Crochet Christmas and birthday gifts

I made these over the last few months but couldn’t show them to you because some of the recipients were also some of my readers.

Slippers for Mr S

Fan and feathers lace-weight scarf for my mother

Woolly scarf for my mother-in-law

Fiendishly difficult flowers

A reindeer for my friend …

… and a second reindeer for Mr S who wanted one for us to keep

And a penguin in a pear tree. (Actually he thought he’d be comfier on the sofa because those feet are not designed for perching in trees.)

All patterns are freely available except for the green scarf which I didn’t use a pattern for. It’s just a pattern of 1 fan, 1 sc; with 1/2 fans at the end of every other row so the sc goes into the middle of the previous row’s fan. Easier to do than describe!

Patterns:

Slippers: Sorry, can’t remember. But I wasn’t that enamoured of it anyway. In the picture they look like wildly different sizes – that’s just poor photography! While they’re not perfect they are pretty much the same size as each other!

Fan and feathers: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/lacy-feather-and-fan-pattern

Flowers: (Iris, Columbine, Anemone) http://melibondre.com/blog/ Mine would have come out better if a) I’d had better skills to start off with and b) I’d used embroidery silks as the patterns suggest. I used the finest embroidery wools because that’s what I had but it made the job a lot harder and silks would have given a nicer finish I suspect. Don’t judge her patterns by my results! Leaves of my own invention.

Reindeer: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/murray-the-reindeer I love this pattern. It was my first amigurumi attempt and it was clear and helpful and I was delighted with the result. Also, it does not require any sewing together at the end. I simplified it a tiny bit (making body coloured hooves and paring down the features) because of my personal tastes and what yarn I had available but I don’t think I’d have found it complicated to do as written.

Penguin: http://theageingyoungrebel.com/amigurumi-penguin-pattern/ I thought this was the cutest free penguin pattern on the internet. I found it harder than the reindeer, although in part that’s because working with black makes it hard to see your stitches and working with white makes me paranoid about getting it dirty 😉 Sewing up nearly drove me mad but I fear that’s probably the norm for amigurumi.

So am I all crocheted out? Nope. I got some new hooks for Christmas 😀