The World Famous Crochet Museum

I'm not lying, there's a museum dedicated to the world of crocheting, and it is really called  The World Famous Crochet Museum!!  It looks tiny, but pretty cool :)

I came across this whilst catching up on my twitter feed.  It's in a little place just outside of Joshua Tree National Park, California - around 130 miles west of Los Angeles.  So even when I do go and see the boy, I think a trip here would be pretty unlikely :(

If anyone does go and check it out, let me know!

Hey Girl, it's me, Ryan Gosling

http://handmaderyangosling.tumblr.com/post/19342287710/submitted-by-maryvl

A few months ago, I never understood the whole swooning over Ryan Gosling.  I was also pretty content living in this uninformed world of mine.

On my most recent trip to see my boyfriend, there were a few movies showing starring Mr Gosling and so I thought I'd watch them to see what all the hype was about.

OMG.  Like, seriously.  After watching "Crazy Stupid Love" and "Drive", I was swooning 30,000 feet in the air.  Literally.  (sorry Jim, you'll always my number one guy to make me swoon!)

Anyway, background done, there's an awesome tumblr site called  Handmade Ryan Gosling. It's made just for people who love crafting and who adore Ryan Gosling!  The picture above is pretty much what the site is all about and is one of my favourites.  Go visit it....now!!

NB If you didn't notice, this was just a poor excuse to mention Ryan Gosling somewhere on my blog :)

Knitted Card (yes, really)

So, it was my BFF's birthday this week and in true yarn-addict style I decided to knit her a card.

In my head the card looked a lot different...it was going to be all fancy and amazing and fabulous. But in the end it kind of looks like a primary school kid made it. That's not to say I still don't love it, and I'm sure she will too!

I encountered a few logistical problems after making the huge stockinette swatch to cover the actual bit of card. I thought I'd make it like a book cover. However, I failed to think about the extra thickness the overlap of an inch would make and I forgot the rolling that happens with a stockinette!

I ended up having to sew the swatch to the card, then gluing another bit of card to hide all of that! The sewing of her name turned out a bit childish, oh well, I guess it adds character!

I'm pretty happy with it, although I will make a few alterations to my next one! (oh, and the cupcake frosting and candle are crocheted before anyone points that out!)

NB Stockinette swatch was made with double knit (DK) acrylic yarn and 4.5mm needles

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!