What I made for Chrismas: Hot Water Bottle Cover

I had this baby in mind for a few months now and figured it would make a really good present for Christmas. Off course me being me, I started making it last-minute :-) But it was finished just in time to be wrapped and then unwrapped by the more than happy receiver!

I would like to present you a tutorial with pictures and directions, but fact is it depends on the size of your HWB, the yarn and crochet hook you use… So I’m just going to give some hints as to how I made mine!

I used the leftover yarn from my blanket: Caron Simply Soft. With my crochet hook number 5, I made a chain just slightly longer than the round curved part of the HWB, that was my base.

Then I started crocheting away… Single crochets (US) to get a good tight cover, following the curves from the bottle by increasing stiches where needed. When the cover was long enough to reach the neck of the bottle I started decreasing and increasing along the end of the HWB.


Actually you make up your pattern as you go along. After finishing the grey (back) part of the cover I realised it could be a little on the small side…


You see that it would be a little too small if I didn’t make the front part wider… So the stripy (front) part got a few more stitches to it :-) It ended up about a cm bigger on both sides.





As both sides where done, I laid them out, good sides together and began to sew around the edges. Starting from the top of the cover going down, but leaving the bottom part open! When the sewing part is done, you turn the cover good way out and stuff in the HWB. I closed the bottom with slipstitches, but you could sew it shut if you like.

And ta dah!! Your own custom-made hot water bottle is finished!



Yes, since the finishing part took place at night, I forgot to take pictures :-) So this is one after the unwrapping took place on Christmas eve!

Love, Zjizjipke!

The colours I used are Caron Simply Soft Grey Heather, Blackberry, Soft Pink, Victorian Rose and Raspberry.

Merry Christmas from Rudolph!

We want wish you all a very, very merry Christmas! With lots of prezzies, good food and in the company of loving friends and family!

To welcome those who pass by my door I made a wreath this year. What did I use? A Styrofoam circle, wool, a fork, a crochet hook and my new glue gun (love it!)


I wrapped the grey wool around my Styrofoam, regularly securing the wool with some glue.

With the fork and some white yarn I made some cute mini-pompons, gluing them to the wreath:

Online I found a nice pattern for a sweet little crochet reindeer. Rudolph was born and glued to his new spot from where he can greet visitors.

Ta dah!

Love, Zjizjipke!

Granny stripe blankie ta dah!

In September I ordered some new yarn, yes, what a joyous day that was! Shopping for yarn and fabrics are two of my favourite things. (indeed I have a quite substantial collection of both, hence the rarity of those treasured shopping sprees…)

But since Blankie the second had been given another purpose in life, I just had to make another Blankie, right? Enter the need for new yarn, I already had the colours picked out! At Wooly.nl I came across a beautiful acrylic yarn: Simply Soft from Caron. It comes in a nice range of colours and has a little shine to it.



The pattern I had in mind was the famous Granny Stripe Pattern from Lucy (Attic24). I started with a crochet hook number four, but the first rows turned out too rigid, so I restarted with a number five hook, which was better. Seems I crochet my stitches really tight, so next time I’m going to try a number six, just to see the difference.

The yarn was a real joy to work with, the pattern was a breeze to crochet, so the blanket grew and grew quite quickly…

Ok, enough with the blabla, here comes the Ta dah!!


Isn’t she gorgeous?? I’m totally in love with the result!


I haven’t got the exact dimensions, but she’s big enough to keep one person nice and warm!


A row of grey between four other colours gives a really nice effect, doesn’t it?


As a border I just crocheted some rows of treble crochet (US: double crochet, Dutch: stokjes)





Yes, she inspected the new Blankie and claimed it as hers (again) :-) But this one’s mine!

Love, Zjizjipke!

Grannyswap, part two!

November 30 was the big-grannyswap-unwrapping-day!


And such gorgeous granny squares found their way to Belgium! But first I’ll show you the ones I sent to these lovely ladies:


As a little extra I made everyone a masking tape happy birthday card :-) That was my first card making try-out, so I hope they came out ok!

Now for the moment you’ve all been waiting for: the big tadaah-look-what-I-got!

Esther

Birgit

Isolde

Willeke

Tessa

Sandra

All the beautiful, brightly coloured granny squares!

Now to decide what to make with them… Thank you so much ladies for the fun swap! I loved it :-)
Love, Zjizjipke!

Whatever happened to Blankie n°2??

You remember how enthusiastically I started Blankie n°2 way back in January? With her 450 squares I needed to make?

I know you all are thinking ‘finally the here-she-is-in-all-her-glory-post is here’. Well, yes and no…
During the summer doubt started to creep in, doubt about the heaviness of the end result, all cotton for a double sized blanket equals a lot of weight… The practicality, will it fit in the washing machine? And I lost my drive to crochet another 200 squares for a Blankie that would be absolutely cute, but unused probably…
Then I started to think about the box full of squares that just sat there… What to do? What to do?

Take them all apart and re-use the yarn? Well, no! Maybe I could use them for smaller blankets? Like baby-blankets? Yes! That’s it!
So two new-born bundles of joy are now the proud owners of the very first batch of Zjizjipke’s babyblankies extraordinaire…
The first one for a beautiful baby girl.

The second one for a gorgeous baby boy.

Hopefully I can make some more baby’s happy with some blankies, I can make loads of colour combinations with my squares :-)
Can’t wait to hear what you think about the babyblankies!
Love, Zjizjipke!

Well, well, well…

… did you really think I was going to let you finish the pattern today??
Love, Zjizjipke!

Grannyswap

Back in august I came across a granny swap on Twitter. You crochet some granny squares for other people and get an equal amount of granny’s in return. It looked like a fun thing to do, so didn’t hesitate to write myself up!
After some Tweets and mails we agreed on 5 squares each, so with a group of seven, we needed to send out 6 envelopes with 5 granny’s in them.
Being the procrastinating queen of the world, I knew I would get into trouble if I didn’t start immediately! So going against my nature, I had all the granny’s finished by mid-September :-)
The big unveiling is planned for November 30th, so I made the envelopes today, ready to go to Holland tomorrow!

Tessa, Birgit, Esther, Sandra, Willeke en Isolde, the granny’s are coming! Hope you like them!
Love, Zjizjipke!

Lucky me!

A while ago, more than a month to be honest (Sorry it took so long to blog this, Petra) I won the give-away at Woonschrift.

A few days later this sweet present found its way to my door:



Inside the pretty purple paper where 3 cute DIY packages:


A embroidery pattern with all the utensils to make this little owl.


A spool knitting pack, with yarn and some wire to make words like this:




And last but not least: all the felt pompons to make a really colourful bunting!



Thanks for the fantastic prezzies, Petra!

You can find her creative and inspiring place on the web here and here!

Love, Zjizjipke!

Redemption…

I know it’s been awfully quiet here for weeks on end now… And not because I have nothing to write about or no creative ideas, I just don’t seem to get anything done.

My to-do-list or want-to-do-list are becoming ridiculously long or should I say endless! Endless to the point I’m doing multiple projects at once instead of finishing them one by one.

Some projects I need to do or finish don’t even get going, because I want them to turn out perfect! I know perfectionism kills creativity and the challenge is to allow yourself to make mistakes. My biggest challenge is turning of my need for perfection in creations, so not easy!!

So I end up browsing the net, picking up more ideas for my to-do-list on Pinterest(vicious circle anyone?), procrastinating current projects, telling myself I’ll write a new blog post tomorrow and so on… Result? Frustration off course!

Therefore I see this post as my first step to redemption and I’ll try to post more frequent and just do something creative! Maybe I should just look at these quotes more often?





How do you all keep this blogger’s block or creative block at bay? Any tips??

Love, Zjizjipke!

Hobbymarket–Hobbysalon

Last week me and my BFF went to Mechelen, there was this big market with all things creative. If you can imagine something, they sold everything to make it! So yes, we did buy stuff, a lot of stuff to be exact :-) But they had really gorgeous fabrics, I could say in my defence!

The loot:

The loot-inspector:

Pretty fabrics:

The 4 on the right are Michael Miller fabrics, love them! The babushka is a design from Design-by-me, it’s a doll/pillow to make.

The pink gingham roll and the other are oilcloth, maybe a toiletry bag to be.

I’m already saving up for the next edition :-)
Love, Zjizjipke!