Sky Blue Pink Can Cosy

Hello..... Today I thought I would tell you about this little make.  It's another upcycled tin can storage pot but unlike my fabric covered one which you can read all about 'here' this time I've made a little crocheted cosy to fit over a tin can.

I love these little upcycling makes as tins are plentiful and you can never have too many storage pots when your crafting. I'm making mine as a Thank you gift, but I'm already feeling the need to make another one just for the Summerhouse.

So here's how I went about making it.

  The first thing I did was sort out my colour palette, at first I decided that I would make a colourful rainbow  pot starting with turquoise through the blues, lilacs, pinks, saffron ending on a lovely pomegranate colour. All colours from the Stylecrafts Special DK range. Really it was my design plan, until I looked out the window and saw this............

Isn't it gorgeous, I guess it's what they call sky blue pink, any plans I had at that point went straight out the window, inspiration struck lightning bolt style and I knew I just had to make a sky blue pink sunset cover. 

 We really do get the best sunsets this time of year here at the Summerhouse. Luckily I had only completed the first four rows for my can, so no frogging was required to keep my sunset inspired crochet on track.

So with the Sunset in mind I crocheted  in blues pinks and lilacs and here it is. My late summer sunset cover.

I used a standard size tin can and measure my chain around it until I had a chain that was quite a snug fit. It turned out to be a chain of 41 stitches in the end. I then simply crocheted rounds of trebles changing yarn colour after each round ten rounds in total.

I then decided I needed some sort of decoration for the top of the cover, as I had some lovely pastel  beads in just right colours I decided I would attach them around the top of my can.

  At first I was going to sew them on individually but thought there must be a easier way. So I did a bit of searching about online (google is the crafters friend)  and  found a tutorial for the very thing here over at the fab Attic 24. In fact the tutorial show you how to make a tin can cover from start to finish the only difference is that Lucy makes her tin can covers using double crochet and uses smaller Tuna tins.

So I followed the tutorial threading my beads on to the yarn and then working a row of double crochet,  working out my bead spacing as per the tutorial. I decided to space by beads every third stitch.  I thought it was going to be really tricky crocheting the beads onto the cover but it was really simple. Good old Attic24 tutorials

I'm so pleased with how the beading turned out. I made sure to darn in the ends after each round so I didn't end up with loads to darn in when I finish the cosy and here it is my little tin can cosy, ready to be posted off to a friend, with instructions to slip it into a tin can on arrival. I had a little test run here with a peach can just to make sure it wasn't to big.

and Ta-Dah here it is all finished.

I'm very tempted to make one for the summerhouse too, once I've caught up a bit on my WIP list.

I hope my friend who is also very creative and quite a artist likes her little storage pot, which hopefully will be great for storing pens and paint brushes. 

As for reading this week, a long awaited crochet book has arrived at the Summerhouse Nicki Tench's 'Cute and Easy Crochet with Flowers', yippee I've so been looking forward to this book coming out for so long as I love her  first Cute and Easy crochet book. I've only flipped throught it quickly so far but I've already got my eye on the cute flower pin cushion.

As for music today I've mostly been listening to Gillian Welch, Live in Hickory NC. I'm loving adding in a mostly listening too, with my yarn along, as it gives me a chance to switch my ipod off shuffle for a while and listen a entire album. something I should do more often.

Linking up with Nicole's Keep Calm Craft On and Yarning along with ginny, so why not pop over and see what everyone else had been making.

Happy Crafting

Clare xx