The Big Five: Big Knit Hats

A friend of mine set the challenge to make at least five hats for the Innocent Big Knit. In our case, we crocheted the hats. Here’s my result:

I tried to follow a pattern for the first one (the owl) but ended up improvising all five ^_^”

All there’s left to do now is put them in the mail and wait for January, that’s when they will appear in supermarkets 🙂

Like this!

Cheers, Lydia

Ps: there are two days left to vote in the AmigurumiPatterns.net design contest. Follow this link and vote for your top five designs. Don’t forget to check out my entry, Dr. Bearnard and nurse Octopus!

Design contest: voting is now open!!~

Hey guys,

you might remember my entry for the Amigurumi Patterns.net design contest, Dr. Bear and his lovely nurse Octopus:

From today until saturday (25th till the 30th of november) you can vote for your five(!) favorite designs here! Check it out and please vote for me? It would be totally awesome to win something with my very first completely-not-based-on-any-existing-character-ever design! In other words, this was the first (and so far, only) design I’ve ever made without pictures to work from.

I know there are loads of great designs that entered in the contest, but please take your time to check them out and hopefully, mine will be in your top five!

Also, if I win anything, I will háve to do a giveaway/contest kind of thingy, cause lets face it: what’s a crocheting girl to do with two copies of Zoomigurumi? ^_~

Here’s the link one more time: Amigurumi Patterns.net design contest voting page. Click the little hearts on your top five so that they turn green and leave your name and email. Thanks!

Check out the cuteness once more:

Cheers, Lydia

PS: choosing five favorites is hard! I know, I’ve done it. If you’re having trouble finding five to vote for, consider Chance the Football Cheeta, by Lelie. He was made by a friend of mine ^_^

Maggie the African flower owl – finished!

Some of you may have followed the work in progress on FaceBook and now, I’m proud to present the finished item!

This was a big project. It didn’t take up as much time as I thought it would and didn’t come out as big as I wanted, but it still was a lot of work! And in the end, it was definitely worth it.

The entire owl is built up out of 34 ‘african flowers’, two circles for the eyes, and one cone for the beak. Making all the parts isn’t that hard, once you get the hang of working on the flowers. It’s putting it all together that got to me. I usually shy away from projects with loads of parts, but this one just had a way of captivating me. It seemed like I just couldn’t stop working on it ^_^”

So, after a lot of crocheting parts together, I got this result:

Inside out after attaching all the flowers together

And finally, almost an entire bag of stuffing and some finishing touches later, the completed project!

I’m still on the fence on whether to keep this one myself, or combine it with another upcoming project: the baby gift for my brothers friend.

I have got plenty of yarn left over to work on another one. I ended up only using a little over half a grey skein, less than half a white skein and just over one blue skein. So maybe I will try making a bigger one by doubling the tread and using a bigger needle. But first I will make some hats for The Big Knit and a friend of mine asked me to help him out by doing a little commission for him.
So I know I won’t get bored any time soon 🙂

Have a great weekend and don’t forget that starting tomorrow, you can vote for my Dr. Bearnard and nurse Octopus design in the AmigurumiPatterns.net design contest! (The prices are awesome and if I win something, I just need to do a giveaway ^_~)

Cheers, Lydia

The Big Knit

Even though I’m still working on putting my african flower owl together, I’m already thinking about my next project. I couldn’t really decide what to make next when one of my friends brought The Big Knit to my attention.

This is an initiative from Innocent Smoothies to help raise money for charity. Over here in the Netherlands, they’ve chosen to support the National Fund for the Elderly (freely translated).

Basically, what they ask you to do is knit or crochet a tiny hat (or two, or a hundred) and send them to Innocent. They then put the hats on their smoothies and sell them. For every smoothy sold, they donate a certain amount to the chosen charity.

It’s an initiative that has been around in the Netherlands for a couple years already, but I have to admit I never really give it much thought. Mostly because I didn’t know that the hats were made by the public and frankly, I can’t knit to save my life ^_^” Luckily, they also provide some crochet patterns on their site, so this year, I will try to make as many as I can. They have to be send in before the 1st of december, so I think I will start as soon as I can.

That is, once I’ve finished putting all the the african flowers together to form an owl. Or maybe I’ll just put it aside for a bit.

Have you ever joined The Big Knit or another incentive where you crochet/knit for charity?
Check your ‘local’ Innocent Smoothies website to see if you can still contribute for this years’ Big Knit and make a diffence ^_^

Cheers, Lydia

I have made a huge mistake…

All the skeins I (believe I) will need for the African Flower Owl

Remember this giant stash of yarn I bought at the crafts fair a few weeks back? I really thought I would need that much yarn to make Maggie the African flower owl. As it turns out, I only need to make about 6 more flowers and I’m still on my first skeins. I’m using three colours: white, grey, and blue and it looks like I will need just one skein of each.

