Good morning fellow hookers and craft enthusiasts! I hope you’ve all had a lovely Christmas and excited and enthusiastic about 2013. May it be a crafty one for us all. I for one am quite excited but also a bit terrified about this year. I’m busy organising stock for an online store which will be selling some of my creations, including the elephant string! I have done quite a bit of research and decided to stick with a South African company, but the store has international shipping too, so all of you who have been asking about the elephant string will be able to order in the not too distant future 🙂 YAY! I will post the link once everything is ready.
Now, for my first post of 2013 I thought I’d show you what I was up to before Christmas and over the holiday period. Being a crafter I decided two years ago that I would try to make most presents myself and so this year was no different. It’s a bit tricky to come up with ideas for everyone, especially the men in the family, since most of them don’t wear scarves and/or hats, so I ended up making things only for the kids and the ladies.
For the kids I made these really cute owl hats, Eliana modeled them for me and I forgot to take a photo of the cousin wearing his on Christmas Eve. I love this hat, it’s really quick and easy to make and the cotton/bamboo blend yarn I used is really soft and squishy.
A month or so before Christmas I posted a link of owl shaped phone covers on facebook and my brother’s girlfriend commented on the link, saying how much she liked the cover, so I obviously had to make her one. I used my go to Vinnis Colour cotton yarn and combined it with a lovely mohair to create some texture.
I had to make her pose with the cover, which she loved 🙂
For my sister, sister-in-law and closest friend I made cowls. I loved making these because it gave me the opportunity to try out some more stitches from Robyn Chachula’s book Crochet Stitches Visual Encyclopedia. For my sister’s cowl I used the Petal Link Stitch, adapting it to work in the round. This cowl is quite tight-fitting and can also be worn as a headband. It’s made with 100% bamboo yarn, which makes it soft and silky.
For my sister-in-law’s cowl I used the Kroller Stitch and a cotton/bamboo blend. This cowl is very chunky. I worked it flat and joined it when it was completed. I twisted it before joining and it can be work in a number of different ways.
I loved making the cowl for my friend, it was a challenge, since it’s two-tone and the work is only turned every two rows. I used the Kenitra Stitch pattern for this but changed colours every row, instead of every second row, so it looks different to the photo in the book. I must say that I prefer it this way.
This cowl is 100% cotton and I really think I need to make one for myself, I love the stitch and I love the two-tone gray.Well, that’s all the handmade items, except for some stars which I made as part of the tags on the gifts.
The stars are also all from the same book.
I don’t know about you but I love wrapping presents and I love how these turned out. It’s amazing what you can do with brown paper, yarn and masking tape 🙂
Here’s one of my favourite gifts, a lovely hook organiser from KnitPro.
I also got a sewing machine from my mom and I can’t wait to try it out!
If you follow me on facebook you may have seen my post about a late special request order, which I can now share with you. I was asked to make an elephant string, my most popular item by far but this one had to have tutus and ballet slippers added. I was so excited to make these, and they turned out so nicely. I just love the frilly tutus and the cute little slippers. I will add these to the store too (and no, I am still not parting with the pattern.)
Aren’t they just adorable? I have taken some photos with my DSLR and will post them as soon as I’ve processed them.I thought I’d share a bit of my holiday with you. There was quite a bit of eating on Christmas day. Apart from the starter, which varies from year to year (this year it was cucumber and melon salad with parma ham skewers- delicious!) we pretty much eat the same thing on Christmas day. A full on German Christmas lunch with a roast turkey, potato dumplings, red cabbage and gravy. We also had roast butternut squash and carrots this year (usually it’s peas and carrots) and for desert we have black forrest trifle and the Lindt Santa Claus made an appearance too. Eliana and her cousin had a fun bath together on Christmas day. There were plenty of homemade German Christmas cookies, courtesy of my mom, if you live in Gauteng, South Africa you can order them from her. We flew down to Cape Town to visit my sister-in-law and her husband. Eliana slept through most of the flight, she’s a great traveller 🙂 We went to the Johannesburg zoo, which she loved! She cooked with Oma and we received a surprise Christmas present from one of my mom’s friends in Germany. Matching handmade socks. They are totally awesome :)!
The drive back home was beautiful. The weather was in our favour, it was overcast and cool, which was great since our car doesn’t have an air-con.
After all the cowls I made as gifts I just had to make one for myself. I had wanted to try the crochet basket weave stitch for quite some time already and Cape Town plus some lovely black bamboo yarn gave me the perfect opportunity. Unfortunately I didn’t end up doing much other than crocheting for most of our Cape Town visit because I developed a horrible head-cold when I got there and seeing as it was a bit windy on most days I decided to play it safe and stayed indoors most days 🙁
I do have this lovely cowl to show for it though.
Oh, and here’s a photo of the little angels and stars/snowflakes I made for my mom in 2011.
Well, that’s about it for the moment. Don’t forget to send me photos of your projects (especially if you’ve made one of my tutorials) and I’ll feature you on a future post. You can email me stephanie@radiate.co.za, or if you’re on Instagram tag your photos #loveabagfullofcrochet and @stephaniedavies.