Here be dinosaurs

I've designed some new dinosaurs that will be appearing soon in my Etsy shop.  Only problem is, they are so cute, that they got sold as soon as I showed them to my knitting group!

Those Gals have good taste and they are also a good indicator that these would be a good addition to my Etsy shop.  Keep an eye out for them.

January's lovely Charity - The Donkey Sanctuary

I adore this charity based in the UK but helps donkeys all around the world.
   
You can adopt a donkey or make a donation or buy some of their lovely donkey goodies from their shop
A quick advert for them first.  

Each donkey has a unique character, with their own personality.  Which one do you think is the perfect match for your Valentine?  Are they full of mischief like Cisco? Forever making you laugh like Toby? Or totally chilled-out likeEeyore?  There really is a donkey friend for everyone! For just £2 a month, your loved one will receive a beautiful gift pack with a certificate, stunning portrait photos, a set of postcards to share with family and friends plus regular news throughout the year.
You can also follow all their daily antics on our Facebook and Twitter feed, with access to our Memory Maker app.  Using our app, you can add your donkey to pictures of your friends and family, then save, email or upload your snaps to Facebook to share with other adopters. By adopting a donkey you'll guarantee their future with us where they will never want for warmth, care or food again.

I'm a donkey volunteer.  This does not mean that I visit or partly own a donkey, I make some of the donkey toys that they sell.  I've been doing this for quite a while.  All donkey toys are made to very strict guidelines.  They even sport a CE label which means that it conforms to all European Safety Standards.  I've made the knitted Woolly Donkeys for ages but these are the new crocheted Neddy donkeys and come in lots of colours.  In fact they are so new they are not quite in the donkey shop yet.

  

Happy New Year

First I must wish you all a Happy New Year.  I hope last year treated you well and that this year will be even better and that you will find the strength to cope with anything a little untoward that may come your way.

OK so here we are again at the beginning of the year.  With me promising to blog more often.  (I can hear you say "you said that last year, and the year before")  I know, I know but this time I have more happening.  In fact, I haven't been here since this time last year.  lol.

Was just looking at last year's promises; I did do some of that.  I did a show and sold quite a few of those popular little elves - they were also popular in the online shop too.  So more this year.

Here is this year's list...

• So first thing.  I'm sorting out some half-finished items. (I have many that are just sitting around in storage-land) They will be finished off.  If I can't finish them (unable to get matching yarn) I will take them apart and remake them in a different colour.
• Secondly I have so many patterns that I have paid for but never used.  I will use them this year.  I may not stick to the pattern exactly - I do like to improvise.  
• I also have many, many knitting magazines.  These are a danger; they are such a high stack.  I will work my way though them (slowly) I will either make one item from each mag.  or (if I can't find anything I like in them) I will give them away.  Expect more improvisation.  
• I will make a new items for my Etsy shop.  At least one per month.  That's not including items that I will make again since they have sold.  
• I am doing quite a bit of charity knitting this year so I will be sharing these wonderful good causes with you too.

Well, that is my list of New Year's resolutions; let's see if I can keep up with it.  .

I will start as I mean to go on and show you my newest item in my Etsy shop; Eddy's Pressies

These are the Crochet Kitties.  I tend to crochet as much as I knit lately.  These kitties can be made up in any colour you like and you don't have to stick to "cat colours" either.  If you want a blue or red one, then just ask.  You can also have them in a "teddy" pose or a sitting pose; as shown in the photo.

New year promises here - no doubt soon to be broken lol

Many promises for this year.

• First one is I will re-stock my Etsy shop.  Etsy did particularly well over the Winter months so I want to re-make and re-list all the items that sold 
• New items - never before seen in my shop are promised too (I know I promised that last year) but now I have less outlets to worry about since I will be closing down my Artfire store soon. 
• I will be doing a craft show in Fall/winter of next year so I will be making 3 of my 10" elves per week until then and maybe some hair barrettes and brooches too.
• I have some lovely yarn that I've been given via swaps or presents - many from other countries.  I've been afraid to use them 'cos firstly they are too nice, and secondly I might run out partway through a project and I can't get more -- well, this year, I'm going to man-up and use them on something nice for me - even if I have to buy something similar in UK yarn to finish them off.  

I've even started some of these promises already; 
I made 3 elves last week, 
made a blue sheep as a replacement for the white and lilac ones that sold in my etsy shop 
and made myself a market bag using some "sugar n cream stripes" that I got in a yellow themed swap last year.  Even though I had to finish it off with some British Rico aran cotton.  
So pleased with it that I might make some in entirely British cotton for the Etsy shop.

So things are looking promising for this year's promises 

Merry Christmas Everyone

Oh yes here is Christmas and no matter how much your family drives you nuts, it's the time for getting together again; forgiving and forgetting as we go.  

Nothing beats that feeling of connecting again with those you don't see all year (whether through illness or distance) Skype is nice and helpful but it's not the same as proper face-to-face seeing and talking to each other.  

