I'm back! And giveaway news.....!

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and best wishes for the New Year. Mine was pretty hectic with last minute crafting and a holiday over New Year which is why I haven't been spotted much around these parts of late. I had a lovely time but I am also looking forward to getting back into a routine and checking out all your blogs to find out what you've been up to. I'm also excited about getting back to some projects for myself after all those Christmas makes!!

Before Christmas something very exciting happened to me: I won my first giveaway! Hurrah! I was very lucky to win an early Christmas present from Cute Crochet Creations. I got a gorgeous little crochet drawstring bag:

I don't know if you can see from the picture but the yarn has got sequins in - so pretty! I'm definitely going to hunt some of this out - you can never have too much sparkle as far as I'm concerned! In the bag were some festive earrings and a cute little phone charm too:

Thanks so much Laura - I loved my early Christmas present :o) My earrings were much admired on Christmas day and my little crochet bag was very useful for taking my jewellery on holiday!

If you haven't visited Cute Crochet Creations before then I suggest you head over there now! There are lots of cute amigurumi creatures and gorgeous cross stitch to check out. I only wish I could be that prolific in my creations!

Now also seems like an appropriate time to announce that I am planning a giveaway shortly too so please look out for that. I decided to have a giveaway when I reached 60 followers which I have done recently (actually 61 as of today! hello new follower!) so I am currently working on some goodies to send to one of you.

I know lots of people have a giveaway when they reach 50 followers but I chose 60 for two reasons. Firstly, although I do have 60 followers I am aware that some of them don't seem to exist anymore (or, less morbidly, their blogger accounts have been deleted!) so when I reached 50 followers I knew I didn't actually have 50 followers so if felt like cheating somehow. Secondly, and probably more importantly, I didn't notice I had passed 50 followers for a good while after it happened - whoops!! Anyway, I hope you will enter my giveaway when I post about it in the next couple of weeks.

I'm going to start planning my crafting for the year......YAY! I wish you all a lovely and creative 2012 xx

Christmas Decorations (Part 2)

I've had my Christmas decorations up for over a week now and I've just realised that I never shared the rest of them with you. Whoops - I think it is all the pre-Christmas manic busyness that made it slip my mind. This year I've added to the felt decorations I made last year with some glass ornaments. (As always, I've struggled to photograph the glass - sorry if the pics are a bit blurry!)

First up the fused glass decorations for the tree. This is the "star" I made for the top:

There are more stars dotted about the tree.

I've tried to keep all the decorations in a roughly white and clear theme. The sparkly ones are made of either iridescent glass or dichroic glass.

This decoration is inspired by one I saw on flickr. Unfortunately I now can't find the original photo. If anyone knows whose it was then please let me know so I can credit the original maker:

I've also made around 10 stained glass stars using the copper foil method.

I haven't done that much copper foiling so these stars were a really good project to practice on - and brilliant for using up all the scraps of glass I have hanging around.

I haven't quite finished decorating the tree (I still need to add those crochet granny stars!) but here is my almost complete tree:

The tree is actually in my bedroom. This is partly because there isn't really enough room in my living room and partly because I have a lovely bay window in my bedroom which is perfect for a tree. When it gets dark I turn the lights off, leave the curtains open and people going past can see it sparkling in the window.

I've also added a bit of decoration in the living room to make things a bit more festive in there, mainly centred on the fireplace:

The mini baubles were a set from Paperchase which I spent ages knotting onto a ribbon this time last year! Again, I've got some fused glass decorations hanging here. Here are some closeups:



Phew - that was quite a photo heavy post! I hope you enjoyed seeing all the decorations I have made for my flat. I am now working frantically on all the Christmas presents I need to finish before next weekend. Eeek! Still, it is much nicer sitting on my sofa sewing than it is doing battle in the shops! Hopefully I should be able to show you the products of my efforts soon.

Hope all your Christmas crafting is going well and you are looking forward to Christmas. Unfortunately I got so much into the festive spirit last night that I have now pretty much lost my voice!! Whoops!

Have a good week xx

Granny Christmas Stars

Over the last few days I've become slightly addicted to making these crochet granny stars. Since I discovered the pattern on Jelly Wares blog (via this post on Paisley Jade) I've been crocheting them every spare moment!


They are really quick and satisfying to make and I am planning to hang them on the tree once I have blocked them with some PVA glue. I might even add some glitter if I'm feeling particularly festive!!

I made the smaller stars by missing out the last round of the pattern and in the second round replacing the half double crochet with a single (this will make sense if you look at the pattern).

My original plan was to make crochet snowflakes for the tree. I even bought these books for that purpose. Unfortunately it turns out I don't have the patience for the snowflakes - they take FOREVER! I don't mind all the fiddly bits on the first or even second branch of the snowflake but by the third and fourth I get grumpy!! I've started about five snowflakes and haven't managed to finish one yet! If you want to see some beautiful crochet snowflakes from the book then check out these posts from someone who has a lot more patience than me!

Maybe I'll have enough patience to attempt snowflakes next year but for the moment I'm pretty happy with my cute little granny stars!

