Chester the cat Stash Buster!

I have just come across the February Stash Link Party over at Linda's Crafty Corner and was wondering what I could enter.  I often find you never quite have the correct colours to match or contrast or the right yarn, to use up your stash so the stash just seems to get bigger and bigger!! Do you feel the same?

Well I do hope the stash buster I'm going to show you will solve all your problems in one go!!  Let me introduce you to Chester the cat.  I made him about 3 years ago now and he is very much part of the family.

He is made using Axminster carpet yarn which I salvaged from a weaver.  Once the cones of yarn have been used they cannot be put on the loom again as there is never enough yarn left to complete another carpet so they get discarded.  They are perfect for doing Jumbo Crochet but as you can imagine I have a lot left in my stash too!!  Click on Chester's name and you will be able to read all about how I made him and what started the idea off.  I used 5 strands of yarn at a time, using grey as the base and every time I ran out of a colour I just added a different one!

 Chester Goes Topless!

Chester has had lots of adventures so if you would like to read about what he gets up to click on any of the links in this post or just type Chester into the search box at the top on the left hand side.

A Birthday Surprise for Mum!

Ooops! Chester's friend Taffy is joining in now.  What mischief have they been up to?

It's about time these two little mischief makers had another adventure.  Can you think of anything they may like to try?

Thank you for reading and I hope this post has given you an idea of
what you could do with your stash!!

That's if you have any left, of course, after entering the February Stash Link Party!

Bye from me
and bye from Chester too!

x

Jumbo Crochet Rope Cushion

You may remember from my previous post (although it was a little while ago I admit) I was experimenting with different materials to crochet a cushion.  Well, I have finally finished my Jumbo Crochet experiments so thought I would share my efforts with you.

I chose to use cotton sash cord as it is soft and pliable and still gives a chunky effect.  You can see from the pictures below the size of the stitches in comparison with the 50p piece.  Having finished the crocheting I was then presented with the problem of how to join the two sides together.  The picture, bottom left, shows how I solved this problem.

My next dilemma took a lot of thought.  I wanted to make the cushion cover removable for cleaning so this meant finding some way of fastening an opening.  A zip would have been impossible to sew in and buttons would have added to the cost.  So I put it to one side for a while and kept returning to it hoping for a 'light bulb' moment!  I finally decided on toggles and the pictures below show the result.

And ta dah! Here is the finished product.

I hope you like the finished Cushion.

It is very difficult to do it justice in the photos.

I have sent it off now so keep your fingers crossed the shop like it too!

This is the first one as a sample, if it is accepted I will be able to crochet different sizes and colours.

I'll keep you posted!

I am off to grab myself a cup of tea and settle down with Handmade Monday.  

See you there.

Have a good week!  

Jumbo Crochet Experiments

I'm very excited this week as I have been given the opportunity to design and make jumbo crochet cushions for an exculsive shop.

All I need now is to come up with suitable yarn to use and a stunning design or two!! Simples!!

Here are a few pictures of my first experiments

I tried a block pattern in dk yarn first and then in

 Boodles Yarn from Hobbycraft (recycled t shirt yarn)

These pictures show wavy stripes - not keen on this, it just

looked as though I hadn't crocheted the stripes straight!!

I decided on straight stripes in the end, but despite having

only completed one side of the cushion I used 3 balls of yarn!!

I like the results of this one!  Here I used Jute sash cord.  It comes

in 10m lengths and this used the whole 10m. Hmm .... need to give this some thought.

This circle measures 10" at it's widest!

I've not settled on the right yarn to use yet.   May just have to order some more for a little more experimenting.

If any of you have any ideas what you would use, or indeed have used, for a very, very, thick chunky cushion, all suggestions would be gratefully received.

Hope you have all had a good week.  

I'm off over to Handmade Monday now.

See you there!

Thanks for reading :)

Chester at Lustleigh Spring Show

You will be pleased to know that with all your help and comments last week, Little Ted now 

has a name!

