Behold, The Potterpus!

Lets skip right past the part where I apologize for going so long without blogging, and then tell you that I'm sincerely going to attempt to blog at least once a week.  Instead, how about we dive right into what has fallen off my hook today!?

 Well, hello there!  Look who it is!  You may think that you have come across this handsome fellow before, but I assure you, you have not!  I wanted to make something based on Harry Potter, but not just a straight up Harry Potter doll.  I've been doing a fair amount of dolls lately (in fact, I have two WIPs that are dolls right now), and I just felt like I wanted to do something.... different.  As I was watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 1 over the weekend, the idea suddenly exploded in my mind.  And thus, it was born!

Behold! The Great Potterpus!  Look at how cute he is, waving "hello" to you!  I put a small amount of wire into his legs to make him somewhat poseable. I had originally planned to give him a mouth, but the more I looked at him, the more I loved him just the way he was.  In the end, I decided to leave him how he is for now.  I still may add a mouth later.  What do you think? The glasses are made of wire, and then wrapped in black yarn.  We wont discuss how many hours it took me to get them looking that way (okay, three).

I didn't write down the pattern while I was creating this, but I am considering making a somewhat similar creature in the not-so-distant future, so perhaps I will try to write it down when I do that one. He was made with worsted weight yarn and a size E hook.
 My son was very excited about the Potterpus and wanted to know what a Potterpus eats.  So I told him that, of course, a Potterpus eats tacos and bacon!

Something Fishy!

Hello again! 
I'm just popping in quickly to share a little project I have been working on this week.  I have been making these little "fishbowls" for my kids to give to their teachers at the Teacher Appreciation Lunch at their school this week.

 It was a little hard to get a good picture of this because of the glass, but they turned out pretty cute.  I found the graphic for the lid on Pintrest, and just sized it down and printed it on paper and glued it to the lid.  the fish I made using Red Heart Unforgettable in Stained Glass using a size C hook.  I didn't follow a pattern for them, I just freehanded them, but I could probably write out a pattern for them- they are pretty easy.  The eyes I had ordered awhile back from COLINCHJ on Etsy, and they are 6mm.  The "marbles" in the bottom of the jar are just clear colored pony beads that I picked up at the dollar store.  I'm hoping the teachers will like them.  One jar down, three to go!

Dragon My Feet

Hello there!  I had meant to update much sooner, but life has just had me busy, busy, busy!  It is late, and I am pretty tired, so this probably won't be too long of an entry.  But I did want to share a couple of things I have finished up recently.   The first one is a dragon I made for my daughter's eighth birthday.  She loves dragons and wanted to have a dragon themed birthday party, so I thought this was a fitting present. 

I made this little lady with King Cole Flash in the color Apricot.  My daughter decided to name her "April," since that is when her birthday is.  I love, love, love this yarn, and I'm looking forward to finding something else to use it for.  The solid colored pieces are Stylecraft DK in Spice and Plum.  They blended together wonderfully.  It was a LOT of little stitches, and my fingers were pretty achy after all was said and done.  At the end of the day, she loves her dragon, and I love seeing her so happy with it! The pictures are a little yellow, but I've since replaced my phone, so hopefully here on out my pictures will look much better.

My kids' school has a carnival every year and there are always raffle baskets with a theme given away as prizes.  I wanted to donate something handmade, but I was kind of short on time.  My son's class had a theme of "Spa Night," so I made a little package up that had two facial cloths, a back scrubber, and two candles in cosies.  I felt bad that I didn't have time to make something super stunning, but they turned out pretty good and are hopefully being enjoyed.  My picture only shows one candle, but I made another in purple. 

It's Been A Long Time

Hello!
I know it has been an awfully long time since last I updated.  I do apologize for my absence.  The end of last year was a very busy time for me craft wise.  I had so many projects that needed to be completed on time, and it was a crunch to get them all done.  Here are but a few examples of things I was hooking like mad to complete!

Shortly after the first of the year, I had some personal issues of a catastrophic level happen.  I can't discuss the details here, but life as I knew it before has been turned upside down. So I've been struggling to right myself since then.  I went almost 3 weeks without hooking anything at all, and then when I did try to do anything, I'd end up having to rip rows and rows out because I just couldn't focus well enough.  I've been trying to ease back into my crafting, and only doing it when I feel like it, for however long, and on whatever project it is that I feel up to working on at the time.  This is why you haven't been seeing posts from me, nor seen my Etsy store open in January as I had planned.  So hopefully there will be more posts coming soon!  I'm about mid-way through a project and hopefully will be able to share it in about a week's time- but I'm not going to hold myself to that.  It might be a week, it might be a month.  Crochet is somewhat therapeutic for me right now, but I have to do it on my own terms.  I'm hoping that I'll be able to start taking orders again soon, and get back to some more regular blogging.

So Many Hats, So Few Blog Entries!

I've been horribly slack about updating the blog lately.  Things have been very busy here.  The kids are finally back to school and are settling in to their new classes and making new friends.  I love this time of year!  October is my favourite month.  I find that the natural beauty here in Vancouver certainly leaves no lack of inspiration.

