Baby Things!

If you ask any of my friends and family, they'll tell you that I don't have a maternal bone in my body. And they're quite right but that doesn't mean that I don't have a little bit of a squee over teeny tiny baby clothes and toys. Also, I will admit that I did melt more than a little when I saw my new niece and nephew at the weekend - they are adorable.

Obviously, I just had to make stuff for them. I'm so going to be that random aunt who knits clothes for their toys when they want the proper bought stuff, lol. But I don't mind that, I have very fond memories of toys my Nana made me when I was a kid.

The first things I made, I didn't actually end up giving to the babies because they were far too small. The twins were premature and even smaller again because they are twins so I made a pair of hats in the 'premmie' size but by the time we managed to go to Dorset and see them, they'd grown to 'new born' size and the hats I made were comically small. That's okay though, I have brought them back home and put them on a couple of our Funko figures instead.

The pattern I used was this one from AlliCrafts. I'm definitely going to make them again because they are so cute but this time, I'll make them in the correct size.

The next couple of things I made were far more successful, to the point that my sister-in-law claimed that she wanted to keep them for herself, lol. Cuddly toys, they're always a winner.

The first toy I made was one that I'd made before for a my mum's friend's baby. So I already knew how easy the pattern is and just how adorable the finished product is. I'm talking about Rachel H's L'il Baby Unicorn I love this toy so much, it's really to fun to make and looks great; I highly recommend giving it a try. The first time I made it, I stuck Rachel H's colours of pink and red because it was for a little girl and the colours were one of the reasons I wanted to try it in the first place. This time, even though it's a unicorn I wanted it to be something both the twins could play with if they wanted. I had a ball of Robin DK in bright pink, blue and white in my stash that I've been looking for a good project to use it on and I thought this would be perfect, especially if I used plain blue as the contrast colour to offset the pink even more.

The original L'il Unicorn I made a couple of years ago.

The second toy I decided to make was Emma's Crochet Stripy Giraffe. Just look at it, I could not resist something that cute. Again I wanted both twins to be able to play with and cuddle it so I tried to use colours that would appeal to both boys and girls. This was a great pattern; I know that there have been some negative comments on Emma's page but I didn't have any problems at all and would definitely recommend giving it a go. In fact I'm planning on making a couple more for my friends because I had lots of fun making this [and so did my cat who discovered a fun new game of stealing a leg and making me chase him to get it back].

Na na - na na - na na - na na - Slippers!

I named this blog the Stitchy Nook because I wanted it to cover most of the crafts I like doing but so far, it's been very knit-heavy. Obviously, this is because I'm currently working on the Blanket of Doom. Usually, though, knitting is a lot lower down in the favourite crafts list because I much prefer crochet and cross stitch. So even though, I'm still working on the blanket, I'm going to try and drop in details of other things I've made that aren't knitted, every here and there.

The first thing I want to show you, purely because I'd completely forgotten about them until a few days ago, are my Batman slippers. I'd been meaning to crochet a pair of slippers for a while and finally gave it a go. The link to the exact pattern I used has died and, having looked through the other posts on that particular blog, I think the creator has taken the pattern down completely. But if you wanted to recreate these slippers then any pattern for a basic slipper will work, as long as it's for a slipper that will cover the top of your foot rather than a strappy or Mary Jane slipper. Zoom yummy's slippers or Mammy Made's slippers look to be similar to the ones I made.

I crocheted the actual slipper in a shimmery black wool that I have in my stash and then I used the Batman applique pattern from the amazing Louie's Loops site [seriously, you need to check this site out, it's fab!]. And ta da! Batman slippers!

Not So Frolicking Reindeer (Or The Family Friendly Version)

Wow, it's been a couple of weeks since I last blogged; time really flies when you're ill and then super busy with other stuff. Yep, I got that whole flu bug that's immune to the flu jab lurgy again and this time passed it on to my dad, who passed it on to my mum etc... It's a nasty little bug and I hope you've managed to avoid it.

But in far nicer news, my new sublimation printer is here! My new mug heat press is here! It's time for a whole new venture! It'll be sad to move away from having t-shirt printing as my main business but big sites like Qwertee and Teefury have knocked my little Ebay shop for six and I've been really struggling for the past year. A new direction was needed and I hope my sublimation printer will lead the way. I'll be overhauling my Ebay shop and building up my Etsy shop and I'll keep you updated on that.

In my last post, I mentioned knitting another Reindeer hat (this is the third one I've made so they're pretty popular this winter). This particular version was for my father-in-law who didn't want the naughty reindeer side to his hat so I had to try and find a new design that he'd like. I eventually found a lovely little cottage design that would work nicely with the trees that were already in the reindeer pattern. This time I worked the hat up in navy and dusky blue colours and I think it looks great; the alien from Toy Story agrees...

With the two sides to the hat, the width is the perfect size but it's a very long hat which works well for my husband but I did remove some of the pattern to make it a little smaller for my father-in-law. It still looks great though and it'll definitely keep him warm on his early morning milk round.

The Happy, Froliking Reindeer *ahem*

I've finished that hat I was telling you about (and am now back to the Banket of Doom grindstone) so I thought I'd do two posts today; one for the hat and one for the next square.

Last winter my husband told me about a new jumper that Queens of the Stone Age had come out with "in that knitting type style, you know what I mean". This was before everyone and their brother had printed fair isle t-shirts so he had to pull a picture up on his phone for me and I saw this pretty hilarious jumper.

But I had the feeling that it would be even funnier if it was more pixilated and knit-like or, even better, actually knitted.

Then I forgot all about it until a few months ago when I was looking for a hat to knit for a friend and stumbled across Kat Mcab's Frolicking Deer Hat It was perfect and when I showed it to my husband he got that puppy dog look which means he really wants me to make him something. Of course, I was busy with the blanket and the giant queue of stuff behind it so I couldn't start it until last week when we went visiting the in-laws and I didn't want to take a huge bag of wool with me.

I went with a lovely wine colour and a contrasting silver grey. It took about a week to make as you're basically making two hats in order to make it double-sided. That was probably a good thing because it meant I only worked on the 'parental friendly' side of the hat while at the in-laws.

Here is the finished hat, modelled by my very camera-shy husband.

Parental friendly side of the hat

Non-parental friendly side of the hat

Kat states on the pattern page that this is an XXL hat but I found that the width was fine because the doubling up made the hat very thick and warm. It did, however, make the hat very long which looks good on my husband but I think I'm going to have to find a way to make the hat shorter when I make one for my father-in-law. Of course, because he asked me to make him one based on the fact that he'd only seen the non-naughty side, I'll have to come up with a new pattern for the other side of that hat anyway.