2 Days Past My Due Date....

And here I am STILL waiting for baby to make an appearance!

So, to keep me sane while waiting I've joined the Folksy July Jesters! Hopefully it will as big a success as the June Loons were!

I've only managed to list on 4 days so far... but have made 2 sales today wooohooo! Once again to the amazing Mish72. She bought two of my new favourites, so I'll definitely be listing them again soon...

The top ones are handknit cotton in new vintage style shades which I love! The bottom ones are cotton twist and are so soft.

And finally... I'm going to attempt to add a slideshow of Jester's listing to my blog... here goes!

Last Day for the Folksy June Loons

I can't believe it's the last day of June already! Once again I have been lucky enough to feature in some fellow June Loon Blogs...

http://spottynstripy.blogspot.com/2010/06/weve-made-it-to-30th-ive-made-27-sales.html

http://nofkantscurios.blogspot.com/2010/06/loons-golden-blog-gold-medal-position.html

http://milliebead.blogspot.com/2010/06/last-day-of-june-loons.html

http://damselflygemma.blogspot.com/2010/06/june-loon-finale.html

There are some amazing items there and it's been a fabulous month! Here's to the July Jesters....!

June Loons Penultimate Day Treasury

Right, typical me to leave it to the penultimate day, but here's my first attempt at doing a treasury!

First off, here's my listing for Tuesday 29th June....





Here should be some of my favourites from today....

Some more blue from Mildunkley:




Lemonade and Lamingtons:




NOfkantsCurios:



I think that will have to do me for today, but I'll definitely be adding some more tomorrow now I seem to know what I'm doing!

Lots of Blogs...!

I've been very lucky to have been included in some amazing blogs over the last month.... I'm going to list them all here then hopefully I'll manage a June Loon Treasury all of my own! Here goes...


http://nofkantscurios.blogspot.com/2010/06/penultimate-june-loon-blog-silver-medal.html
http://damselflygemma.blogspot.com/2010/06/june-loons-days-twenty-one-to-twenty.html
http://thelittlebeadbox.blogspot.com/2010/06/june-loons-day-23.html
http://nofkantscurios.blogspot.com/2010/06/june-loons-day-19-and-20.html
http://nofkantscurios.blogspot.com/2010/06/blooming-marvelous-weather-was-awful.html
http://mary-elliott-jewellery.blogspot.com/

There are some amazing items there and I'm very privileged to have been included!

Folksy June Loons and my First Sale!

It seems I joined Folksy at just the right time... I spotted a post on the forum about a listing club for June which meant listing one new item every day for the whole of June... just what I needed as a new shop and so I joined up!

The motivation and support has been amazing, especially thanks to Natalie, and within a few days I had made my first sale! Since then I've had 5 more :) I'm going to try joining the July Jesters for the beginning of July to carry on the motivation, but it kind of depends on when you know who decides to arrive!

A Whole Month of Catchup!

Oh dear, I really have left it a whole month! I am appalled that the last addition to my blog was way back in May (and I can't believe I was all ready for Baby to make his or her appearance then and we're STILL waiting!)!

OK, in short, at the beginning of June I decided to open a shop on Folksy as well as my Etsy shop, so there's my excuse! I have added a link to the left which should go straight to my new shop which is..... http://www.folksy.com/shops/HeloiseV Yes, I thought I'd stick with the same name seeing as I'm used to typing in HeloiseV now! So there we go, Heloisev is now in £ as well as $!

So what else has been going on in June........

Circles!

So, all the baby preparation is done, so today I've been experimenting with circles!

I made some big ones (to match the flowers I made earlier this week)...

And some smaller ones (some more tags maybe)...

And I've made a few to test as face scrubbies. I'm not 100% sure about the cotton to use for these, so I've done a couple in soft DK handknit cotton and some in normal cotton. Both are 100% cotton so should wash and dry well. I'll test them over the weekend and report back next week!

New Yarn Colour - Lilac!

I was very excited to get a lovely new yarn colour earlier this week - lilac (actually, that's not its official name, i need to check what that is!). What do you think? I think it's lovely!
I just need to try it out with some other colour combinations next....

Sneak Attack!

I've been 'Sneak Attacked'!!

Take a look here to see what an Attack is...

http://www.handmademovement.com/

I woke up on Friday morning to 4 sales and 6 items sold - what a great morning!

Yesterday morning the parcels were posted...

