new blanket beginnings

Hello there!

It's been a beautiful day here, and I've been making some little granny squares for a new baby blanket.  It's been lots of fun! :)

What do you think of these gorgeous soft colours?

I'm enjoying playing with all the colour combinations, I am going for a bit of a vintage/retro vibe with the colours in this blanket, I think the slightly washed out, faded pastels are very pretty.

Hopefully I will get lots of squares made over the next few lazy week of Summer, this kind of feels like a Summer blanket. :)

I'm using  MoYa Caresse cotton, this is an Aran weight cotton, really great to crochet with, and is working up quite quickly with a 5mm hook, the texture is beautiful!  They are going to need a bit of blocking as I am trying to get a nice solid granny square, so have crammed in the stitches. 

I'm planning on making about 80 squares, so nothing too big, and it should actually get finished!! 

I'll post a few progress updates as this grows, I had forgotten how fun mini squares can be! 

Have a great day/night wherever you are! 

xxxxxxx

Monday Snaps

1. Lots of slippers ready for the Emu Plains Winter market on June 11 at Balnarring, I love making these! Pattern is the wonderful Galilee Bootie by Mamachee available on Ravelry and 

from her Etsy shop.

2. My favourite page form the Flow paper lovers book, these little stamps are just so cute! :) 

3. A pile of flowers in the winter sun. 

4 . Colourful threads on my messy desk.

5. Sunlight through the button jars. :) 

6 + 7.  Pretty pastels cottons from Vinnis Colours, this Nikkim cotton is so versatile and has so many lovely colours! 

8. A pile of crochet goodies. There seems to be little piles like this turning up all around me house! 

9. Super cute samples from Nurturing Fibres, I think I might have start stocking some of these beauties! 

What have you been up to recently?  

Lots of crafty things going on? 

Also, thanks to everyone who has signed up for the Winter Yarny Love Club, you yarny lovers are so awesome! There are only a couple of days left to join up if you are interested, have a look at my shop or the post back a few posts for details! 

Have a great day! 

Flower making.....

Hello there! 

How have things been going in your world?  

I've been busy doing this and that, lots of yarny things going on, the days don't seem to be long enough! 

It has been a very typical Melbourne winter recently, cold and wet and windy, perfect for staying indoors and doing some comforting crochet.  I am trying to get fitter over the winter months and have started boxing classes 3 times a week, some days it is hard to make myself go , but I am glad once I get there and start moving!  

Hopefully I will not put on my usual winter layer this year, I still have several years worth of cosy winter eating to work off!! :) 

On the crafty front, I have been having fun playing with lots of colour, making flowers !  

This pretty pattern is the Anemone Flower, by Heather from the lovely blog Pink Milk.  

Such a fabulous pattern, you can find it over here.  Heather's flowers are a real looking anemone with a dark centre, I went a bit off script and mixed my colours around. :) 

Actually, I did go a bit crazy with all the colour combination possibilities, I think they are really cute!!   Perfect for using up little bits of cotton left from my washer making. :) 

.....colour explosion! :) .........

I have been making a few other things recently too, but they will have to wait for another post, no photos to show you yet!  And I am getting grumbles from the boys because me being on the internet is causing major lag for their gaming!  Our internet has suddenly become very unreliable, not sure what's going on with that. 

Have a great week, hope you get some crafty time in, and stay warm if you're  local, it's going to get even chillier later in the week.  Gotta love a Melbourne Winter! :) 

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Handmade Christmas Making......

Hello, how are you going today? 

I am having a good day, nothing special, just food shopping and general housey things, but I like days like this.

Firstly, I'd like to thank you for the lovely comments on my last post and your ideas for reinvigorating   bloggy energy.  I think I will just continue to blog when I can and not worry too much if it's not everyday, I think I am too casual for anything like a formal schedule, so this blog is just going to go with the flow, the same approach I take to most aspects of my life.  Thank you all for your continued interest in Little Woollie, I have a few new ideas to try out over the next few months so I'll see how that goes. :)

Well, suddenly Christmas doesn't seem that far away, (eek, nearly November!) and once again I am finding myself tossing up how much of a handmade Christmas I'll be able to achieve.  I'd love to make some of the gifts for my family this year, I don't think I'll worry to much about all the boys I have to buy for, they are not really into handmade stuff, but I could do some baking for them, they do love a homemade bikkie or 2.

I am thinking that cute crochet washers and a nice piece of soap would be a nice little gift for my friends, I like making the washers so they should be fun to make.

I am doing a couple of markets between now and Christmas, so I am also trying to make some things that would be good presents for people to buy, maybe for teachers or other people we get little gifts for at this time of year.

So I have been making these little milk jar covers in multicoloured stripes, I think they look so cute in a group!  These jars make good small vases and you could pick a posy of flowers and give a cute jar of flowers to your favourite teacher, or you could stick a nice candle in one for a candleholder, or you could fill it with some bright coloured fine liners for a cute pen holder.......or you could fill a shadow box with different patterned one for a very cute wall display!  

