A Christmas Wreath – Holly Pattern

I’m still here, just incase you thought I might have disappeared again! It as been crazily busy at T&T HQ the last few weeks but that isn’t the whole reason that I have been quiet – Instagram also has a part to play! I’ve discovered it in the last month and need to admit that I am totally addicted to hundreds of little pieces of creative magic that are living within my phone at this very moment. If you haven’t investigated it yet – it’s almost as addictive as Pinterest! You can find me at https://instagram.com/tinyandtoad/.

Last time I popped in for a chat, I shared details of my wreath competition the prize being this year’s version of my very first crochet wreath:

I have received so many compliments on what, I must admit, is my absolutely favourite creation that I decided to time how long it would take for me to hook a replica with a view to making them for sale in my Etsy shop. I guessed at around the 10 hour mark and I was wrong but, sadly, not wrong enough to make it viable for me to make and sell any more of these Christmassy treats.

Here, then, is my Christmas Wreath v.2 (I  wish I could remember how I made the original bow!):

…these are all of the component parts…:

…and this is the timer on my phone as I pressed stop for the last time:

Time and handmade are words which do not fit easily into the same sentence because creativity cannot be measured in minutes, seconds or hours but rather in passion. For the creative me, the need to create something that I perceive to be beautiful is the driving force in everything that I make and time is secondary. For the me that just opened an Etsy shop, time matters and this is a make that just takes a bit too much of it.

I’ve decided tho that that isn’t going to be the end of my Christmas Wreaths, and that the best way to achieve that is to share the pattern. So, without further ado, here is my Holly Pattern.

T&T Christmas Holly

The pattern is written in UK terms

I used a 4mm hook and Stylecraft Special DK in meadow and khaki.

You will find this easier if you hook the foundation chain in fairly loose stitches as you are going to need to crochet into the chain from both sides – you are going to be crocheting around the end of the chain

Stitches used:

Chain (ch) Slip Stitch (sl st)

Double Crochet (dc) Half Treble Crochet (htr)

Foundation Row: Chain 10

Sl st into the first ch from the hook, working along the foundation chain dc, dc, htr, htr, htr, htr, dc, dc, and sl st in  in last ch.

You should now have something that looks like this:

Now ch1 to take you around the end before you start working back down the other loop of the foundation chain.

Start with a sl st into the other loop of the last ch worked as below:

Working back along the foundation chain, now dc, dc, htr, htr, htr, htr, dc, dc and sl st into the last ch. Do not join.

Now to make the stem.

Ch4 and sl st into second ch from your hook, sl st into the remaining two ch and you should now have a leaf shape like this:

…but holly isn’t holly without prickles!

So, let’s add those. You are going to work a second row around the edge of the leaf.

Sl st into both the sl st and first dc from previous row.

To make the prickle, ch3 and sl st into the second ch from the hook. Dc into remaining ch and sl st into next stitch on previous row (dc). Repeat another 3 times until you have created 4 prickles and reached the end of the first side:

(You need to sl st and ch3 to make the prickle in the following stitches:First htr, Third htr and Second dc. And sl st only into the stitches between these).

The prickle on the end of the holly leaf is made by making a sl st into the back loop of the ch that you made to go around the end of the leaf on the previous row. This prickle is worked slightly differently, so ch3 again and sl st into second ch from hook but, this time, htr into next ch.

To work back down the other side, sl st into the sl st from previous row. *Sl st into first dc from previous row and ch3. Now create the prickle as before (sl st into second ch from hook and dc into remaining chain) and sl st into second dc from previous row. Repeat from * three times down the side until you have four prickles (sl st and ch3 into the following stitches – first htr, third htr, first dc).

The last stitch is a sl st into sl st from previous row.

Fast off and darn in the ends.

From me to you, an early Merry Christmas!

Please feel free to contact me if you need any help with the pattern.

Thanks for reading!

T&T

Did someone say competition?

I’m currently having a little down time as it is half term here in the UK. 

It’s been a busy week since launching T&T on Etsy and I have got far too many ideas of what to work on next!

Here’s a few pics from my first week:

   
    
    
    
    
   
I’ve got so many ideas for new projects I barely know where to start.

…but the next one is going to be a competition to win this year’s version of my Christmas Wreath. Last year’s is pictured below:

  
For your chance to win, head over to my Facebook page here.

I can’t wait to start creating my new wreath – first thing on Wednesday morning. Christmas 2015, here we come!

Why Blog?

