FINALLYOMIGODFINALLY

Well, kids, I finally did it. I finally posted my VERY FIRST pattern on Etsy. Wooooooo...That means that TLOPTIWMODWIGATI(IS) -- The List Of Patterns That I Will Make One Day When I Get Around To It (I Swear) -- is one item shorter!

Anyway, have a look at it: PATTERN Amigurumi Kitten Finger Puppet

It's a cute little kitten pattern, quite simple and quick, but fun. I hope you like :)

noisypitta.etsy.com

I'm back!

Hi everyone! I'm back from a week in Seattle for my Grandpa's memorial, and then a week of struggling to survive through Horti peak season and 8-hour jet lag.

Oooooh, I spent WAY too much money on yarn and crochet accoutrements while I was there! (And yes, I know that's not strictly a correct use of the word "accoutrements", but I don't care...It sounds niiiiiice.) I think I spent about £30 in Seattle, on yarn and books, and another £25 when I got back, on more yarn to use on a pattern in one of the aforementioned books...Yikes. I justify it by saying that I'll probably end up making the money back in sales! I don't know if that will end up being true, but again, it sounds niiiiiiiiiiiiiiice.

While out in Seattle, I did quite a lot of crocheting...I was surprised that I managed to get so much done, but I guess it's different when you haven't got to do any housework or run around after a two-year-old! I made a kitten for my aunt Lynita, and a strange little bunny-type creature for my cousin Marina, which I will post here once I figure out how to get it off my phone...

Now that I'm back, I have made some little sachets for my neighbour, which will eventually be filled with lavender and hung in her closet, and I've started on a little devil 'gurumi...But my big project at the moment is the babydoll dress pattern from Crochet Me. It's a gorgeous little pattern, and I hope I don't mess it up! I purposely don't do garments because they're hard! I'm far too impatient to be diligent with gauge, etc. So we'll see.

Anyway, to wrap up this post, I feel as though I need to publicise the great places I saw when out in Seattle...

• Village Yarn and Tea: My aunt Lynita took me to Village Yarn and Tea to meet her friend Anna, on the first day I was there. We browsed the shop for AGES, and then sat down to, omigod, the NICEST cuppa I have ever had. I was boring and went for a Scottish breakfast variety, but I also got a coconut tea scone (made with chopped up tea leaves that looked a little like poppy seeds) and clotted cream. Plus, the tea was served in gorgeous little tea sets, each one different...Mine was a sort of sea green colour with gold trim and a scalloped shape. Loooovvvveeeeellllly. Anyway, they have a fantastic selection of yarns and haberdashery, and the whole place smelled faintly of fudge brownies. Absolute heaven!
• Jo-Ann Fabrics: It's a big chain, and everyone knows it, but I still wish I had one next door. It kicks Hobbycraft's butt up and down the block!!!
• And one that I went to last time, but didn't get a chance to go on this trip: Main Street Yarn. It's got a great selection of lovely yarns to fondle. (Tee-hee!)

Happy hooking :)

noisypitta.etsy.com

Kid-safe kitten

Okay, I'm being the proud 'gurumi-ist again. I have come up with the ultimate way of making toys kid-safe (kid-proof?) by crocheting arms and legs into the fabric as you go, and it's much more secure than simply whipstitching. Here's the latest kitten I've done:
First off, I must explain the crazy nature of her colouring: it's a kind of "recycled yarn" look, like that Muji elephant I have. I did it because I had half a ball of five different yarns lying around; not enough to do a whole ANYTHING, but enough between them to accomplish something nice. It was a painstaking process to use this method, because it involved cutting each of the five balls into lengths of about 2ft, and then "randomly" tying them together as I wound a new ball out of them. I think the whole thing was worth it, though; I like the colour effect, and it got rid of A LOT of scrap yarn.

Anyway, the point of showing you the picture was so that you could see what the kitten looks like with "integrated" arms and legs. I'm sorry I haven't got a great closeup of it, but the joins look exactly the same as whipstitching, only because they're crocheted into the fabric, they're much stronger.

The idea is, you make the arms as normal; these ones are tubes with a circumference of 12 st. Then on the last round, only sc for half the stitches (in this case, 6 st), then ch 1 and pinch the fabric together. For the last 6 st, stitch through two layers of fabric. This gives you a nice, clean edge to your arm. (Please note, this is the same technique as Elisabeth Doherty uses in her book, "Amigurumi! Super Happy Crochet Cute", which can be found at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.)

