather with a bit of a curl sounded perfect. But what to use them for? My love of dream catchers started when I was very young. I just like the way something so simple can be made into something so pretty. I also have an affection for trees. One of my favourite trees is the Japanese Maple, which I happen to have in my garden, it changes gradually from orange to green, beautiful (such a nice surprise to find this gorgeous tree after I moved in to my house!). Anyway back to the point. I wanted to mash together two things that I love, dream catchers and trees. I roughly followed the tree of life wire crafts that can easily be fou...

String art is getting more popular at the moment. I've been wanting to try it for a while now, I just needed an excuse to give it a go. A friend and I make gifts for each other each Christmas so this was my excuse. However I didn't get to see him until April so this post had to wait. It took me a while to decide what picture I wanted to try with string art. I didn't want my first string art project to be something really complicated but I also wanted it to look good, as it was a gift. Trying to find something that my friend would like, that wasn't too complicated, was difficult. He loves wolves so I was determined to make a wolf. I think I spent more time trying to decide on a picture to try than actually making the thing. I also spent ages trying to find some wood. So I ended up buying a chopping board... may not have been the best idea though as I will explain in a bit. So what I used: -nails -poster paint -thin string -chopping board -paint brush -hamm...

A while back I fell in love with the tiny hats I made for the  Crochet Santa Minion  and the Crochet Snowmen . I had a great urge to make more this year but I want to make a LOT so I wanted to find an easier and quicker way than crochet. Here it is: I think these would be a great crafts for kids where they could choose whatever colour Yarn strips they want to make funky coloured hats! To make these hats you need: Yarn (I used some scrap Yarn in holiday colours but any colour would look awesome) Scissors Tape measure/ruler Toilet roll or kitchen roll Cotton balls First cut the toilet roll or kitchen roll into Just under 1 inch pieces and cut the Yarn into approx 12 inch strips. For one hat I used 1 piece of toilet roll and between 40-60 strips of Yarn (depending on the Yarn thickness). Next tie Larks head knots with the Yarn all the way around the toilet roll, here's how: Take a piece of Yarn put the two ends together to fold the Yarn in half....

I was requested to make a coaster, the request was for a square or circle (whatever was easiest for me) but I wanted to make something a little bit more exciting. The recipient likes dinosaurs so here is a dinosaur coaster or appliqué that I made. It used more red yarn than I expected so I made half of it in red and half in grey. To blend the grey and red a bit more I surfaced crocheted some red stripes. I think it turned out OK to say I didn't have a pattern. Maybe the neck should have been a little thicker and the body a bit smaller... It is a big coaster. I did enjoy making it though as it's something I haven't tried before. I can write up the pattern if anyone wants it. Enjoy this post?

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...