The dreaded lurgy

We've spent the past week curled up on the sofa, H and I, with the dreaded lurgy. We've had an absolute shocker of a very heavy cold and we've been like a pair of wet weekends, feeling really flu-ey and thoroughly miserable, but on the plus side meant we got to spend lots of mummy and her boy snuggle time which has been really nice.

Today is the first day I've felt 100% other than the stabbing pain in my back, grrr. Last night I decided I had to get out so joined some Mums from school at the local theatre to watch the youth production of Grease. It was brilliant, the kids were so professional and very talented, great acting and amazing singing voices. I must admit to feeling a little envious of them, I'd love to have a great singing voice and belt it out like they were doing but alas, I sound more like a croaky old pheasant than a beautiful skylark!

I haven't really got much crocheting done this past week, I just haven't felt like doing anything, the mind was brimming with ideas but every other part of me was unwilling and all I seemed able to do was sip lemsip and sleep. Before going down with the lurgy I'd been working on some Christmas Stars. It took me a good while to figure out how to make a 3d star. My first approach to it was to try and make it in one whole piece, needless to say that was a disaster and was very quickly written off as a bad idea. I sat down and fiddled about with different shapes, first of all making a pentagon and trying to add 5 triangles to it. It sort of worked but just looked messy and I wasn't happy with it. Then I hit on it, what I needed was 5 diamond shapes stitched together and eventually it started to resemble what I had in mind. The first star was too short and fat and just didn't sit right, it kept curling and bunching up, but eventually after a bit of fiddling around with some paper (note to self............. Try making it out of paper first, it saves a lot of time!) I finally realised I needed elongated diamonds, wider at one end and pointier at the other, and BINGO it worked. 

Figuring out how to make them was the hard part, I already had a good idea of how I wanted them to look. I made 10 elongated triangles, stitching them together in pairs and stuffing them. I stitched them to each other with clear plastic filament but once they were together they just seemed a bit plain and boring, so out came the buttons, thread and ribbons and an hour later I had transformed them and was really happy with the finished product.

And here they are:

Lovely and rustic and just waiting to adorn my Christmas tree, but seeing as that won't be up until the middle of December for the moment they're hanging on the door knobs on the kitchen cabinets and making me smile when I open the mug cupboard.  

My friend loved them too and asked me to make them into a kit to sell in her shop, so I've spent most of today typing up the instructions, and putting together the kit.

I'm really pleased with the end result, I hope they'll make a lovely unusual gift and people will want to buy them, so tomorrow I'm off to deliver them to "The Green Monkey". If I manage to figure it out I'll be putting them in my little Etsy shop too :0)

What do you think?

Above are the contents of the kits and below are the finished articles, wrapped in cellophane to keep the them clean and together and tied with raffia and a tag to finish.

I don't think they'll make me my first million, the 4 kits took me most of the day to put together, but they might make someone a very nice Christmas Present!