724 - Mick Foley Beanbag

So as you may know, me and Donald watch a lot of wresting. A few weeks ago when we were watching WWE, one of the announcers said how much Mick Foley looked like a plaid beanbag.

We laughed a lot, and I said "how cool would it be to make a little Mick Foley beanbag". I had the idea on my craft ideas list for a while and decided to make it for Donald for our anniversary. Our anniversary isn't actually until Saturday, but as we'll be roller derbying all day, we decided to swap pressies/have dinner last night.









I filled his bum up with rice to give him a bean-baggy feel. I love his little cutie face and how cute his little smiley face t-shirt is too, so I'm very happy with the way he turned out. Donald also loved him too, which is the main thing.

723 - Polar Bear

So for the past couple of years I've been making Christmas ornaments for my Mum to hang on her Christmas tree. This year I asked her what she would like and she finally settled on a polar bear.

I looked around for a good pattern, but sadly there was quite a lack of good free ones. I settled on tracing an outline of a china polar bear figure and changing the face (as the one in the ornament was looking up at the sky). I also added a little fish parcel for the cute polar bear as his Christmas present.

So here he is.



And I embroidered the date on the back of him as I always do, so we know which ornament is from which year.



I still have a couple of Christmas ornament craft kits left to make but I think my Christmas crafting is over for this year. Alongside the tag and card kits I have to do (which I already said I was probably going to leave and just focus on ornaments) I still have a peg doll, a garland kit and a little knitted polar bear kit to do. I bought the needles to do the polar bear kit before realising it was actually double pointed needles I needed. And as I haven't got the hang of knitting on them yet, he definitely won't be getting done this year.

I'm hoping to avoid having such a backlog of free kits next year as I'm stopping my subscription to Cross Stitcher this year. I just feel a lot of the free kits are very similar, and as cross stitch is such a time consuming craft, I feel I already have such a huge library of patterns, I really don't need to add more to the pile.

I'm still considering my Mollie Makes subscription, but as they focus on loads of different crafts, and the kits are more varied, it will probably survive. I don't think I can go cold turkey on crafty magazines!

722 - Robbie Robin

A great thing about crafting is you can make ugly little Franken-creatures that no-one else will love, but you do because you made them. I think this is true of little Robbie Robin that I made this week.

He came as a free kit with Let's Knit magazine, and I made him in about two evening sittings. I'm not sure if it's just when I sew my knitting together it seems to go downhill, or if the knitting is a bit mental to begin with, but Robbie maybe looks a little more squint than he's meant too.







But, he does look like a Robin. And his mental looking legs (I'm sure I knitted one longer than the other) look fine when he's sitting, which is what he will be doing this Christmas period.

I do love all my little created children. And hey, at least I had my first double pointed needles experience when I was knitting Robbie's legs. Hoping to progress to socks or something soon. That would be awesome.

721 - Roller Derby Award

So usually at a roller derby bout they give out awards for the best jammer, best blocker and MVP. Refs don't get awards, but a couple of weeks ago at scrims, I started making stupid little awards for a fellow ref V for Vienetta.

However, last week I forgot my handbag notepad, and promised him I would make him a proper award, with colouring pencils and everything. And because I drew it properly, I thought I would pop it up on the blog.



He won grizzliet ref award because that particular night he had grown quite the beard. Past award categories include swishist fall and sexiest belt. Clearly much better than the usual awards ha ha!

720 - Nativity Dolls

One thing I feel I've been missing from my Christmas decorations for some time is a nativity scene. I keep seeing lovely handmade ones, but a lot of them are knitted, which was more time and skill than I felt I had.

A while ago I came across this amazing pattern from What Madeleine Loves. It's felty, quite simple to make, free and is only three little dolls, even though it represents all the main nativity people.

You can check out Madeleine's post about her dolls, and another post which has the pattern in it. They are so cute. So here are my little versions, done in plenty of time for this Christmas.










How cute are they? And they aren't going to take up too much space in my already cramped Christmas display so they're perfect.

719 - Little Hats

As you know, when I made my own little hats for Innocent's Big Knit this year, I was very keen to make sure I managed to pick up a hat when they were gracing the little bottles. I've never managed to do this before, so it was a mission.