It also looks like it will become a bit smaller than it should be. But I won’t know for sure until I’ve put all the pieces together.

This will become the front, the white parts are the eyes

Now I need to figure out what to do with the rest of the yarn. Maybe I will make a matching afghan (the one I’ve been meaning to make since summer). On the other hand, if it really turns out smaller than expected, I might make another one with a bigger hook and a double thread.

What do you do when it turns out you have bought way too much yarn for a single project?

In other news: this blog has gotten over 10.000 views! I was hoping it would reach this number before my anniversary (the 4th of December) but I never thought it would go this quick! So now, I’m trying to think of a way to celebrate, but can’t quite decide what to do. A friend of mine suggested a give-away or something like a crochet-along, but I’m still not sure. So any suggestions are very welcome!

Cheers, Lydia

Docto-Bear (design contest entry)

Octo-Bear works really hard during the month October as a mascotte, but that doesn’t mean the duo just sits around the rest of the year! Instead, they try to rid the world of illness using the best medicine there is: cuteness overload.

Meet Dr. Bearnard and his trusty Nurse Octopus:

I had loads of fun designing this duo and it was a challenge for me to make the clothes (well, jacket) I’d never made anything like this from scratch and I’m pretty proud to say that they got accepted as my entry for the AmigurumiPatterns.net Design Contest. The theme of the contest is animals at work and the other entries look amazing! So I’m crossing my fingers, hoping I might win something. But the best part is, all the visitors of the site get to vote, so when the time comes, please vote for me? Don’t worry, I’ll remind you guys when you can vote ^_~
You can check out all the entries here.

In other news: Crochetnanigans is now on FaceBook! Just check the sidebar on the right side of your screen and you will find the link to like this page! Here I will post WIP’s and tiny tidbits that just aren’t big enough to make into a blogpost. And it will be easier for you guys to post about the things you’ve made using my patterns, or anything else you’d like me to know about ^_^ So I hope you will join me there as well!

Have a wonderful sunday!
Cheers, Lydia

Pin-cushion piggy

Yesterday, I decided it was about time to retire my old pincushion:

This little whale was my very first crochet creation, but because of that, the stitches aren’t very tight. The result? He tends to eat my needles ^_^”

Now he can spend the rest of his days safely on a shelve, not needing to worry about accidentally filling his belly with sharp objects.

A while back I got a nice goodiebag from Echtstudio. In it was a cute little pattern from DenDennis for a “porcupine”.

Being a combination between a piglet and a cactus, this little critter is just the perfect candidate for my new pincushion! I might even start using pins now that I’ve got them at hand instead of somewhere at the bottom of my big box of ‘stuff I might need while crocheting‘.

He can even hop out of his little pot, but he prefers not to (since he’s a bit unstable when he does, he still needs to hold on to the rim)

What do you use to hold your pins and needles? Just an everyday pincushion, your current projects or something you made especially for them?

Cheers, Lydia

Lovely day for a crafts fair

Welcome to KreaDoe

Yesterday was my first time ever visiting the ‘KreaDoe’, a huge crafts fair in the Netherlands, together with my friend Doretta (site in Dutch). I had no idea what to expect and I have to say, it really blew me away.

First of all: Saturday is not the best day for visiting this event. It was busy:

Yes, blurry pictures.. My phone isn’t the best when it comes to busy overview pictures and I didn’t feel like lugging my camera around all the time ^_^” but you get the idea!

Second: it was a lot of the same stuff. I must have seen at least a hundred stands with different kinds of paper for making cards. Ok, maybe I’m exaggerating, but trust me when I say there were many!

Third: it was tons and tons of fun! So much to see and so much inspiration to be drawn from every corner! One thing I picked up was a DIY package for a little felt owl. If I like making it, I might order some more!

