Rose and Trellis

Time to log another recent craft project.

Shortly before Christmas my friend Steph posted me a big bag of yarn that she'd seen going for a song in her local charity shop, it was branded and lovely quality, mostly baby weight stuff in pretty pastel colours. I was chuffed to bits and I'm planning on practicing my crochet skills with some of it in the near future. It was so lovely to receive an unexpected boost to my yarn stash so as a big thankyou I wanted to make Steph a little something ... hmmm what to choose.

Through indulging in my recently developed blogging habit I had found a pattern for some cool wrist warmers over on the Protect the Cookie blog. I love Marie's blog - so inspirational! This is the pattern for the wrist warmers and here are my finished version - I've dubbed the pattern rose and trellis as I think the bobbles look like flowers peeping through the cables.



I had some nice black Aran wool hanging about in my stash and I ran these up in literally a couple of evenings. The bobbles were surprisingly easy to make - another new skill acquired. Steph loved them and I will be making myself a pair pronto!

Sack Boy Sack Girl

A few weeks back my brother-in-law asked me if I'd be up to knitting one of these little critters for my nephew Jacob. Sack Boy is the character from LittleBIGPlanet (TM) computer game..... apparently. All a bit of a mystery to me since I haven't touched a computer gaming console since the 80's when it was all Pac Man and Space Invaders :)

Turned out I had actually bought the issue of Simply Knitting Magazine which contained the pattern so I thought I'd give it a whirl. The pattern for Sack Boy is also available here . Well, my effort is now completed, sewn up and posted off to his new owner so here he is ....

I managed to source the required Click Chunky yarn locally and it only took me a few days to knit up the various pieces. Finding a zip and the buttons for the eyes proved to be surprisingly hard. Living where we do is so frustrating sometimes as the craft shops are a bit thin on stock and never have quite what you are looking for. I eventually got a metal zip that was too long but I fudged a solution by folding up the excess inside the body. Buttons proved impossible. I found some perfect ones online at 6p each but it would have cost me £3 in postage to get them - for two 6p buttons I won't pay that on principle! So, my Sack Boy ended up with embroidered eyes. A slight compromise but here's hoping a 5 year old won't mind!

He's only the second teddy thingy I've ever knitted and I found it quite fun to do - nice and quick. I actually preferred him before I added the contrast stitching to make him look like he'd been made out of sacks. The instructions said 'make sure you do your whipping stiches nice and uneven to get the right look'. Now call me weird but I don't actually do messy stitching - I've spent years practicing doing tidy ones - so I compensated by trying too hard and in the end I think I made it a bit too messy :)

The original commission was for a green one please but also could he have a zebra tail,a pirates outfit and a hard hat. Bonkers :) I'll have to leave the customisations for another day as I've got too many other makes on the go at the moment.

Toodle pip.
J

Introducing the gang

o.k. - So this is new :)

I guess the first thing to do is to introduce the Peapod gang, so here we are. Me, him indoors and the little fella who is today celebrating his half year birthday. Happy sixth month birthday Reubs!

I've decided to start this blogging malarkey to record some details of family life, like keeping a diary but easier to keep up (and easier to do whilst at work : -0 ) Plus, I've been meaning for some time to archive and log my various craft projects and this looks like a great way to do so. My crafty inspiration levels are super high at the moment, largely because I started reading some crafty blogs whilst I was off on maternity leave and now I'm addicted. At the moment I'm not sure how much I will share this site with others. Confession alert - I'm a terrible lurker! So this site might just be for me, or maybe I will be brave and come out of the lurkers closet, declaring myself to some fellow bloggers and trading info. Got to practice me posts first though :)

Finally, I think I should also explain where the peapod thing comes from; one of my numerous nicknames has always been Sweetpea and when Reuben came along Dave started calling him Peapod. It kind of stuck and here we are setting up the Peapod Patch.

Toodle pip!

J