Coastal Crocheted Birds…Puffin

I recently discovered the blog of ‘Son’s Popkes’ http://sonspopkes.com/ and immediately fell in love with the gorgeous crocheted creatures Sonja van der Wijk designs. When a pattern for ‘Plubby the Puffin’ was published I knew I had to make it (especially as puffins are much loved coastal birds)! http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/plubby

http://www.rspb.org.uk/discoverandenjoynature/discoverandlearn/birdguide/name/p/puffin/

And here is the finished result perched happily on our local cliffs. I had a lot of fun making ‘Plubby’ and then photographing him on various parts of the cliffs along our beach. It was a very windy day and my children helped to keep him in position just long enough to be photographed!

He looks so at home on these cliffs but unfortunately we don’t actually get puffins along our part of the southern coastline of England. Puffins can be found in many other parts of the British coast during the summer months. My nephew Jacob is the lucky recipient of Plubby as my brother and sister in law visited Bempton Cliffs on a recent summer holiday http://www.rspb.org.uk/discoverandenjoynature/seenature/reserves/guide/b/bemptoncliffs/

They were hoping to see some puffins but missed them by only a couple of days as they had left to migrate south, so I hope my crocheted puffin is some consolation!

For a small project like this I tend to dig into my huge stash of yarn (currently stored under our bed) rather than buy the recommended yarn. I’m pleased with the colours but it taught me a lot about yarn quality as the black and white was difficult to crochet with, splitting easily as I crocheted. I’m also very aware that my chain stitch used for the beak could have been a lot neater, definitely need to practice that!! 😉

I decided to buy eyes rather than make them and knew what I was looking for. I visited a great yarn store in Shoreham, West Sussex.

http://www.shorehamherald.co.uk/news/local/shoreham-knitting-shop-celebrates-40th-1-4609565

http://www.englishyarns.co.uk/

When I walked in I was greeted with literally floor to ceiling yarn (a crocheter and knitters paradise) and I couldn’t have asked for better eyes! It’s a real gem of a shop and it was a happy shopping experience 😃

Such a great design and my crochet skills were stretched which is always good!

So, as we don’t get puffins locally, which seabirds do we get on our stretch of coastline? Well, we get a lot of varieties of seagulls of course, and here are a couple which were circling above us as I was photographing ‘Plubby’.

Which gives me an idea……to crochet a Seagull!

That’s a project I’ll share with you next week. In the meantime, Happy Crocheting….