My friend Ruth bought me a book called Amigurumi World for my birthday, so I was really looking forward to finally getting some amigurumi patterns that were in English, rather than me having to try to decipher the Japanese patterns using my limited Japanese reading skills. So when I heard my friend Catriona was pregnant, I thought it would be the perfect chance for me to use one of the patterns from the book.

I chose the owl pattern, and made it with felt eyes instead of plastic ones, as it would be for a newborn baby. I also added a rattle inside, by putting some beads into a little plastic spherical container and nestling this in the stuffing. The container is from one of those vending machines that looks like a gumball machine, which you sometimes find in petrol station loos (usually containing a wet wipe or a fuzzy brush). I knew it would come in handy for something & I hate throwing away plastic, so why not recycle it!

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I loved making that adorable cupcake pincushion so much, I decided to make another one for another friend’s birthday. She’s a crafty gal herself, and EVERYONE likes cake, so I knew she’d like it. She’s also diabetic so I figured this would be one birthday cake she could accept without worry

I think this one turned out just as yummy as the last one, and I like the pink frosting with the brown chocolatey cake…. yummmmmm. The only trouble with these darned cupcakes is that they make me want to eat real cake!

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It was my friend Mairead’s birthday, and she simply LOVES sewing. She makes the best, most amazing fancy-dress costumes ever. Plus, she is as big a fan of cute kitsch as you could ever find, and she loves cakes, too. So I thought there could be no better gift than a crochet cupcake pincushion!

I made this one from two different patterns I found online. The top is from this pattern on the Bittersweet blog, and the cupcake base is made from another pattern that is no longer available online* (sadly). But this one from Good Housekeeping is pretty close. I liked the curly icing from the Bittersweet pattern, but wanted a stable base for the pincushion rather than a curved one. My other variation was to put a little piece of felt that had a 2p coin glued to it in the bottom, to weight the pincushion to keep it from toppling over when using it. I also looked all around to find some pearlised pins to put into the top – I wanted to make sure they looked like sprinkles or those little metallic sugar balls you find in cake decorating shops.

The coolest bit about this gift is that loads of Mairead’s friends had decided to group together and buy her a joint gift of sewing lessons at a London costumier, so my little pincushion present couldn’t have been more appropriate!

* If I can find the printout of the pattern I used, I will post it, because it really is good and I know that the original author said anyone could use it (I will be sure to credit if I can!).

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I have known Simon for years, and over the years, I am sure that he has acquired pretty much everything a man could need or want. Well, that’s not because he is some kind of stuff-hoarder, but maybe it’s just my impression because I could not think of a thing to get him. I find it hard to do gifts for men in general. Even harder is trying to come up with some kind of crafty thing for men. So I thought long & hard and then I figured that every man needs a place to put his keys and wallet when he comes home from work. What could be better for this that a sturdy felted bowl?

I made this one from crochet, which is not really how you are supposed to make felted things, but there you go. I think knitting rather than crochet probably makes a smoother felt, but as crochet is thicker and sturdier, I figured why not give it a go? I pretty much followed the same pattern as I did when I made the recycled jeans bowl – which is really easy: just crochet in the round and increase when you want to make the bowl sides go up & out, decrease when you want to make the opening narrower. Anyone could do it.

I picked nice manly colours and used Rowan Super Chunky wool. He loved it and it goes well with his decor. Yay – now what will I make him next year ?!?

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I went to visit my most fantastic friend ever, Ken Wilson, in glorious green Kentucky. I have known Ken since I was 16 years old, and he has been my friend through thick & thin, for years on end. I will always have fond memories of the years we spent hanging out together in Texas. I love him dearly!

It so happened that it was Ken’s birthday when I went to see him, so I just had to crochet him something… and quick. So I got out the ‘Happy Small Goods of Crochet’ book and whipped up a small cotton bowl in no time:

As luck would have it, the inside of the bowl is exactly the same circumference as a Mason jar, which Ken uses to store his sticks of incense. So I didn’t realise it at the time, but I made an incense cozy. I am pretty sure that’s a first . In any case, it looks rather sweet in that shade of duck-egg blue. It sure has smartened up the Mason jar.