This is a blog that I wrote just under 4 years ago on another page which I have not maintained. I have pontificated over sharing it here, but I passionately believe in breaking the taboo that is talking about pregnancy loss.

The very last thing I want to do in sharing this is to upset, my hope is that, in sharing, I can help at least one person to not feel the isolation that I did in 2009.

Should any of you reading be touched by molar pregnancy now, there is hope. Promise X

A Circuitous Route to Motherhood

Today, I left the house and car keys in the outside of the front door for nearly two hours. Today, I left the house and car keys in the outside of the front door for nearly two hours because my mind was elsewhere. Where elsewhere? Oscar, that’s where.

Oscar is my 12 week old son and Oscar is a miracle. All babies are miracles so what makes Oscar any different? Ostensibly, nothing. It is what went before that makes him our miracle.

Molar Pregnancy.

If you are randomly reading this blog and don’t know me, then you have probably never heard of Molar Pregnancy. If you dream of becoming, or are already, a Mum, that ignorance makes you lucky. You can trust me on that.

Molar pregnancy is a very rare form of tumour (effectively an abnormality of the placenta) that affects around 1500 women living in the UK annually…

View original post 534 more words

Don’t be afraid to fail (or, feel the fear and do it anyway)

As a child, I am told, my “little fingers were always busy”. I’m an only child that was rarely bored. In part, because my Mum was great at making sure I had lots of friends over to play (and, of course, that was a time in which ‘playing out’ was the norm – the ‘good old days’) but also because I had a craft cupboard for most of my childhood and I could usually find a way to delve into it and entertain myself.

During the friendship bracelet craze, I’d created my own designs whilst my friends were buying theirs in town, I cross stitched, french knitted, dried flowers, created fairy gardens. You name it,  I was there. Oh, and there was the time when I accidentally knocked a bottle of ink (remember Quink ink for re-filling your fountain pens?) all over my Mum’s beautiful pine kitchen table in the name of some crafty project or another.

Then I became a young woman, went away to university and left crafting at home in a village in Norfolk. For much of the subsequent 12 years, life’s greatest pleasures revolved around cheap wine, great nights out (some of which are best forgotten) and that hunt my 20 something self would never have admitted to, you know, the one for Mr Right (I found him).

Then, in 2009, life threw me a curveball and I became ill, the vices of the previous years fell by the wayside and I needed something to do to keep my hands busy and my mind on something other than the low-risk chemo that I was undergoing. A friend had recently discovered crochet and I decided to give it a try too. I bought a book and, to this day, I am not sure I understand the diagrams but I very much understand how to crochet thanks to Youtube and lots and lots of practice.

I produced some decidedly ropey pieces six years ago, but it was wonderful therapy. Really wonderful therapy. It still is.

In 2011 Toad arrived early one Autumn morning and the nesting instinct re-ignited my interest in crochet. Tiny’s arrival in the summer of 2013 turned it from a hobby into an obsession and, somehow, during the first three months of his life I managed to complete my first big project (after their baby blankets) – an advent calendar for the boys:

Christmas 2013

This little chap also came to join us for Christmas 2013:

This is Ahren the elf and, goodness me, wasn’t he a challenge in my sleep-deprived state and without the hours and hours of crochet that I have enjoyed since then. One leg is fatter than the other and he isn’t quite the same shape as the elf from the pattern that I used.

BUT…

Ahren and the mini stockings were something I made for my children without the fear of failure and they led me to be starting this blog which brought me to feeling the fear and doing it anyway.

You see, I had an itch that I just had to scratch. An itch that just wouldn’t go away no matter how much fear I felt so I decided to do it any way – on Friday I opened an Etsy store.

I’m feeling the fear posting this today, I’m feeling the fear about sending out my first orders but I am doing it anyway. I’m doing it because I don’t want to live with the regret of never having tried.

I love to craft, I need to craft, I can’t not craft and now I’m working my socks off in the hope that some folks out there love, need and can’t not have my craft as much as I want them to share in my crafty little obsessions.

So, here’s a peek at the process:

And here’s what I did anyway (which you can find at http://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/TinyandToad):

      

Life is too short to live it in regret so, feel the fear and do it anyway.

xx

Big News for T&T

I thought I would show you some of my wreaths as works in progress.

This one is crocheted in garden twine and I really like the finished look:

And it goes rather well with a small Twool wrapped heart don’t you think?

I am currently working on the final design and I am really loving this one!

