Crochet cacti and pumpkins

Hello dear friends and readers!



So its been officially autumn for a couple of weeks now but it seems that noone has told the people in charge of the weather. Yes, the leaves are changing colour and the berries are out, but the temperature is still lovely and warm, and I personally am still in tshirts, cropped trousers and sandals - just lovely.

Here at Emerald Cottage we have had lots of lurgy. Little Tomboy had a sore throat and a day off school. Miss 13 had a hacking cough and a few days off. Mr 15 had it really badly, off school for almost 2 weeks - not good in your GCSE year - and is still coughing loads. Mr EC has been off work (obvs at death's door with man-flu) this week with it and still isn't great. But yes, you guessed right, yours truly has remained uninfected thus far. I did think this morning that my throat felt a bit scratchy but so far its not evolved into anything.

Having MR EC at home is very unsettling. I find it so hard to crack on with whatever I need to do when other people are milling around the house (how dare they! you'd think it was their house too!!) and consequently the last week or two I've felt very unproductive and a bit twitchy to be honest. My mental health always feels like a very delicate balance so I'm trying to get some crafting done each day to keep me sane. Literally. Having said that, I have had lots of orders coming in, and looking back at my photos, I have done a fair bit.

I had some further orders for crochet cacti - in fact those orders are still rolling in, I had another person ask for one yesterday. My cacti are made following a pattern from an old issue of Simply Crochet magazine. One of the orders was for 2 cacti and a scrabble art picture. I love working out how the words will interlink.



I've also made a couple of baby sloths, this time with a pattern from The Twisted Crocheter. Isn't he so cute with this little felt heart 💓



A lady ordered four purses from me, she wants them personalised, which I have yet to do (that's my next job!).



I've made around 12 orders in the last two weeks. Doesn't sound a lot but its just about the right amount for me. I really enjoy packaging them up to send out.



Every order goes out in a brown bag with a handwritten thankyou note, and a little heart sweetie 💗

I've been joining in with Vlogtober - where you vlog every day for the month of October. I decided to participate in order to focus getting on with crafting, but its been quite hard to do, especially since there have been poorly people hanging round at home and I don't want them to hear me LOL Weekends are hard for the same reason, and then I have my Mum coming for a few days next week so that will be tricky too! Oh well, I'm sure I'll manage. You can find my vlogs here on my youtube channel if you fancy a listen. The last few are very boring - sorry - due to the pesky ill people - but I'm hoping they might get a bit ore interesting again next week!

I've also been participating on Inktober, over on my instagram. The idea is to do drawing every day throughout October. I've LOVED doing this. I am not an expert artist by ANY stretch of the imagination, but I do love drawing, I just normally don't find the time. I still don't find the time really, I know a lot of people are spending upwards of an hour on their daily drawings, I only spend about 5- 10 minutes on each of mine. And it probably shows. But I don't care, I'm enjoying it, its getting me in the habit of drawing every day, and that was my purpose of joining in. Here are a few of my favourite pictures I've done :

I've also started to think abut making some necklaces. In the summer I went on a Dorset Button making workshop - I'll do a blog post about it one of these days - but the idea of  plain dorset button can be extended to something slightly more intricate. I made this necklace, and hope to do a few more to sell in my Etsy shop.



If you look closely you will see some little beads on the beige area of the pendant, they are hard to notice in the photo but are lovely and twinkly in real life. My Mum and my friend both have birthdays coming up so I think I will make them a necklace each.

Speaking of my Etsy shop, its still there but its empty! I've had so many orders, mostly from my facebook page, that I haven't had time to make up some stock for the page. Its all good though, stocking the shop gives me plenty to do when the orders go quiet, as I'm sure they will. Oh and I've also signed up for 3 craft fairs before Christmas, so I have lots to do to make stock for those too.

My final thing to tell you is that I've been making loads of these little pumpkins, again for orders.



They can be made with or without faces, but the faces have proved very popular! I really need to make a few for home too :)



In the midst of all these orders I've obviously had the ill people to look after, school runs to do for the non-ill people, we've been going around looking at sixth-form colleges for Mr 15, which reminds me I MUST NOT FORGET to fill out secondary school application for Little Tomboy (poor 3rd child always forgotten about ....), and getting organised for my Mum's visit next week i.e. making the house vaguely presentable - ok I confess I haven't actually started that yet. That's the job for the weekend - fun! Not! Hopefully even with Mum's visit I will have time to do some crafting, so watch this space for more :)

Have a lovely weekend, and a lovely week next week, I probably won't be back here til Mum has been and gone.
Bye for now,
Jilllxxxxxxxxx