Ken is such a wonderful caring friend – he kept a string bowl I crocheted for him a couple of Christmases ago. In fact, he even kept the little tag I put on it. It now sits at his bedside holding handy things like lip balm, so a little part of me is there with him every night, even though we now live more than 3000 miles apart.

I made it from cotton postal string – the kind you tie around parcels – so I reckon it will last for a while as that stuff is pretty durable. I love the slight texture you get with that string: little flecks of brown & black from the cotton seeds. I think it really gives the bowl a rustic charm. The pattern for this bowl is adapted from one in Erika Knight’s book Simple Crochet.

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Last November when I went to visit my family in Japan, I had a hard time withholding from buying every single craft book in the country. I really did. All the books I looked at were AMAZING, and the patterns were for things that were either sooooo cute (kawaii!) or just plain practical and wearable. So needless to say I came home with half a suitcase full of yarn, books and accessories – adorable handles for handbags and whatnot. Lots of whatnot.

By far my favourite book has to be the rather wonderfully titled ‘Happy Small Goods of Crochet’, in which I really want to make every single thing. From slippers to shawls to bowls, book covers, bags, hats and loads more. The really col thing is that Japanese crochet patterns are pictorial rather than written out in sentences, so as long as you know what the stitches look like when drawn, you can follow the patterns… although being able to read hiragana/katakana does come in handy.

My first project from the book I started while I was there, using a Japanese yarn which is also wonderfully titled: it’s called James Dean. What this rebel without a cause had to do with wool is beyond me, but he looks good on a label regardless. Here’s the finished result:

When I get a chance, I think I will line it with the denim bits I had leftover from  making the crochet bowl from jeans. Since I didn’t use the ‘bum’ from the jeans, I think I can sew those ‘cheeks’ together to make a liner for the bag that incorporates the back pockets for handy storage. Sweet.

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Every so often, my girlfriends have a clearout of our closets and we have a Girlie Swap Shop: we all bring the clothes we don’t want – along with some cake and booze – to one of our houses and we have a good old rummage around to see if we can find any treasure in each other’s cast-offs. At the last one, I was going to take a pair of jeans I never wore much, but upon closer inspection, they had a small hole in the knee. I was secretly excited, actually: I knew they could be recycled into something fabulous.

So when it was my friend Jane’s birthday, I whipped out a mega huge crochet hook, some scissors, and made this groovy denim bowl out of the legs of those jeans. I just cut lengthways back & forth almost to the edge, resulting in a long strip that I crocheted in the round to make the bowl. I increased/decreased on each row to shape the bowl.

I think it looks pretty cool. When I gave it to Jane I filled it with some sachets of homemade bath salts, and I reckon it was a pretty darn good gift.

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So I’ve been inspired to get back in to crochet recently, perhaps because my life has been so hectic and crochet can be done so much more quickly than knitting. I picked up a copy of Stitch & Bitch Crochet: The Happy Hooker a while back, and ever since then, I’ve been doing bits of crochet here and there.

The real clincher for me switching to the hook has been the fact that you can no longer knit on airplanes anymore, due to the ludicrous security rules (oh come on, you can do more damage with a ballpoint pen than most knitting needles!). Anyway, I decided to take a few skeins of yarn and some crochet hooks with me on my recent trip to Japan, to try and whip out a project or two during my travels.

Here’s a crochet scarf I made one night when my insomnia struck again. I think this took me an hour or two, crochet by the light of a headtorch while my hubby snoozed away. I made it using some super chunky chartreuse yarn in a wool blend. In fact it’s so chunky, it only took 3 rows of double crochet to make it! It’s a really long skinny scarf that looks rather fetching in shocking chartreuse, especially when paired with my favourite peacock blue overcoat. I have another skein of this yarn left, so I am thinking of making a beret or perhaps some wrist-warmers to go with the scarf. Yet another in my long list of future projects!

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