Paper Pumpkin

So this year I could not be bothered carving out a real pumpkin, especially when Ivy is too wee to even care if we have one or not, so I decided to take a shortcut.

I bought a paper pumpkin out of Hobbycraft, one of the ones that you're supposed to decoupage or paint, and decided to just paint it and that way at least we always have a pumpkin when Halloween rolls around.

I just painted him plain orange and added some orange glitter around his features and all over the stalk (and all over the sofa and the rug...whoops!).

These guys take the little LED tealights you can buy so they are nice and fire safe, but you still get the nice spooky glow with them.

Even with two coats of orange paint, you can still see the brown shining through in some places, but he does the job and makes the place look a bit spookier. He maybe could have done with a priming coat first to try and cover up the brown.

Though I have no doubt when Ivy is a bit older we'll be back to carving the real pumpkins to get into the Halloween spirit!

Decoupage Bat

Yay, Halloween is almost here! I love Halloween so much, and now we actually have a house and the space to do it, it's nice to be able to actually decorate the house a little bit for Halloween.

This year I picked up a couple of wee bits to add to my Halloween collection, and this is the first one, a wee decoupage bat.

I got this from Hobbycraft, along with some cute Halloween print decoupage papers to cover him in, which are super cute. As well as these ghost print ones, I got another pack of bat print and stripey ones, which I'll have to find something else for.

And here he is hanging in the hall with a couple of other bits and pieces in our hall. Please excuse the poor lighting in my super dark hall! Even daylight doesn't really help with photos out here!

I actually forgot how quick decoupage is, though you do have to wait for all the glue to dry to see if you've missed any bits, so it sometimes means a second attempt to get it completely covered.

Crochet Baskets

A little while ago I crocheted Donald a little bowl thing to keep his keys/change/wallet in on a unit in our living room. It was really a way to try and keep all his junk in one place so it wasn't all over the place. It turned out a little smaller than I wanted, but it worked to start with.

However, recently we changed the unit for a smaller set of wicker drawers, with a smaller surface for junk, so I decided to remake the basket so all of Donald's stuff would actually fit inside it and not clutter the top of the drawers.

I also wanted to make one for myself to keep my receipts in, and then put it in one of the drawers to keep them hidden. I used to keep them in my lovely fox basket (which also sits on top of the unit) but they were sort of overspilling and making it hard to get the stuff out the fox that I actually wanted!

I found this lovely basket tutorial on Raverly by Sandra at Cherry Heart, which I really liked because I love her stuff and she made it really easy to make a basket exactly the size you needed, instead of just a standard size. I used a 10mm hook for this, as I used a 12mm hook for my rug, and I wanted this to be a bit tighter.

For the base of both baskets I used to tiny bits of leftover t-shirt yarn I had from my rug, as I thought it would make them quite stiff. I did three rounds for the base and then ran out of both colours of yarn, so swapped to a nice chunky, light brown yarn, which I thought went well with the colour of our set of drawers. I worked this double to try and make the baskets more sturdy.

I made my basket a bit taller so I could stuff all my receipts in it. I also decided to finish off Donald's basket with a row of double crochets, as I didn't have enough yarn to do a full round of half treble crochets, and I thought I might as well just use up as much of the yarn as I could.

So now we have two lovely baskets that are making us a bit more organised, and I finished off three balls of yarn from my stash. Double win!

Yarn Used:

• Boodles Tshirt Yarn:
• Green.
• Grey.
• Stylecraft Special Chunky:
• Camel.

Raverly project page.

Link Yoshi Amigurumi

Last year I made a little Yoshi amigurumi pal for my friend Kirk, and Donald was super jealous of it. I'm not super keen on making the same thing over and over again, so I put the idea of making him one out of my head. However, when I was looking for an awesome Yoshi pattern to use, I did find this picture of Yoshi as Link from The Legend of Zelda by Gallynette, which is Donald's favourite game.


Alas, it was just a picture, and not a pattern, so I sort of put it out of my mind.

However, I recently realised that I could probably work out how to make Link Yoshi a reality. I mean, really it's only different colours added in, and I already had a Yoshi pattern which I knew was rad (the original Yoshi pattern I used can be found here). Even the original maker of the Link Yoshi says she just used a Yoshi pattern and adapted it, so if you wanted to make one yourself, just go for it! (She has also done awesome little cow and Mario versions! Check them out!)

So I went for it, as it was Donald's birthday this week, and here's how he turned out!

It was actually really easy! The bit I was worried about was the main section, as the head and body are done in one piece, so it was a bit dicey guessing where to do the colour changes for the belt, and then for the hair higher up (which is a bit hard to see as it's super light yellow!). The rest was pretty easy, as all the bits were basically the same as original Yoshi. In terms of changs, I did have to do a colour change in the spikes and stitch the Triforce symbol on the shell, but I didn't have to make the belly piece which made things a bit speedier.

I did mean to make his nose cream, like it is in the original picture, but flicking between the actual pattern and the reference picture means I did it green by mistake, but I actually think it looks fine, and perhaps gives him a bit more of a Yoshi look.

I was worried Donald would have no idea what was going on, but luckily he opened the present in a way that he saw the Triforce symbol first and knew it was Link, then revealed the Yoshi face!

I'm really happy with how he turned out and this has definitely inspired me to be more confident in my abilities when it comes to adapted crochet patterns, especially when it's just something that really boils down to just colours changes!

Yarn Used:

• Lion Brand Vanna's Choice:
• Chocolate.
• Drops Alaska:
• Light grey mix.
• Stylecraft Special Aran:
• Lemon.
• Cream.
• Red Heart Soft:
• Kiwi green.
• Robin Bonny Babe Aran:
• White.
• Caron Simply Soft:
• Royal blue.
• Black.

Raverly project page.