Busy Baby Box Farm Activity Cube Bottom

Now we come to the last decorated portion of the Leisure Arts Busy Baby BoxesFarm cube. As I've begun working on the finger puppets I am considering adding a pocket to the roof to hold the finger puppets. Not sure how that will work. Another option would be to attach a bag. My one concern is that while the pockets are a fun place for a child to put the puppets while playing, they aren't a storage option. Lost puppets make for a dull toy.

This section is the pig pen and the dark green and lime green both are open for puppets to hang out. The brown circle area is the pig pen. I did end up altering the pattern for the green areas as I couldn't get mine to work out as detailed so I designed ones that worked for me. While I am really glad I put the extra support of plastic canvas in for the walls I will say putting the details in like the lazy daisy stich for the sunflower were not a good deal of fun working through the plastic canvas once the block was put together. It is something to consider if you decide to make you make this project.

Busy Baby Box Farm Activity Cube Side 4

This is the final barn side of Leisure Art's Busy Baby Boxes. The last side is actually the bottom of the barn.

Until I started making the various sides I hadn't realized how many nesting places the birds have in this toy. This side has a basket for the chicks. I ended up making a bigger basket because the chicks are attached by what I'd call saftey lines to the basket and can hang out over the edge and then be stored back inside. The original basket I made was too small to fit all the yarn and the chicks. I decided the best choice was to make the toy child friendly and thus a bigger basket was made that makes it much easier to store the chicks and their safety lines in the basket.

Carrot Rattle

With a new baby nephew I needed something to put in his Easter basket. I combined two bib patterns from the Daily Crochet Calendar and free Duck Bib pattern found in the free Easter Links to make one of the items I needed. I wanted something else. When I looked at the carrot rattle it just seemed cute and fun to make. This free pattern link can also be located in the crochet section of the Easter Links on this blog.

Oddly the most challenging problem was finding carrot colored yarn right after Christmas. The shade I used was not the ideal color I wanted, however, orange was not a popular post Christmas color in the stores I shopped at when I was ready to make this item. As many of us know, sometimes you use what you can find. The pattern was easy to follow and the directions were clear. The pattern did not include directions for creating a “rattle” noise, so I followed directions I had from other books about making child safe crochet rattles.






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