How fab! http://www.etsy.com/shop/HeloiseV now has 9 sales! Not bad for my first three weeks... let's hope it continues!

Spring Flower Pattern

Right, I'm trying to keep a record of the patterns I use now I've got a good few on the go as I'm starting to get confused!

This is a mega easy one for little spring flowers. Each one is about 1.25" across with a 3mm crochet hook and has 5 petals.

Spring Flower Pattern

Chain 4 and join with a ss
1 - 10 sc (single crochet) into the ring and join with a ss
2 - *Chain 2, in the next stitch 1 dc (double crochet) and 1 hdc (half double crochet), ss (slip stitch) in the next stitch*
Repeat * to * 4 more times to make 5 petals.
ss to first chain by pulling stich through to the back and fasten off

See, easy! This is what they should look like... so pretty and perfect for scrapbooking, cardmaking, hairbobbles... all sorts!

Lazy Daisy

My daughter picked me a lovely bunch of daisies at the weekend, and that became my inspiration for the next few days! This is what I came up with...

It had been raining and she thought the raindrops were all sparkly, so I added the tiny glass beads to some of them... No doubt they will end up on one of her (many) handbags (she's 4 and she has more than me!).

More Leaves...

Better picture of the leaves here...

Leaves Leaves Everywhere

I've been playing around with leaf patterns this week. I've attempted loads, but they're either too big and complicated or else my stitches never seem to match up with the chain! I really need to work on reading other people's patterns!

Anyway, in the end I've perfected my own, for three slightly different sized leaves, depending on the size of the flower. The patterns are in US (I find that easier)and for the two bigger leaves you work down one side of the chain then round and down the other side. The tiny one is just down one side.

Biggest Leaves pattern:

Chain 10
Miss 2 chains nearest hook
In each chain: 1 sc, 1 hdc, 3dc, 2hdc, 1 sc, 3sc in one st (takes you to the end and round to the other side)
1sc, 2hdc, 3dc, 1hdc, 1sc ss


Middle Leaf Pattern:

Chain 8
Miss 2 chains nearest hook
In each chain: 1sc, 1hdc, 2dc, 1hdc, 1sc, 3sc in one st (takes you to the end and round the other side)
1sc, 1hdc, 2dc, 1hdc, 1sc, ss



Tiny Leaf:

Chain 8
Miss chain nearest hook
In each chain: 1sc, 1hdc, 2dc, 1hdc, 1sc, ss


Hope that's ok... I usually use diagrams to remember patterns so I'm not used to writing it all down!


Here are some pictures with the leaves...

These are the biggest leaves above. The flowers are around 2". http://www.etsy.com/listing/45967275/crochet-bouquet-of-flower-applique-in

These are the tiny leaves. The flowers are 1.75" and 2.5".

First Etsy order for HeloiseV Crochet!

Well, after only one week I got my first order, and for 3 items of crochet! Here it is all packed up ready to be shipped...





The order arrived at gone 11pm last night and I had to stop myself jumping around with excitement! Everything was put together this afternoon while B&H were at school and we'll take a trip to the post office tomorrow.

My First Blog

Well, the 1st May seems like a good day to start my blog!

I was going to say it's a beautiful sunny day here in York, but it's just started raining, how typical!

So, a few months ago I decided to teach myself to crochet! I'm pregnant with my third baby and am supposed to be resting (difficult with a 6 year old and a 4 year old!) due to SPD, so crochet seemed like the perfect way to keep my fingers busy while resting my legs!

I started off, rather ambitiously, with a baby blanket! Granny squares are fab to make and I found a really good pattern with tutorial to follow. I've now finished all the squares I need, but am yet to find the patience to crochet them all together! Here's a few squares... our pram is red so hopefully it'll match... and I'd better get round to finishing soon... only 9 weeks to go!!






I've now found a love of crochet flowers! They are so quick and easy to make and look so cute! My daughter now has flower applique on her jeans and bags and has flower and heart hairclips and bobbles!

So, that's me for now. The washing is soggy on the line, I've mug of hot chocolate, and I'm about to crochet a lovely big pink flower to go with the smaller ones while I've got the house to myself... very May Bank Holiday....!

** Just editing to add a link to the granny square instructions I followed for my blanket. Thank you to Lucy at attic24!

http://attic24.typepad.com/weblog/summer-garden-granny-square.html