Hoooked Gifraffe

 The lovely giraffe comes from another kit, this time from Hoooked. The pattern was very good and quite simple, the body and head of the giraffe are crocheted as one piece which means there's no difficulty with attaching the head later.

I did however find the Eco Barbante yarn very hard to work with. Especially with the bamboo hook provided it was very tough on the hands.

But the outcome is very pleasing!

Crocheted Dinosaur

This little fellow comes from a kit I picked up at the Festival of Quilts last year. The kit came from TOFT and I had been wanting one of their kits for quite a while. I was so excited to see they had dinosaur kits at the Festival that I had to get one!

Creeper Blanket

For the same friend I made an apron for, I also made a creeper blanket for her son.

Sorry about the wonky picture! I was in a rush to get it done and sent out, and didn't have the time to photograph it properly.

Penguin Patrol

I've been crocheting penguins in between everything else. I haven't got them quite right yet, but they are a fun looking lot!

Crochet hook roll

On my post about my little wallet I made Sasha mentioned needing something similar for her crochet hooks. I thought that was a great idea and promptly stole it.

I used fabrics from a Crafty Creatives box (the measuring tape and bobbins), and from the Bolt End Club (the stripy binding).

You can see that I've somehow manged to lose all my crochet hooks, only two remain. I got them out to measure out the spaces and they have vanished.

Hillarys Blinds Country Craft Competion

A little while ago I received an e-mail from a friend (thanks Laura!) about a craft competition run by Hillarys Blinds. You got to choose one of four fabrics, of which you received a 100cmx100cm piece and with which you could make whatever you fancied.

I chose a fabric called Calluna Amethyst.

Calluna Amethyst

I loved the bold, warm colours in the fabric and the way that this fabric gave the impression of falling petals.

My idea was to embellish a cushion, so I started by making a simple envelope back cushion cover.

Front

And back

 I found some wool I had left from an old project that matched the colours in the fabric.

The materials

And made crocheted roses and petals. For the roses I used a pattern from Petals to Picots. And for the petals and leaves I made it up as I went along!

The finished flowers and petals. 

After a lot of umming and ahing I finally settled on how I wanted the flowers to be arranged on the cushion.

The finished piece.

The petals pop a lot more in real life than on the photo, unfortunately, but I'm really happy with the finished piece.

And I've still got enough fabric to make another cushion!

Crocheted handwarmers and a life update

Hi there! I know I've not been a very good blogger lately. I've been busy, busy, busy at my new job, and I recently got my permanent position there. This has meant that Michael and I have been looking at places of our own. We've found a lovely 3 bed apartment in Birmingham and we hope to be moving just before or after Christmas. Hopefully once we're settled in there I'll have more time for blogging!

I have still been crafting, slowly working on various projects, but today I wanted to show you these handwarmers I made. They are made with Crystal Palace Mochi Plus wool and are very soft and warm. I'm very proud of these and have been commissioned to make a few pairs for other people!

Hopefully my next post won't be too far in the future. See you then.

Crochet bag

I have been crocheting again. While I was in Birmingham, I got the itch after going into a wool shop and found the blue and brown wools for a steal. It took me two days to crochet, and another day to sew it up. My mum helped me to make the lining for inside the bag and to support the strap.

I'm very pleased with it and I think I shall be making more crochet bags in the future!

Crocheting the night away

I've been crocheting again. Not quite all night as the title suggests, but in the evenings, because it's easier on the eyes in the dark evenings than stitching!

I've put this one up for sale on Etsy! Please also don't forget to check out my giveaway!

My Memories Suite review

A little while ago I was asked to do a review and giveaway for the My Memories Suite. I've decided to this in two parts; today the review, and in a couple of days the giveaway.

At first I was hesitant to write a review about this software, as it is scrapbooking software, and I'm not a scrapbooker. However, I downloaded the trial version, had a little play around with it and decided it might be quite fun for presenting photos on my blog as I have seen other people do.

Here's a page I made for a few doilies I made over the last week or so. These photos were again taken with that lovely EOS 5D Mark II. 

This is a page with some views of the town we live in, Roermond.

It's quite simple to make some nice pages with the software. I'm not a terribly creative person when it comes to these kinds of things, so I'm sure you guys and gals can come up with something better.

