In the Media - Gathered by Mollie Makes

I've been published, just a little bit! How to you get published a little bit? Here's how it all came about.

Since my jewellery making muse is on the fritz I've been indulging in some of my other creative pursuits, mostly crochet. A couple of weeks ago I discovered an Australian site, Yarnover, that sells Lily Sugar 'n Cream cotton yarn and my favourite (but expensive) crochet hooks, Tulip Etimo. I received my order early last week and promptly went in search of a couple of patterns for the Sugar 'n cream yarn.

I made this pretty crochet Kitty adapted from a pattern by Janette of the Green Dragonfly. Being me, I tweaked the pattern to include a full twisty tail, some extra shaping in the ears and around the face.

 

I also made these Christmas Coasters, just a set of plain granny squares and a star shaped hot pad for a teapot or coffee plunger.

I was so please by how they turned out I snapped a couple of photos and uploaded them to Instagram. Low and behold on Tuesday evening I received an email from Nina, a Production Assistant for the magazine, asking me if they could use my photo in their Show and Tell section of Gathered by Mollie Makes. I happily said yes, without even checking which photo!

I downloaded the magazine on Saturday and here she is... My Pretty KittyCat lifted right off the iPad.

I still have one or two embellishments to add, a butterfly for her tail and a heart shaped pocked with flowers. If you'd like to be featured in Gathered upload a picture to Instagram, Twitter or Facebook and tag them #gatheredbymm.

And that my friends is how you get just a little bit published.

 

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My Handmade Elf on the Shelf

This Christmas I've decided to make a few handmade decorations and I've been looking at crochet patterns for gingerbread men, elves, reindeer, snowmen and of course the jolly man himself. The kids are protesting at the idea of another snowman, so I thought I'd start with something else.

If you follow me on Facebook you might remember that I posted about a new handmade crochet project I was starting. You can find the pattern on Ravelry and Craftsy for free. I've also started a board on Pinterest that I'm pinning Christmas tutorials, the elf is on there too. Well, here it is! Jill Watt's Shelf Elf .

I knew straight away which yarn I wanted to use for "Elffy", a quick trip into the local store and I had almost everything I needed. Paton's Zhivago in a lovely deep red and some tapestry wool in flesh and white. Zhivago is a lovely yarn that has a velvety finish, it must be the tencel in the yarn I guess.

The Making of an Elf

Making the body

Basically the elf is made from two long skinny crochet tubes for legs, two shorter ones for arms and a long barrel shaped body. After making the arms and legs I threaded pipe cleaners through, to make the elf posable. I stuffed the body (above) with fibre fill and sewed the body closed, attaching the arms and legs at the same time.

That left the collar, head, hair and hat. Out of those three the head is the most complicated. There appears to be a small error in the pattern for the head. In row 7 it calls for chain 9 at the end of the row, I think it is supposed to be sc 9 (single crochet US or double crochet UK).

You can see above there is a small bobble in the centre for the nose and larger ones for cheeks. Just a hint, make sure you place the nose bobble in the dead centre between the ears (mine's just a little off centre), and for colour I used some of my blush on his cheeks and the tip of his nose. If your worried that the blush is going to rub off spray a little hairspray on your finger and rub over the blush spots to seal it, that's an old theatre trick. He looks like he has a strange pink mustache, lol.

If you think positioning the nose and cheeks is tricky well, it's time to add the eyes and mouth. You can use felt or embroidery floss to add these. I'm not 100% happy with his eyes, I might replace them with felt. My tip is to use the pins with coloured heads to work out where to put his eyes. Oh, and don't do what I did and sew his hat on, forgetting his hair! BALD ELF! My fault because I had decided not to crochet him a "rug" (hair piece) and sewed the hat on before I embroidered the hair.

Here he is, finally finished! Keep an eye on my Facebook page, I'm sure he'll get into trouble before Christmas.

You can check out more of Jill's crochet patterns on Ravelry or on her blog Dapper Toad.

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