Let me introduce you to ......

wait for it ....

I whispered a few names in his ear and he seemed to like Hugo so ... Hugo it is!

Hugo just seemed to suit him for some inexplicable reason! 

I am so grateful to you for your wonderful suggestions, thank you. 

I really couldn't have done it without you :)

Chester at Lustleigh Spring Show

As far as I can tell, Chester had a very pleasant time at Lustleigh.  He was all by himself this time but being a male he doesn't give much feedback!!!!  Here are just a few pictures for you. 

For those very observant ones amongst you, you may have noticed I have altered Chester's eyes slightly.  I have attached them with velcro this time so I can position them looking in different directions.  I think his extreme crochet flowers were equally as good as those on show, don't you?

I apologise to everyone last week as I had a quick peak at what you were all up to but I didn't have a lot of free time to place many comments.  We've been decorating you see, it seems to eat up the hours!

I shall aim to remedy that this week! 

Popping over to Handmade Harbour very soon. 

See you there!

Oh! Just one last thing

Now have to spend the evening re-threading the heading tape on a new set of curtains I bought from Dunelm Mill.  First pair were tied.  Only when I started to gather the second pair, and didn't seem to be getting anywhere   -  did I twig they weren't attached!!!!!!!!!! Doh!

Thank you Dunelm !!!!!

Make and Craft Swap

A very chilly and frosty day down here in Devon as no doubt it is in many other parts of the country too!

I have had a lovely start to the week, receiving a gift from my Make and Craft swap partner, Wendy of  Alice and Florence Blog.

I can't wait to start my little cross stitch Christmas Tree!  Wendy chose one of my favourite colour combinations, pink and green.  Thank you Wendy for such a thoughtful gift.

Here is what I made for Wendy

The bought gift was a little tea-light holder with Wendy's name on, but I forgot to take a photo of this.  Oops! If you would like to see what it looked like and what Wendy thought of her gift, why not pop over and take a look at her blog.  I'm sure she would love to meet you.

All that's left now is to say Happy Christmas to you all and I'll see you over at Handmade Monday and don't forget ......

Make and Craft Magazine

I'm sorry but I am bursting with excitement!  There is a write-up about Chester and I in the second issue of Make and Craft Magazine.  It's my first time ever in a magazine and I am over the moon.

If you'd like to read the posts referred to in the write up

Chester goes Topless

Hello Chester

Chester and Taffy help with the hedge trimming

.... just click on these links and they should take you straight to them.  Feel free to leave a comment if you would like to, I'll post a reply as soon as I can.

You can see how Chester was made by clicking on the tab 'Chester the Extreme Crochet Cat' at the top of the page and to see pictures of Chester click on 'Chester's Gallery'.  There is also a tab marked 'workshops' where you can find out what workshops are coming up soon.

Finally, I would just like to thank Katharine of Make and Craft for creating such a fantastic magazine.

While I'm at it, I'd also like to thank Wendy over at Handmade Harbour for hosting Handmade Monday.  She has been very busy recently but still manages to keep up with us all.

Have a good week and I'll see you over there!

Extreme Crochet Fruity Basket

Hello Everyone

No post last week I'm afraid as we were away for the weekend up in North Devon.  No photos either this time as it is somewhere we have been before and I forgot to take the camera on the walk we did! But you'll be glad to know we had a lovely time and were quite lucky with the weather.

We did however pop into Ilfracombe, on our way up, to have a look at their new sculpture, Verity by Damien Hirst. Just click on this link to find out more about her.

What do you think?  I absolutely love it!  In my mind it sparks conversation and discussion.

Are you all enjoying the sunshine this weekend? There are some wonderful Autumn colours around as I'm sure you will all have noticed.

