DOMO

Having fun in the garden

Who is Domo? He is a little creature that hatched from an egg. He adores meat and potato stew but hates apples ( Source: Wikipedia ). The only word he can say is his own name. "DOMO!"

I made this for my awesome brother who has recently become slightly obsessed with Domo!

I got the pattern from Nerdigurumi, and lovely crocheting lady who lists her amigurumi patterns of geek paraphernalia for free.

Domo scaring Percival the Penguin.

The body was so easy to make, as were the arms and legs. But putting him together was a different story! His legs are weighted so he can stand and the arms poseable so Domo can scare things in pictures! Nerdigurumi has a tutorial on how to wire the arms so it wasn't all bad!  I had to improvise the weighted feet.  I cut out a piece of cardboard so he could stand.  The only flat metal things I could find in the house were washers.  I glued two of these onto each piece of cardboard and et voila, weighted feet!

Anyway, my brother LOVES his Domo. And so does their little kitty apparently! Definitely one of the most fun projects I've done so far!

Hero sniffing out Domo.  

New books!

Woohoo...just received 4 new books to add to my library of knitting and crocheting! All pretty good but I especially LOVE the Stitch Library one, I had no idea there were so many different knitting stitches!

Knitting with jetlag :/

So I'm back from my travels to see my lovely boy!! Had an awesome trip, but as always I'm jetlagged and missing my boy loads :(

Well, further to my last post, I took my knitting project on the flight (NB saves lots of time to tell security about knitting needles and scissors before they go through the X-ray!). Managed to do quite a lot and thought I was almost done.  But after measuring him up with the ukulele in place, I wasn't even halfway *shakes angry fist* at tall people. I managed to do a bit on the way back, so I'll get there slowly but surely.

I only got back earlier today and so my jetlag is horrendous. After unpacking and settling back in, I'm knitting to keep myself awake to get me back onto Greenwich Meantime.  I just hope I don't make a mistake in my jetlagged state.  Will keep you updated when I've finished the ukulele strap!

The Travelling Yarning Darling

Since my boy moved to the City of Angels, I've been back and forth visiting him every few months, and I'm off again at the end of this week :)

The novelty of a long-haul 11 hour flight with unlimited movies wore off extremely quickly, pretty much after my first visit, so on the next visit I decided to take my current crochet project with me. Each time I've always got funny looks and even got known as the 'knitting lady' on one flight (even though I was crocheting!).

Now just like a girl must limit the number of shoes she packs, I also had to do this with my yarning stuff.  With all the regulation of banned items, it took some investigating to find out about crochet hooks. The Heathrow Airport website says knitting needles are fine so I assumed a crochet hook would be okay too. The check in desk had no idea but when I got through security they didn't have a problem so I was good to go.

Anyway, I thought I'd jot down a list of items that I usually take, varying depending on the project (so if it was only crocheting there would be no need to take knitting needles or a DPN). These all also adhere to the hand baggage regulations, including the TSA rules, so you shouldn't have any problems.

• Yarn
• Pattern
• Round-ended scissors (with blades 6" or shorter from the fulcrum)
• Any length/size knitting needles or crochet hooks
• Split stitch markers
• Tape measure
• Pen
• Pencil
• Notepaper
• Handcream 100ml or less (the cabin pressure and onboard soap can wreak havoc on hands)
• For knitting, double-pointed needle (if required) and point protectors.

From the picture you can see that I've packed aluminium needles.  I'm usually one for bamboo, but after accidentally stepping on one I found out the hard way how fragile they are.  For travelling, aluminium is best as they can take a little beating and be fine.

If you've never thought of taking your project with you, do it...you can get so much done on a long haul flight and the time passes by so quickly!

I like my Hello Kitty with a cherry on top.

Yay, kitty! If there's anything I love apart from yarn and cat videos it's Hello Kitty! I adopted this little obsession from my sister-in-law, but everyone who knows her seems to as Hello Kitty is so cute! My first crochet kitty was for her and was strawberry themed.

One day, casually talking to one of the receptionists at work, I discovered she adores kitty too and asked if I could make her one. Tomorrow is her 21st birthday so I thought it appropriate to fulfil her wish. It didn't take that long as I followed a pattern but I still think she looks kawaii!

Deconstructed kitty.

Snuggly Snood

Project complete! Remember that post last week with the giant crochet hook and gorgeous yarn? Well I finally did something with it. And when I said it was gonna be simple, I really wasn't joking. This was for two reasons:
1. I needed a quick project.
2. I wanted the chunkiness of the project to stand out.

I started it at about 6pm today and with eating and a bit of faffing I had it done by 10pm so extremely easy and quick!

Me and my boy have a skiing trip planned next week so I made this snood for that. Gotta look good in those minus temperatures (shame I didn't have it for the big freeze in the UK last week!)

Pattern
Materials
20mm crochet hook
2xSMC Select Highland Alpaca Yarn (or any other chunky 100g balls)
Split stitch marker (a larger one will be more handy)

Method (work in a continuous spiral)
Base: ch35
Join last stitch to first with sl st, take care not to twist the chain.
Round 1: SC each stitch (35), mark last stitch.
Round 2-15: SC (35).
Cast off.

I was annoyingly 4 stitches short of the 15th round when the yarn got too short. So, as I was working in a spiral, I cheekily cast off a bit early :/ Hey, you can't tell so it's fine (just keep it our little secret!)

Kitty's Christmas Mouse

My brother and his wife have a gorgeous (but slightly bitey) Siamese kitty called Hero.  She likes little mouse toys. So, I had to do the obvious and make her one!

I browsed Crochet Pattern Central for a quick and easy pattern and found one here by KristieMN.  I managed to make it in about an hour and half so it was pretty easy. I had to make a few amendments, like I sewed the eyes on instead of using toy eyes.  I also decided to stuff the mouse with strips of felt rather than the usual poly-fill because she has a tendency to completely destroy a soft toy so didn't want her eating any of the thin fibres.

Needless to say, she enjoyed the little mouse. But poor mousey (rest in peace) succumbed to its injuries 3.5 days later.  Oh well, kitty enjoyed it!