so my christmas pressie....

was the collectors edition of Assassins creed Revelations.  I figured I nearly always get the soundtrack anyway and love all the art so why not treat myself.

Nice.

 

Ooooh, sculpted....

 

shiny, shiny

hang on a sec..

note the careful wording on the CD.  "Assassins Creed Soundtrack".  That would surely be the soundtrack to this game.  This game Revelations that I have purchased (as I already have the other soundtracks - I am a Collector remember?).  Foolishness.  Ubisoft in there wisdom figured that no-one would notice if they just slipped in a CD of music from all the other games (WHICH I ALREADY HAVE!!).  Not a scrap of it is the new stuff.  The box is nice though.  I guess I will find the Revelations soundtrack elsewhere.  Shame on you Ubisoft for treating us like idiots.  O wait, maybe I haven't heard this track before....

December 24th

Well, since big bro was getting a christmas Yoda in his Lego advent calendar - guess what the daughter had to have?

December 19th

A little ninja chappy from Creepy Cute Crochet.  I didn't have any felt so crocheted his face as well. :)

December the 17th ish...

Another one just made up as I went along.  I like orange.  Actually, this is the last of my lovely orange wool.  Poo.  Face done with slip stitch.  This is an absolute pig to do unless you stitch only in the back loop.  Aha!

December the something or other...

Well I knew I would get behind so I finally finished this and pretended I made it for the advent calendar.  Don't think I was fooling anybody :)

Pattern came from Amiamour on Etsy and a lovely pattern it is too.  If I were to make it again though, there are a few things I would have to tweak.  I already did the mouth a bit differently but after numerous attempts, I still could not get it how I wanted it.  A great learning experience though.

December 10th and 11th..

December 9th..

Oh my..

Well, I sort of made this up as I went along, and after the ears, though it looked a little foxy.  So, I made a kind of foxy tail but proceeded to stitch it on......the front.  Ooops. The daughter found it hilarious, yes, her nine year old mind did make the distinctly male connection...Think I'd better try this one again.

December 8th..

Getting serious now.  I've been promising this one for a while.  Trouble is, now she wants the whole Totoro clan!  He didn't fit in the 4cm advent box either so I had to stick in a note with a clue to his location.  Think I may have accidentally turned the advent calendar into an advent treasure hunt...

I didn't quite follow this pattern but near enough.  I am so going to have to try Lucy Ravenscar's Fierce Little Dragon too on the same link.

December 7th..

I thought I would get creative here - I sketched this out on paper first and everything.  To be honest, it's actually fairly close to my sketch.  Could have done with being a bit fatter though.  I've finally succumbed and ordered some plastic eyes from ebay for future efforts.  My embroidery is just too fugly.

December 6th..

Now this one turned out a bit better

Pattern found on the marvellous Ravelry site.  It was one of those patterns in Japanese with a squiggly little diagram to follow.  A bit of googling had me following it just fine...mostly.  It wasn't worked in the spirally round and round though but with a slip stitch and single crochet arrangement (at least I think that's what the pattern meant).  I did find it a bit tricky to keep track of which bit to slip stitch to.  I'm too mean to buy markers and got in a right funk trying to use paperclips before discovering that a kirby grip/hair pin/bobby pin whatchmacallem makes an easy solution.  I feel a trip to Claires accessories coming on to see if they do little tiddy ones.

December 5th....

Well, um, first efforts and all that....

It looked so lovely in the pattern here.  It started to go wrong when I went to stitch the eyes which I then decided that I did not like, so tried to remove them with scissors and cut through the crochet....I thought I was being rather ingenious using buttons to cover my error :)

Where it all started...

So, I've been meaning to create a blog to record my successes and disasters in the world of hooking handicrafts.  I knit too but the trouble with knitting is a) great big needles flapping around all over the place and b) the disaster that occurs when a stitch is dropped (especially when you don't notice it for 3 or 4 rows).  So, a year or so ago, for her birthday, my daughter was given a 'Learn to crochet kit'.  This was tossed aside and trampled in her haste to get to the preferable Lego offerings.  Taking pity on the potential multi-coloured dog staring at me from the packet, I adopted it, and took it to keep me company while sitting bored out of my skull at our end of year art show.  Fortunately, it was Fine Art I studied and therefore any person that came through the door and saw me swearing profusely at the small cardboard box, tangle of wool and half-translated instructions, would have assumed I was involved in some sort of Performance work.  What a useless pile of **** that kit was, the best thing for it was to toss it aside and trample it.

Still, my interest was piqued, so off to Youtube I went.  Now here I am about a year on and the same daughter has decided that since her brother got a rather extravagent Star Wars lego advent calendar (which I have to say is brilliant), she would have to have something equally spectacular.  The daily creature challenge was born.  We have a wooden calendar thingy with little drawers in it so the creature has to squish into a little box that is about 4cm cubed.  I'll post my efforts as I manage it - for no apparent reason, we started on the 5th December.  She got squinkies the days before that.