These small milk bottles can be picked up cheaply from 2 dollar shops, or you could keep your eyes open for interesting shaped bottle and recycle bottles that are finished in the kitchen, I think a little collection of different shaped and sized bottles with there cute colourful cover would be a lovely present! Cute and thrifty, gotta love that!

.....I just had to pick a few ranunculus from the garden and colour match them to their vase....

.....and a couple more gratuitous flower shots, just because I can't get enough of their gorgeous colours.........

So, are you making any presents this year?  

I am going to make a few decorations too.

Have you been following the Handmade Christmas posts over at One Crafty Mumma?  Mel is one organised girl!  She has lots of ideas and links for handmade things this year, I am getting on board a little late, but there is still lots of time to get making!

During the week I will have a look around the internet and see what Christmas decorations I can find and share with you all next week.

Have you got any handmade ideas for Christmas this year, any secret crafty plans?

Have a great day!

Granny bunting making......

Hello there!  How has your week been going?  Good I hope!  

Have you been making anything fun?

I have been busy making granny squares in lots of gorgeous colour combinations to make some granny buntings, well, my version of granny square bunting anyway.  I have been quite productive and speedy for me, I usually seem to take a long time to amass a nice pile of squares, but this week they have grown pretty fast! 

I stacked  them all together and then spent quite a lot of time admiring the way all the colours worked together in little slices and glimpses, something about this really pleased me and made me very happy!  So of course I had to take a heap of photos so I could remember it and look at it later whenever I need a little colour fix.  So that is why you are seeing all these pictures of stacked squares, it is all quite self indulgent really!

I think they look a bit like a fat colourful caterpillar.  I am thinking there are a few colour combos here that would look great as a skinny stripe blanket too!

Anyway, I am in a bit of a tizz getting things made for an exciting market that I am having a stall at on Saturday 18th October.  It is the first one for the season at Emu Plains Market, held about 5 minutes from here at the Balnarring Racecourse.  I love this market, it is set under the gum trees and has lots of stalls, I have been as a shopper last season, but this is my first market stall there with my Little Woollie Makes things! Eek!  I hope it goes ok! 

I am taking along a bit of a mini yarn stall too, just in case my stall looks empty with too few crochet makes, I will have yarn for sale as well.  Come and say hello if you are down this way, I'd love to meet you! (that was the best part of the last market, meeting some readers of this blog!)

I really enjoyed doing the Nanna Cool Market in Chelsea last month, the feedback was so encouraging and everybody was so nice, this one is much bigger so I hope I don't get too lost in the crowd!

Now I have to crochet all these squares into lines of bunting, I thought it would be a quick job, but I did one piece this afternoon (16 squares), and it took about 10 times longer than I had anticipated! 

So that is how I will be spending tomorrow I think, and hopefully I will have more pretty pictures of some finished bunting.  I know it's been around for a while, and probably done to death, but I still love a bit of bunting fluttering on a Spring day!

Okay, I had better go and get started on those buntings, I might be able to cross a couple off my to do list tonight if I am good!

See you later!

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Crochet a postage stamp!

Hello! How are you going?  

I have been busy, want to see what I have been hooking up over the weekend? 

I have been making some little crochet stamps.  You know, like postage stamps but woolly!

I know that this is a totally impractical and whimsical thing to make, not really useful, but I think they are really cute and would be a lovely thing to receive stuck on a bit of snail mail. (Maybe somewhere inside the envelope not actually on the outside of the mail!) 

And that is why I decided to have a go at making a crochet postage stamp, I like to add a postcard with a thank you message to all yarn orders that go out of my shop, and I like to stick a little decorative bit of crochet, like a flower or heart or whatever I have been making.  

One of the ladies who did the Blog with Pip course, Yvette of Bear Loves Dove, has started a little linky thing called 'Smile Inducers', and that is what I was trying to create when people open up there postcard, a little smile inducing moment.  I was thinking it would be nice to make an actual stamp out of yarn to go on the postcard. So this is what I came up with!

I thought I'd make a little tutorial so you can make your own crochet stamps too, to pretty up your mail or gifts.  So get out your small hooks and fine thread and lets make a stamp !

Ok, firstly crochet up some little squares, mine where 12 stitches by 12 rows, I used a 4ply cotton and a 2mm hook.  Make 2 of each colour, 1 for the front and 1 for the back.

Next, get your embroidery cottons out and have a bit of a play embroidering on patterns of your own choice to personalise your stamps, you can do anything you like!  Some suggestions - words, flowers, hearts, geometric patterns, smiley faces, etc. Embroider onto one piece of your crochet that will become the front of your stamp.

I have embroidered some flowers on mine.

Next, get your back and front and crochet them together using a slip stitch through both layers, with picots every second stitch to create a kind of 'stampy' edge all the way around your stamp. This means that all the messy back bits of the embroidery are hidden inside the two layers.

 I used a 1.5mm hook for the edge.

Sew in your ends and there you have it, a crochet stamp!

