Crochet ipad case for Father's Day - free pattern

With just three weeks to go until Father's Day, it's on the 19th June in case you were wondering, now's the perfect time to hook up this quick handmade gift to keep his ipad looking stylish and cosy. Although looks-wise this one has been designed with men in mind (as they can be so difficult to find good crochet patterns for), swap the buttons and colours and it can be customised for anyone! 
You'll be pleased to know it comes pre-approved by my Dad as I actually wrote the pattern back in December and gave it to him as a Christmas gift - and have since had to borrow it back to take photographs because I wasn't organised enough to do it before!

The finished case measures 26mm deep and 18cm wide and is designed to fit an ipad 2 with or without a official apple ipad 2 case, but if you need it bigger or smaller just work with a tape measure to hand and adjust the stitch numbers as you go.
Hook: 4mm crochet hook Wool: DK weight You will also need a button, tape measure and yarn needle
Pattern (UK terms) Foundation double crochet 63 - there's a great video tutorial here (it's known as foundation single crochet in the US). It's basically a way of creating your chain and first row of dcs at the same time, which is much less fiddly.
Slip stitch into the first foundation double crochet to form a circle. Make sure the work isn't twisted as you do so. 
Work continuous rounds of dc in back loop only until your crochet sleeve measures 22cm long.
Change colour to grey and continue to work rounds of dc in the back loop until the grey stripe is 4.5cm deep. Fasten off.
Turn inside out and seam along the bottom. Weave in all ends.
Sew on chunky button where the two colours meet. 
With your grey wool chain 30 and test the length around the button and up to the back of the case to make sure it fits. Once you're happy with the length form a loop, then slip stitch both ends to the back of your case. Weave in all ends.

And you're done. As ever I'd love to know if you make one.
Right I better go and give this one back to my Dad now!


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The Maker Place wish list*

While we're still busy decorating all the rooms in our house (to all of you who told me it's a slow process, I believe you now!) earlier this year we made a bit of a resolution to think more about our purchases and focus on investing in a few key pieces, particularly from local and UK based makers and designers. And The Maker Place is a new online site where you can do just that. 

With everything from kitchenware to office accessories and wallpaper to decorative prints, it's bursting with handmade pieces from some incredibly talented makers. Each maker has their own profile page so you can find out a bit more about who you're buying from and they feature in-depth interviews on their blog, the most recent with potter Kara Leigh Ford is well worth a read - she got down to the final 20 auditions for the Great Pottery Showdown and I love her organic style (and her striped shed/studio)! 

Here's a little pre-payday wish list of some of my favourite pieces:

Clockwise from top left: stoneware speckle teapot, nest building materials cushion, classic Swedish butter knives, peg it all little in green peg board, great tit screen print, sea foam dinner plate
What handmade pieces are you keen to pick up for your home this season?
*Affiliate links - if you're thinking of making a purchase I'd be honoured if you'd use the links in this post to do so and I'll receive a little bit of commission.

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Recently I’ve been…

Seeing as I haven’t managed to blog for nearly a month, it’s safe to assume that recently I’ve been... fairly busy. So thought I’d better hop on the blog today to apologise and explain the reason for the radio silence.
Firstly, a couple of weeks ago my laptop finally decided it had seen enough photos of crochet and flowers and announced it was full. Some rather desperate deleting ensued but it was clear I wanted to keep more photographs than it would allow. Luckily this was just before my birthday, so the boyfriend’s present to me was to buy and fit a new larger hard drive. Unfortunately this took longer than expected as it also coincided with the start of redecorating our bathroom…
I mentioned when writing this post that we’d be getting our bathroom redecorated this year, and while I planned what we’d need doing back in January it took us a good few months to get quotes and book in a plumber.  To save money we’re doing a lot of the work ourselves, so my evening and weekend blog time has now been taken over by removing  tiles and plasterboard, putting up new plasterboard, removing the tiled floor and many, many DIY shop and tip trips. There’s still a very long way to go as you can see in the picture below! 

But aside from manual labour, I have also been…

Crocheting this cushion for a friend’s birthday, the colours are inspired our local bluebell wood and I’m pleased to say she liked it. I also kind of wanted to keep it for myself.

Visiting Nymans a nearby National Trust garden, which I’ve blogged about several times before, including here. I love that there’s always something different in bloom and took home lots of inspiration for our garden (the next project after the bathroom).

Growing tomato seedlings, I did also try and grow some last year but they seemed to give up the ghost just after I re-potted them. Since re-potting these ones it’s so far so good and they're much bigger than last year's already! 
What have you been up to? 
I’m also terribly behind on blog reading so feel free to add your latest post in the comments so I can catch-up.


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