Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Crochet snowmen heads

I finally made the snowman head that set me on the path of crocheting. Last year around the same time I came across this awesome Christmas ornament.
from an equal cool site . Unfortunately I did not posses any crocheting skills. My mother had tried to teach me the basics on several occasions but this had always ended in much laughing (mostly from her side) and no results.
At the same time that I spotted these great snowmen I also spotted ornament knitting with Arne and Carlos. Which ignited my current creativity wave. The child sweater that I knitted after Christmas re-acquainted me  with the art of  crocheting. After knitting the ornaments and the sweater I got a been-there-done-that-feeling with knitting for a few months. I seized the opportunity and decided that I had to change my lack of crochet skills and started to search on you tube for patient teachers. I found a bunch of them with one particular favorite . The lady in these movies explains very clear and the image quality is great. I was wondering if I could recommend these movies to a non-dutch speaker by using the automatic capture button. The results were very funny but far from useful. In the first few seconds you tube came up with word suggestions like "hike" and "holocaust". After having a quit productive crochet year filled with several cactus and stuffed animals, yesterday I finally made a snowman!
The nose is a bit to low which resulted lacking some space for a happy smile but all in all I am quit satisfied. I will keep you posted on the development of some companionship for my lonely friend.

Thursday, October 4, 2012

The very hungry caterpillar

I have some trouble with buying gifts now a days. In the past when I was still a student my friends (and me) cloud not simply buy every (small) thing that we liked. Now that we are all working it is harder to find a good present because all the "good" small things we simply buy when we realize we like them. In such a case a personalized hand made gift is ideal! My first hand made gift was to my sister, I made her a crocheted cactus and loved it.


After that I decided to give the option of a hand made gift whenever I ask what somebody would like to get as a present. My niece was creating a "very hungry caterpillar" room for her son and could use another caterpillar. This was a very easy project, I created the caterpillar by increasing and decreasing like if making a round shape. I added some wire to be able to fake crawling position. A friend of mine pointed out that I reversed the leg amount (oops), well lets call it creative expression.