Just a quick update. Also a quick tutorial of those sweet little crocodile stitch baby booties

Happy October everyone!
I've been super super busy with the cold weather coming up. Making hats and slippers, blankets and a few gifts. I'm planning a trip to Nova Scotia/ Prince Edward Island next week and I've been doing some quick finishing up of projects I wanted to share with you all out there.

picot flowers

I finally finished something for myself this week! I made this slouchy hat out of some bernart roving in a lovely coral colour and embellished it with a couple of these picot flowers and a few leaves of my own design. It's warm, soft and fuzzy, even if the flowers are a bit too big.

Work in progress

I also did some delving into the crocodile stitch. Finally. There are a lot of different tutorials out there to get the desired effect. I find this one to be the best/easiest.

I decided to try to figure my own method of making those cute crocodile stitch booties I keep seeing everywhere. It was super easy. But I did learn a couple of helpful hints that I'll share with you.

I just made a pair of baby slippers in a "mary jane" style and omitted the strap then added an extra round decreases and another round of stitches at the top of the slipper, fasten off as you normally would then tie your yarn on what will be the "outside" of the bootie and began the round of crocodile stitches. (as you'll see mine have the "seam/buttons" up the back- I should've done 'em up the side).

I found it beneficial to skip a stitch between my V stitch and Single crochet when I set up the "scale" on the first go around. You'll also want to to a chain and turn (working back and forth rather than in rounds) on the crocodile stitches. Starting a new colour is easy enough, just fasten off and tie on at the end of the "scale" and set up your row of V stitches in the new colour (you want the set up and the scale in the same colour). Then you just fasten off and weave in your ends as with every other crochet project and add some cute little buttons.

I just used the "turning chains" as button holes but you can sew little loops on for button holes. So, there you have it. They're super cute and really easy. I'm working on a big pair of boots with jute bottoms in this style for myself.

If you wanna be a viking say YAAAA!

Everybody say YAA!

Who doesn't love a viking helmet?

I know I do! So do my kids and husband and the rest of everyone ever.

I've seen a lot of them out there for sale and a handful of free patterns just didn't have what I was looking for in the horn area. Which, I must admit I'm pretty picky about.

Just when I thought all hope was lost and I'd have to fight like a mad woman to figure something out or suffer sub par horns I came across this pattern/tutorial. I gotta tell ya, it was love at first sight!

I had a few ideas in my head for the actual helmet part, the thing is I want to attach a big beard to it and give my son a little toy axe, slap some fun fur and a dollar store chest plate on him and send him out dressed as "stoik the vast" from How to train your dragon. So I wanted it to be good and helmety.

The horns are a bit tricky both to make, I'm pretty sure I lost count more than twice and place (I'm impatient and terrible at taking my time to do things properly) but that will get easier with practise. I kind of like them a little bit wonky.  

The hat itself can be made with any hat patten, ever and adding some popcorn stitches about 3/4 of the way down. The piping is made from chains just sewn into place and are totally optional. Heck you don't even need to make them 2 toned.

I'm probably going to end up making  a lot of these.

Who wants to learn how to crochet an Octopus?

I thought so!

Twofer today! this has been sitting unpublished in my dashboard for months!

Okay, so this project came into my head and heart earlier this week. A friend drew a picture of two lovey octopuses and it got me thinking that I would love to make one. So after trying it a few times And failing miserably ( I just couldn't get the legs right) I did an interweb search (all hail lord Google!) and came up with some wonderful pictures of the Octopus pattern from Ruby submerine and I found me a free pattern from PaulaGail over at squidoo and I knew what I wanted and now have a fairly good idea of how to achieve my desired effect (Start with the legs! who knew!).


So, Now I'm going to walk to through what I've come up with, with the help of the pattern I found from Squidoo and a few tweaks of my own:

Leg 1: Chain 21. Starting in 2nd ch from end,
5 sc, 13 hdc, 2 dc. Leg should have a natural twist.

Legs 2-8: Without cutting the yarn, repeat steps for leg 1 seven more times. You will have eight curly legs all in a row. Join the legs into a circle with a slip stitch in the first chain of the first leg.

Head and body:

Working from the legs in continuous rounds without turning:
Round 1: Work 2 sc through the dc at the base of each leg (16 st).
Round 2:*1 sc in each of next 2 st, work 2 st together* 4 times (12 st).
Rounds 3, 4: Sc in each sc around (12 st).
Round 5: *1 sc in each of next 2 st, 2 sc in 3rd st* 4 times (16 st).
Round 6: *1 sc in each of next 3 st, 2 sc in 4th st* 4 times (20 st).
Rounds 7-9: Sc in each sc around (20 st).
Round 10: 1 sc in each of next 3 st, work 2 st together* 4 times (16 st).
Round 11: *1 sc in each of next 2 st, work 2 st together* 4 times (12 st).
Round 12: *1 sc in next st, work 2 st together* 4 times (8 st).
Round 13: *Work 2 st together* 4 times (4 st).

Cut yarn. You probably will not have a hole at the top with only 4 st, but if you do,
use yarn end to stitch hole shut. Work in yarn ends.

I attached sew-on googly eyes to the sides and taa-daa!

This one I SC an extra round before I started the major decrease in the head/body. 

He's still not quite right but I'm getting there