Hot Dog Costume!

This post is about the hot dog costume I made for the crochet Dachshund that I made for my sister, he is now referred to as Lord Buttons. The pattern for Lord Buttons himself is from Voodoo Maggie's Amigurumi book so all the credit for him goes to her. Once I had made him I then made the costume design up as I went along.

The costume was made in 3 pieces, 2 "bun" pieces and the central piece which I made using the same yarn I made Lord Buttons in. The distance between his front and back legs was 4 inches, which equated to 25 stitches, so I chained 26, and then single crocheted along for 10 rows until it measured 1.5 inches in length. I then crocheted tabs on the edges so it could be buttoned up underneath. I did 9 slip stitches and then 11sc and then crocheted 3 rows of 11 stitches. Obviously I made 2 one for either side. The "sausage" was made by chaining 26 and then repeating 15 rows of 25 stitches.

I used surface crochet to add the ketchup and mustard and sewed the button on one tab and some loops to attach to the button on the other.

He's so cute!

P.s. Apologies for the overuse of "Lord Buttons" my sister would be mad if I referred to him as anything else.

Lots of Birthdays!

This is a particular time of year is just full of birthdays. Dave's brother and sister are both in December, its my birthday in January and then my sister, Dave and Dave's dad are all in February as well as our anniversary!

When I asked my sister what she wanted for her birthday she said she wanted a tortoise with a balloon attached to it and a Dachshund dressed like a hotdog. So that's what she got.

I made her a Brownie and Marshmallow pie (recipe adapted from one I saw on Sally's Baking Addiction) and made a marzipan tortoise for the top. The pie was really nice, but very sweet so we had very small pieces. Also as we served it hot the candles kept falling over!

And then I crocheted this guy, 

This is Lord Buttons the Dachshund in his removable hotdog costume, the pattern for the dog came from VooDoo Maggie's Adorable Amigurumi book but the costume was something I made up and will be putting up a blog on how I did it in the next week or so.

Tomorrow it is my lovely friend Katie's 21st birthday and she is flying off to Amsterdam,  Monday was her last day in work before her birthday and I promised her that I would make a giant cake so she could share it with as many people in the office as possible. Not everyone got a slice (there's 100 or so people just in our office) but I did my best:

It was dubbed the "Matilda" cake as it looks like the one that Bruce Bogtrotter ate. Just to give you an idea of how big it was, the plate that its sat on is a large dinner plate and the box is about 4 inches tall. It was 4 chocolate fudge cakes with whipped cream in the middle and then the whole thing was covered in dark chocolate ganache.

I also crocheted her this as a Congratulations on her new job in our department

(Pattern from Little Muggles in the Zoomigurumi book)

She named him Charlie after me :)

Hope everyone is recovering from January (gloomiest part of the year) and is looking forward to the rest of 2015 xx