Recycled Crochet

Hello Lovelies,
I've got some  crochet to share with you today , yay , it seems like a while since I've done that .

As I mentioned in my previous post, I bought a lovely ,but stained child's poncho in a charity shop last week......

Because the colours were so nice I decided it would be worth the time and effort to unravel it and reuse the yarn in my own project.
A few of you seemed surprised at this idea. But I guess it seems normal to me as my Nanna was always unraveling things to use in her knitting .

Indeed the first ever blog I came across, back in 2008 was Laughing purple goldfish. This talented Australian lady uses recycled yarn in all her crochet and knitted projects ,do have a look at her lovely site.

Being "green" was not the main reason I chose this project though.......I was keen not to make a colour choice mistake like I did for my hexagons.I did not want to start another project only for it to be abandoned unfinished.So I decided to play safe and make a simple giant granny cushion cover in the same colour repeats as the original garment , that I liked so much.

What do you think ? I'm very pleased with how it turned out :0)
Yay .... phew ..... it's a great confidence booster to make something so pretty even if the colours were not chosen by me .
And here are those lovely colours close up....

Ummmmm,yummy :0)



I did end up with lots of extra ends where I had to tie the relatively short lenghts of yarn together ,and the yarn was quite "stiff" to work with , but I tend to find that with cotton yarns.

For the back I decided to use an old fleece blanket that I had lying around and made an envelope style back. To pretty it up a little I added a crochet trim in orange ....

And then I added some buttons to keep it closed. The benefit of using fleece meant I could just made a tiny button hole with scissors and they did not need any sewing as the fleece will not fray.

The back of this cushion does NOT meet with the boys approval , and I have to admit it does look a little like an old fashioned bed jacket , but that just makes me smile :0)

I've got quite a few tiny balls of yarn left so I've been making little three round grannies to use them up ......

These will make another cushion that should co-ordinate nicely with the first one :0)

Jacquie x

P.S. I just had to mention that the boys wore my Hawaiian shirts for Red Nose Day at school today . We had fun making tissue paper flower garlands to add to their costume........

These were really easy to do , just tissue paper flowers threaded on to yarn using a darning needle . We used cut up drinking straws to space them out.
 Much to their excitement they won a prize for the best costumes in their year, yay for keeping stuff 20 odd years !!

Little Happies

Hello lovelies,
Lately I've been reading several blog posts on the theme of finding the small things in your surroundings which make you smile . In a busy day it's so calming and uplifting to notice a pretty view or bunch of daffodils,a blue sky or a pretty item, be it handmade , thrifted or a small treat :0)
I heartily agree with this sentiment and  being able to capture some of these things and share them here increasingly helps me open my eyes to the beauty around me .

 On a week when the world has once more been rocked by terrible natural disaster and human suffering I feel oh so fortunate than my loved ones are safe and my little part of the globe is as beautiful as ever.....

So here are my little happies from this week........

Flowers appearnig in my front garden after months of nothing........

These pretties are all from pots I bought for the house in preceeding years, and planted out when they faded.

The pretty purple crocuses I planted in the autumn only open up like this when the sun is shining but what a treat when they do.....

Indoors I've been enjoying flowers in the bathroom....

 at four bunches for a pound I'm enjoying having these sunny flowers all around the home :0)


Cute spring Lambs and walking the fresh ,but thankfully not freezing, countryside.....

Finding this lovely in a charity shop.It's a childs poncho but I was so drawn to the colours that after afew moments thought I decided to buy it and pull it down to use the cotton blend yarn for my next project ........

It's made for gap and I think the colours are stunning....

There are a few ink stains so thats probably why it ended up on the sale rail for £2...

So I've been busy turning it into this .....

There's only a small ball of some colours but I've already made a start on a project to recycle these lovelies into something new....can't wait to share it with you  :0)

Jacquie x

P.S. thankyou for all your suggestions regarding my hexagons . Apparently I'ts not O.K. to do a tutorial for a published pattern ( thanks for the heads up Victoria)
I think I will turn it into a small project as several of you suggested, maybe a cushion cover or possibly a bag .

P.P.S. Sorry if you are one of my winners awaiting your needle case. Due to me having the memory of a goldfish , I've forgotten to buy some padded envelopes to post them in .I'm hoping to finally get this sorted soon.

A Tale of Two Shirts

Hello Lovelies,

Last week the boys came home from school with a note to say that next Friday would be  non-uniform for Red-nose day and the children should dress up in a "Beach Party " theme. So I made these Hawaiian shirts ....

O.K. I'll come clean that's not quite true ......... I did indeed make these shirts , but it wasn't quite so recently :0)
Not recently at all in fact. These were made by my 20year old self way back in the 80's !( not the most tasteful decade )

Back then I was due to go on my first "couple holiday" just the two of us for two whole weeks . We booked to travel to what was then Yugoslavia . It was only the second time I had been abroad and the first time I had ever flown.
Being a student money was pretty tight so I made and borrowed quite a few items of clothing for myself.
In this picture , taken on that holiday, I'm wearing a borrowed top and some shorts I made from a white bed sheet ! ( please excuse the perm , it was my first and last )......

My then boyfriend decided he would like a Hawaiian shirt to wear on this holiday , and as he couldn't find one , I volunteered to make him one. Trouble was the first one turned out too short , so I made him another ( young love !)

I think he only wore it a couple of times and somehow they both ended up in my fabric stash..... in case the fabric came in useful . Now I'm soooooooooo glad it didn't .

