Busy Baby Box Farm Activity Cube Finished

I took pictures to send with the box to show what the pockets did, but for my own purposes I also wanted to remember what it looked like not just as individual pieces that I documented as I made them but what the finished product looked like too. This will help if I ever decide I want to go back and do this again. It also sometimes is just nice to be able to look back at completed projects and think wow I did that?

This was especially true for the roof pocket section which doesn't exsist in the pattern but I wanted so the puppets had a home and thuse would be less likely to be lost in the first day of play.

Busy Baby Box Farm Activity Cube Side 2

For some foolish reason when I looked at the pictures I thought this side of the farm Busy Baby Boxeswas going to be easy. Foolish me. Honestly the tree was pretty straight forward. The windows not so bad, although a little challenging to sew on with the plastic canvas behind the barn for some reason. What my brain would not wrap its head around was the joining the fence posts. I could have just sewed them together but being in a stubborn mood I was determined to follow the directions and figure out how to crochet them together. Well they are together. If I do this again, I'd likely just sew them. It would have been easier in the long run.

Another change I'd make is I would sew down the middle of the posts when attaching them as to leave more room for the puppets to fit in the fence openings. I have this need to make sure things don't fall off so I tend to try to attach things tightly but in this case I think it is over tight and would do better looser.

Busy Baby Box Farm Activity Cube Side 1

I finally got around to crocheting and sewing on the pieces for the first side of Leisure Arts Busy Baby Boxes Farm.

You may recognize the chicken finger puppet. I made that back in August as a quick project in between other projects. I will likely not get to the rest of the finger puppets prior to finishing the farm. However, the cow will go inside the barn doors in the yellow pocket. I am hoping to post the finger puppets in their new homes as I finish them.

My mailing deadlines are coming up so I do need to get a move on for this birthday box and the Halloween one if I hope to get them there with time to spare.

The Three Billy Goats Gruff Large Goat

I've long been a fan of giving gifts of books combined with themed toys that help kids act out the book as it is being read and retell the story long after they've heard it. My next project is to go with a gift of The Three Billy Goats Gruff (Paul Galdone Classics) for a summer birthday gift.

The pattern for the goats comes from Once Upon a Time... in Crochet: 30 amigurumi characters from your favorite fairytales a book I picked up with a couple of fairy tale crochet books that I'm finally putting to use. I found a free pattern online for a troll that has some unique techniques I wanted to try out so, I'm experimenting with that pattern first as I liked the troll better and I wanted to see if I could manage the challenges of the other pattern. If it doesn't work out I'll be back working the troll from this book. I'm sure I'll be documenting my journey at some point.

I haven't been working much from books lately and one of the challenges is keeping your page. One of the things I appreciated about this book was the end pages that bend in to create page holders.

The pattern calls for fingering weight yarn and C or D hooks for the goats making them around 4-4 1/2" for those of you interested in the pattern as written. I had no interest in making them that small and I also wasn't crazy about working in the round in such a tight area. There was also my quest to use as much yarn on hand as I can. Using worsted weight yarn to make the goats means not ordering more yarn and that is important to my goals of trying to use up yarn on hand.

I often read reviews where people say they don't like X pattern because they prefer X yarn. The reality with amis is that most can be adjusted to different yarns but it will effect size and in some cases textures and patterns created if there are yarn/hook changes, etc. In the case of the goats making them larger was not a huge issue. These will actually be about the size of the farm animals I made previously and something tells me they may end up on the farm play sets along with their journey through the Three Billy Goats Gruff so making them a compatible size was not the worse choice I could make.

Farm Cilo Bag

I made a farm bag for a summer birthday present and decided to add the cilo for Christmas along with some additional farm animals for Christmas this year. You can find the free bag pattern along with the farmer and the included animals here.

I sewed snaps on to the cover of the cilo to make it easier to store the toys. The directions don't indicate that the cover should be attached. In the past I've sewn half the cover on so it wouldn't get lost. I decided to experiment with the snaps and I liked the way it worked.

The farmer is included with the free pattern but I found the wife pattern in a pattern called Wash Days in Annie's Crochet Newsletter July-August 1992. The cilo pattern includes a pattern for an additional cow and pig. Since my time was limited and I'd made a cow for the original farm bag I chose not to make another cow. When I wanted to add a few animals I turned to planet June for her pig and her collie to act as farm dog.. You can purchase the pig pattern here. The collie dog is available here.

I try to include books with toys to encourage kids to read.

My time was limited on this project, but I hope to add more farm animals.