What do you think?  I am really happy how this little project turned out.  I know these are purely decorative, but sometimes it is nice to make something just for the fun of it, to create something to put a smile on your face. 

I might hook up some more of these for a wooly stamp collection, or just to add something whimsical to my thank you postcards.  It was nice to do some embroidery for a change too.

......this is what the backs look like, quite neat and tidy........

......so that is what I have been up to, have you been making anything fun?
Are you someone who makes practical things, or are you more into the cute little useless fun make?
I think I do a bit of both.  Or course it is great if you can make something practical that is cute and fun as well!

I just had a thought that they would make nice brooches if you sewed a pin to the back,
 so quite multi functional after all!

Have a great happy day.

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little makes interlude.....

Hello!

How is your week going?  It's pretty chilly around here, and I have been lighting the fire early in the day, it's been a nice place to sit and do a bit of daytime crochet, I have so many projects on the go that I am needing to crochet during the day, the evening sessions are just not cutting it!

The other day I bought a collection of little ceramic bottles, they are very plain and white, I think they are just crying out for a little hooky make over, so have started making some stripy covers for them.

I know this is totally frivolous and a purely decorative project, but it is kind of fun choosing stripe combinations and seeing the colourful collection grow!  Sometimes it is good to have little side project on the go that you can work on when you need a break from bigger, more demanding work!

I am looking forward to having this whole tray full of colourful, stripy little bottle vases, so cute!

After all the big projects I have been working on recently, it's nice to have a quick make off the hook.

I am about to start a new Harlequin blanket in some lovely blues and greens, so it is back to the big stuff for a few weeks,  I have also come across some fun craft projects that I 'd like to try, I just have to be patient and wait for a spare afternoon to have a go.

Are you making anything frivolous at the moment?

Julie xxxxxxxxxxxxx

More tapestry crochet, hearts this time!

Hi there.

So I thought today I'd show you some more tapestry crochet that I hooked up last week.  I can't get enough of this technique, I just love working with the two colours. 

This is my "Nine of Hearts" pattern, fairly obvious!  This is a nice big face washer, a bit rectangular, but that's ok.

I am going to make a little series of heart washers using the Cascade Ultra Pima that I bought on holiday, the colours are so nice, I think they will look great.

I have to rope my son into helping me wind the hanks into balls, he is not that keen, I think a bit of bribery might sweeten the deal!

I'm also hooking away at the 'Wheels within wheels' blanket behind the scenes. I think a trip to Bendigo Knitting Mills is called for, I have run out of grey background colour and can't tell which shade it is from the website (the label is long gone!).

Next time I think I will choose a colour that I stock in my shop, it should make getting more a bit easier.

How is your crafting going?

Got any fun plans for the weekend?  It is festival time in our town this weekend so we'll probably head out and see the fireworks, I love a good fireworks display!

Have great weekend.

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Yarny acquisitions.......

Hello.

How is your day going? I hope all you lovely people in the Northern Hemisphere are staying warm and cosy, I have seen on the news that the weather is pretty extreme at the moment, it's hard to imagine such cold here, although today is fairly ordinary here too, windy and cool, not summer like at all!

I haven't told you much about our holiday before Christmas have I?

Well, there were a few things I thought might be interesting to put on here, one of them being a little yarny purchase I made along our travels.

One of the benefits of doing a road trip as opposed to flying is that you get to stop wherever you like along the way.  We were driving through Brisbane on our way home and I was able to stop at Tangled Yarns, a lovely yarn shop in the city, I'd love my little shop to end up like this one, colourful and full of gorgeous inspiring yarn and book and magazines, pretty much yarn nirvana!  I had seen this shop mentioned in blogs and wanted to check it out myself, and I am glad I did.

Anyway, I bought a few skeins of Ultra Pima cotton by Cascade, such a beautiful range of colours, it was hard to limit myself, but I managed!  

It was a fairly speedy stop over, ( I had the all boys waiting (im)patiently for me in the car),  so I didn't get to spend too much time browsing through all the different yarns,  but I could tell it was a great shop!

....so this is the collection of colours I chose......

.......lovely cool shades.......

....and some nice bright warm shades too.........

.......I think these combos look good together..........

......and this nice combination of cool and warm could work well too.

I am having fun thinking of things I could make with this yarn.

This year I am planning to attend some markets with my Little Woollie Makes, and I think I'll make some things from this cotton to that end, I'm planning a little series of spotty washclothes and maybe a bag for my laptop.  One thing for sure, they will involve quite a few colours! :)

Now that I have felt the Ultra Pima in my hands, I would really like to stock it in my shop.  

One of the things I'd like to do this year is source some more lovely yarns for the shop, and this one would be up there near the top. I think it would be a very versatile yarn, used for pretty much anything!

I'm going to be saving hard to make this happen!

Anyway, it is always exciting to add to the yarn stash, don't you think, and I am super happy with my new colours!

Has your yarn stash grown over the holidays?

Talk soon!

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