Bridal bouquet

It has been ages since I last updated this blog! Not for a lack of projects though, it seems the past few months have been the busiest so far, with baby's to crochet gifts for, house selling/buying, preparing to quit my job and ... preparing for our wedding. Since my family and me love to craft/DIY, we did a lot ourselves. When I say 'we', I mean they did most of the work and I mainly 'directed' :-)

My main solo wedding project was to crochet my bouquet, and I have been thinking about/planning this for about a year and properly working on it for the last few months. I found some beautiful patterns for calla lilies (http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/calla-lily-flower-2) and roses (http://www.fiori-uncinetto.com/). The leaves and sepals are derived from another pattern (http://happyberrycrochet.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/how-to-crochet-realistic-roses.html).

There are 7 calla lilies and 5 red roses and a dozen of stems of leaves. A fashionably small bouquet but surprisingly heavy and substantial. I got a lot of positive comments, people were fascinated that this could be done using crochet! :-)

Hula hoop rug weaving

At some point, I stumbled upon a Pintrest tutorial on how to weave a rug using old fabric and a hula hoop. Since I've only ever used my - rather large - hula hoop 2 or 3 times (not enough space indoors, I was constantly damaging things), I thought this may be a good way to put it to use.

I used a tutorial that seems to be down at the time of writing this (original link). However, Pintrest has lots of similar tutorials (here's a place to start).

It was very easy to do and went a lot more quickly than crocheting something this size (at least for me). I used 2 old double/king duvet sets with some spare fabric left over. After finishing the weaving, I crocheted 1 row around the edge to make it heavier and stop it from curling up. As an alternative, you may want to weave quite loosely (also when tying off!) to prevent this from happening.

And yes, that's the pouf I made a while ago there on the right. I do like upcycling and currently there's another idea brewing involving (non-hula-hoop) weaving and old jeans. Stay tuned...

Happy New Year!

Another year over, and lots of crochet has happened in its last few weeks! I've made more presents than ever before, some of which were only finished the day before, and broke my personal record of frogging. Good times :-)

I will be trying to catch up soon, writing a bit about every project and a 'how to crochet a basic hat (with modifications)', since I've now made 4 (3 complete, 2 in progress counting for 0.5 each) which are essentially very similar even though they look different.

Here's to more crafts in the New Year!

Hanging pockets

I've been saving old jeans for quite a while for a future project (stay tuned), and recently saw some picture on Pintrest that sparked an idea. It has been done lots of times before, just google 'jeans pocket hanger'. Here's mine, quick and dirty hand sewing but very handy to hide/organise clutter.

Crochet shell curtains

We have a nice big window in our bathroom. Unfortunately, it looks out onto a blind wall.

Adding curtains or blinds would take the light away, but having it bare didn't feel very cosy. Our local DIY business offered some cheap easy cut & paste frosted film, but this too, seemed to take away quite a bit of light, so we only applied it to the bottom half of the window. For the top half, it was crochet to the rescue ;-)

Using a fishnet like stitch, I crocheted 3 panels, to mimic, you guessed it, fish nets. They can be moved out of the way individually, allowing to maximise the amount of light entering the room. To finish it off, we attached sea shells (carefully collected when I was a child and subsequently forgotten in a box somewhere) to the bottom edge. Window makeover, nautical style...

Another paper light shade

Just as a quick side note, before the origami light shade, there was Jimbo:

Jimbo was originally going to be the new light shade for the bedroom, but turned out a bit heavier than expected. Rather than testing the strength of the ceiling suspension, Jimbo and an old uplighter were recycled into a 'paper palm tree' like structure. It sounds funky and it looks it too. I still don't know if I actually like it, but I couldn't quit discard the hours of gluing hundreds of triangular paper strips onto an old paper light shade (idea from here).

Origami light shade

After seeing some interesting light shades that looked DIYable, I hit Pintrest and found one that looked simple enough to make but complicated enough to have a bit of a wow factor. There are various tutorials out there resulting in a similar light shade, here's just one of them to get you started if you're interested.

Briefly, I used 5 A2 sheets of drawing paper (lengthwise), folding each one first, punching holes in the top & bottom, then using clear tape on the inside to attach them to one another into the round. Next, I threaded a piece of string through the holes in the top, and similarly another one for the bottom. This construction was then hung over an existing spherical light shade and the strings tightened to form an origami sphere covering the existing shade.

While it took a bit longer than it sounds, it wasn't particularly hard and it's definitely worth it in my opinion. Much better than the bare bulb that was there the previous couple of months! It gives a lovely indirect light, though you could get more light by not tightening the bottom string. For comparison, here's Habitat's £20 version & £35 version. I know which one's my favourite!