It's day 4 already! The week is flying by but I hope you have been enjoying
the special guest posts so far?
Today I am very pleased to introduce Emma from Lemons for Lemonade. Emma lives in Oxford and works in a jewellery shop by day and crochets and sews by night. Her blog is full of great photos of everything and anything she gets up to - visiting lovely craft fairs, seeking out quirky new shops, the sights around her and crochet! I don't know how to crochet so I am a little in awe of the amazing creations she produces - and so quickly! I asked her to guest in this series as I couldn't wait to see what she would make.... You won't be disappointed!
"I can’t remember how old I was when I got given my first Mr Men book. I’d hazard a guess at five or six. And I can’t even remember which was the first book I got, but I’m pretty sure it was Mr Nosey....no wait, Mr Sneeze....or was it Mr Muddle?! Anyway, these books were my collection. My sister had the Beatrix Potter books, my brother had the Little Grey Rabbit books, and I had the Mr Men books. When I reminded The Fathership of this over supper last night, he said he’d never have let that happen if he’d realised at the time!
I’m glad The Fathership didn’t realise. I loved the Mr Men books – the Little Miss books too (although these were a much later addition to my collection) – and I still do: short stories, funny characters and brightly coloured pictures, what more could you want?!
When Angela asked me if I’d like to be a guest contributor on her blog for World Book Day, and to perhaps crochet my favourite character from a childhood book, I jumped at the chance. To not only have been asked to feature on Angela’s fantastic blog, but to get to challenge myself to make something completely different to what I’ve done before, and without a pattern to follow to boot, was too good an opportunity to miss.
So I set about thinking what on earth I could make. What character could I crochet that wouldn’t be too hard to do, or take too long? My first thought was The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Definitely up there in my list of favourites, and I very nearly settled for that, (several squished up crocheted balls, all sewn together, plus a couple of antennae, easy) but I knew deep down that it wasn’t my absolute favourite character. It was then that I decided to approach the whole thing from a different angle. I know, I thought, I’ll Google “favourite children’s books 1980s” and see what comes up. Well, all sorts of beauties that I’d forgotten all about popped up: Meg and Mog; Flat Stanley; the Dick King-Smith books, The Worst Witch.....it was all I could do not to go straight out and buy them all again just so I could re-live my childhood years! And then up popped Mr Tickle. That was it! I’d found my character! How could I have forgotten all about Roger Hargreaves’ brilliant set of characters and the books I used to read over and over and over again? And the best bit was (or so I thought) that Mr Tickle would be a breeze to crochet....
How wrong I was!
First I tried making Mr Tickle’s body spherical.
It didn’t look right.
Then I couldn’t work out how to shape his feet, and couldn’t find a suitable pattern for “crocheted feet” anywhere, until trusty Twitter came to the rescue and the lovely Louise Campbell (@louisefcampbell) very kindly pointed me towards her pattern for a crocheted David Tenant, which she thought I could adapt in the foot department. Perfect!
Even the arms caused me grief! I really wanted to have some wire running though them so that I could manipulate Mr Tickle’s arms into all those bendy shapes without them flopping about everywhere.
A couple of homemade French knitting bobbins (Thanks Fathership) and a small length of French knitting later, and I went back to the drawing board.
In fact, the easiest part was the hat which, weirdly, I thought would be the hardest part.
So would you like to see the finished article? Of course you would!
Ta-daaaaaaaah!
I just love his obscenely long arms and those distinctly Quentin Blake-ish looking fingers (Roald Dahl was of course another contender for this project but I knew I wouldn’t be able to do justice to Quentin’s distinctive drawings) and he looks so happy and jolly doesn’t he?
I am mighty pleased with him.
Now then, I am almost certain that Mr Tickle is going to stay here and live with me at number 23 (he’s made some friends already, as you can see above) but if enough of you clamour for a pattern, then I will think about having a go at rustling one up for you, but you must promise not to reproduce the pattern in any way or sell the resulting Mr Tickle. How does that sound? Just leave a comment on this post, and I’m sure Angela will let me know how many people respond.
This has been such a rewarding project for me, so thank you so much Angela for asking me to contribute. I feel very honoured to be here amongst all these talented people – be sure to visit their blogs, won’t you?
Have a lovely day.
Much love,
Emmalemonade x x"
Thank you Emma! Not only is your Mr Tickle fantastic but I also learnt that there is actually a pattern out there for a crocheted David Tennant. Wow!
Visit Emma's blog for more fabulous crafting, snippets of her life and lovely photographs. And leave a comment below if you'd like to make a Mr Tickle of your own.
As always, you can find lots of great things to do/see/read/play on the Official World Book Day website. They've even got a cooking section!
The World Book Day Event continues on This is Wiss tomorrow with another post from me: I will be sharing ideas on making your own books. Enjoy your Sunday and I hope you will visit again tomorrow.
I wanted to involve Wiss as much as possible and the decorations seemed like a good place to start. We spent one very cold and wet afternoon making Paper Plate Fish, and some underwater scenes with potato prints, sponges and finger painting. He was really proud when we put them up for the party and I definitely want to do more crafting with him in the future.
Wiss loves helping out in the kitchen and these fish biscuits (cheesy pastry) were perfect for a budding toddler chef. The rest of the food was pretty simple - tuna or ham rolls, sausage rolls, carrot sticks (with a nod to Tweak!) and hummus, but we had a trump card to play. I had seen this Shark Fruit Salad on Pinterest and wasn't sure if we'd be able to find a watermelon in January, let alone make it look convincing but I think that the husband did a fantastic job with a scalpel...
I made some card Octonauts hats with logos that could be coloured in and some felt collars with velcro fastenings for all the kids to wear. We planned some simple party games that fitted with the theme - 'Musical Starfish' (basically Musical Statues but you make a frozen star shape instead), magnetic fishing rods, Find the Octonauts (which was the same as this game but with the added extra of having an 'Octo-Alert' to hit when one was found), and 'What's the Time Professor Inkling?'. This re-working of What's the Time Mr Wolf? obviously needed a costume, and so I made this in a hurry using an old shirt collar and some felt! The kids loved it, the husband did not!
And talking of birthday presents, we decided to buy Wiss an Octopod from ebay - there are loads on there in perfect condition, with extra figures and vehicles included too; especially at this age, it made good sense. We set it all up for him while he was sleeping and he was so excited when he opened his eyes!