So last week, I went on the hunt, and after a couple of failed attempts with hat-less smoothies, I finally found some in Boots in the Gyle. I was so excited. Ever since I saw the little apple hat in the hat gallery on the Innocent website I was REALLY hoping I could get a little apple hat. Well luck must have been on my side that day.

Yay! How cute is it? I mean really! I'm so happy!

I've also been trawling the #bigknitmyhat hashtag on Instagram, trying to see if the hats I made pop up anywhere. Exciting!

718 - Christmas Teddy

With Christmas fast approaching yet again, and my pile of "stuff I want to make for Christmas" still being quite big, I decided I was going to try and knock through what Christmas kits I had left. I have loads of card kits to make but I'd quite like to knock through all the decorations at least.

First up I decided to tackle this Christmas teddy kit that I've had for ages. I always thought he was a card, but he's just some festive stitching on a mount, which means I can pop him up in the house.



Much like the Christmas cat I stitched earlier this year, all the stitching was visible once I popped him in the mount, so I covered the back with some Christmas scrapbooking paper.



This project had a lot of things I hate about cross stitch. A lot of very similar colours (natural white, cream, tan, light tan, etc.) and lots of stupid back stitch which makes your brain hurt just trying to follow it. But I am happy he's finally done!

717 - Halloween Recap

So Halloween has been and gone. I love Halloween because it's a great excuse to watch horror movies and wear things with ghosts on them. So here's a little recap of Halloween. First up, the pumpkin.







Our neighbours had a pumpkin out this year too and I was very excited!



Next up, the Halloween costume. We went to a party the weekend after Halloween and I had decided to go as Hipster Ariel. I was very annoyed though because I ordered a top with a clam shell bra on it from Etsy two weeks before I needed it and it still hasn't arrived! Not happy. Donald decided to go as Hipster Eric because it meant we went together and it wasn't much effort for him.



What's that word again? Lame!





Fishy neck tattoo ha ha!







As you may have seen I was wearing a little Flounder badge, which I made myself.



Phew! And we spent the whole night watching horror movies and eating loads of pizza, which was lovely. I hope you all had an awesome Halloween!

716 - Woodland knits & 5 reasons why I love it

I have a lot of craft books, and because of this there aren't that many that jump out at me as "Oh my God I need to own that" these days. However, I had read about Woodland Knits by Stephanie Dosen in a couple of places and was pretty convinced that this was one book I did in fact need. The clincher came when I spotted a pattern I had been coveting on Pinterest (but didn't know where it was from due to some bad pinning) and spotted it in a magazine review for this book!



So I ordered it and here are my five favourite patterns in the book.

1) The Fawn Poncho.



I was so excited when I spotted this pattern! If you read the blog One Sheepish Girl you may have seen her knitting this very item. It's so lovely and cute! Meredith from One Sheepish Girls purchased the single pattern from the Tiny Owl Knits Etsy shop (which also has a number of the patterns from this book available for single sale) but I couldn't convince myself to buy a single knitting pattern when 1) I have a lot of patterns still to make and 2) at the time I was very rubbish at knitting. It's so nice to know I have this in my collection now! Exciting!

2) Meow Mitts.



This the reason I caved and bought this book. I pinned these mittens on a Pinterest a little while ago, and was totally in love with them. And then I saw their picture in a magazine, saying they came from Woodland Knits. Sold! They are so cute!

3) Garden Gate & Ivy.



This cowl is lovely. I love the colours and the knitted pattern, it's just amazing.

4) Oh My Bear!



Look at this sweater! Just look at it!!!! Will I ever be able to knit this? Who knows, but I just love everything about it, and would love to give it a try. It looks so snuggly.

5) The Changeling Collar.



I've been wanting to make myself a collar for some time now, having seen a cute felt one in Sew magazine a few issues ago, but this one is so cute. I love the colours.

I highly recommend Woodland Knits, it just looks amazing, and while I've picked out 5 patterns I'm totally in love with, everything in the book is lovely, and there is loads more I would like to make.

Also check out Tiny Owls Knits Esty shop for more patterns, including the pattern for a set of woodland gloves, which I am in love with.