This had been available in Ducth for a couple of days now, and now I finally managed to translate it to English. You can download the pattern completely for free, in PDF!

I hope you’ll enjoy the pattern! And please leave me a message when you made a Smurf. Who knows, you might get a feature post .

Enjoy!

Click on the link below to open the pattern in a PDF-window, or right click and save the document to your computer!

Charami – patroon – Smurf NL.pdf

I didn’t crochet whilst on vacation. Wasn’t really an option to bring yarn and hooks in a bag nearly weighing 20 kgs, which I had to drag to another location every three days. So, no crocheting, wouldn’t have found the time anyway , but I did crochet something small before I left. Something I haven’t shown here yet.

It’s another variation on my Phat Cat. These are the original cats:

Later I made this little trial of a coloured, maring Phat Cat:

And this one I made before I left on vacation, a Phat Pig:

It’s a white pig with a pink cherry blossom theme, because when you say pig, you say cherries ? Whatever

Finally my vacation has arrived! I’ll be leaving for a small month to Great-Britain. I’ll be back by the end of September.

See you then!

The hat was a bit of a pain to get right. Only after the 6th try did I succeed. It’s not perfect, but I think it resembles the original smurf-drawings by Peyo very well .

I’m also very proud of the shaping of the shoes. They are like little clogs.

The tilted behind is also just like I wanted it. If you look at it from the side, the back curves in an S-shape.

I had to contemplate a while about how I would do the arms. Normally a Smurf has 3 fingers and a thumb, but fingers are really hard to crochet. So in the end I settled for just the thumb, but I made the hand more oval shaped than round.

And then the face.
First I wanted to use googly eyes. They looked nice, but I was bothered with their roundness. Smurfs have more oval-shaped eyes. So I tried crocheted eyes instead, and eventually liked the crochet result much better than the googly eyes.
The mouth is embroidered with black yarn.

So what do you think of the finished product?

Cheers,
Charlotte

My cousin graduated from highschool this week.
To congratulate her for finishing mandatory school successfully I decided to do something a little more original than a card. I crocheted her a graduation bear .

The bear was crocheted without pattern, just on the go and by eye.
I really like how he turned out . And I managed to attached one of my labels on his tush

For over a month now I have been working on an item that has been on my To-do list for a while now: A granny stripe blanket.
The main goal for this blanket is to reduce some of my stash. I have so many odd balls of colour lying around and I want to make some room in my boxes of yarn for new yarn.

The picture above shows the colours I had picked out of my stash to use. You will count 14 different shades, arranged in true rainbow style.
I loved the way these colours looked, but still I had a nagging feeling the shades leaned too much to the blue side, making my rainbow a little unbalanced. A trip to a yarn shop remedied that. I added another 3 shades to balance out the colour scheme: an orange, a yolk yellow and a light apple green.

Better, right?

As mentioned, the plan for these balls is a huge granny stripe blanket, using Lucy’s (from Attic24) pattern.

I love Lucy’s blankets and all the Lucy-style blankets made in inspiration, but personally I feel that the jumble of colours, one after the other, is a bit too heavy on the eyes, a bit too chaotic to my taste. So, my plan is to alternate each row of colour with a row of plain white, to freshen it up.

Yesterday, I finished crocheting the first set of 17 colours and decided now was a good time to blog about it

I started with a chain of 203 and a hook of 4.5mm, measuring approximately 130cm. Then I did 4 rows of white, before starting with the first colour. After each two rows of colour, follows two rows of white.

Want to see what it looks like now that I have the 17 colours in?
I’m telling you, I am really excited about how this is looking right now. So colourful, yet easy on the eye.

Curious yet?

Okay, I’ll stop teasing and show you already

Looking good, don’t you think? Oooh, this will make one fine blanket

The plan is to do 4 repeats of the colours, as one repeat roughly measures 54cm and I want a lengthy blanket of about 2 meters. If my calculations are correct, the 4 repeats, plus a border will exceed the plan

One down, three and a border to go!

I have frequently heard her talk about her children, but I’ve never met either of them. I was both surprised and pleased to be invited to the party.
Of course I asked if her daughter wanted something special or if she had any ideas for a gift (I don’t want to give a plain envelope with money to someone I don’t know…). She replies that I shouldn’t bother too much. This is of course the standard reply , but I really do not want to show up empty handed. That would make me feel like a leech….

So, in the end, my mind came up with only one thing: make a special amigurumi.
I really have no idea if this girl is a girly girl and if she likes stuffed animals. I do recall her mother telling me that her daughter had been nagging for ages to have a Diddlina toy, so I guess she’s not completely averse stuffed animals…
Decision one was made.

Question two: What kind of amigurumi would I make?
I’ve always immensely admired Dawn Toussaint’s dolls. They are truely something unique and present-worthy. So I quickly decided to make one of her bunnies and my eye fell on Bronwen, mostly because she could be made with only crochet skills, no knitting needed.

Yesterday, with the huge help of my mother, who sew the skirt completely by hand for me, I finished my Bronwen, whom my mother christened Coralie:

I’m kind of in love with this bunny and not a little bit reluctant to give her away. Didn’t she turn out cute? Totally adorable, I think and I sincerely hope the recipient will love her too (and hopefully not think “What in heaven’s name is that?”)
BTW, did you notice my label on her shoe? Looks good, huh?

The party is next Sunday. Until now, Coralie will keep me company at my desk, before her big move. We both hope she will be loved

This has been sitting on my shelf for two months already. I just considered it unfinished, as he doesn’t have a tail yet. I was indecisive about what to do for a tail?? Eventually after two months, I decided he doesn’t need a tail

I love the marine style. Love the combination of dark blue and red and white and light blue (just see my hexagon bag ). Love stripes too. So the idea for a Marine styled Phat Cat was born.

Here you see the initial sketch:

And the result: