It's large, it's spotty

What more can I say.  It's a large spotty blanket consisting of 40 squares for my friend's 40th Birthday.  She was very pleased with it.  I was very pleased that she was very pleased.  I always feel a little nervous giving surprise crafted gifts to people.

The circles were easy enough to do.  I just expanded on some of the patterns for spots in squares on ravelry.  Ellen Gormley's Sunny Spread pattern was very helpful in working out the square borders.  The edging was from Edie Eckman's Around the Corner book.   I wanted something that would curl up but wasn't just granny edging.

I used Stylecraft Special Aran for the whole thing.  It's soft and squishy and rather cosy if I do say so myself.

Red noses

It's Comic Relief day here in the UK tomorrow.  The tag line this year is "make your face funny for money".  My kids aren't great fans of face painting so I made a couple of red noses with googly eyes for my eldest to hang off of her glasses.

It's a simple ball pattern(UK)

round 1 crochet 6 single crochets into an adjustable ring
round 2 crochet 2 single crochets into each from the previous round (12 sc)
round 3 crochet 2 sc, and then 1 sc (18 sc)
rounds 4-6 - 18 sc around
round 7 decrease in the same way incresed - sc 2tog, sc 1 (repeat until 12 sc)
stuff
round 8 decrease 2 tog around (6sc)
round 9 sc 2 tog to close the hole

sew or stick on googly eyes.

Elephant hat

It was World Book Day yesterday. Harriet wanted to be Oona the elephant from the Michael Morpugo novel  Running Wild.  The hat was a slight challenge.  My starting point was one I had seen by Red Heart.  I liked the look of it but wasn't sure about the pattern.

http://www.redheart.com/free-patterns/elephant-hat

In the end I made a basic ear flap hat from this pattern

http://craft-chic.com/free-crochet-pattern-basic-ear-flap-hat/

I liked this pattern as it was worked in half doubles/trebles (US/UK) so the hat came out nice and cosy but robust - ready for the heavy ears and trunks to be added.  The ears flopped when on the head but I thought it looked more elephant like.

And then I winged it with the embellishments. The pattern for the ears I wrote down but the rest was improvised.  It did the job I think.

Another Triangulation

Another hat for Toby.  Brown and orange as requested.