Robins and an award and a new pattern preview

Now that the little robins have been received by their new owners, I can at last blog about them :)

I made them using this easy pattern from ravelry:
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/robin-and-penguin-christmas-decorations 

Except that I made the wings differently. But then I found the wings were a bit too big and bulky, so you might be better sticking to the designer's original wing pattern too. I sewed on the beak instead of gluing it, and also sewed on some lovely goggly eyes.

If you want to get to the pattern, you'll need to have an account on Ravelry. And I oh so much advise anyone who is a crochet fiend like me to do so!  There are zillions of patterns, including more than 24,000 free crochet patterns.  Yes, over TWENTY-FOUR THOUSAND. That's a lot of free patterns. Go on over there and join! It's free and really well worth the time it takes to create your account.

I also want to say a huge thank you to Barbina at Little Things Made with Love who has awarded me the Liebster Blog award! Thank you so much Barbina, it's my first ever award and I am so happy to receive it!

The award goes to lovely blogs with less than 200 followers, the rules are:
1. Show your thanks to the blogger who gave you the award by linking back to them.
2. Reveal your top 5 picks for the award and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.
3. Post the award on your blog.
4. Bask in the love from the most supportive people in the blogsphere - other bloggers.
5. And, best of all – have fun and spread the Karma.


I would therefore like to pass the award on to the following bloggers:


Madison from Madison Makes
Joy from The Craft Frog
Christelle from A voir, etc.
Kathmeymac from Petites créations aux fils des temps

Kristin from Brysselpyssel


Wishing you all great fun in your future blogging! 


One last thing before I go... I've been very busy the last few days preparing a new pattern to share with you all. I'm not quite ready to post it yet, but here's a little preview.  

Be back soon!

Thoughts about starting and finishing

Hmmm... I just realised I had another photo of my beloved pouffes and armrest cover that I hadn't shown to you, and as I didn't really know how to illustrate this post, here they are.


Other than that, I've been having a thoughtful day today. 


My favourite thing is starting wonderful new crochet projects.  I love doing it so much that I start many, many, many new crochet projects. I get all excited about some new crochet pattern that I find, or an idea that I have.


Just today a friend talked about name labels to put on her childen's Christmas stockings, and as I walked home I was having lots of ideas about the different ways of making such labels, the best material to use, whether embroidering the letters would be best, or if it would be better to make them from felt. It did make the walk home enjoyable and quick, but I did decided I should give myself a talking to.


Much as I love to start things, my friend didn't even ask me to make any labels! We were just chatting about it. Luckily I didn't offer to make them either. But before I got home I did realise that I must, must, must try to finish things off before I start on something new!


This is easier said than done. Since we moved house I've started... at least four new projects. They are all sitting half-done in my Work in Progress bag. In that WIP bag there are:

• One pair of gloves
• One granny ripple blanket
• One decorative curtain thingy
• and two robin decorations

The robin decorations are nearly finished. They'll be going to a new home very soon. But the other things are moving  v e r y   s l o w l y .


To get some inspiration, I looked back again at this page where I wrote my last list of WIPs, and here it is again with some notes

• the second pouffe cover (finished!)
• lip balm holders (finished!)
• a yet-to-be-named amigurumi (half-made and wherever did I put it?)
• a snake finger puppet (not started)
• a pastel drawstring bag (finished!)
• a felt house door-stop (not started)
• a felt bag keyring (three-quarters made and wherever did I put it?)

So I suppose there is progress. I did manage to finish three out of seven projects. 

Please tell me I'm not the only one with such a list of unfinished projects.  What do you have in your WIP bag?

Moving, moving... moved!

Well hello there! Would you like some tea from my lovely new teapot?

It's been a long time, hasn't it? Almost three months since I wrote my last blog entry. Since then, lots of things have happened.

First of all, we've finally finished moving. Gosh was it hard work! Despite our early start, despite the large-scale decluttering, it was still hard work. But we managed! We managed to move everything ourselves in our car (with most of the seats removed). I even managed to loosen the strong emotional ties that tied me to my old bed and give it away. We managed to move all our belongings from a big flat to a smaller one (and a spare garage for storage, thank goodness).

Then about a week after moving, I had to go on a work trip to Tunisia, but I'll tell you more about that another day.

For now, I'm just going to tell you what hooky business I've been up to!

First news - I finished the second pouffe! So now I have a matching pair, except that I didn't want them to match exactly so they're not twins, just sisters.

And... I don't know if you noticed it on that first picture, but I've also made a matching armrest cover for our rather beige sofa. The sofa is getting a bit old and the armrests are a bit grubby, despite cleaning them with upholstery shampoo. So these armrest covers have the double role of hiding the dirt and making everything look a little bit brighter.

And lastly (for now) I've made a new little swirling bag, a bigger and more pastel version of this one. Cute, eh?

And I did want to all a HUGE WELCOME to my new followers, who followed despite me absence (Thank you!). I promise I'll be back sooner next time.

Carrots are good for your lips

Sorry I've not been blogging for a while. The Move is taking up an awful lot of my time and energy. We've started to move our stuff over to the new flat, so there's lots of Dismantling Furniture and Putting Things in Boxes going on.

