Category: CAL

12 Days of Christmas Charity Hats

This year was my third year of taking part in the annual 12 days of Christmas charity hat challenge – making 12 premature baby hats in 12 days to donate to charity.

We were given lots of different patterns to choose from to make our hats, but one in particular appealed to me, so I used the same pattern for all my hats.

I chose a range of colours to make my hats in. Each one should fit a baby weighing around 3-5lb.

They are being sent to a local charity who will send them to hospital baby units where they are needed.

Pascha Bear

This is Pascha bear. He’s made from a free pattern by Crafty is Cool, who also sent me the eyes and nose to make him.

I used Rico Design Creative Cotton Aran yarn to make Pascha, which is the same as I used to make Upsy Daisy, nice and sturdy for a toy.

He has made his way to Ireland with lots of other Pascha bears that people have made to the charity ‘To Russia With Love’ who help and support abandoned children.

Christmas Stars

Habitual Homebody

 

This month’s crochet-along was stars, and Alycia wrote a great photo tutorial on how to make them.

I thought they’d make a great Christmas decoration, and made a set of 8 stars. They were very quick and easy. I made the whole thing in an evening. I chose red and green to make the stars so they’re nice and Christmassy, and a yellowy gold colour for the string to hold them all together, which is just a string of chain stitches that are slip stitched through the top of each star. When I had finished making my stars they were very curly, so I knew I would need to do something to them to keep them straight. I pinned them wrong side up to the ironing board and painted them with a water/pva glue mixture several times.

This morning they were dry and I unpinned them to find nice straight stars 🙂 The glue dries clear (although you can’t see it anyway as it’s on the back) and they’re nice and solid so they won’t curl again. The also have a bit more weight to them now which I think makes them hang nicely. Pretty Christmassy stars 🙂And since it’s 1st December, they’ll be joined later today by the Christmas tree!

March Crochet-Along

Habitual Homebody

 

This month’s crochet along was a knotted headband, using the free pattern from All About Ami.

It was a nice quick my pattern, and I made mine using 8-ply (because I own no 10-ply at all) cotton (as I thought it would give it more shape) and a 5.5mm hook (tbh because that was the first hook I found, but I figured using a size bigger than the pattern would kind of even out the sizing since my yarn was thinner!). I picked black as I thought it would go with anything.

Here is my finished hairband 🙂

Mandala CAL – finished!

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It’s the last week of the CAL and I finished mine just in time!

It think it looks pretty good 🙂

It is made with Panda 8-ply cotton and is pretty big, measuring 41cm in diameter!

This week the CAL finishes with a vote with prizes for the top 3. The link to go and vote is here. If you’d like to go and vote for me that would be great!

UPDATE: I came joint first place in the mandala voting – yay! Thank you to everyone who voted 🙂