Still Crocheting Away

I am still busy crocheting although a lot of my time has been taken up with taking photographs and listing things on Etsy. I haven't sold anything yet but other people on Etsy tell me that this is quite normal until people get to know me.

If I don't stop shopping on EBay soon I will be asking you to send me food parcels! There are just too many bargains and I have decided that not only do I lack willpower where food is concerned I also lack it with yarn and crochet patterns.These are two cones of aran thickness. I just fell in love with the colours. It's so hard to get a  nice random dyed yarn these days without paying a small fortune per ball for it.

These wooden Tunisian hooks turned up today. I had almost forgotten about them as they came all the way from China. As I only bid 99p for them plus the postage of course I wasn't expecting much from them. Surprisingly they are so smooth to use. I have had expensive wooden crochet hooks and given them away because I couldn't work with the shape of the hook tips. A lot of them have more of a flat head. They used to snag on my yarn and slow me down. I had a practise with these today and they are as smooth as silk with just the kind of hook tip that I like. They are very short for Tunisian hooks. Only 10" long but I can wield these far easier than my plastic ones with the wiggly wires that cost me a fortune. Perhaps once I get the hang of using these short ones I can progress to the longer ones with wires to make larger things. For the moment I will just practise with baby things until I get better at it. Watch out Beverooni I will be asking you lots of questions soon!.

This is my doll Jo-Anna who came home with me from my shop. She was my display doll for many years. Now she has a new career of modelling for Etsy.

This is Maisie. The latest addition to my doll family. She is also a model for my Etsy store. Unfortunately she needs better lighting to show off her complexion better.

On this photo Jo-Anna is pretending to be a boy. I don't have any boy dolls so the girls have to change sex sometimes. I have another little doll called Sophia but as she is premature sized she hasn't done any modelling yet. The clothes that I have made so far are way too big for her. I shall have to make a set especially for her to model.

I have just signed myself up for 2 craft fairs in my home town. They are Vintage and Craft fairs with a variety of furniture, vintage clothing, cakes and jewelry as well as hand made crafts. I will be working like mad to make some thing more vintage themed as the first one is September 25th which doesn't leave me much time. I found out about them through my ice cream man. We were chatting about hobbies and I mentioned that mine was crochet. He gave me his daughter's phone number as she was looking for a crocheter for her fairs. I am also signed up for one just before Christmas and for that I will be trying to make more gift things as people might be looking for last minute Christmas gifts of hats and scarves.

Feedbackfrom my friends who have done craft fairs is they say that they can be good for sales one day and the next tine you go to one you can sell nothing. As I have been pre warned about this I won't feel too badly if I don't get any sales on the day. I am going to get some business cards printed. As the venue is so local to me and I will know a lot of the people visiting then at least it will raise my profile locally about what I do and where they can find me on my blog, facebook and Etsy. If they are not buying that day it might lead to sales later. Who knows. I can only try. I have been talking about doing this for quite some time so I thought that now is the time to give it a go. If it is successful then it might keep me occupied until I go to crochet heaven. With rising prices for everything any extra money I might make would be very welcome. If I just make enough to feed my EBay addiction to yarn and patterns I shall be happy!

Time is a wasting. I have some crochet to finish and a baby blanket to make. Not for my Etsy store this time it's for my elder niece's best friend who is due her third baby any day. I made blankets for her other two so I can't leave number three out. It will be a white blanket as she doesn't know the sex of the baby until it is born. We all think that it is another boy so it will be a lovely surprise if it's a girl.

There will probably be more photos of Buddy and Poppy as I am dog minding them for a day or so whilst my neighbour visits her new nephew. He still hasn't made his appearance yet but I think that the hospital is using dynamite if the other drugs don't work soon. He must be too comfy in there.

If you don't hear from me for a couple of days it will be because I will be busy with crochet and dogs in no particular order. At least these two don't shed hair all over everywhere as my lovely Buster does.

Furry Visitors

These are my two house guests. Mum and Dad have gone to a funeral and won't be back until tomorrow. They live next door to me and so are used to me looking after them but they are not too keen when it comes to bedtime. Normally they only stay with me for a few hours. There was a little bit  of conflict this morning as Lily was asleep on her rocking chair when they arrived and I had to rescue her. She scratched me for my trouble, but that's cats for you.

Poppy thinks this is her second home as she visits me all the time via the hedge. She never has a problem staying with me.

Buddy is a Mommas boy. He had a bit of a sulk for a while when he first arrived but soon perked up with the promise of jerky treats!

They both helped me to unpack my two parcels that arrived this morning as you can see from the bag visible in the first photo. I think they thought that the bags contained something other than boring balls of yarn.

The first parcel was just more supplies of white James C Brett 400 grams of baby DK yarn as I had underestimated just how much white that I would need for my crochet projects.

The second parcel was from Kemps which has some more bargain goodies. The lemon and pink textured are for pram blankets although the yellow is a bit brighter than I anticipated. That's the only drawback with ordering online. With my monitor the colours aren't always true. I got some more bargain buttons. If you like a collection of buttons then I suggest that you take a look at their sale buttons.

This is really what I placed the order with Kemps for. I had bought and used some Rowan Natural Silk Aran for my sister in law for her Birthday but when I saw that they had reduced this colour to 99p a ball I just could not resist buying some to stash for myself. It looks far nicer out of the plastic bag. It is one of those 'go with anything' colours that are so useful in a wardrobe. The pink fleck Baby 4ply was also reduced so that has been added to my baby stash.

I finished this off last night and started another jacket. The idea came from a very old pattern but as that was in two colours I changed it to three colours so that I could strand up the sides. I did quite a lot of modifications as the original pattern has a hood, but of course as per usual didn't write anything down. I really should make a tissue paper template so that I can make another one should it be needed.

The jacket is mainly half trebles (UK) with double crochet (UK) edgings. I added the little butterflies as a bit of added interest.

I don't think that I will get much crochet done for the rest of the week with the dogs being here until tomorrow and then Buster arriving on Friday morning. Buddy and Poppy don't shed but Buster sheds hair around himself like a halo. I often wonder why he isn't bald! I can't crochet anything important when Buster is around. I do have some oddments of DK cotton that I might make into something. The cotton doesn't attract the dog hair like the synthetics do.

It's almost time for dinner for me and then later feed the dogs. They went for a long walk this morning and so don't need another walk until my neighbours arrive home in the morning. Poppy has shown Buddy where I keep the dog treats so every time I go anywhere near the kitchen I have two furry friends at my heels.