Mockingbird Hill Cottage

Life in our little cottage in the country

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Thursday Snapshots

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On the hook:

In the mail:

Hanging in the windows:

In my in box:

1. Scarf #4. I’ll show you photos of #3 and #4 later this week.

2. My Moo minicards. They are smaller than the usual business cards and are popular with artists and bloggers. I love mine. I picked a favorite photo for the front. On the back is my blog URL and email address.

3. The infamous Big Lots Bottle Brush Wreaths are hanging in the living room and kitchen windows. I wrote at least 2 posts last year about scouring the entire Big Lots store and scoring 4 of them. I love them. However, one of the wreaths in the kitchen keeps turning slightly to the right. After 3 days of trying to get it to hang straight, I have officially given up.

4. I’m being taunted. Right after I wrote about wanting a new camera, this showed up in my inbox. Both my cameras have come from B & H (simply the most fabulous camera-and-everything-else store in the world.) It’s as if they can read my thoughts. They also send me a coffee-table-sized catalog every year which is on my bedside table. I look at the pictures every night. Visualization. Oh, and this morning I was reading the NY Times online and there was an ad for a rebate on Canon cameras staring me in the face as I tried to read an article. I’m being taunted, I tell you.

How is your day today?

The Pattern and a Party

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Happy Friday, everyone! Thanks so much for all the compliments on my garland. By the way, I fully intend to keep it up all year. Yes, it is the Christmas season and those little snowflake/flowers are perfect for the holidays. But I’m now realizing that I made it to grace my home every day of the year.

For those of you new to crochet, let me just say this: I taught myself how to crochet by reading books and, even more valuable, by watching videos on the internet. There are a ton of them out there. I am visual person. Seeing someone actually working with a hook makes a learning to crochet so much easier. Just google ‘crochet and video’ and you will be surprised at the links that appear on your screen.

This little flower is pretty easy. Let me give you the pattern, which is based on this pattern:
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Chain 6 and join with sl stitch to form a ring.

Chain 3 (counts as 1 dc), work 13 dc into a ring. Join the last dc to the first dc with a slip stitch.

Chain 1, turn.

Work a sc into next 2 dc. *Chain 4, sc in next 2 dc. Repeat from * five more times (creating 6 – 4sc loops).

Finish it off by slip stitching into the next stitch and weave the end into the stitches.

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That’s it – easy. sc – single crochet, dc = double crochet. When you see ‘join into a ring’ you do that by slip stitching the last chain on the hook into the first chain you made. I really just went with the pattern for the flower portion of the scarf and figured out how to isolate the flower. In the original pattern, the 13 dc are not joined together. For the purposes of this project, I slip stitched them together. You could make the flower bigger by increasing the amount of dc you start with. Just have fun with it. There’s no right or wrong. I had 7 loops on a couple of my flowers – who cares? It is supposed to look homemade and one-of-a-kind.

Have fun!

A DIY Garland Project

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I knew you’d understand the Christmas blues. My hope is that all of us somehow cope with them and find joy in this Christmas season. Thank you for each and every comment. I can’t tell you how much they mean to me.

I may not be in the Christmas decorating mood quite yet, but I continue to be in a crafty mood. You know all about the obsession scarves, of course, which are ongoing. I have the pattern memorized and the other day as I was crocheting away, a thought struck me. I had an idea for a project that involves just the flower portion of the pattern.

I started out with these:

These are cones of Peaches & Creme Cotton that I had in my stash. I once had this in several colors – I used P&C to make dish cloths. The reason I chose P&C for this project is the texture of the yarn. It’s a bit stiffer (in a good way.) More on that later. I crocheted about 12 of the flowers – 6 in each color.

There they are. Then I found some ribbon that I liked and strung them on the ribbon.

I tied a knot in each end and hung my little crocheted garland on our living room cupboard.

I’m not sure whether this will stay on this cupboard; more likely it will move upstairs to the studio. The cupboard seemed like the perfect place to hang it for this post (and it’s sort of yummy with the pottery on top of the cupboard.) Wait a minute – maybe I’m talking myself into leaving it here. The flowers certainly look like snowflakes. Perfect for Christmas. You could crochet these in white and hang them in your window or as a garland on your tree. That’s another reason for the Peaches & Creme with its stiffer quality. It holds the design nicely, almost as if the flower is starched.
If you want me to post the pattern for just the flower, let me know in a comment.
This makes me smile. Maybe all this crafting is quietly gearing me up for a bit more Christmas decorating. I know one thing: I’m headed out to the porch to hang some lights.
Edited to add: It’s too cute on this cupboard, so staple gun in hand, I stapled the ribbon ends to the inside of the door. Now we can open and close the door and it will stay in place.

Lambs Like to Party

Lambs Like to Party

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