Swimming Right Along

I just hopped right over Spring and went into Summer when I saw these little fish and shells. I took a crochet course on Domestika with an artist named Marianne Seiman and made some pretty shells. You can get a free trial of most classes online and cancel any time you want to.

So I made some shells and then I found some wonderful tutorials on youtube done by Linda Di Martino and she has filled up her aquarium with crocheted fish and sea life. I fell in love with the fish and all the plants in her aquarium! 

So I tried my best to follow along in Italian with broken English subtitles and wrote down the basic instructions the best I could figure out. 

I love the Angelfish and the butterfly fish!

But the puffer fish just blew me away. Look at that little pout! It takes me a long time to watch, write down the instructions and then make the item, refining my instructions as I go. So that's what has taken me so long on all these sea life projects.

And I found a little blue lobster by Kara Lyon which is also a free pattern... yes, I am really into sea life mode at this point... I found out that embroidery cord/thread is size 5 and that is what I really needed for these. I did experiment with all kinds of threads and yarns. You can get it at Hobby Lobby in limited colors or you can get it the cheapest in packs of embroidery cords. 

Double twisted works up fine but you can use the six strand embroidery floss in a pinch. You get more yardage and color variety in the 36 pack than you do on the spool. So that's what I prefer for these and they turned out beautiful with a sheen to the final product. Yarn makes them look fuzzy. Now I'm not sure what to do with all this size 8 thread but I'm sure I'll figure it out. Those colors are gorgeous.

Then, I found Spike the scuba diver. He's a free pattern by Nancy Anderson. He pulled me away from my fish for a little while. But he was worth it. I love Spike! So I'll keep working on these but I'm getting the itch to paint... I'll go see if there are any free courses or trial offers online but it's a pretty good bet some flower paintings are about to be made. Skillshare has a 1 month trial going on now with an artist I really like named Suzanne Allard so maybe I'll go check that out...

So I've been pretty busy all through the month of March with Summer stuff. I think I'm finally going to get into Spring for April though.