Winter Owl Decoration
It has all you need to make it, except for pins, scissors, glue and measuring tape ^_^

One of the stands that really stood out to me was that of Fantasy Atelier (site in Dutch!). They make the most amazing, tiny little castles and fairy-trees with mostly natural products. If you’ve ever been to the Efteling (a big themepark in the Netherlands) you can compare what they make with the ‘Droomvlucht’. Aw heck, you guys need a picture to know what I’m talking about:

Castle Globe

“Beanstalk”

All their products looked so amazing, I fell in love with them. They also sell DIY packages, I think I just need to put at least one of those on my Christmas Wishlist ❤

At the EchtStudio stand, you could have your picture taken with Joke, from AmigurumiPatterns.net, in order to get a 10% discount. The only catch was that you needed to bring a Zoomigurumi with you. I finished my Wasabi the Bunny way before the event, but bought the book last wednesday and couldn’t resist working on the Toucan. I finished work on it friday night, just in time to join me on my trip:

Me with Joke and Zico the Toucan

And a 10% discount was just what I needed, since I found out how much yarn is needed to make that African Flower Owl I love so much. Which brings me to my purchases of the day:

All the skeins I (believe I) will need for the African Flower Owl

Other stuff I got: present labels, the felt owl, a new crochet hook (4mm), colour changing yarn and some felt-wool (wool-felt? no idea what the stuff is called ^_^”)

All together!

After all that shopping, we enjoyed a nice cup of hot cocoa (me) and coffee (Doretta) at a café in Utrecht and then went on our way home. I was exhausted after the trip and was glad to see my trusty couch and later on my bed. A headache attack kept me from going to the birthday party that was on the agenda for the evening, but in the end, I think it’s a good thing I didn’t go, as I might have fallen asleep right in between the other guests…

And what did I spend my sunday on? Finished work on my shy little unicorn for the CAL:

Isn’t she a cutie? I think I need to make her a big brother to watch over her!

How was your weekend?

Cheers, Lydia

Byatwf: Wasabi the bunny

Today was bring your amigurumi to work Friday! Because I plan on bringing a different ami to the crafts fair tomorrow, Wasabi the bunny got to accompany me to work. But when we got to the store, Wasabi suddenly realised that he was a little bit shy… So he spent the day in our office, helping out with paperwork ^_^

He makes a great bookstand

He can do complicated calculations

And is a great conversational partner during dinner time (“are you really going to eat that?!”)

As to the person who forgot their roses in our store: thanks, they look great on my coffee table ^_^

What activities did your amigurumi help you with today?

Cheers, Lydia

Crochet Dates, Crochet-Alongs and Hook-ins. The tale of a busy week

Well, to be honest, I kind of combined them all together ^_^”

Last wednesday, I visited my friend Jaqueline from EenMooiMomentje/Threading Along for a crochet date. We had planned the perfect date, since on wednesdays EchtStudio holds their weekly Hook-ins. It’s a pretty long drive for me, but because I could spend the afternoon at my friends house, it was definitely worth it.

We drank loads of tea, chatted and all the while worked on our most current projects. She’s knitting a hat, which I believe is pretty amazing, since I can’t knit. I started working on a smaller project than I thought it would be: a unicorn for the latest Ana Paula Rimoli Crochet-Along. I’m really starting to love CALs, especially when they’re based around one or two patterns. It’s so much fun to see what everyone comes up with to really make a pattern their own.

After dinner, we went over to EchtStudio for the Hook-in. Which was way more fun than last time! I have to admit, being back in my comfort zone with making amigurumi helped a lot. Last time, I was so annoyed by my own confusion about wanting to make a blanket, I just couldn’t seem to enjoy myself. Also, last time it was really, really busy, while this week, only two tables were taken (must have had something to do with that giant crafts fair that’s going on…)

I spent the evening working on the unicorn and just wandering around the shop. But like I said, my unicorn is turning out a bit smaller than expected, so it’s almost done already. Inevitably, I came to the point where I didn’t bring the yarn to make the manes and horn, so I had to stop working. Right on time as well, as the evening was drawing to a close. This is as far as I’ve come that day:

Tiny little unicorn

One last walk around the shop and I stumbled on something I’d been looking for for a while now: the first Zoomigurumi book, in English! It’s been impossible to get and even though I do still plan on joining the Design Contest where you can win both the books, I couldn’t resist inquiring what the price was. And since it was their last one, they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse ^_^ Needless to say, it was a very enjoyable day for me.

I also came across two projects I really want to do in the future, if I ever find the pattern for them:

African Flower Hippo

African Flower Owl

I have to say, I think I love everything about them: their enormous size, their vibrant colours (you can’t really see on these pictures), their squishiness ^_____^

Tomorrow, I will visit the giant crafts fair I mentioned earlier: Kreadoe. It’s my first time there, so I’m pretty excited and have no idea what to expect! But I’m sure it will be loads of fun and a great way to get tons of inspiration for upcoming projects.

What are your plans for the weekend? And don’t forget, today is the first friday of the month, which means: BYATWF!

Cheers, Lydia