Molotov Hookers: crochet

Wow, it's been a long time since I've done any yarnbombing folks. I guess you could say life's been getting in the way of frivolity a bit since I started my OT degree. But to be fair there is always a degree of frivolity in my life (boom boom!) It just varies according to other priorities.

So anyway this week I got the worst cold I've had for a very very long time, I can't remember a cold ever wiping me out for a week solid but this one did. So I've had some time to think about things other than Occupational Therapy and eating.....
things like twitter and half-finished crochet projects and Kylie.

Yes, that's right, I said Kylie. Not that I'm a crazy obsessed fan or anything but I've always had a solid admiration for her; for a start she's an Aussie which wins anybody points in my book, but then there are so many other great things about her, like her general aura of fun and twinkle and mischief, her determination, the way she constantly reinvents herself and always look FAB. Oh yeah, and she can belt out a decent tune!

A combination which I find compelling in a person, which is why I decided to watch The Voice for the first time this year, I wanted to get me a slice of Kylie
(I ended up getting a lot more actually, there's some serious talent out there!)

This could perhaps be the reason I randomly dreamt the other night that I was on Team Kylie and needed to get her a birthday present.
When I woke up I told my husband about it, saying
'I don't know why I was looking round the charity shops, I would obviously crochet her a dress!'

I must admit I have been looking at the gold crochet dress she wears on the cover of Into the Blue and wondering what the rest of it looks like/how I could crochet myself one like it.

Not that I have a snowball's chance in hell of looking as hot as Kylie in it but a girl can dream.

So I thought it would be fun to tweet her about it, although in hindsight she probably just thinks I'm a wierdo now.

Which is a shame because if that is the case then this will only make it worse......

I crocheted a Micro-Kylie!!!

This is what happens when I'm in bed for 5 days, my creative mind goes into overdrive and I start to micro-crochet.

I had a bit of a craze on micro crocheting a while back which resulted in a full english breakfast, some forget-me-nots and a tiny flower fairy but I've managed to go even smaller this time; micro-Kylie is only 32mm tall!!!

I made her using single strands of embroidery cotton and a 0.5mm crochet hook. Yes, it's very fiddly...I was super glad I haven't cut my nails for a while as I needed them to hold her as I worked.

So next up I want to make her a little big red chair and another outfit. Whether I can achieve this by the end of the final next saturday night remains to be seen; I'll work on the chair over the coming week but obviously I won't know what she's wearing for the final until the show starts so I might have a fun challenge on my hands!

Getting her to pose a la 'Into the Blue' was tricky but I gave it a red hot go.....

So there you have it, an insight into the workings of a micro crocheters mind.
A bit like a recipe really, just add dreams, ideas, inspirational people, a 0.5mm crochet hook and embroidery cottons and hey presto you have possibly the smallest homage to Kylie ever :)

OK, it's been a few months now since I illuminated the streets with a colourful crocheted installation, so what better to get me going again than some sunshine (finally!!!), the livestreaming of TEDxBrum, and INTERNATIONAL YARNBOMB DAY!!!!!!!!!

My friend Odilia was organizing the livestream event and asked me if I'd like to yarnbomb it since the theme was 'marking the map' and I jumped at the chance. Crochet for me really has been a wonderful journey and I wish I could convey to you just how amazing it's actually been. I'll have a go anyway;
I've always loved making things, so when I bought myself a gorgeous pair of turquoise suede boots and fancied a poncho to go with them I didn't think I would have any trouble as ponchos were in fashion at the time. WRONG!

Have you ever tried to match a turquoise item to make the perfect outfit? It's surely the most ambiguous colour out there and I just couldn't find ANYTHING that went with them. Or even that I liked very much actually. I had a picture of a lovely poncho in pink (bleurgh) which i carried around with me in the hope it would draw something to me. No luck so, not being someone who graciously accepts defeat, I asked my Mum to teach me to crochet so I could make my own poncho. Hah! Take THAT world-I'll have a poncho whether you like it or not.
Again the turquoise matching problem; no yarn in the right colour anywhere either!
So I went for purple instead and a big hairy poncho was born, along with a parasitic twin-my ongoing obsession with crochet!
I have never looked back and always love to challenge myself to try new and more elaborate things with crochet-I tried amigurumi fairly early on and that brought out the beautiful 'porno monkey', a gift for a friend which was only ever meant to be a monkey but when i added a little banana to her hand and tried to copy the mouth from the pattern she took on the persona of a sex doll and one thing led to another........
I do have pictures of her but I'm apprehensive about sharing them in case I should offend anybody's sensibilities.

So then we went to Australia and I felt the urge to produce Aussie wildlife amigurumis which were a big hit (especially the galah I made for my brother which i embellished with real galah feathers we had found on our travels) We were WWOOFing at the time and our hosts asked me to make them a bunch to give to friends and family when they went to Europe visiting, so that was quite a significant pin in my crocheting map!

They happened to be goat farmers and one of our jobs was feeding baby goats-when you have more than one baby goat to feed it can be tricky keeping the milk warm enough for the other babies who are
*patiently waiting*
for their turn (if you know anything about goats you will know this is a physical impossibility for them) So I made these handy bottle cozies with topical appliques of milk bottles and udders on them.

A couple of years later (and far too many crochet projects to mention-I'm trying to just add the most significant ones for you) I spotted a pattern online for a scarf that was a string of sausages-Brilliant! so i made that and then thought it should really have a matching hat. The famous brekkie hat then slowly emerged from my hook...

I only have these pics of it half assembled on a polystyrene head I'm afraid, but you get the idea. Also can you spot the problem with wearing the scarf and the hat together? (It has to do with them touching each other...)

When we got back to the UK and people saw these pics they were amazed and someone suggested I open an Etsy shop-I'd never heard of Etsy so I looked it up and thought that it would be a good way to offer my talents to the world. So I opened Berthas Bizarre Bazaar in february 2012, not long before my Mum was diagnosed with cancer as it turned out. So it actually became a handy outlet for all the things I was madly crocheting (did you know crochet is a very meditative activity-I don't know how I'd have got through the last year without it!)
So one of the last things I made before we sadly lost Mum in October was the bumbomb of my last post-a mandala pattern I tested for a fellow etsian and which I now use as a saddle cover for my bike.
This is a heavily abridged version of my crochet journey but I hope it gives you a little idea of how I came to be at this point in my life-You can pick up the story of how I came to be a yarnbomber if you go to the start of this blog.
So the only thing left to do is show you the pictures of what I did yesterday to celebrate TEDxBrum: Marking the Map and International YarnBomb Day :D
You might notice some significant items along the rainbow pathway I made to wrap around the railings.
The other items were donated by wonderful friends and I used them to mark a trail from the car park to the livestreaming event location