There’s nothing better than a long weekend. With little planned, other than a trip to Anfield, and with my husband working for half of it I had plenty of time to get the wool back out and learn some new crochet skills.

Having so far only made granny squares and flowers I decided I wanted to try something with more substance.

I flicked through my growing collection of crochet books and settled on a cute little toadstool, mainly because I had the right colours and a surplus of white buttons left over from making my wedding bouquet. Initially I struggled a bit with understanding the pattern terms but after a little help from Google it started to make sense.  I had been into town and bought some cushion pads for £1 each with the intention of making cushion covers but one was sacrificed for the stuffing!

Feeling accomplished I set about a second Easter weekend project, a snail.  The pattern was for a plain shell but I decided to challenge myself to having a stripy snail shell.  After looking in another book to learn how to join colours I set about making my snail.  I’d become familiar with working in the round with the toadstool and managed to keep track of my stitches a little better on this project.

It was time to embark on a project that I knew I would love.  An owl. Our home is scattered with owls – cushions, doorstops, candles, owl (fairy) lights, even my sewing box is an owl design! This is the first homemade owl. I took extra care, using a stitch marker, a tip picked up online, when working in the round. I struggled with the ears in the design I was following but have developed a good enough understanding to improvise so fashioned ears out of circles.  I am so pleased with the outcome. This is probably my neatest project yet.