So just for Christmas day, my kids will not be PISO.  Yes, that's Plugged In (to their devices) and Switched Off (to the real world)
Grumpy, they may be, but they will be totally Christmas Present and correct.  

November

Well, here we are; nearly Christmas again. 
I did manage to get a few new items into my shop this year.
I also sold quite a few items too but by far the most popular so far is the large elves.

They are 18 inches tall and I have sold male ones, female ones and even different coloured ones. 

These are made to order and are found in my Etsy shop as Jingle bell elves  

But that is not all  

I've also made a smaller version - only 10 inches tall - just the right size to sit on your shelf and keep an eye on the childrens' behaviour and then report back to Santa!

 

This is my Christmas Shelf elf  also in my Etsy shop.  Very popular.  You will have to hurry if you want then as they are selling out almost as fast as I can make them

 

Just to prove the size difference

 

 (If you visit my shop and they are sold out; just send me a convo or message telling my what size and what colours you would like and I will get to work on yours as soon as I am able)

Oh dear, oh dear.

Well here we are; halfway through the year, and how am I doing with this year's challenge of make something new every month never seen before in my shops? 
Answer; bad.

I started off well enough with Santa and Mrs Santa for December and a lovely fluffy polar bear for January.  But then.....exactly; not a sausage. 

Time for a restart. 

Same challenge - just starting again in August.  Let us see if I can make something new before the end of August.  I do hope so. 

creative challenge - new item for January - Polar Bear

Well we have some very snowy weather promised on the way to the UK over the next week or so.  As a result I've made a new critter who will feel at home in the snow

He's a happy little Polar bear.  all soft and hand knitted.  He has matching earmuffs and scarf to keep him snuggly in the weather to come.  Also, to stop him getting lost in all that white stuff he has lovely black paws.  He is also a huge 9 inches long and 12 inches tall.

he is part of my "Make something new never seen before in my shops" challenge.  He is available in my artfire and etsy shops and is at a slightly lower price for all of January. 

It's Christmas

Well it looks like the Mayans were way off...all us knitters survived the alpacca-lypse

So I'm celebrating Christmas (always intended to anyway)  
So Happy Christmas to all my friends.  

Promises, promises

Well here we are at that time of year again where folks are thinking about out new year's resolutions.  

I love making new year resoloutions but I'm not brilliant at keeping them.

So this year I will make it simple.

I promise to make at least one new item (never seen before in my shops) every month.

Getting off to a good start, why wait for January?  here is the special new item for DECEMBER

It's a Mrs. Santa to go with my Softie Santa.  She is the same price (32 US dollars) and in the same shops Artifre and Etsy

Well, that was easy; let's see if I can keep up the "new item a month" for a whole year - wish me luck.

Here comes Santa Claus

Christmas is coming so I have made a Softie Santa.  He is such a cute critter that I just had to make another this year.  I only make one each year as he is kinda time-consuming.
He is all hand knitted and sooo soft.
He's 12 inches tall and only $30 (that's about £20 GBP)
If you want him you'll have to hurry.
Last year, he didn't stay in the shop for an hour!!!
Find him in my etsy shop here
or my Artfire shop here.

olympic flame in Bridgend

olympic flame in Bridgend a video by Eddy_G on Flickr.

Here's some film my daughter took of the olympic flame as it passed through our little town of Bridgend last month.

Making something for me

Yes, I have decided to make something for ME!!!

The only problem is; I'm not so good at choosing a number of colours that go together well and it could all end up looking a bit funky all too easily.

To choose two or three colours that go together well is easy - just choose shades of the same colour - but I want to do the Bernat Mystery Afghan blanket CAL (that's a Crochet a-long) and for that I will need to find 5 complimentary colours that are available as yarn.

Luckily, a friend showed me this wonderful blog; Design Seeds.com Jessica is a proper designer; she's been a car designer, shoe designer, colour & material specialist and forecaster so she knows what she is talking about. She has all these wonderful photos on her blog and then, after she has got the mood just right, she picks out the main colours and shows us the proper hex numbers for them so that we can use her colourways for anything from wedding colours to afghan blanket colours.

This is the colourway of hers that I have chosen for my blanket out of the many, many she has.

If you go to the actual blog, you will be able to hover over the colour points and it will give you the proper hex numbers. You can also search for colourways by colour, or theme. It's really cool. But these are the ones I want for my blanket.

Well, its all well and good choosing lovely colours - but the real question is; are they available in the real world as real yarn colours? At this point, much internet searching went on. I mostly discovered that UK yarn is made in lots of colours - but they don't necessarily go together. UK yarn is not made in palettes, even finding shades of the same colour in the same brand of yarn is tricky.

Eventually, I found Hayfield Bonus DK which is made by Sidar. It has over 55 different shades to choose from. Well, did I find a good match for the picture? judge for yourself. Here is the picture again, this time with the yarn colours I chose in a bar across the bottom.

