Happy Hallowe’en folks! I have made minimal effort to jazz up this week’s crochet vlogcast with a spooky theme. Whilst there is a spider and some fancy-dress, er, there is little else to do with this fun filled holiday. But I still love Halloween! Please click on the pic above to fly (broom stick style) to YouTube.
In this episode I talk about the following delights:
There was lovely autumn sunshine yesterday. I went into the garden in my Hallowe’en get up to take a few pictures. The garden isn’t as exciting to me now but I think I should have a record of what it looks like in a different season.
Autumn is seriously beautiful. The other day I drove back home from the weekly shop through an orange tunnel of trees. Low sun, autumn leaves, winding roads through the woods. There was definitely some magic going on.
I haven’t got much to say today. It was only five minutes in the garden, finding what I liked best about it.
There is one last courgette hanging on. And since I can’t be bothered to tear up the bedraggled runner beans yet, there are still some of those too.
One bed dug over and manured. Nasturtiums are trying their luck. I could salad them up before the frosts, I suppose.
I’m most impressed with the hosta seeds. Pretty! Last year I took some of these and planted them. Nowt happened. Next year I’m really going to look after my hostas. This year so many snails and slugs dined on them, they ended up looking like lace.
That’s it for now. Shock,horror, I have done very little crochet in the last week. We’ve been away for half term and had poorliness. I’ve taken to reading more too, which takes up stitchy time. I’ll try and find a better balance this week.
Ps. I found a couple more dodgy pictures of my little halloween garland.
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’m a little early but I couldn’t wait to get stuck into some Halloween crochet! Wahaha. This pattern is so speedy, it really only takes a few minutes. You could make an army of crochet spiders, it’d be brilliant! These guys are so much better than real spiders, which intefere with your telly watching (out of the corner of your eye, there they are stomping across your sofa, on their way to eat your face whilst you innocently watch Bake Off).
I’m a little disappointed that this spider pattern didn’t become part of last year’s amigurumi Halloween collection but I hadn’t thought of it when I designed that lot. This pattern is a great partner to all the other spooky creations from that collection though…
[Edit: New for the summer of 2017 is a YouTube tutorial!! If you’d rather watch me make a spider on film, then pop over and take a look! Thanks]
Anyway here’s what you’ll need:
3.5mm hook (you could go up or down a hook size if you want), DK acrylic yarn, darning needle.
For the eyes you’ll need some sewing thread, a fine needle and little beads.
Crochet House Spider
(I’ve written it in US terms, that’s what I’m used to with amigurumi).
6 into a magic ring [6]
Increase around [12]
Sc around [12]
Decrease around [6]
Fasten off leaving a tail of about 50cm. Stitch the hole closed with a darning needle, looping through the 6 front loops. Pull closed and secure. Do not cut yarn, you’ll need it for sewing on the legs.
Choose where you want your head to be. Get a slip knot on your hook and attach the yarn with a slip stitch to the body. I put my hook on/behind row 3. (The pictures above are two different angles of the same thing. It’s just demonstrating where I’ve put my hook and where I’ll be making the slip stitch).
Next, make a puff stitch. To get a nice plump head, yarn over and pull through 4 times (you’ll have 9 loops on your hook). Chain 1 and join back to the body with a slip stitch in the same place. Fasten off and sew in the head ends.
Make four chains for legs: 1. ch18, 2. ch20, 3. ch22, 4. ch24.
Before you snip them short, pull the legs really tight to make sure they won’t become undone. This is why it’s best to use acrylic yarn, it’s less likely to break off when you pull.
Using the tail from before, thread through the middles of all the legs and stitch to the underside of the body. Shortest legs nearest the head.
Stitching the legs on is really simple. When they’re secure, thread the yarn out through the spider’s bottom.
Pass the yarn through the ends of the two back legs.
There is now a spider… where there wasn’t one before!
Little beads make great eyes. I went in from underneath with the thread, going in and out a couple of times to make sure it wasn’t going to go anywhere.
This sparkly, purple job has too many eyes but I wasn’t really concentrating. Most spiders have eight eyes if you want to go for accuracy!
And it’s as easy as that! A happy Hallowe’en house spider!
I made one with t-shirt yarn too!
This is a free pattern that has been designed by me (Zeens and Roger). Please don’t sell the pattern or finished product. They’re all mine! Tis personal use only. Thanks very much. X
Since Halloween fell on a Saturday night I thought I’d invite some friends over to celebrate Samhain. It wasn’t exactly a party, it would have been a bit stressful to invite everyone I knew. I tested the water by inviting a few families to revel in some witchy goings-on. I also didn’t know how many people would fit inside our house as it is quite small. Next time I think a real party might be in order because we could have easily squeezed in a few more people.
A Pinterest Halloween board exploded in the living room. I had lots of fabulous help from friends who did their bit to turn my house into a Halloweeny hovel.
This was a witch’s table. Complete with a collection of potions and poisons.
My amigurumi Halloween creations came out. My friend and I gathered some good looking twigs from the woods. This twig got stuck in a plant pot. (Thank you too to Sultanabun whose October blog post prompted me to have a go at making a collage).
A witch’s shelf. Me and another friend had scoured junk shops to find cheap bottles, jugs and vases to turn into something suitable for a witches house. I sprayed some with black spray paint and left others clear, which I had planned to fill with coloured water. I didn’t get round to that but they still looked good with their spooky labels.
I planned on some fancy wreaths but didn’t quite manage it. I also bought a lifetime supply of black card, which I did manage to cut up to make lots of different silhouettes.
My friend also made spooky spell books. This modern witch uses them whilst cross referencing wikipedia.
Autumn harvest. I made people eat homemade chutney and piccalilli. People brought cheese (the empty cake stand did eventually display a massively stinky round of Exmoor blue), crackers, grapes and celery to accompany them. I also made blackberry vodka and it tasted just like blackberries. It worked! We picked the blackberries about six weeks ago and filled a kilner jar with them. Chuck in some sugar and a whole load of vodka and you get an amazing drink!
Scary face, as requested by the kids.
Pan and his pipe. I had trouble designing the image. I drew it out several times before I finally accepted one that would work. And it never turns out exactly the same anyway because cutting up pumpkin with a scalpel is a whole different kettle of fish.
Headless Huntsman. Unfortunately, I didn’t finish this guy. I gave up after slicing my finger on a very very sharp blade. I also managed to slice through his arm too so I knew my pumpkin powers were waning. Anyway, I already have an idea for next year’s offerings….
Happy Hallowe’en folks! I have made minimal effort to jazz up this week’s crochet vlogcast with a spooky theme. Whilst there is a spider and some fancy-dress, er, there is little else to do with this fun filled holiday. But I still love Halloween! Please click on the pic above to fly (broom stick style) to YouTube.
Thanks as always. x