When I look at the sewing on these I'm impressed with the skill I had then . Anyone who makes clothes will know that a shirt is a pretty tricky garment , there's a collar to to set in ......

Interfacing and a yolk......

Here you can see I've hand sewn the button holes ......

And I did a good job with the pocket.......

The whole idea of pattern cutting , notches , tailor tacks , and other stuff I can't even remember seems pretty daunting these days , let alone the sewing.
That's what I meant when I referred to my rusty sewing skills in my Russian doll post.


So......after all these years they will get to see the light of day once more .The boys think they are perfect and I'll have a big smile when they put them on ......

Oh, about that holiday, it didn't totally live up to my dreams ! Yugoslavia was stunning but I spent most of the first week in the bathroom and by the end of the holiday the boyfriend and I were bearly speaking !

Jacquie x

Hexagon love

Hello Lovelies,
Last week, to take my mind off feeling rather yuk, I was searching around on the Internet for some crochet inspiration , there are such great resources out there , like flickr and Ravelry .
Eventually ,on  Ravelry, I found a hexagon pattern I wanted to try . There was a link to the free pattern.
The colours were not to my taste but I could see that it was a pretty design . I liked the fact that the central motif was a Hexagon ,not a circle, for a change .
I gave the pattern a try and was really pleased with the first 4 rows .....really pleased :0)

But the final row was very thin and I was keen to have a more substantial border to my hexagons , one that would lend it's self to the join as you go method ...explained clearly here .
So I had a play around and came up with a new 5th round .  Here is my version of this Coats pattern........

Ahh, I do think that is an improvement .

Next I chose some yarn from my stash ......

and got hooking , would you like to see how it's going ? OK .......

Ummmmmmmmmm, Not sure what I was thinking here . I think it's probably best not to make colour choices when you are feeling so yuk. Or am I being unfair to this piece? The motifs do look pretty , like this one.....

and this one .....

what about this one ?..........

Maybe it's the border colour, but I think I would be happier with a wider range of colours in the motifs.
It's a shame I'm not feeling the love with these colours as I do love this motif . I think I'm going to start again with and new colour scheme , what do you think ?

I am planning to share my version of the final round with you lovelies , in case you would like to give it a try.
I suppose I could do a tutorial for the whole motif , it is a free pattern so I can't really see a problem with taking a few pictures of the stages to make it a little easier for beginners  to follow , can you?

I would love to here your suggestions about this project and  I must thank you so much for the Blog anniversary wishes
Jacquie x

Celebrations

Hello Lovelies , it's a double celebration here at Bunny Mummy today.

Firstly.....my little blog is one year old ,YAY. The boys decorated a cake today and tonight we added a candle ....it's always great to have an excuse to blow out candles , and this one was relighted and blown out several times :0) .........

I know I've said before how happy this blog makes me , but it would be nothing without you lovelies to share it . So thank you , and here's to many happy returns .

The other celebration is my giveaway draw, to win one of my handmade crochet and felt needle cases .....

My human random number generators (the boys and my two nieces) chose 5 numbers between 1 and 105

They chose these numbers 60,8,19,44 and 95

So thats ....
NERO'S POST AND PATCH
TWO BONES AND A BAGLE
HEATHER
GILL
MRS TWINS

Congratulations to you all , I'll contact you very soon , but right now I'm pretty pooped so I'll say "Night Night" ...... and as one of my boys used to say, when they were very small....... "don't let the bed bus bike".

 Back soon with my latest project,you can just see it peeping out from under the cake .I've been experimenting with hexagons and I'm loving them so much :0)

Jacquie x

Maybe .......

Hello Lovelies , how are you ?
I've been a bit blurgh the last couple of days . Nothing serious , but I'm sure the return to freezing weather , and grey days haven't helped things. It's a good job I've got some sunshine in a vase on my coffee table ....

Some colourful yarn to play with........

And a teensy bit of retail therapy :0)............
 I'm not sure what came over me but I splurged on this today..........

A cute little dolls bed. It was sat at the back of the charity shop and didn't have a price .....so I enquired and the lady said "would a pound be OK?" Welllll , I couldn't really say no , could I . 

I don't have any little girls of my own and I don't know any , young enough to play with this , but I'm thinking I might make it a pretty quilt ( I'm longing to try patchwork again ) or a little granny stripe , yes , that would be cute . I might paint it , or stencil it .
 Maybe 2011 might be the year I take the plunge and have a craft stall , near Christmas , Maybe someone would buy it if it was looking all pretty with a little mattress, pillow and blanket..........maybe.......................?????????? So many possibilities.
Have a great weekend , see you Sunday for the draw .
Jacquie x

Giveaway Reminder

Hello Lovelies,
Are you wondering why there are 2 soft toys in this picture? No I didn't make them . I was just having a bit of fun depicting a famous March saying , can you guess it ? ( answer at the bottom of this post )


My main reason for  popping in today is to say thank you all for the great comments on my Russian doll project .
You lot really are sweet and there's still time to  put your name in the hat HERE if you fancy winning one of my little felt needle cases....

I'm so glad it's March and today I was determined to get a picture of some lambs, such a wonderful spring sight.....First I stopped the car after spotting these "sheep".........

Sorry, Geese ! well  I was driving .....

Finally I got the right animal...so cute ...

I also spotted some fab spring flowers whilst in town...........

Yay Spring , I love ,love, love it .
Jacquie x

( answer to saying..........."When March comes in like a lion it goes out like a lamb ",well... it was pretty cold and grey here yesterday so hopefully that means we will have good weather at the end of the month, when spring really gets going :0) )