It's a pretty good match between the two, yes? The brown is a little darker than I hoped for but I won't really know the colours until the yarn arrives (I've only just ordered it so I can't wait for it to be delivered so that I can start)

The bar also shows how much of each colour will be used in the finished blanket. You need a main background colour, then 3 colours that work well together and a bright accent colour. That is all I know about the blanket - it is a mystery you see. You are given the various motifs to make one at a time and then they tell you at the end how it all goes together. For example motif one will have written instructions and how many to make. So, I have to make 9 motifs in the main colour, 1 in colour A, 1 in colour B and 1 in colour C. (I'm sure colour D will be in there somewhere later - maybe for a border)

The pattern is free on the Bernat website and, as I said, they release the motif patterns one at a time. They are doing a Crochet blanket and a Knitted blanket - I'm only doing the crochet one. I hope it does not get too difficult.

Hello gang

Oh I'm so sorry; I haven't posted anything in ages

So I guess I'll just show you one of my cartoons

Here are photos of my last visit to the Zoo - Do you think I'm obsessed with handicrafts?

Panda bears - Done :)

Hurray, It may have taken me four weeks but here are the finished bears. As you can see; they ended up quite big.

Each one is made from slightly different fibres of yarn but the same fluffy white yarn too. I was really surprised to find that the wool based yarn behaved so differently to the polyester based yarn that I practically had to re-write the pattern for each!

Here is a better picture of the little guys without me in the way.

Little Panda Bears

Aren't these just the cutest little bears? They belong to a CBBC show called "the same smile"

In the programme they are taken around different playgroups in Britain to see how different kids do different things (different religons or abilities) but how they are also all the same; all kids like to play and have fun. It's a really cool programme.

There is just one problem. Even though loads of kids watch the show and are, of course, in love with the bears, the people at CBBC do not make the toys for sale to the public. This is so sad.

I was asked to have a try at making one. Well, I love a challenge...

The original bears are made from different materials but I was unable to find the right materials in the right colours.

Here is my first attempt. He is knitted all from a toweling effect yarn. His legs are pretty small and there is not much difference between him sitting down and standing up - but he can do both. (his head is not really off to one side I did that for the ahhhh effect lol) He does stand an impressive 14 inches tall though - which is pretty close to the same smile bears.

If I make the others it will be in white toweling yarn and yarn with no special effect. But that will make them more like the ones I'm trying to imitate. I'm quite pleased with him.

Hello ducky

If you liked last year's snuggle bunnies, then you are going to love this years snuggle ducks. Little yellow ducky cushion pals with a choice of colours for the beak and feet.

Just like the bunnies, you can put a few on the bed or sofa and tell everyone that they are just "throw cushions" to brighten up the room. But we all know that they are for secret hugs when you feel the need (but we won't tell)

These little cushion pals are bought for baby showers, teen congratulation gifts, going-to-college gifts, housewarming gifts, toy collections, room decor, throw pillows and "just because..." Gotta love that reasoning.

All hand knitted from extremely soft, fluffy yarn with washable fibre filling; they can be machine washed on a cool cycle ('cos we all need a wash sometimes) and are a 10 inch circular artwork.

Of course, I intend to make more, but for now, you can find the blue one here and the purple one by clicking here The bunnies are also still available - they look so happy together.

Pink Mammoths on Parade

My latest dinosaur in the collection is Woolhelmina The Woolly Mammoth. She is also in my Artfire shop She is a total snuggle beast and a real hug monster. But nothing scary here.

All hand knitted, she is perfect for any age. I can also make one up in another colour if you like. Just like all Mammoths she has a head bump and lovely long tusks and just look at those manicured finger nails. Her arms and legs are securely attached but can also move (just like a teddy)

More dinos

OK this is how Barney the dinosaur should look. Lots of teeth and claws for "rawr, rawr, nom, nom, nom" Well, maybe not so scary. He can do a mean rock and roll dance too as his legs have "teddy bear" joints and he is oh, so soft and fluffy.

Of course he has a cooler name than the "other purple dinosaur" too; He is a tyrannosaurus rex so his name is Tyrone O'Saurus, of course. You can find him with others at my artfire store.

As always you don't have to have him in this colour-way. You can choose your own colours and I will make one up for exactly the same cost.

"Barney the Dinosaur is Lame"

Yes, you heard it; and it didn't come from me.

I was once told by a 4 year old, that Barney the Dinosaur is lame because he doesn't have proper teeth and claws and all dinosaurs should have proper teeth and claws.

I've given it some thought and he was right; dinosaurs just look too cute these days. So I'm making a few dinosaurs for my Artfire shop Mine will look right even if, maybe a bit cute and fluffy.

This is Pterry my first dinosaur. He is a Pterodactyl and although he doesn't have sharp teeth, he does have a big yellow beak and proper claws; they may be knitted but they are there. He's as soft as a big blanket and knitted in very fluffy yarn. He's pretty huge too standing at 40cm tall and with a wingspan of the same. I love his long goosey neck and the fact that he will nod in agreement to anything you say. He has to be the perfect companion.