Tag: Ireland

Come dive with me…

Posted on by crawcraftsbeasties in Info, Knitted Beasties

Diver Beastie

Every now and again, Beastie development takes a bigger-than-usual leap forward – often when I take on a commission, which pushes me out of my comfort zone and gets me thinking of new methods and accessories. And this was definitely the case with Diver Beastie! He taught me a lot about diving equipment, and encouraged me to experiment with some new materials in my quest to shrink human-sized tanks, regulators and dive masks to Beastie proportions. So, without further ado, I’m delighted to introduce Diver Beastie! Let’s take a look at all the cool stuff he has…
Wetsuit, Line Cutter, Dive Knife and Watch

Diver Beastie lives in his wetsuit. You can just about see the snazzy yellow flashes down the side of his legs in this picture! The red thing hanging from his belt is a line cutter –  although he’s also carrying a dive knife (inspired by every James Bond film I’ve ever seen), knives aren’t permitted in some diving sites. The line cutter is a safer tool, which can be used to cut through tangled or snagged lines. It’s always best to be prepared! Diver Beastie is also very proud of his watch/dive computer, which you can see on his left wrist. He also has…
Diver Beastie Flippers

… Felt flippers…
Diver Beastie Tank

… An air tank…
Diver Beastie Mask and Regulator

… A dive mask and a regulator! Put all that together and you get…

Finished Diver Beastie!

One Diver Beastie, ready for action!

Then it was time to send him off to his new home… in Texas! He was very keen to swim there himself, but I managed to talk him out of it… the last thing I wanted was for him to end up as a shark’s lunch. Also, going by plane is a lot quicker. And it looks like he arrived safely! He now lives with two fellow diving enthusiasts, and enjoys borrowing their equipment…
Diver Beastie in Texas

…Marvelling at their enormous human-sized dive tanks…
Diver Beastie with Tank
… And scooting around in a conveniently Beastie-sized Landrover, which also came over from Ireland!
Diver Beastie with Landrover

Thanks to Tracy for sharing photos of Diver Beastie in his new home! And to everyone else for keeping up with the Beasties and their adventures – talk to you again soon!

More New Beasties…

Posted on by crawcraftsbeasties in Knitted Beasties

Rugby Beastie

Holy moly! It’s been another busy week… this summer is just zipping by! At least I’ve been able to find a couple of spare minutes to finish off a few new Beastie friends. Yesterday, I sent a top secret Beastie commission to his new home – I’ll share pictures once he reaches his destination successfully!

I also thought that the Creative Collective shop in Dalkey could use a bigger Beastie turnout. Beasties are naturally gregarious creatures, and they’re happiest when they’re hanging out in a big bunch. So I used that as an excuse to add the final touches to some monsters who have been living in my “In Progress” box for a while.

First of all, meet our cover star… Rugby Beastie!
Rugby Beastie side view

Rugby Beastie is the newest addition to the Irish squad. He’s shown up for training this morning with his own rugby ball and old-school rugby jersey, and he’s taped up his ears to prevent long-term damage…

Cauliflower Ear!

Uh-oh! Looks like he’s a little too late on that one. And because he’s my first Rugby Beastie, it was obvious which number he should get…
Rugby Beastie back view

Cheering him on from the sidelines is a lady who usually prefers to stay at home with a good book – Book Club Beastie!
Book Club Beastie

With her mop of blonde hair and natty print skirt, she can easily be spotted lugging another huge bag of purchases out of her local bookshop or enjoying a good read in her favourite cafe. What’s she reading right now, you ask?
The Great Knitsby

“The Great Knitsby”, of course!

Thanks for stopping by… have a monster weekend, everyone!

Oooh! New Beasties!

Posted on by crawcraftsbeasties in Ideas, Knitted Beasties

All-Irish Beastie

For some time now, I’ve been wanting to make a range of Irish Beasties. Of course, my Beasties are already pretty Irish – they are born here, after all. But it always surprises me how little of the yarn we get in this country actually comes from here. And when you have a whole world of beautiful fibres to choose from – South American alpaca, merino wool from Down Under – it’s very easy to take what you have at home for granted.

