Last Sunday I wrote about a Sneak peek. Just a little look into what I was doing. I was actually cheating a little, this wasn’t something I was working on. Better yet, I already gave the item to it’s new owner last Saturday!

But I still want to write about it. Thing is, I’m actually a little bit proud of it.

In this case, it’s about (as the title says) a hot water bottle cozy. A cover for this thing:

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Several weeks back, a friend of mine gave me a catflap. And not just a simple one, it was one that could scan the chip in the cats. Those things are pretty expensive! The one we had, for our three cats, broke down unfortunately. So when my friend M. asked us if someone wanted a chipscanning catflap, I of course raised my hand.

She just gave it to me. To my shame, I have to admit, a couple of days later I realized she just donated the costly thing to me for free, so I asked her if I could perhaps transfer her some money. Below was her answer (for those Non-Dutchies; ‘If you want to give anthing, I lost my hot water bottle cozy. But I don’t know if you have time to make me something? There’s no rush, I’m using a pillowcover’ 

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And that’s something I’d like to do of course! Pay a service with a service, deal!

These were the pictures she send, for inspiration on color and feel;

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And as was the case, I actually had some lilac yarn left over. Gorgeous soft cotton from Lana Grossa. If you take a look at my gallery, you’ll see where these leftovers come from, hihi.

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This was pretty much the perfect color for M. I thought. So I set to work, not knowing exactly yet on what the final product would look like. I just had something with cross-stitching/ embroidery on crochet in mind. I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time now but never found the project for that yet. But now I had!

— Warning, crochet terms up ahead —

I started with a chain, and then made a flat oval with single crochet only, until I had the desired length and width for the bottom of the cozy(here is a good link for making basic shapes like this). After that came a row of single crochet in the back loop only. Following that I went up (so no increasing) with just single crochet.

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Eventually I went through my leftover lilac pretty fast so I had to add a color. I had some white from the same brand and yarn leftover so I added two rows of half double crochet, with single lilac ones in between. Some more lilac following the second row of white and then back to white again with triple crochet and a chain, to make the holes for the ribbon to close the cozy. On top I did a little shell edging and the cozy was done!

But, my plan was to add something. After some searching for flowers or blossoms, eventually I came to a picture of a hummingbird. I thought this would fit M. nicely so I went with that!

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And boy, did I set myself a task! Embroidery on your crochet! (here is a link for doing this) You have to really carefully seek out the stitches on which to place your ‘crosses’, they have to turn out square of course. But, I must say, I think I did alright. Perhaps the most work was tidying up the back/inside with all the loose ends!

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It’s not often that I’m actually proud of my own work… but this time, I definitely am! Here’s the result:

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This post is also available in: Dutch