Voilà, Camille

After taking forever,  je vous présent Camille my sweet bear.  Why Camille? I have no idea whatsoever, it just felt right for her...her? jajaja Yeah I give name and gender to stuffed animals, thankfully, lots of other people do that, otherwise I might start thinking I've got  issues..jajaja

Today I had class at the airport, so I seized this opportunity to visit Vic and gift her to him, chose a nice baby gift bag, took some quick shots and off I went to class.

habemus ursus....almost

Remember the bear I'm working on, well, it seems that getting the ball's size right was trickier than I thought. Yesterday I ended up with a ball 1 inch bigger than it should....so now I have to  down size it  in order to give my lovely bear a decent body :-p

Mr Google found a very nice tutorial for sewing balls on the internet database for jugglers. I chose a 3 pannel ball and doubled the pattern's size before printing.  Mine is made out of 6 diferent fabrics. Here´s my choice:

Wonder which one's my fave?  I love this one soooo much? It's adorable!!!

This cutie is not sawn up just yet, look how weird the body looks with the big ball inside..jajaja

And in the mean time, Hanna was awaiting for her own ball session ^^

more on baby stuff

As I've mentioned  in former posts, one of the things I enjoy making the most is baby stuff,  the fabrics,  crocheting, sewing you name it, baby stuff. So when Vic told me about his newborn...well I was thrilled. I decided to give stuffed animals a try.

As you may guess, I chose a Bear..jaja couldn't help myself :p When Ximena was born, I bought a  pattern from e-patterncentral that I didn't crochet, hence this was my opportunity to do so ^^ It's a "bear blanket hide-out" this means it has an opening to well, hide a blankie in there, jajaja as Im nooot crocheting a blankie I decided to sew a fabric ball instead ^^

I'm almost through the hole body now, and will be joining this gorgeous little bear, I hope, this afternoon. Can you see it already?

St James cross belt pouch

I know this lovely minstrel who looves medieval stuff and above all Santiago de Compostela, (Santiafo-St James, same person) so last year (OMG time flies....) I decided to make a special belt pouch for him. Fave yarn shop, some nice woolen yarn, leather, red woollen cloth and off-white linen and off I went...jejeje

It's a simple bag a bit wider at the bottom and rounded on the corners...simple but pretty :) The effect I wanted on the bottom couldn't be achieve by crocheting in circles, well I couldnt't, sooo I had to do a front and back parts. After putting it all together, felting came along so the bag can endure the hard use a mistrel could give to it. When felting crochet, I always try to remeber that it'll shrink more horizontally than vertically...or ...how was it?

While the washing machine did her work, I marked and cut out the St James cross ( Cruz de Santiago) from beautiful red woollen cloth (dunno why but M'm head over heels for the texture in it)

I'd never done this before, so..well..my stitching didn't look as pretty as I thought it would, actually it's quite dreadful, soooo.....

I used those uneven horrible looking stitches to embroider a more even endging..better looking doesnt it?

The lining was something that took me a while. For some reason (dunno why????), I coudn't get it to be the right size...at the end it turned just fine buuut the first atempt ended up being a lavender sachet jejeje.

For the leather straps I got some help from the above mentioned mistrel. He lendt me waxwed cotton and the tools needed for making the holes (dunno how those are called), he even explained how to do it...hehehe of course he had no idea of what I was doing...or so I think ¬_¬

My fave is the little leather button, my mom's idea. She has a bag from morocco with that type of closure, so when I told here I hated how my store-bought button looked with the leather strap, she suggested I make this other instead....and It worked! ^_^

So, here's the finished pouch. It's has no synthetic materials in it.

the circular bag

Not posting bout it, doesnt mean I'm not into crafting....I can't go without crafting....I've got to do it, even if its only inside my mind...jaja

Last winter I knitted a lot of scarves, so my knitting is more even now. Practice makes the master. My next proyect is an easy lace scarf from lion brand patterns, or sothey say "easy" lets see how "easy" it turns out to be...jejeje

I crocheted a circular woolen bag...and felted it! Felting was a troubling issue cause I really liked the texture of the wool and how one dc looked next to the other...

still I planned to "half" felt it. My lack of experience...ended up with a small, pretty fully felted bag...jajaja While inside the machine it slipped out of the pillowcase and the pompons ended up messed all over the bag and the towel i tossed in for felting jajajaja I'm learning...jaja
Nonetheless I love my bag :D

So pretty it looked...oooh

Double crochet detail

before felting with its lovely pompons

After felting with its lovely beads ;-p

Bead detail

welcome Ximena!!

"A new baby is like the beginning of all things-wonder, hope, a dream of possibilities."

Eda J. Le Shan quotes

Been so busy I didnt have time to photograph this proyect before handling it to it's rightfull owner jeje.
Loved stitching this little tortoise but far beyond that, I loved how it fits on little Ximena.

This is the very first time I stitch on knits....not so cool..jajaja really they are soo unstable and delicate. Took me a while to get into the rightway of introducing the needle without distorting the fabric; I wanted neither the design nor the bodysuit to be missshaped. As it should be done, I used some stabilizing fabric for the stitching process and ended up with this little lilac tortoise.

Sadly the shoes I crocheted were too small for her. Maybe if I use double yarn strands or a heavier yarn.

Picture taken by the proud father of this little girl

Babies season

Some of my dear friends are having babies... for some weird reason all are comming out of the oven on June!! So I'm quite busy now with baby thingies which by the way I looove doing (this sounds funny and might be misunderstood by some, I knooow I can see your smile from here).

Done some stuff before, 3 baby blankets with cross-stich and needlework designs all around the border and a couple of granny's blocks afghans. Hope I can get some photos from these and post them here.

For Rosita and Adolfo I finished last week a baby blanket, a pair of booties and a lamb. Thaaat afghan took me a loooooot of time. I should tell you, so I will..jejeje... my mom has this huge collection of crochet magazines (Mon tricot, now called a vintage magazine LOL) from old times when she crocheted like crazy. Hence I dont buy magazines for baby designs, I've got plenty to lure within... found a pattern that promised to be easy and crochetable while in the subway ( yeaaah I stitch in there, why not) Went to the store, bought some pretty yarn and started. Double crochet...again and again..and again the whole blanket is made with double crochet...as it is worked like an overgrown granny's block and Im not very experienced, made me prone to skipping stitches every now and then....soooo I had to count and count to fix it many times (sic). Still I love how it turned out.Nooooo its miiine, my treasure, my precious treasure..eventually I girt-wrapped it.

The booties were quite easy to crochet and to fall in love with, they look so cute. Did I mention all I had crocheted before these projects were scarfs and afghans? ergo this was a new experience..jajaja I used ballet slippers pattern from e-Patterncentral and modified it a bit. Where I bought the buttons, the salegirls (who are very nice to me) made my day with an "oooh looooook!" ;-p Here's the result. Crocheted a pair for each baby.

And at last but not least, my lamb..mmm actually theirs. For this sweetie I used a Lion Brand pattern but changed to Red Heart yarn. Yep, had to make “slight” changes, cause of this and cause I wanted the legs bigger. Took out some scrap yarn I had and transformed it into flowers ( pattern) It turned out just fine I guess; at least I liked it and Rosita and Adolfo did too so, that's moooore than enough.

Soooo tiny

Isnt it beautiful, I really really liked it. [n_n]

Detail of the border, each triangle is made separately.

This is how it looked before placing inside a pretty giftbag