ScrapHappy May 2024: The Snail, the Clock and the Fire Engine

Apparently, this fire engine is called George. Sorry George, I’m ‘aving your clock…

Could this be the long awaited follow-up to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe? No.

It began with a snail-shaped board, and a man too long without sleep to continue his journey. It began with the landing of a craft from another galaxy. It… no, hang on, that’s The Invaders.* Actually, it began when we realised that it would be useful to have a wall clock in the shop. Of course, I wanted to make one out of old packaging and pre-loved yarn, but it turns out it is nigh on impossible to crochet a working clock mechanism (at least over a sensible time frame). Fortunately, the Climate Shop up the road from us in Lampeter had a second-hand fire engine clock. It was almost a shame to remove the mechanism but, well, I did anyway. Rather usefully, we also had a snail-shaped board that had been part of an auction lot we had bought way back at the beginning of our shop adventure. We had kept it “just in case it proved useful”. It’s time had come!

George post clock-ectomy

The clock-ectomy continues – ready to be placed into the new host

The right felt, the wrong glue

I had to buy a chisel to hollow out a hole for the clock mechanism to sit in. This was quite nerve wracking since I didn’t want to go right through the board, I only had the one board and my incompetence with a chisel is such that I almost cut myself getting it out the packaging. I managed to achieve the desired result with a minimum of swearing and an absence of blood (mine or anyone else’s). It’s these small victories at DIY that stop me giving up completely and using the chisel as a doorstop.

I wanted the snail to be Snail-of-Happiness blue, and found a piece of felt in our scraps-for-sale basket which was pretty close. I glued it onto the snail (using the wrong sort of glue, but never mind, it worked) and trimmed around the edge. Then I fitted the clock mechanism and glued on the new hands on top of the old ones – a crochet hook for the hours and a knitting needle for the minutes. I drilled two holes in the snail’s head (don’t worry, it didn’t hurt) and fitted the ends of two 3.25 mm knitting needles as antennae.

Attaching hands, knees felt and toes antennae

Finally, I used some of that old BT wire I found in the road (see here) and screwed the ends through washers into the back of the clock to act as a hanger.

A dash of chalk and the Snail smiles in its new home

oOo

* Ancient TV series which is well worth a watch.

Many other people contribute to Kate and Gun’s wonderful ScrapHappy every month – check out what they have been up to too!

Kate, Gun, Eva, Sue, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Tracy, 
Jan, Moira, Sandra, Chris, Alys,
Claire, Jean, Jon, Dawn, Gwen,
Sunny, Kjerstin, Sue L, Vera, Edith,
Ann, Dawn 2, Carol, Preeti,
Viv, Karrin,
Amo, Alissa, Lynn, Tierney and Hannah

 

ScrapHappy April 2024: What a load of tentacles!

Did I mention the coral reef we are doing for The Snail of Happiness shop? No? That was remiss of me, then, and I will correct the error immediately. You can read about progress from the Snail herself here.

I crocheted an octopus. It took two and a half months. I had to fight it off my cheesecake one Friday morning. It keeps punching the corals*.

Thing is, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Octopuses live in coral reefs and are eye-catching (if there happen to be eyes to be caught). Rather nicely, the red yarn (possibly a mix of acrylic and wool) came from a stash that was destined for a skip and landfill, so it was particularly pleasing to find a good** use for it.

The head was crocheted in rounds, and wasn’t too bad although there was quite a bit of shaping, so rows with asymmetric increases and decreases, but I managed to reach the last row of that fairly quickly. Then came the tentacles…

With hindsight and a proper education, I should’ve spotted that octopuses have eight legs. Eight tricky, time-consuming, fiddly legs. After two, I was ready to accept that the thing could be displayed peering out from behind a rock. After four, I was questioning the wisdom of sticking so rigidly to the pattern. After eight, I decided that just as a peanut isn’t a nut, and a koala bear is nether a bear nor some kind of cola, clearly an octopus (from the Greek: octo (eight) + podus (foot)) was just another thing misnamed by scientists. I reached the end with more red yarn than sanity to spare.

Guess what? The white bit is done separately, and fits over all eight legs, including all the knobbly bits. I couldn’t give up now, I was in too deep, like an octopus in the Mariana Trench. The days, due to a misprint, turned into knights and disappeared to Camelot for the weekend. The knights turned into bears, and I knew that a) I needed a new keyboard and b) I needed more wine.

I did finish and have managed to disguise the fact that the bottoms of the tentacles really don’t match exactly with the tops. I like to think it gives my octopus a unique character, a nuance of mystery, an air of sophistication even. I know, however, it really just means I got it a bit wrong.

After this, I did a couple of corals, regular and unnuanced. Never again, Mr Octopus, never again.

So, I’ve started a Killer Whale…

oOo

* True story. Octopuses punch fish, sometimes for no apparent reason. All those bloody legs, I’m not surprised they get testy (tentacle-ally?!?). Odd socks must be a nightmare.