 

This one is hooked in acrylic yarn with crochet cotton trimmings

 

This is a mini full round wreath

 

And this one is wrapped with aran weight cotton yarn.

And, I am really excited to be able to share that they are coming to an Etsy store near you!!! I have been working on this for a little while and launch night is Friday 16 October at 20:00 BST when you will (I hope!) be able to see finished versions of everything photographed above. Pop over to my Facebook page for updates!

Party week is crafty week!

Last week was birthday week here at T&T HQ and, boy, was it busy! So much so that blogging and my usual crafting went totally out of the window but my big little man is just so very worth it!

A few months ago, he requested a dinosaur cake. I found an image to use for inspiration that I could work with and felt fairly happy that I could achieve it. Then I started plotting for a dinosaur themed party.

We made papier mache dino eggs – which T&T both helped with – you can see the finished eggs on the birthday party table below.

Mr T&T helped me to making dino bunting. I drew the templates and did the cutting out – my craft scissors are mine and only mine!

 

And I also whipped up some dino foot prints.

And, Ta da!!! We decorated the boy shed. Sadly We ran out of time to get it properly finished but it is functional and, for two small boys, that’s all that matters.

…and then came the cakes. Mr Toad had a slight change of heart at the beginning of the week and decided to add a butterfly into the mix, followed by Star Wars!!! Oh, and the cake needed to be pink. I had been planning on blue or green. Pink is Toad’s favourite colour, so I don’t suppose I should have really been all that surprised. But I was. Having two boys, I hadn’t ever imagined creating either butterfly cakes or pink ones but, last week I did both.

We crafted (in the loosest sense of the word) a butterfly cake together for Toad’s actually birthday. Just to be clear, this cake was a butterfly, dinosaur cake whilst the cake made for his party was a dinosaur, butterfly, Star Wars cake. Confused? Well, hopefully, the photographs below will explain things a little.

Here is the Butterfly, Dinosaur Cake:

We like to think of it as rustic and Toad had such wonderful fun helping to decorate it and deciding that the dinosaurs should be eating the chocolate sauce.

And here is the Dinosaur, Butterly, Star Wars cake:

 

Spot the dinosaur and the light sabre:

 Toad’s party was, sadly, small but he loved all of the dino touches and the eggs went down a storm. This morning he polished off the dino’s horns and teeth and, tonight, Tiny snuck a few toes into his little tummy. When T&T are involved, deconstructing pink with blue spots dinosaur, butterfly Star Wars cake turns out to be far more enjoyable than I had imagined!

Thank you for reading

p.s. This week is exciting too…more of that tomorrow!

Rag Rugging on the Road

I promised more of rag rugging, and here it is! I am slightly delayed courtesy of a certain Mr Toad’s birthday and it feels good to be sitting at my desk again, looking out over the beautiful sunshine bathed Cornish Hills whilst tapping away and sharing a little bit of the T&T world.

Crochet is my crafting sanctuary. It’s the place that I return to for the same kind of cosy feel that an old favourite jumper might give. Or, at least, it always has been! Rag rugging really might be starting to give it a run for its money. It is so amazingly therapeutic that I find it pretty hypnotic. That is probably something to do with its simplicity.

Thanks to the lovely Jo Macintosh of Knit One Weave One, I am completely in love with this craft and even more in love with the fact that I can do it with a crochet hook – no need for any new tools at all. If you are even a tiny bit crafty, I highly recommend you give it a go!

I took my project with me on a trip up country to the Midlands the main purpose of which was to take the boys to Thomas Land at Drayton Manor Park (brilliant to see their little faces having so much fun!) and managed to even give a little lesson in ragging to one of my best friends and her mother-in-law. It really is so easy that I can already pass it on!

So here is the development of my first work…until Toad’s birthday got a teeny weeny bit in the way (more of which in my next blog).

 

I will share a picture of the finished work just as soon as I get there.

Thanks for joining me

xx

 

Shed time in crochet land

I’m just swinging by so that you don’t think that I have gone away on a long break again! It’s a busy time here at T&T HQ because it’s the run up to a certain Little Mr Toad’s fourth birthday which means that my creative streak (who am I kidding, it’s a juggernaut?!) has gone in to overdrive. There are also lots of other exciting things going on in the world of T&T which I will tell you about another day.

The BIG project for this birthday is a ‘Boy shed’ (Toad has asked for a shed specifically, not a playhouse, a shed.). Toad has been desperate for one for months and, being completely honest, so have I! This is a gift that will go on creatively giving to me long after The Birthday.- think of all the decoration it is absolutely going to need. Constantly!