I have had a couple of interesting 'meetings' this week, one with a local yarn shop Spin A Yarn in the lovely village (or maybe small town!) of Bovey Tracey.  It is a gorgeous shop with every possible type of yarn you can imagine, so inspirational and extremely difficult to walk out of there without buying anything.

I am very pleased to say I will be tutoring a Jumbo Crochet Basket Workshop here after Christmas.  More details will follow when they are released.  In the meantime I am experimenting with just one or two of the yarns in the shop.

A ball of King Cole Gypsy, a skein of Colinette Zero and some Big Fab in black that I had in my stash.

And here is the finished article, complete with bananas to give it some scale.

4 strands of super chunky yarns and a 20mm hook.  Not quite as large scale as my usual but I am pleased with the way it has turned out, not to mention how quickly it crochets up!

I shall try another one with more muted tones next time.

My other meeting was with the organiser of the Contemporary Craft Festival  held annually at Bovey Tracey.  We discussed a large crochet/knitted creation for a display to herald their 10th Anniversary.  Watch this space for more details!  As soon as I know more I will let you know :)

Well, that's all for this week folks, I will try and visit as many of you as I can over at Handmade Monday on Handmade Harbour.  My apologies for not having done so for a couple of weeks, life just got in the way, you know what it's like, although I will try and remedy this over the next couple of days.

Have a good week! 

Bye for now 

x

Update on Fair and a Round Square!

Hello again

I wish these Handmade Mondays didn't come around so quickly.  You start the week off with plenty of determination to get a mountain of things done, only to get to the weekend with a list longer than you started with!  And of course all this rain isn't helping!

Well, moan over, I thought I had better update you on last weekend's fair as so many of you left such lovely comments.  After the first day (Sunday) it got progressively better.  More signs were put up and we had activities going on inside and outside the marquee.  As you all predicted, Chester was a real crowd puller, even if people weren't interested in crochet they still wanted to know all about him.  I lost track of the amount of times I told people what he was stuffed with and how long he took to make!  He had his photo taken with another bear to go back to nursery school with them!  And the nursery school bear had his photo taken 'doing' some extreme crochet!

Lots of people had a go at extreme crochet and I was also pleasantly surprised to find out that quite a few men can crochet too.  I managed to photograph one having a go!

I was overwhelmed by the interest in the huge balls of yarn I had wound.  It was my daughter's suggestion to market them like this and I'm so glad I did (I owe her one, but don't tell her!).  I had to go home on the Monday night and wind 5 more.  I only had two left at the end of the fair! (Sorry for the grainy picture!)

So, it was a totally brilliant weekend after all.  I met lots of interesting people, apart from the interest in the extreme crochet many customers were also interested in the workshops and the atmosphere between stall holders was very friendly.  I made new friends and caught up with past ones too, a far better weekend than I had ever imagined it could be.  A big thank you to everyone who came to visit Fiddly Fingers, I hope you all enjoyed the fair.

A round square basket!

I decided I would do something a bit different and make a square basket, after all I couldn't find many square crochet baskets on the internet so I thought an extreme crochet square basket would be a little more interesting.

Well, as you can see the base started off square!

But after the first round things started going round too!  A bit of a flop really, may as well have done a round one!!  Maybe the fact I couldn't find many pictures of square crochet baskets on the internet should have been a warning!!

Anyway, back to the drawing board! Next time I'll try crocheting each side separately , although probably not for a while as I need to be in the right mood!  I've moved on to a small 'v' stitch rug now, another trial so we'll see how this one turns out.

I'd love to hear any ideas for other items you think may work well in extreme crochet.  I'll give anything a go!

Hope you all have a good week, I'm hoping not to end up with webbed feet by the end of it!!!!

Bye for now!

x

An Extreme Wind Up

Hello everyone!

What gorgeous sunny weather we are having at the moment.  Doesn't it make you feel so much better?

