Finnished balnket and amigurumi crochet bunny

Cold weather always makes me want to crochet more. And this time around my head is full of ideas for lots of crochet projects. As I mentioned before I've been making my firs baby blanket. It's supposed to be a part of this baby gift basket/set. I'm not sure what else is going to be in this set, but a blanket (lovey) and a crochet amigurumi toy are a musts. At first I really wanted to restrain myself and make it one piece at a time - first finish the blanket and then move on to the toy. But boy is that a hard task for me :) I always tend on start new projects while the on going ones are still not finished. And this time I did it again. But to be honest it really turned out good this time. I managed to make the toy and still finish the blanket without having to push myself on finishing.
So here is the finished blanket. It's about 13x13'' (33x33mm), few inches bigger then expected because I went went with the flow of the pattern. It's still not washed so it's a bit stiff and wavy.

For the toy I went with the bunny. Always loved them and it seemed like a good fit for a baby's toy. I really had no clear pattern for it, just made it one row at a time :) Having a vision in my head helped, rest is just a case of trail and error. Although for the head I used this great pattern called "The Ideal Crochet Sphere" I used it before, it has few different sizes, it's absolutely awesome and perfectly round. After assembling the parts whole picture came together and I was so happy with the result. Also I made this pink dress for the bunny (it's obviously a girl :)).

Since while making the fist bunny I didn't wrote down any of the pattern I had to star making the second right away while still remembering how it was made. And this time I'm writing down the pattern very carefully :)

For the second one I switched from cotton to baby wool (Merino) and the color is Cream, more like a winter bunny :)

Crochet granny ripple blanket

After some careful consideration I decided that I have to put all of my non jewelry crafts in a separate shop on Etsy. So now I have "Pretty Dots Art" and I can finally do some more crocheting! This is so exiting, I have like a million new ideas and my Pinterest crochet board is getting bigger by the minute! But I have to calm myself down so I wouldn't start a bunch of new project at the same time (as I do so often). First of all I decided to make something that's been in my mind for quite some time, something fun and sweet for a truly special occasion - new baby. I love those gift sets/baskets so why not make something like that for a newborn girl/boy. No doubt one of the most important things for a baby is his own sweet blanket and a hand crochet blanket is always so much nicer than any of these store bought mass production ones. I've been making this big blanket for myself from some old yarn I never use, and the pattern (video tutorial here) I chose looks really nice. It's a simple dc ripple, but it looks really good, even with those random colors.

So I thought I'll do that for the baby blanket as well. But then I saw this cute granny ripple pattern and went for it instead. 

You can find the pattern tutorial here. It really is a simple pattern, basically you only need to know the chain and double crochet stitches in order to do it. I decided to go with a small lovey type blanket (about 10'x10') since it's just a part of a gift set, not the whole gift. So far I'm only on the 10th row but it looks nice and I'm quite happy with it. Hope to be finished with this blanket soon so I could move on to the next item on the new baby gift set list - crochet toy! 

Peacock inspiration

I find myself having a bit of a peacock obsession lately. The colors, shapes and the over all mood of this majestic creature is captivating and some what overpowering. Of course this is not something new to the fashion and inspirational worlds, peacock have been around for quite some time. But for me this fascination helps to see all this from a new perspective. Now I can see so much potential for so many new projects. And let’s face it peacock is not one of the more simple creatures. Let alone the number of colors and hues.

So this all started from a couple of bottles of nail polish. One ordinary day I stumbled upon a new color collection from my favorite nail polish. I picked two lovely colors – apple green and this teal with glitter. They looked really nice together, figured I’m gonna do my nails in that green and use the sparkly teal for the ring finger (Yes I love this trend!♥). When buying these nail polishes I thought to myself that together they remind me of peacock. And that was the trigger. After few days I was working with polymer clay and decided to make some earrings in peacocky colors and this nice swirl pattern so it would look kind of like swirly feathers. It came out beautifully and made me want more of this peacock inspiration. So as always for inspiration I “went” to Pinterest. After few hours of countless images I made a “Peacock” board and got hooked for real LOL. 

Now I’m working on this bead loom bracelet pattern with a peacock feather. Since it’s beauty is mostly in the colors I had to made it in 25 colors (mostly different hues). And after raiding my bead supplies I managed to match only half of those colors. Good thing my favorite (and the best) bead shop is very near my home and my good friend works there so bead shopping is always twice as fun. So I got like 14 new colors (couple of more “just in case”) and plan to by done with the pattern soon. And I’m really excited to start beading this bracelet. Since after this I will have a LOT of peacock color beads left, I feel plenty more peacock project coming up. Right now I’m also making new set (or few sets) of crochet flowers in these colors and while bead sopping I found these gorgeous tiny sparkly cabochons in blues and purples so they will be becoming something too.

Accordingly Cup of Color may be changing it’s color scheme for the time being, we’ll see ;)

That’s it for now, till next time!

Best wishes,

Kristina

Crochet pincushion, pentagon

Some time ago I got tired of getting my needles in and out of that special sorting box. And noticed I keep on pinning those needles in some random thread ball lying on the desk. It was clearly time for a pincushion (no idea why I didn't made it even earlier). At first, while browsing the net I found these cute flower like pincushions sawn from beautiful colorful fabric. But it took me a bunch of time to find the right fabric (I’m very particular about these kind of things), and I almost forgot why I needed it (while keeping on pinning my tread balls). And then my new found love for crocheting came. While looking for inspiration on patterns I stumbled upon this gorgeous crochet pentagon pincushion. "I have to make this!" - loud inner voice screamed.
I adapted the simple granny pentagon and it came out perfect! First one was for my mom (she‘s a seamstress so new pincushion is always welcome) and the second one for myself (of course the bright colorful one :)). They both came out very cute and fun looking. So now my needles have a respectable place to hang out :)

Now I‘m making another one, and this one will go into my shop.