Fortunately, I recently got a couple of timely wake-up calls. A while ago, some of my knitting friends and I started taking “Knit Days” – we’d hop on a train, or form a convoy of cars, and travel to another town or city to enjoy a crafty day out, usually fuelled by copious quantities of tea and cake. One of these Knit Days took us to the village of Graignamanagh in Co. Kilkenny, which is the home of Cushendale Woollen Mills. This family-owned mill has been producing yarn and finished woollen goods since the mid-1800s, and we were lucky enough to get a full tour during our visit. Since then, I’ve been looking out for a project that would allow me to use some of their products… even more so after I helped my friend with the annual stocktake at her wool shop, and I couldn’t stop admiring the beautiful colours of the Cushendale yarns. I realised that they reminded me of the countryside out in Roscommon, which is where my boyfriend comes from, and somewhere I never get tired of visiting…

Lake, RoscommonRoad, RoscommonForest, RoscommonAbandoned Car, RoscommonPeat Bog, Roscommon

Gate, RoscommonBlackthorn Blossom, RoscommonMoss, RoscommonPeat Bog on a Cloudy Day

So, I picked out the four colours which I thought best summed up the peat-bog palette, and got knitting! Having completed my first full All-Irish Beastie, I had to give him an accessory… something really IRISH. I could have gone the obvious route – shamrock, leprechaun outfit – but I wanted something a little different, that still reflected everyday life in this part of the world. So he got…
Irish Beastie full lengthIrish Beastie Tea Mug

A BIG MUG OF TEA!

Bet you didn’t see that coming… but, no matter who you consult, we Irish always make the top 3  in the world tea-drinking charts.

Our only challengers for the title are Morocco and Turkey, where people must be making cuppas 24-7 to hold us off the top spot. Truly “Irish” tea is made in a teapot, then put back on the range to stew into a viscous tar-like substance, before being thinned out with liberal doses of milk and sugar. But most of us settle for throwing a bag of Lyons or Barrys into a mug and just stirring it around a bit!

More All-Irish Beasties will be landing soon! Let me know in the comments if there are any you’d particularly like to see!

A Grand Day Out… With Victorian Explorer Beastie

Posted on by crawcraftsbeasties in Knitted Beasties

Victorian Explorer Beastie With Hippo

I had to go out and pick up a few last-minute display bits for the Pop Up Shop over the weekend, and I thought I would treat myself to a quick wander around one of my favourite places in Dublin – the Natural History Museum!Natural History Museum

I love this place. It’s like a museum of a museum – a real old-fashioned collection of interesting things in hardwood and glass cases, uncluttered by the beeping interactive displays and looping videos that infest most modern museums. Most of the animals are labelled with only their name (in English and Latin), where they came from and when they were added to the collection. If you want to know more about them, you have everything you need to do the rest of the legwork yourself at home. This frees you up to actually look at the animals while you’re in the museum, and appreciate their size, their colouring, the crazier features of their bodies that help them to survive… it’s also a great place to do some people-watching!

I figured Victorian Explorer Beastie would feel right at home here, so I brought him along for the ride.
Outside the Natural History Museum
The ground floor of the building houses Irish fauna. These giant Irish elk skeletons greet you as you walk in!

Irish Elk Skeleton

Even the smallest animals get a look-in – there are cases at the back containing all kinds of minibeasts, from beetles to slugs. Understandably, perhaps, the butterflies and moths are the most popular!
Butterfly Case

Upstairs is the “Animals of the World” exhibition, where Victorian Explorer Beastie came face-to-face with a monkey…
Explorer Beastie with Capuchin Monkey
… Met a record-breaking Irish wolfhound…
Explorer Beastie with Irish Wolfhound

…And realised he is much, much smaller than an elephant.
Victorian Explorer Beastie with Elephant
He also nearly got into a spot of bother – LOOK BEHIND YOU!
He's behind you...

Turned out the hippo was only having a bit of a yawn, so we left unscathed. But we’ll be back! Hope you enjoyed visiting with us!

Victorian Explorer Beastie

Posted on by crawcraftsbeasties in Info, Knitted Beasties, Uncategorized

Victorian Explorer Beastie Close-Up

Regular visitors to the BeastieBlog will remember this dashing chap from our visit to Bray in Co. Wicklow a couple of months ago.
Bray Head

However, he was so busy strolling along the promenade, climbing the hill and picking up interesting pebbles on the beach that he didn’t get a chance to show off all his tip-top explorer kit. So I’ve invited him back!Victorian Explorer Beastie

No gentleman explorer should leave home without his pith helmet, belt pouch for assorted sundries, and knapsack. I wonder what he’s taking with him?
Map and Hipflask

Oh, of course! A map of a distant land and a hipflask of finest gin. Nice!

