A Challenge: The FreshStitches Kit Club

This January, I joined the FreshStitches Kit Club. The idea is you pay a two-monthly fee and get a complete kit to make an amigurumi every other month. I figured I could try it out, since I bought a few FreshStitches patterns in the past. They’re fun to do and the bonus with the Kit Club is that you get to make yours with a little twist, apart from just the pattern.

So when I got my first package last week, I got pretty excited! Here’s what it looked like:

The package

Unwrapping

All materials are ready to go!

It’s a chick that turns into an egg! Or maybe it’s the other way around… I started on the pattern right away and managed to finish working on it today:

All parts are done

The egg

From the bottom

Something is coming out!

It’s Russ the chick!

Of course, I got too excited. I checked out the special Kit Club Web page today and found that I’d been too quick. In order for the special twist to work, you needed to make some minor changes to the pattern and keep all parts separate. So I ended up frogging everything T_T Now I have to start all over again.

For now, I will keep the special twist a secret. That is, until I’ve managed to create the intended product 😛
Which, I will have to admit, might take a while. It’s been busy lately to say the least. Work is demanding a lot of my time and free days aren’t a certainty any more. Also, Boyfriend and I have been looking in to buying a house, for which I am also very excited, but we still need to do a lot of research, view possible houses and get everything together. Plus, one of our cats has been a bit sick the past few days, so we need to keep an extra close eye on him. All in all, I’m certainly not bored, but I’m afraid this also means that I will be less able to blog the coming month or so. Please bear with me, I have some patterns lined up still (one’s already done, but I just don’t have the time to type it up right now…)

What have you guys been up to lately?
And remember, I try to keep the Crochetnanigans FaceBook page updated a bit more than I am able to do here, so if you want to keep an eye on my current projects, be sure to check it out!

Cheers, Lydia

Upcoming projects

Inspiration has struck and now I’m drowning in plans for things to crochet! So I guess what I’m going to put here will be my to-do list for the coming few weeks ^_^

–Elephant Snuggle

Free pattern by DenDennis

This pattern by DenDennis is so insanely cute that I wanted to make at least one as soon as I saw it. Sadly, no babies in the future in my group of family and friends. A coworker of mine made me very happy yesterday by asking if I could make something for her. Friends of her have a lovely baby girl and she wanted to give her a snuggle/security blanket. Do I ever have the right pattern in line for that! So yesterday when I came home, I started on the elephant part, since I need to get some yarn to make the blanky part.

This is how far I’ve gotten yesterday

It’s a pretty quick and easy pattern, I guess that’s what I love about DenDennis (he’s got a book coming out this march, I need to get my hands on that!)
Today I have a trip planned to the market to see if they have the yarn I need. As I’m writing this, I suddenly realise I might as well pay a visit to the local yarn store, they might have what I’m looking for as well and I haven’t been there in a while ^_^”

– Baskets (Dutch!)

Free pattern by EchtStudio (Dutch!)

I’ve been looking for new and bigger boxes to store my stash of yarn in. And even though I have considerably lessened the amount of yarn I have laying around, I still want some more storage space. My eye had fallen on some nice boxes from Ikea, but they didn’t have the right one in store at that moment. Then I came across this free pattern from EchtStudio and realised my mistake. Instead of buying something, I could just as easily make something myself! And I fell in love with the colours of the yarn: Lammy Hawai. So I need to put in an order sometime soon ^_^

-Boyfriend’s scarf
I need to go to the market today either way, because I really want to get some work done on the scarf I’m making for Boyfriend. Lately, I’ve been pondering just frogging the whole thing and making a slightly shorter one. But that does mean starting all over again.. Oh well, I’ll see what I will do when I get my hands on some more yarn and am able to continue.

– Own patterns
I’m not entirely sure why, but I really feel like making some Legend of Zelda characters! I really love the games. The Minish Cap was the first one I ever played (yes, I’m a late-bloomer)
I searched around on the web to find suitable candidates for me to turn into crochet. I’ll keep it a secret for now, but I do have three characters/enemies/weapons/whatevers planned, so stay tuned!

Today will be filled with taking up stock and getting the yarns I need and want to keep myself busy.

What are your crochet-plans for the coming weeks? Anything big, or just quick little projects in between?

Cheers, Lydia

Guess what..

Can you guys guess what I’ll be spending my work-free day on tomorrow? ^_~

Cheers, Lydia

Projects, projects everywhere!

These past few days have been quite eventful for me. I’ve been working on the monkey project, which is getting there steadily. Just one more monkey to go and most of its parts are done.

This September, my boyfriend and I will be going to Greece for ten days. I’m pretty excited, but also bumped into a slight problem: I don’t want to bring all the stuff I need for amigurimis with me (stuffing, eyes, needles and whatnot), but I think I might go crazy if I don’t bring a project with me to work on in the evenings or lazy afternoons! So I’ve decided that I will make an afghan while on our little trip. I fell in love with a pattern, but I’m not really sure if I will be able to pull it off. So far, every project that is not an ami ended up in my bog box of unfinished projects and junk… But I will certainly give it a try!

But that is something for the future, a bit closer is a request from a friend: another big minion! So today, I finally sat myself at the computer to type out the pattern. It will be easier to work from than my notes, which always tend to end up really messy -_-”
I have send the typed out pattern to All About Ami and asked her if it’s ok if I post it here. Since she wrote the pattern I based mine on, I believe it is only decent to ask her opinion first. I hope she doesn’t mind, cause this minion has been getting a lot of attention!

What really made my week was that Ana Paula Rimoli liked the big minion enough to share the link to this little blog on her facebook page. And man, did it ever create a buzz! This place had never seen so many visitors and I would like to thank everyone who liked it enough to take a look around! I feel very honored to be recognized by someone who is one of my idols when it comes to crocheting. (If you don’t know who Ana Paula is, she has four crochet pattern books published and is working on the fifth one.)

And this week I finally got to see Despicable Me2! I completely fell head over heels for the ‘evil’ purple minions, so now I really feel the need to crochet some of those as well!

So in short, it’s been a busy week and I’ll probably be busy for a few more!

Stay tuned for pictures of the complete monkey set!

Cheers, Lydia

Find Ana Paula on facebook here!