** This is a relative term, and the reader may feel another one is more appropriate.

Many other people contribute to Kate and Gun’s wonderful ScrapHappy every month – check out what they have been up to too!

Kate, Gun, Eva, Sue, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Tracy, 
Jan, Moira, Sandra, Chris, Alys,
Claire, Jean, Jon, Dawn, Gwen,
Sunny, Kjerstin, Sue L, Vera, Edith,
Ann, Dawn 2, Carol, Preeti,
Viv, Karrin,
Amo, Alissa, Lynn, Tierney and Hannah

 

ScrapHappy Extra: Clarice Cliff Hanger

As part on the ongoing coral reef creation (see here for some kind of an explanation), I made a coral (all pre-loved yarn) using the simple rule of increase in every 5 stitches, crocheted in the round. The final round is about a million trebles* and I am possibly still doing it without realising.

The coral does rather resemble a flamenco dancer’s skirt but then art has often imitated nature.

I decided to use a colour palette based on popular hues used by Clarice Cliff, partly because the contrasting colours are visually striking but mostly because Clarice Cliff was The Snail’s Great** Aunt.

oOo

*OK, not a million, but close.

** When it came to pottery, she was terrific.

ScrapHappy February 2024: Avogadro’s PiE or Yarnfight at the OK Coral

Good (G)reef!

Hello! Just when you thought it was safe to, you know, do things that were previously unsafe because I was blogging, well, think again! This is a quick return to blogging ways, and ScrapHappy in particular to show you lovely people three things I am crocheting with scrap yarn.

The Snail of Happiness shop is going to have a crocheted/knitted coral reef as a summer window display, and corals are very easy to make. You start with any kind of loop, any size of hook/needles (I used a 4 mm crochet hook), do some simple stitches (single/double for crochet), then go over them, increasing every 2, 3, or more stitches. So, the pattern is really very simply but the shapes created (called hyperbolic space by mathematicky types) become complex as they twist of their own volition. I used trebles (US doubles) to make the coral bigger, but you can use anything you like.

eeeeeeee!

Having started with a loop of 5 chains with16 double crochets (singles in the US) into it, the number of trebles (US doubles) was determined by the numbers in Pi, Euler’s constant e, and Avogadro’s number (although for the latter, I used 6 stitches because I couldn’t face any more). For a zero, I did a slip stitch.

The values I used were:
Pi: 3.141592653589793*
e: 2.718281828459045**
Avogadro’s Number: 6.022140***

Mmm… Pi

‘Ave a go at Avogadro’s number coral – well, I did…

The Snail has also written about our coral reef here.

oOo

* Number used to calculate circle-related things. NASA only use Pi to 15 decimal places, so that’s what I did. It’s the closest I’ll get to rocket science. Also, if you follow Pi with Euler’s number, you get Pie and that’s usually delicious.
** Euler came up with this one, he was Greek and knew stuff before anyone else. This has something to do with natural logarithms, and I’m guessing that unnatural logarithms want nothing to do with it.
*** Avogadro was a chef in a pizzeria and wanted to know the exact number of pepperoni pieces to use for pizza perfection. Or he may have been a scientist who figured out the number of atoms in a mole of substance, which is presumably a burrowing creature which exhibits gravitas. Or something. The exact number is really big – 6.02214076 times 10 with 23 noughts after it.

Many other people contribute to Kate and Gun’s wonderful ScrapHappy every month – check out what they have been up to too!

Kate, Gun, Eva, Sue, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Tracy, 
Jan, Moira, Sandra, Chris, Alys,
Claire, Jean, Jon, Dawn, Gwen,
Sunny, Kjerstin, Sue L, Vera, Edith,
Ann, Dawn 2, Carol, Preeti,
Viv, Karrin,
Amo, Alissa, Lynn, Tierney and Hannah

 

ScrapHappy August 2023: Crochet Who

I have been crocheting with scrap yarn and decided (because why not?) to crochet some Dr Who-related items. I started with a sonic screwdriver:

Sonic Screwdriver ready to save the Universe

In use, defending against Dalexa

And I am partway through this cute Adipose:

A legless, almost completely ‘armless Adipose

The adipose needs another arm and two feet before it is done.

There is also a miniature Fez out in the Universe somewhere because fezs are cool, but too cool to be photographed.

oOo

Many other people contribute to Kate and Gun’s wonderful ScrapHappy every month – check out what they have been up to too!

Kate, Gun, Eva, Sue, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Tracy, 
Jan, Moira, Sandra, Chris, Alys,
Claire, Jean, Jon, Dawn, Gwen,
Sunny, Kjerstin, Sue L, Vera, Edith,
Ann, Dawn 2, Carol, Preeti,
Viv, Karrin,
Amo, Alissa, Lynn, Tierney and Hannah