5 Friends

These cute little animals are all from Little Cotton Rabbits and they are so adorable! 

I love making them and their super cute outfits.
For their dresses I experiment with designs and combine them with things I see on Pinterest.
For $35-40 each they sell well through my display at Michelle's clinic.
I'm trying to make a selection to take to the yard sales in June, also with as assortment of different dresses so people can choose their favourite combination.
But the grandgirls were here this week and wanted one so the pig and the cat are gone already.
Need to make more!

Double Knit Blanket

It's done, finished it last night.

That was a very intense job, not exactly hard to do but you need to concentrate on the counting pattern at all times and if you make a mistake it's very hard to see at first and even harder to fix.

But now that it's hanging on my chair looking Christmassy and beautiful I'm very happy with the result.

There is no pattern, I saw the graphs and a picture online and I just made up my own version.
I made mine smaller (3x5 blocks instead of 5x7) so it would fit the armrest and also finish quicker.

Christmas busy

They don't call this the "busy time of the year" for nothing, I'm literally knitting and crocheting all day just to get everything done (10 more days to go).

The nativity set is a great success again, just like last year. As soon as I make some, they sell.
I mostly make the Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus set but there is also 3 wise men, 2 shepherds and an angel.
The free pattern is from Whistle & Ivy

My own design of the Scandinavian Christmas Gnomes are the other popular item this year.
I think I've made about 10 of these and still getting requests for more!

If you Google "Christmas crafts" my website gnome post is mentioned somewhere in the top (at least right now it is :)

I also send a suggestion about the Gnomes to "Blij dat ik Brei" (I translated the pattern in Dutch) and she wrote about it in her blog right away.

All this brings a lot more people to this website which is a nice thing.

I think I'll probably have to call a halt to making things for others soon so I can still finish my own Christmas armrest blanket before the 25th. I'm about 3/4 finished so I have good hope it can be done.

Doll with dreads

Made a couple of dolls before this one and always had trouble doing a nice hairdo. 

Then I saw this one from Annita Wilschut (same designer who does the monkey, bear, hippo, elephant etc. I LOVE her patterns so decided to go for it.

The doll (and the hair) are great but the hair is an ENORMOUS amount of work. You need to knit about 100 i-cord hairs strands. Takes longer than knitting the whole doll. But the result is very nice so I guess it's worth it in the end!

A little problem is the weight of the head (because the big hairdo!) so you need to stuff the neck pretty good otherwise it will fall fore/backwards.

I didn't like the fact that she had no nose so I added one!

Gnomes

I know it's not Christmas yet (too hot right now to even think about winter!) but I'm always working ahead of the season.
I've been eyeing these cute gnomes for a while already, apparently they're Scandinavian Christmas Gnomes, also called Tomte or Nisse. I figured they couldn't be too hard to make so I worked on it for a few days and came up with my own pattern (you can download it here). You don't need much yarn so it's a great way to use up leftovers (which I always have an awful lot of)
I'm pretty pleased with the result and I think I'll make some more later to sell at Michelle's clinic for the upcoming Christmas season.

You can of course use any colour yarn and they don't need to be for Christmas (e.g. using green would make them look like a Leprechaun for St. Patricks Day)