We’re up-cycling for this little (or not so little) project using our current garden shed. It came to us with the house and, is in the perfect spot for the Boy Shed, will enable us to further put our own stamp on our little corner of Cornwall and, of course, we’ll save a few pennies doing it this way.

The Shed before the Boy-shed conversion began

This is the progress by half way through yesterday – the front wall is being moved back to make a veranda and little door is going to be added to it together with a window. That wall is currently no more than a frame and Mr T&T is in his element in the construction phase. Of course, my head is swimming with decor ideas.

The deconstruction phase

(It pains me to post such a messy pic, but this is a shed construction site and this is how Mr T&T works.)
I’m really excited today because not only is Mr T&T on holiday, The Boy shed is under construction but I am also going off to spend a couple of hours learning how to Rag Rug as part of Wool Week here in Liskeard. It’s organised by 3 bags full  and I absolutely cannot wait.

Before I go, tho, I thought that you might like a little peek into my world. This is my workspace and, behind it, the amazing view of Cornwall that I have the joy of waking up to every day. I’m a very lucky girl!

My view of beautiful Cornwall

Thanks for joining me again today.

The Stylecraft Giveaway: It’s Coming!

the twisted yarn

Would you like a free pattern and the chance to win a whole sack of joyfullycolourfulyarn? You would?? Oh my friend, you’ve come to the right place: you won’t be disappointed.

I’ve mentioned this on the ‘Yarn’s Facebook page (do please ‘like’ for updates) but I hear a faint rumour that not quite everyone is accounted for on The Book Of Faces, so it’s only fair that I also mention it on Ye Olde WordPress(e).

Y’see, it’s like this. Cast your almost perfectly photographic memory back to Stylecraft’s competition to select a new shade of yarn, which I co-judged along with the editor of Let’s Knit magazine and Lucy from Attic24. So gorgeous were the ten shades that we shortlisted that the fine fibrous folks at Stylecraft briefly put…

View original post 283 more words

It’s beginning to feel a bit like…

At T&T HQ time seems to disappear into a vacuum. I’m sure that I only published my last blog 5 minutes ago, yet just over two weeks have passed. It’s been busy, T&T have been fun (and tiring!) and we seem to be setting ourselves up for winter’s hibernation. This last weekend, we’ve all made the most of the good weather and spent both days out in the garden getting muddy. We’ve been in our home for just over a year and just hadn’t quite taken ownership of the garden…until Saturday afternoon. It’s a bit of a back to the drawing board plan since what we inherited was a little lacking in the aesthetic department and, frankly, neither of us know a whole lot about how not to kill plants, but we’re about to learn!

The creativity has, of course, not been limited to the garden, I’ve added to my yarn stash with lots of dusky pinks, neutrals and Christmassy colours with the result that I am currently caretaker of a constantly growing collection of works in progress. I’ve promised myself that I have until the end of the week to remedy that situation.

This is the beginning of a rug using Hooked Zpagetti yarn. This is t-shirt yarn – a waste product from the textile industry. Using such a large hook and this yarn is hard on the hands so this one is going to be a pick up and put down project. Since it is for us, there is no particular hurry.

I have managed to finish the odd project in the last couple of weeks.

This is my finished Attic24 ripple ‘blanket’. Truthfully, I am not a blanket girl, I just find them far too repetitive. I love the finished look of this ripple blanket but  I started it in June 2014 and finished about ten days ago and it’s considerably shorter than it is wide – just the depth of the sofa seat. I couldn’t even begin to estimate how many times I have picked it up and put it down again. So, for now, I am going to retire from hooking blankets and concentrate on my smaller (and quicker!) projects.

It’s beginning to feel like the right time to start preparing for Christmas and that means it’s wreath season. I am experimenting with covering them in more uncommonly crafted with materials and I am particularly pleased with my garden twine version. It isn’t finished, but here’s the start:

I used a 25cm half ring for this project so it will be the right size for hanging on a front door. Next job (on this project at least) is to finally decide on embellishments.

One of my cousins welcomed a baby girl at the beginning of the month and I’m nearly finished with her gift:

I’m on a little journey in cotton and these flowers are part of my experiment in crochet cotton in particular.

Oh, and it is beginning to look a little like Christmas:
   

The cone tree is very much a work in progress (another one!) and the first of many, many things I have in mind for Christmas 2015. Watch this space!