Victorian Explorer Beastie’s next port of call will be Dun Laoghaire in South Dublin, for Creative Collective Ireland’s annual Pop Up Shop… but who knows where he’ll go after that?

He’s Back!

Posted on by crawcraftsbeasties in Explorer Beastie

Explorer Beastie in Glasnevin

Ta-daaaaah! Explorer Beastie is back in Dublin. Well, for the moment, anyway. While I was away sunning myself in the West of Ireland (yes, that CAN happen) over Easter, he took a trip to the northern suburbs of the city to have a look around Glasnevin Cemetery.
Explorer Beastie with Knotwork Headstone

Not everyone’s idea of a good time, perhaps, but Glasnevin Cemetery is actually a fascinating place. For starters, some of the monuments are beautiful – check out the knotwork design on this one!
Explorer Beastie with Graves

There are over 1.5 million people buried in Glasnevin Cemetery. That’s more than currently live in the County Dublin region! Among them are significant figures from Ireland’s past – Daniel O’Connell, Charles Stewart Parnell and Michael Collins, to name a few – as well as many of our most famous writers, artists and musicians. Glasnevin also makes an appearance in James Joyce’s Ulysses, and Explorer Beastie appears to have caught up with Mr Joyce himself in the gift shop…
Explorer Beastie with James Joyce

Meanwhile, I have enjoyed a relaxing week away! I’ve been flexing my farming muscles, babysitting these little sweethearts…
Calves

…being inspired by the scenery…
Lake at Dusk

…And most importantly, knitting like a fiend! I have a bunch of new Beastie bodies ready to be decorated – I wonder what they’ll be?

Happy St Patrick’s Day!

Posted on by crawcraftsbeasties in Info, Knitted Beasties

St Patrick's Day Parade

I woke up this morning to find my street closed to traffic and overrun with people in leprechaun costumes.  Must be St Patrick’s Day, then!  My building is actually on the parade route, so the Beasties and I had front-row seats for the whole show.  Since Explorer Beastie still isn’t back, I thought I’d let Green Sweetheart Beastie take the lead on this one… Enjoy!Viking Float

"The Wheels of Time" Float

LSU Marching Band

"Celtic Tiger" Float

"History of Love" Float

Beastie Close-Up

Thanks for dropping by… have a great St Patrick’s Day, wherever you are!

Exploring Out West

Posted on by crawcraftsbeasties in Explorer Beastie

Explorer Beastie with Mountain

This weekend, Explorer Beastie took his first trip westwards, to Co. Roscommon.
Um, where?
Don’t worry, I didn’t know it existed myself until I met someone from there during my first week in college. Roscommon sits in the western midlands of Ireland, which means that it’s pretty far removed from any of the main tourist trails. It has no coastline, and is distant enough from Dublin that it was left relatively untroubled by the embarrassing “build just about anything just about anywhere” phase this country went through a few years back. It boasts the second lowest population density in Ireland, and 74% of the people live in rural areas (factoids courtesy of the 2011 Census report). It also happens to be where my boyfriend is from, and I consider myself pretty lucky to have an excuse to visit somewhere as beautiful as this!

Anyway, we got a brief spell of sunny weather on Sunday, so I made a beeline for the bog with Explorer Beastie, Boyfriend and Cooper the dog in tow. The main picture shows Explorer Beastie enjoying his first visit to a genuine Irish peat bog! It looks empty, but this bog has a lot going on. Local people still cut peat here on a small scale and use it to heat their homes, and in the late 1940’s a man discovered a hoard of Bronze Age gold jewellery while cutting turf! The pieces – a gold lunula (a crescent-shaped collar) and two gold discs – are now on display in the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin.

Unfortunately, we didn’t come across any gold. But Explorer Beastie did find some vibrant neon-orange lichen:
Explorer Beastie with Lichen

In fact, the bog is surprisingly colourful at this time of year. We also found some deep crimson moss…
Beastie with Moss

…And some fresh new gorse growing up between the charred stumps left by a fire last year.
New Gorse For Old

We also found some cool bracket fungus on a fallen tree stump:
Explorer Beastie with Fungus

And there were opportunities to climb trees…
Beastie in a Tree

… Hack through the undergrowth…
Beastie in the Bracken

…And stop for a sandwich in a soft mossy hollow.
Sandwich Break

But let’s not forget that this is Ireland, and it wasn’t long before the weather took a turn for the worse!
Raincloud

We had to dash for home and spend the rest of the afternoon toasting our toes by the range. Life’s tough…
Have a great week!