Our old flat is gradually getting emptier. I'm going to miss it.

On a brighter note, look at these!

While I was in England my sister asked me if I could make her two lip balm holders that were nice and bright so she wouldn't lose them easily, and with something to attach them to her bags.

I'm gradually making my way through the remains of my Catania yarn stash, and I had just enough orange left to make a bea-u-ti-ful carrot lipbalm holder.  I reckoned that was already silly enough, so I made the other one a bit more conservative. I hope she'll like them.

You may have noticed a new little link up there on the top of the blog, to the right. I have given up on my online shop, to which there was no reaction, and instead I've started a blog in French, the language of the country I've lived in for more than half my life. It's still just in its early stages, with only two posts, but it's opening up a whole new world of French crafts and crochet. If any of you know any French speakers who may be interested, please do tell them about it. And if you know of any cool French crochet patterns, please let me know and I'll put a link up on the Crochetons! blog.

What a week!

Well I've got quite a mixed bag of things to talk about as this week at last draws to an end!

We are still working hard on The Move, and yesterday we got the keys to the new flat. Yippee! I didn't think we would get them so soon. We're not yet ready to move in, but we're going to move our stuff over gradually. We also need to have a kitchen fitted and put shelves in the built-in wardrobes so it's a good job we have a few weeks to get it all done. There is an amazing number of administrative things to deal with too.

They do say moving is one of the most stressful things we do, coming just after death of a loved on and divorce in the list of stress-inducing situations. My problem now is what to do about the kitchen. Even though it is very small, my research on kitchen furniture leads to me to conclude that it's going to be quite an expensive investment.

On a more thrifty note, while continuing to tidy up today I came across a very soft, very big pillow that we don't use any more. It had been washed and kept in a plastic storage bag, but had a few stains so I decided to get rid. Just as I was packing it into a bag, I saw that the stuffing was 100% polyester, so a little voice inside my head said "maybe you should cut it open and see what state the polyester is, maybe you could use it". So off I went to get my scissors and snip, snip, cut it open and Oh Joy! The polyester filling was beautiful, in perfect condition and so soft! Just like the stuff I buy at three euros for a 250g bag. And there must have been at least 750g in that pillow. So now I have plenty of polyester stuffing, enough to keep me going for a while. And it didn't cost me a single centime.

To finish off, I just wanted to talk again about Ravelry. You know I really love it. But some things about it annoy me just a little bit. The way people charge ridiculous amounts of money for very simple patterns, for example. And then today I went to have a look at the patterns and there was one for amigurumi coloured crayons. Like little coloured pencils, in several different colours. My gut reaction was "what's the use of those?" I don't know about you, but a coloured pencil that you can't actually colour in with seems a bit silly to me. Am I being unfair or does anyone agree with me?

Tiny and bright bag

Tiny swirling bag
Originally uploaded by aishakenza

Hi there to everyone who's reading this! I hope you're having a lovely day.

One thing I am determined to do before The Move is to finish off the zillions of small unfinished projects I have scattered around the place. These include (but the list is probably not exhaustive):

• the second pouffe cover
• lip balm holders
• a yet-to-be-named amigurumi
• a snake finger puppet
• a pastel drawstring bag
• a felt house door-stop
• a felt bag keyring
• ...

Yesterday I did manage to finish this cute little drawstring bag/pouch/purse. It's a birthday present for a little friend of mine who is now seven years old. I hope she'll like it!

I found the pattern on Ravelry (yes!) but I adjusted it quite a lot. You can also get the pattern here. The bag in the pattern is really quite big, so I just reduced all the proportions and this is what it came out like - this one's just 8 cm or 3 inches from top to bottom. I also attached two of my doodle flowers to the ends of the drawstring. I think it's cute.

Now, what shall I do next?

Pincushion jar

Pincushion jar
Originally uploaded by aishakenza

Hello there!

I wonder how many of you are members of Ravelry. It is my most-visited site, I think. I love to browse the patterns - every day there's something new and inspiring.

The other day I came across a pattern for a crocheted pincushion on the top of a jar. Of course I had to make one. I'm always losing my box of pins and so a big jar to keep them in sounded like a good idea.

I got the pattern from The Green Dragonfly. Like the best patterns, it's very simple. The only problem I had was sticking the crochet and stuffing onto the jar lid. As suggested, I used superglue but of course it stuck fast before I could get it straight all the way around, so it looked rather wonky. I searched my ribbon stash and found the perfect solution - a gorgeous fuschia pink ribbon that hides my clumsiness rather well, don't you think?

Now I just have to find my box of pins in order to put them in the jar. Has anybody seen them anywhere?

Actually I didn't tell you yet that we are moving! We'll still be in the same small French town, just a short walk from where we live now. We've been in the present flat for 17 years (yes, seventeen!) so The Move is going to be quite an event. We're going to be very busy over the next month or so and have already started decluttering and collecting cardboard boxes. I'm actually looking forward to it, there's nothing like The Move to put some order into our lives! And maybe I'll come across that box of pins.