Candy Corn House

This is the final house for the Halloween Village this year. I'm going to concentrate on making villagers and finishing the October birthday presents so I can get both boxes in the mail before the beginning of October.

This house was made by adapting a free Christmas house pattern found here. When I saw this pattern something just spoke to me about making it into a candy corn house to go with the candy corn villager.

Just a few notes about this pattern, first it is written in UK crochet terms it looks like it was originally part of a crochet kit possibly found in a UK magazine. 

There is no specific yarn specified but the designer suggests a 4mm hook which led me to worsted 4 yarn as I had the colors I wanted for the candy corn idea. The g hook made a HUGE house, far too large for the village I'd made. I pulled out what I'd crocheted and continued with a D hook and the worsted 4 yarn. The yarn is all different brands, the windows are Caron Simply Soft Ombre Gold that I had left over from an old project. I wanted something different for the windows.

This would make a cute Christmas house should I attempt a Christmas village at some point. It goes together relatively quickly and simply.

Make Way For Ducklings Nack and Ouack

The end is truly near. I can feel it. I'm now making them in pairs. Only two more and the ducklings will be done, with just Mrs. Mallard to complete the set for Make Way for Ducklings and I think I'll make the deadline with room to spare.

The pattern for all the ducks in the set can be found in Zoomigurumi 7I plan to adapt Mr. Mallard's pattern to make Mrs. Mallard.

If you need a duck pattern these do work up remarkably quickly. I know ducks are often popular at Easter. The ducklings are made with sport yarn and a D hook to get them to this size. I tried worsted weight yarn but the first one I made was too too big for a set of 8. I do plan on using him as an Easter decoration.

One thing I do love about this design is other than the beak and the wings it is all one piece so it limits the amount of sewing I have to do later. This is a huge consideration when you are making 8 ducklings and 2 adults.

Busy Baby Box Farm Activity Cube Frame

I made the squares for Farm box found in Leisure Arts Busy Baby Boxes back in the summer but while the pattern doesn't call for it I wanted to back the squares with plastic canvas to make the box a little stronger. This required ordering plastic canvas and that took me longer to get to and thus I finished the frame for the box this week and wanted to post my progress and notes for future reference.

I edged the plastic canvas squares before sewing them to the squares. I learned this trick when making the castle I wrote about earlier. Plastic canvas has a way of edging through crochet sometimes but if it is covered in yarn it isn't an issue. Sewing them on was not an issue from there. I did not line the roof pieces. The roof is the one area of the busy box that doesn't have any attachments. The red loft area does have some windows, but I'm not worried about these needing additional backing. I believe the structure should be solid with the base provided.

The premise of a busy box is that it provides young children with activities on the box to keep them amused. Each side generally has something different for the child to explore. The one exception as I mentioned above for this box is the roof side. Most of the boxes I've seen are flat on all sides. One of the things that drew me to this project was that it was more than a box. The farm theme has been popular and I thought sacrificing one activity side was worth it to continue the farm theme.

After sewing the plastic canvas to the sides I was concerned about assembling the box but that proved to be easier than expected. The directions are clear and used for both boxes in the pattern set.

This leaves me with five sides of the box to decorate and five puppets to make as I made the chicken over the summer. I think this is doable with my deadline. The big hurdle was finishing the box.

My box is not as wide as the box pictured I believe because of the plastic canvas which I preferred. I wasn't crazy about the overstuffed look in the book's pictures.