I have been a bit quiet on the blogging front recently as I have been very busy trying to get ready for a 3 day food and craft fair over the Jubilee weekend.  I am going to be using the fair mainly to promote the workshops I will be running soon.  So in order to get people's attention, I am encouraging people to come along and have a go at extreme crochet.  Therefore I haven't really been making much, but I have been winding balls of yarn by the bucket load!!

I have been trying to design some Extreme Crochet kits to sell at the fair, this is what has been taking up my time and unfortunately I have come to the decision that time wise it is just not viable.  I was going to include a pattern, a 25mm wooden crochet hook (hand made by my OH) and 20 balls of yarn in the kit.  Well winding and labeling all the balls took ages to get them looking professional, on top of that you have the time spent making the hook, and the cost of the packaging!  So all in all what seemed like a good idea at the time turned out to be too time consuming, but it took me at least a week if not more to work this out!!

,

After much discussion we are still going to offer the handmade crochet hooks, the yarn and the pattern, but I will be selling them separately.  Instead of 20 small balls of yarn I have been busy winding huge balls with 20 strands at a time, this reduces the labeling from 20 down to 1 and the winding is so much quicker.  Rather than measuring the length of the yarn on each ball I have weighed each one at 500g.

I added my cup of coffee just to give you an idea of scale!

So as you can see, my link to Handmade Monday this week isn't strictly correct as I haven't actually managed to make anything over these past couple of weeks!!!  But I hope you will forgive me this time :)

To finish off my post I thought you may like to see a photo of Chester that I took a while back (both him and Taffy have been a bit neglected recently :( )

I think you'll agree - he looks such a cool cat!

See you all again soon, have a good week and enjoy the sunshine! 

Alison 

x

Wire jewellery experiments

Thank you to all of you for your comments on Abbotskerswell Fair I'm glad you liked my packaging unfortunately it didn't make me any sales of the bunting though!

Here is a picture of my stall (on the left) and my sil Lime Green Lizzie (on the right).  You can just about see the lovely bunting made for me by Butterfly Blossom.  We had a pleasant afternoon and made enough to cover the cost of our tables and a bit extra and I got a commission for a string of crocheted teddy bunting for a little boy who is due in August by a lady who has bought from me before.  Always very pleasing to see returning customers.

This week I have been busy 'thinking' about how to promote my workshops and what workshops to offer.  Hopefully in the next few weeks I will be able to update my Workshop page so you will all know what is going on. 

Also this week I have been planning for the extreme crochet kits I am hoping to put together.

Here I am winding just one of the twenty balls I need for each kit!  I need to work out how much space 20 balls takes up in order to work out how I am going to package them!

I have also been experimenting with crocheting with wire.  I first tried out a shape in a fine silk yarn.



And then I did it in wire.  I haven't made the shape with it yet as I want to add 3 Swarovski crystals hanging inside from the top corner and think it may be easier to attach these before I stitch the shape together.  I think I may try them slightly smaller as well.  These are all 10 chain wide, about 1.5 inches and may be a little large for some people.  Perhaps I'll halve the stitches and see if that works?  What do you think?  I have many different colours for the wire so may not go with red/pink in the end.  Haven't decided yet!!  I'll let you know how I get on!

I am absolutely shattered now as we have been to a park in Taunton for a family picnic to celebrate my sil 60th birthday.  We had a lovely day, a game of rounders and a few goes with the frisby and the little ones had a great play park to amuse them.  Topped off by singing 'Happy Birthday' and a birthday cake!  A really lovely day :)

The birthday girl is third from the left on the front row and I am sat with one of Liz's grandchildren on my lap on the right hand side of the front row.

So, before I become too sleepy, I am off to have a look at what everyone else has been doing this week over at Handmade Monday.  Why not pop along and see for yourself!

Bye for now!

X

A bit poorly!

Well hello again everyone!

Happy Easter to you all!  I am linking up with Handmade Monday over at http://www.1stuniquegifts.co.uk/blog/  This is my first post for a couple of weeks so I hope you enjoy it, and why not pop over and have a look at the many other bloggers who are linking up to Handmade Monday!