Once you've finished off your arms and legs, continue onto the head and body, working from the top down, and when you get to the place where you want your arms to be, you stitch through BOTH the last row of stitches of your arm, and the stitches on the body. Et voila! When I finally finish the kitten pattern (I KNOW, I've been promising this for ages), I will do two versions, one for the joined arms and one for the kid-safe arms.

noisypitta.etsy.com

What's cuter?

Okay, folks, so the question is, what's cuter? Generally speaking, the rules of cuteness state (okay, slightly paraphrased) that the bigger the head, proportionally speaking, the cuter something is. So I modified Poppet (the white kitten) to have a bigger head (the blue kitten), but actually, I'm not sure. I kind of liked Poppet as she was.

Any opinions?

noisypitta.etsy.com

No dice on the comp

Well, as you may well have already ascertained, I did not make the final of the Hobbycraft craft competition. Of course, if you see the finalists, you'll understand why! There are some fantastic creations on show, and you can still vote for your favourite by going onto their website.

I'm still working on the kitten pattern, doing some tweaks to the body shape. In the meantime, when I haven't been crocheting, I've also done some drawings for an elephant and a weird little alien dude. I also mistakenly started a little chick today, but I haven't got eyes that are small enough, so who knows what I'll do! I'm leaning toward the french knot route...

noisypitta.etsy.com

Kitten pattern coming, and Twitter

I am currently in the process of testing a pattern for a kitten not unlike Poppet...I have a few modifications, tweaks if you will, that I want to make, and I need to take some pictures, but once it's finished, I will be offering it for free to a few testers. Of course, I'll require a bit of feedback! It'll be the first pattern I've published, but I think it's fairly straightforward, and a good, solid pattern. Anyway, keep your eyes peeled, and of course, if you'd like to give it a try, please let me know!

Also, I have joined Twitter, so if you like, you can follow me, although at the moment, my username is not exclusively amigurumi! I have only found one other 'gurumi-ist, SAPlanet (Etsy shop here), and I would love to see some more of you on it. Wouldn't it be great, a little community of 'gurumi-ists all creating stuff together. 1-2-3...Awwwwwww.

noisypitta.etsy.com

Poppet, the accidental kitten

Say, "Hello, Poppet!"

Well, when you run out of yarn for one project and are waiting with bated breath for the next lot to arrive, there's only one thing you can do: start another project! I know, I know, I said before that I don't like doing that, and, well, I don't. But this is the exception.

See, I've been stuck at home on my butt for three (going on four) days now; I was written off work for a week because of tonsillitis. I had it two weeks ago, did my whole course of antibiotics, then the day after I went off the penicillin, it flared up again. I didn't think it could possibly be tonsillitis again, so I didn't go to the doctor's until Friday, when I just couldn't take the pain anymore. He immediately told me to take a week off work, and sent me to the pharmacy with a prescription for THREE TIMES AS MUCH PENICILLIN. You can imagine the poorly tummy that has ensued as well, which isn't very nice, but hey! I've lost half a stone! Cool.

ANYWAY, back to the topic. Since I haven't had any yarn to work on the baby project, I decided to make a phone charm, loosely based on this kitten finger puppet:

However, when I had made most of the head and attached the little phone charm strap, I realised two things:

1) If you put this on a mobile phone, it's so big that if it hits you in the head, you will probably pass out.

2) Point number 1 is completely moot since the head is actually too big to fit back through the phone charm strap, making it impossible to attach it to anything in the first place.

So I gave up that idea.

Since I'd already made a head, I decided to go ahead an attach a body, which was fairly straightforward. The most difficult bits of this project were getting the bobble toes in the right places and embroidering the little toenails. (Well, the last bit was pretty easy, just fiddly.) There was a lot of thought in this process, too, which might not be obvious: Poppet has five toes on her front paws and only four on her back paws, just like real puddy-tats.

Probably the greatest annoyance/disappointment of the project was that, due to her size, I had to use 9mm eyes to hold on the arms and legs, but the brand of eyes that I've bought seems to have very short posts, and very painful washers to attach! They're fine for just using as eyes, but not great as joints. It ended up with me this morning leaning over my son's play table with an inside-out cat, a folded up bit of cloth, and putting all my weight on the washer to get it to go on. To be honest, I'm not entirely convinced that her arms and legs won't pop off in the future, if she were to be played with. However, she's really only meant for decoration, and I've said that in her listing on Etsy. And, probably a good thing, it's prompted me to create a product guarantee for my shop, which hopefully will put customers' minds at ease.

So finally, the plug:

Poppet is available in my Etsy shop!!!

noisypitta.etsy.com