2015 Iron Craft Challenge - #1 Crochet Strawberries Headband

This year I'm taking part in the Iron Craft Challenge over at Just Crafty Enough. Basically a new challenge is given each fortnight and then you post a photo of your completed craft on the group Flickr page. I was looking to do a weekly/monthly type craft challenge and a friend of mine who has participated in Iron Craft in the past recommended it to me. I am so excited!!!!!!!

As this year is the 4th anniversary of the challenge running, the first challenge of the year was to create something around the theme of 4th anniversary gifts -  either traditional, which is fruit or flowers, or modern which is appliances. After a little bit of thought (and some Pinterest browsing) I came up with this crocheted strawberries headband.

I based the strawberries on this strawberry pattern (but downsized it slightly), and the blossom was based on the first part of this simple flower with the addition of a button sewn into the middle. I attached them to a long chain stitch that wrapped around the little miss's head three times and made a loop in the end opposite to the flower so that it could hook over the button.

I can not wait until tomorrow when the second craft challenge is posted...

Rag Curls

Since starting the Irish dancing dress, Irish dancing has been on both mine and the little miss's minds a bit extra lately... She can't wait to preform in her new dress and really, really wants a wig. I myself am not ready for her to get a wig... she's already got such gorgeous hair and she's only 5 years old - it's just too soon for me! I've got what seems like an unlimited amount of fabric scraps, so I thought we'd try out rag curls and see what would happen...

I flicked through Pinterest to see how others had done rag curls - looking especially for tips on how to get nicely shaped ringlets. A few tips of the best that I found were:

•  to start with dry (or mostly dry) hair because if the hair is still damp when taking the rags out, the curls will just fall right out (and use lots of mouse or gel and hairspray instead)
• roll the hair vertically and remove them by unwinding/pulling straight down to get good ringlets
• make a small ponytail with the front section of hair as this is how it is 'styled' for Irish dancing anyway - the curls won't get combed out tying it up afterwards.

I cut up some fabric scraps, put on a DVD, and got started. I put hair mouse and hairspray in her hair before starting as well as a little bit after every layer or so. I ended up using 43 rags in her hair in total. I was a little shocked that the little miss sat nice and still for the half hour/45 minutes it took to roll up her hair.

And then she slept...

I was a little worried that there would be lots of screaming while I took all the rags out so I went nice and slowly and was as careful as possible. Fortunately there was only a complaint or two when I came across a few bits of a knotted hair.

I'm quite pleased with how it turned out for a first try (and the little miss is absolutely thrilled!) but next time I will use some rolling papers to fold around the ends of the hair so they don't end up too kinked and will be less likely to get tangled around the rags. The little miss has already asked if I can do her hair like this for when she goes back to school and has been jumping around to see how the curls will bounce when she's dancing, so I guess I'll be doing it again the night before her next performance...