The software itself is very easy to use. There are premade pages, where you just add your own photos and text, you can also design your own pages, which I did. You can choose your own background paper, matting, and embellishments. A limited selection of the papers and embellishments come with the software, you can pay for different kits, and there are also some free kits on the My Memories website, these kits can also be used in software such as Adobe Photoshop.

As well as making single pages with just images, you can make interactive scrapbooks, with videos, music and other sounds and you can make calendars, which can be printed, burnt to DVD or exported to your iPod, so you can share them with your friends.

Now, I do have a couple of criticisms of the software. First of all, you need to have Quicktime installed to run it. I don't like Quicktime, it slows down my computer, and it is constantly bothering me with updates, not just for itself, but it also tries to get me to install Safari and iTunes. Okay, so My Memories can't control what Quicktime does, but for me, the use of Quicktime gives it a little minus mark.

Secondly, and this might just be related to Quicktime running, but the My Memories Suite is quite slow on my computer. I'm running Windows 7 32-bit on a laptop with 1GB of RAM and 80GB of hard disk space. This is on the lower end of supported systems for this software, so if you have anything less than this, you are going to have problems running the software.

Finally, you need to have a very good Internet connection to download this software. I have a decent, not great, connection and I nearly gave up on trying to install the My Memories Suite, in all it took me about two hours to download and install. This is more time than I have ever spent on downloading any other piece of software.

Overall, the My Memories Suite is a nice bit of software. If you like embellishing your photographs and spicing up your videos, you'll have a lot of fun. You do need a decent computer to run it, and a good Internet connection to install it, if you do not purchase the physical disc.

If you'd like any more information on this software check out these links:

Blog- http://blog.mymemories.com/
Facebook- http://www.facebook.com/pages/MyMemories/140359372717593
Twitter- http://twitter.com/#!/mymemoriessuite

The giveaway will be up in the next couple of days. If you're unsure whether you'd want to/be able to use this  software, I suggest checking out the trial version, if you win the giveaway, you won't have to install the software again, you just have to input the registration key. 

If you choose to buy anything off the My Memories website, you can use the following code at check-out to receive $10 off the software, and a $10 voucher to use on the site, STMMMS78498.

Crochet

I've been doing some more crochet again lately. I think I'm getting a bit better. Here's a couple of things I made.

I learned how to crochet hearts. I will be making some brooches and hair clips as soon as I can get to a craft store for supplies.

A few bits and bobs

I'm going away for a week starting early tomorrow (train leaves at 5.15am, ugh...), so I thought I'd post a quick update before I leave.

First, one quick reason why I love volunteering at a charity bookshop:

 

Cross stitch magazine for 25p each. Three called "Cross Country Stitching" which have some nice classic designs, although they are quite religious, which is not my cup of tea, but I'm sure I can leave out the Bible versus or replace them with other quotes should I use one of the patterns. "Quick & Easy Cross Stitch" has some sweet bear patterns, a lovely alphabet pattern and lots of Christmas patterns in it, and also still has its free gift attached. 

Next, I take back what I said about amigurumi looking easy. I made a couple of teddies so bad I dare not show them, and a little pig with no legs, which looks slightly stupid, but I think is sort of cute.

Make me some legs, and sort out my eyes!

My thumbs almost back to normal, I can do cross stitching without pain as long as I don't do it for too long, so I've done a little bit more of my Pokémon biscornu.

 

I'm sure you can guess who this is.

Lastly, I pulled out a sampler I started well over a year ago and haven't worked on in months and did a little more on it.

It's very creased, and seems to have magically acquired some stains, so I hope those will wash out.

That's about it. Keep stitching. I'll be back in a week!

Crochet flowers

I somehow managed to hurt the joints in my thumb quite badly while stitching Hulk so I've been off the stitching for a few days as it hurts to grip the needle. I tried some crochet yesterday, as this does not put so much pressure on my thumb, and I've been learning to make some flowers.

The black wool was the only decent one I had for this, the red was just too thick. I like how they came out though, and I think if I can get some different wools I'll have a lot of fun making loads of these.

I also got a book on amigurumi out from the library, I've been looking through it and it doesn't look too hard, so as soon as I can get some wool and stuffing I'll try my hand at some little animals too.