So what have I been up to the last few weeks in Yarnland?  Mostly hats, hats, and more hats!  I had a few friends who wanted Groot hats made for them, so I had to try to remember how I made the first one.  I tried keeping some notes on it over the next few I made, but they are nowhere near what would pass for a publishable pattern.  I've had some more minion hats requested.  In fact, the next four items to fall off my hook will all be minion-related.  Two of them I'm designing myself, so that always take a lot longer for me than just following a pattern.  I also had a request for a Unikitty (from The Lego Movie) hat.  I couldn't find a pattern for one, so, again I just made the hat up as I went along. I'm pretty happy with the end result (though if I ever made another, I would assemble it in a different order than I did this time).  I'm looking forward to seeing this little Unikitty in her costume on Halloween!


Speaking of Halloween, it has to be my favourite holiday!  I've been quite busy making things for other people lately, but I did take a little time out to make something to decorate our house for the holiday!  The good folks over at The Crochet Crowd are having another one of their fabulous challenges.  This particular challenge involved making a yarn wreath in a Halloween theme.  They really left a lot of room for creativity in this challenge.  I chose to use a pool noodle for my wreath form, and wrap it in yarn.  In retrospect, I could have crocheted a cover for the noodle faster than wrapping the noodle! To keep in the spirit of the challenge, I decided to try something that has always kind of scared me, and tried crocheting with ruffle yarn. I can't even begin to tell you how silly I felt for avoiding this stuff for so long- it is ridiculously easy to do!  So I used it for the trim of my wreath, found some silvery fabric in my scrap box, and went to work.  It is now hanging on the wall in our hallway, since we can't close the screen door if we hang it on the front door. 

 I managed to finish up a little something for myself this morning.  I had been working on this on short car trips. I'm very, very happy with this scarf!  My Road Trip Scarf, while it did turn out very pretty, is just not my style.  I can't pull off the triangular scarf as well as a lot of people seem to.  I made this scarf with Red Heart Boutique Unforgettable in the colorway Stained Glass.  I love these colours and I would wear them in any season.  It is a very simple shell stitch that is staggered.  However, it is a pleasant stitch to look at (instead of just a plain old double crochet), but not so busy that it detracts from the colour.  I wore it out and about today and had several comments on it, which always makes me feel good.  The closer up pictures shows the stitching better, as well as the colours.  My flash didn't go off in the first picture, apparently.

Until next time,
Happy Hooking!

Darrah

Blog Blogity Blog Blog Blogs

So, I am still new to Blogland. I kept an online journal for years on Open Diary, which sadly is gone now.  I hadn't realized until I looked into it that it was actually the first blogging website, launched 6 months before even Livejournal was.  Back then it was just a way to get all my thoughts and feelings collected, and I type so much faster than I write.  I can't help but feel old and outdated when I don't even know what all the blog features and such are anymore.  I keep seeing blogs I'd like to follow, but I don't want my email overflowing (as if it isn't anyway) and I don't want to have to join 8 different communities to be able to see when the blogs I like have been updated.  That being said, I'm not exactly sure what Bloglovin even IS, but I see it as an option to follow blogs quite often, and so I am giving it a wingding and connecting my blog to it (and it wants me to post a link in a new blog, and so in this entrey is where I will post it).  I also have started a Facebook page (separate from my personal page) for The Button Buffalo which you can see here.  Feel free to pop by and give it a like if you want, and let me know about your pages as well so I can visit them!  There's not much on the Facebook page yet, but I just started it this week and I am still trying to figure out exactly what I want to do with it.  I think I may spend some time today on blogspot trying to get THIS blog to look like I want it to.  I want to share with people the other blogs and things I love.  I just need to figure out how to do all that!
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A Late WIP Wednesday

Well, it's late Wednesday, and I was going to make a post for WIP Wednesday.  but I decided instead to keep working on my road trip scarf, which seems to be a very popular project right now, and was designed by Zelna Olivier.  I've been seeing loads of these around the internet and wanted to try one, and although I always think they are beautiful, I just wasn't sure the scarf was really "my style."  I finally decided to quit drooling over them and to just hook one up.  Besides, if I didn't like it, it would make a wonderful gift for someone, right?

I finally was able to find a couple of skeins of Red Heart Unforgettable in the Sunrise colorway.  This colorway and the Stained Glass seem particularly difficult to find.  Even when I look online, most of the time those colorways are always out of stock.  The Sunrise colorway grabbed my attention because of the bright oranges (which is my favourite colour) and the wonderful contrast of the blue.  Now that I've worked this colorway up, I find myself wishing that the blue was a little more frequent. The colours are bright, shiny, and vibrant.  It's a wonderful combination for Fall.  The bottom picture shows the colours more of how they actually are.  You'll have to excuse the poor lighting in here.  It was a grey, gloomy day here, so I didn't have good natural lighting to photograph in.  Perhaps in a few days when the weather clears up I can try again. The bottom picture I took before I added the flowers.  I almost left it totally plain, and the scarf still looked nice.  The pattern has 8 flowers and some tassels as well.  In the end I decided that it would be a shame not to adorn it in some way, even though I usually prefer my things to be more on the plain side.  I went with 5 flowers instead of 8, and decided to forgo the tassels altogether.  I'm looking forward to trying it out once things cool down just a tad!