Halloween crochet Archives - Zeens and Roger

I put my name down for a #colourpopcraftswap on Instagram a few weeks ago. The name says it all. It’s a craft swap. You make something for someone, someone else makes something for you. I have no idea if my recipient got my present (they haven’t posted any pictures of it) but I got my gift! It was very exciting to receive a surprise parcel in the post. Boo!

I made a garland with pumpkins, stars, bats and one of my spiders.

It was impossible to take a good picture of it. Maybe it was just a terrible garland. I hope that’s not why the person didn’t share a picture! I made it with pastels and some glittery yarn. It was supposed to be bright and colourful.

I love my spiders! The purple one made a home in the garland. I don’t know where the grey one is. Does anyone else fancy making one? I’d love to see. I posted the pattern a few weeks ago. It’s over on my free patterns page but you can also just jump straight to it.

I made this last year. It was a rush job. I remember hastily cobbling together some grainy photos of the process. My tiara post is here.

The tiara was made as part of my fancy dress costume for a Hallowe’en party. I’m still not sure what I was.. a witch, bad fairy? I think I wore green wings.

My little Ami Halloween Collection made their first appearance. You can read about those here and find the pattern on Ravelry.

And here’s a tenuous one. Owls can be Halloweeny. The pattern is a downloadable pdf. That could do with a redesign too (what was I thinking?!). The pattern itself is good but I went a bit over the top on the graphic design. I had help but it was me who wanted all the green!

Just sharing these old pictures tells me how much my photography has improved (the current ones for this post aren’t much better actually, so maybe I shouldn’t comment!). I know that some bloggers go back and change dodgy old blog posts but a lot of mine are dodgy; it’d take an eternity to rectify! Part of why I blog is to record my creative progress and I think it’s all part of the process. I’ll keep it all as it is.

I originally planned to start working on my Halloween ideas in the summer. That didn’t really happen and I’ve left it until late. Not a surprise. I’ve been rush rushing to get my brain babies out and into the open for a few weeks. I was pretty keen to get some patterns up and running by October but have been somewhat disorganised. Having said that… I’ve only gone and done it!

A tray of mess is what I have had sat on my lap every nap time for about three weeks. I have made many variations of witches, bats, cats and pumpkins. I started pretty much from scratch but the idea is based on one I had about four years ago. I remember starting to write the witch pattern down (based on some Christmas angels that weren’t very good). I think it is probably a good thing that I lost what I’d written because I found the initial attempts…

Hidden in a bag under the stairs were some sorry looking heads and hats and unidentifiable things.

Poor, yucky old witch head. Ugh, it belongs to the cat now. It’s been clawed and beaten but it’s robust enough that the stuffing is still there inside her green head. Anyway, I shall move on to how she looks now…

She’s in need of a haircut but other than that, I am very pleased with what I’ve come up with. Begone manhands!

Here she is, off to a party. She’s got her fancy hat on and she’s carrying her fabulous pumpkin. She’s got some mates too…

She also thought she’d try growing pumpkins in her veg patch. She was quite pleased with the results.

Anyway, I took a deep breath and decided to be brave. I thought I would try something new, you know, just give it a go. So…. I have added these to a Ravelry shop. Me and Husband worked together to sort out how to actually open a Ravelry shop after Bake Off last night. For peeps that have never done this before, it was quite confusing but I think it’s worked. The pattern has had some ‘likes’ too! It has joined my Owl pattern on Ravelry but unlike the owl pattern I am charging a small fee for this Halloween Collection. A lot of work has gone into, not only designing the patterns themselves, but also making sure it all looks smart and lovely. This is partly down to the help I’ve had, so thank you to my friends who have all done their bit to support me and give me advice. X

Zeens and Roger now has a Ravelry shop. Woot!

And an Etsy shop! Woot Woot!

I think it’ll take time to learn how to use these selling platforms, I have no clue what I’m doing. None at all! But I will get there eventually.

Wait! Hang on a minute! Just because I can, I’m sharing the pumpkin pattern here! Huzzah! If you like it, think about popping over to the shop to purchase the rest of the pattern for the full set. Thanks very much.

Mini Halloween Pumpkin (Measures about 2.5cm across):
Using orange yarn.
Round 1: 6 into a Magic Ring
Round 2: inc around. [12]
Round 3: (sc in next st, inc in next) around. [18]
Round 4-5: sc around. [18]
Round 6: (sc in next st, dec). [12]
Round 7: dec around [6].
Fo and leave an extra long tail (at least 50cm).
Stitch closed by threading needle through the front loops and pulling tight to close hole. Thread the tail through the top centre of the pumpkin keeping the yarn tight. Wrap the yarn over the outside the pumpkin and thread through the bottom centre of the pumpkin. Repeat this 4 or 5 more times for a good pumpkin effect. Keep the yarn nice and tight. Secure yarn and fo. Thread some green yarn through the centre of the pumpkin and then back through, leaving a loop (be careful not to pull it all back through). Knot the ends together tightly and snip tails short.

And there we have it. Now that it’s all done I feel a bit weird. I have lots more ideas for the future but my head is going a bit crazy and it’s working faster than my hands can. I wish someone would pay me to play.

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Tag: Halloween crochet

Happy Hallowe’en!!

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