Christmas Decorations (Part 1)

I've been digging out my Christmas decorations from last year and realised I never did a post about them. So, before I show you the ones I have made this year, I thought I'd show you last year's ones. 2010 was the first year I had a Christmas tree in my house. I was very excited and had grand plans to decorate it with only homemade decorations. Unfortunately my eight foot tree was a bit of a challenge but I did manage to make some felt hearts:

Felt stars:

And felt Christmas trees:


I can't remember where I got the idea of this type of decoration....I think it might have been from the Hobbycraft website! (Ooooh yes - I've just checked, the inspiration for the idea was here.) I took the idea to the extreme and made loads of little hand sewn ornaments.


I spent some lovely afternoons last November sitting on the sofa making these when I really should have been being more productive. I remember having great fun choosing different buttons especially the tiny little ones.


I even managed to get some little mitten buttons which you can just about see in this picture:

In the end I didn't have enough decorations so I supplemented these with plain white baubles from John Lewis. It was all very tasteful - and I always swore I was going to have a tacky brightly coloured tree when I got my own!!

I haven't put the tree up this year yet but will post some pictures when I do. I'm not feeling that festive yet and I feel so much less organised this time around. The tree was definitely up by this time last year because I had some people round for a Christmas do on the first weekend of December! Last year I was so efficient I even screen printed my own cards and wrapping paper!! I can't find any pictures of the cards but here is an example of the wrapping paper:


I'm not doing anything that ambitious this year! Although I am making lots of presents so I'd better get to work!! Will be back in a few days to show you the decorations I've made this year and hopefully a fully decorated tree (fingers crossed).

Hope you are all getting into the festive spirit a little more than me! xxx

Fused Glass Overload!

One of my Mum's friends showed an interest in buying some of my fused glass for Christmas presents which means I had to finally get off my arse and do something about photographing some of my pieces. Having done that I thought I would share them with you here!



Fused glass is one of my favourite things to make. Its not a very practical hobby - you need a pretty big and expensive kiln for starters (I do a class) - but it is such a fun thing to do.


I have been doing a fused glass class for about a year and a half now and I love it. Playing around with light and colours is soooo much fun.


It does mean however that I now have loads of pieces of fused glass hanging around my (fairly small) flat!



This is only a very small proportion of what I have made!!


There are also lots of flat pieces which I made when I was starting out to practice. They are very pretty but not very useful so I'm not sure what to do with them!


One thing I have made quite a lot of is jewellery. Its really good for giving as presents and, luckily, it doesn't take up too much space!!

I started stockpiling fused glass pieces, in particular lots of jewellery, a while ago with the intention of opening a folksy shop. Now I'm not so sure - I already have a folksy shop selling some of my sewn pieces and I'm not sure its not more bother than its worth - any thoughts? I think I might write a separate post about this soon......!


I was thinking I might look into doing a craft fair instead........

At the moment it is just nice to have all these pretty, sparkly things around my house! Not to mention a necklace to go with every outfit!

Unfortunately I won't be doing the class again after Christmas - its an expensive class and I think I need some time off to get my inspiration back to make the most of the classes. Plus I need to find someway of getting rid of all the glass pieces I have already made!


On the off chance that anyone reading this is interested in buying any of these pieces (or even fancies doing a swap?) then please feel free to get in touch. But mainly I just hope you have enjoyed looking at some of these sparkly things I have hanging round my house!

Have a lovely week xxx

PS. Sorry for the sporadic posting recently - have been having a very busy time! But I have also been working on lots of presents and decorations for Christmas so should have lots of exciting things to share with you soon!

100 grannies!

HURRAH! 100 granny squares with all the ends sewn in. Now for the next challenge - making them into something resembling a blanket! I'm very excited :o)

Crochet Cowl Workshop

There's not been nearly enough time for crafting in the DottyHouse recently - I am taking a psychology course and my first essay is due on Thursday (eeek!) so a lot of my spare time has been concentrated on that. I love the course but I haven't written an essay for years so its taken me a while to get my head round the whole thing! However I did manage to fit in a bit of crochet on a Saturday afternoon a couple of weeks ago.

My local craft studio, the Create Place was running an afternoon course to learn how to make a crochet cowl so I thought I'd pop along. Lisa (our teacher), the other student and I had a lovely afternoon chatting away and learning how to make Lisa's crochet cowl design (hopefully coming to a bookshop near you fairly soon!). I'm not sure there's a better way to spend an afternoon! We were using chunky wool and so the design came together pretty fast - a few hours in the class and a couple more at home and I was left with this beast:

Its HUGE and really snuggly.I really like the way it can be worn in so many ways - long like a scarf, across the shoulders, one end tucked inside the other or doubled round to keep my neck super warm. I'm a bit disappointed it hasn't been cold enough to wear it since I finished making it!!

I really like working with the chunky yarn and larger hook size (it was a size 10). It meant that the cowl came together really fast so there was a real sense of achievement plus it didn't hurt my hand and turn it into a claw like some of the smaller hooks can do!

I'm not sure if you can see from the picture but the yarn is an interesting mix of colours - from a distance it looks grey but close up there are hints of pink, turquoise and green. You might be able to see it on this picture better even though its a little blurry:

I wasn't sure about the yarn to start with but it has really grown on me. It is Wendy Serenity Super Chunky which is 10% wool, 20% alpaca and 70% acrylic. I think the colour is called thistle. I've bought another ball to make the matching wrist warmers. Which I am looking forward to starting on as soon as I finish that bloomin' essay!!

Hope you have a lovely week xx