Taffy's been feeling a bit sorry for me recently! 

Why you may ask?  Well you may or may not have missed me recently but unfortunately last weekend I was struck down with a tummy bug and it took me till at least Thursday before I began to feel better.

But I am glad to say I am back to my normal self  now (my husband said the volume has gone up again!  I have no idea what he means!).  So really this post is just a quickie to let you know I haven't forgotten you all and to apologise for not visiting many blogs recently.  I really hadn't the energy to turn the computer on!

The week before I was ill I went up to a small weaving company in Dunkeswell, Devon to collect some more yarn, mainly to use in the Extreme Crochet Workshops coming up soon.  They very kindly provided me with a car load ....

I was going to take Chester with me to show them what I was making with their yarn, but as the very sensible man said "Just bring a picture with you, leave more room in the car for yarn!".  Good job I did judging by the load I brought back!

What do you think to all these gorgeous colours?  It was like Christmas come early!  I was like a kid in a sweet shop! 

Just got to decide what to make with it now!

I am busy writing a post for Christmas Pie Crafts http://christmaspiecrafts.blogspot.co.uk/ as I am her guest blogger on Friday 13th (unlucky for some!) so please pop over and visit her blog, we would both love to see you there.  Without giving too much away, Taffy and Chester will both be playing staring roles!

Bye for now

So pleased to be back and it's good to be feeling well again.

x



Extreme Crochet Hearts

A very warm welcome to everyone out there! Hope you are all enjoying the sunshine :)  This is the first time I have linked up to We Did It Wednesday over at Sew Much Ado but lets hope it will be the first of many!

I would like to share some Extreme Crochet with you! 

What? I hear you ask. 

 Extreme crochet is using multiple yarns with a huge hook.

Taking crochet to the extreme - so to speak! 

Before I show you my latest creations I have listed links to my previous posts for those of you who are not already familiar with Fiddly Fingers.  

I hope you like what you see - Look out for Chester!!!

 http://www.fiddlyfingers.blogspot.co.uk/p/chester-extreme-crochet-cat.html

http://www.fiddlyfingers.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/experimenting-with-extreme-crochet.html

http://www.fiddlyfingers.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/chester-goes-topless.html

And now you've all caught up, take a look at my newest creations!

I'd finished this basket one evening and was wondering how to photograph it!

The following day a trip to the supermarket was a necessity and being a bit peckish (never a good time to go shopping!) I bought some hot cross buns - two packets actually (buy 1 get 1 free offer!).It was soon after this I had one of those 'ping' moments!  Hence the photo!

The basket is made using 20 strands of yarn and a 25mm hook.

If you click on the link below you will be able to see the size of the hook!

  http://www.fiddlyfingers.blogspot.co.uk/2012_01_01_archive.html

You may be asking yourselves why I am making these?  Well as you will see from 'Chester the Extreme Crochet Cat' link.  It's all my sister-in-law's fault!!  I started with Chester, on a 12mm hook with 5 strands of yarn, then decided to try something a littler larger!  These are my experiements for workshops I will be running in the near future.  I need projects that can be completed within the day long workshop.  So far I have made a really big flower and a 2 round granny square seat pad (see link 'Experimenting with Extreme Crochet' as well as the basket above and heart below.  If you are interested in either workshops just (you guessed it!) click on the following links

 http://www.countesswearvillagehall.co.uk/vh/Home.html 

and

http://www.rowantreestudio.co.uk/workshopcalender.html

 Here is the latest addition to my experiments.

The photograph below shows the scale!

I thought this heart would make a lovely wall decoration and I even thought it would be handy to hang 'hooky' earrings on.

If you have any other ideas for me to create in extreme crochet please let me know and if I manage to make any I can put a link to your blog when I put up a picture.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post.

Enjoy the rest of the week.

Happy hooking!

X