Cwtches explained!

 

What is a Cwtch?

As some of you lovely crafty cwtch blog readers might not be welsh you might not know what the word cwtch means or where it comes from, or you might just be welsh and have always wanted to know a little more about this fabulous little word and the welsh language (wenglish)either way if your interested read on for some more rather interesting information. 

Cwtch is the Welsh word for cuddle, not just any type of cuddle however, a rather special one, blessed with the warmth and generosity of the Welsh, a truly free flowing expression of love and acceptance.

Remember that lovely warm feeling you used to get when a special person put their arms around you, sheltering you from the world and its pressures, at least momentarily. Ahhh... that's a Cwtch. In that single instant you had nothing to fear not a care nor a concern in the world. All pressures, and problems were removed allowing your spirit to soar upwards free from the day to day troubles of life. Pass it On!
That’s what I give you right now! This wonderful love that all encompassing feeling of warmth that reaffirms your place in the universe, not to mention your immeasurable worth as a human being, a special person unlike anyone else.
A recipient of this special kind of love only found in Wales. If you’re Welsh then you already know about this special love, if you’re not then become an honorary Welsh man or woman and pass the Cwtch onto someone else.
  In 2005 the Oxford English Dictionary included "cwtch" for the first time, describing it as, "Noun (Welsh) 1. a cupboard or cubbyhole. 2. a cuddle or hug.

What is Wenglish?
Although a lot of people in Wales don't speak Welsh, the influence the Welsh language has had on the way we speak is huge. We regularly use Welsh words mixed in with our English vocabulary and our sentence structure is often governed by the way you would say things in Welsh. This mixture of a language is called Wenglish.

Cwtch is the nations favourite word!
Cwtch, the Welsh word for cuddle, has emerged as the favourite word in Wales, according to a recent survey, and the word is now heard popping up on popular TV shows such as Gavin and Stacey.

Cwtch, or Cwtsh, has been adopted by many in the cross-over language of Wenglish and is particularly popular in the South Wales valleys. Linguist Professor David Crystal admitted it was quite unusual to have such a strongly Welsh word feature so highly in a survey.

 

BT Openreach asked 50,000 people to contribute a word worth £1 for the charity 'I Can' to develop children's language skills.
The top word voted for across the UK in the internet Wall of Words was "love" with "hope" and "happy" also featuring in the top 10. Professor Crystal, who is based in Holyhead on Anglesey, said it was not surprising then that the Welsh for cuddle should feature so prominently. "It's heart-warming to see that, despite all our daily pressures and worries, so many positive emotional words are turning up in this list," he said. 'To love and to cwtch' Cardiff journalist Steve Johnson and his wife Tracy Goode, who are both originally from the valleys, took the word "cwtch" into their hearts, using it as part of their wedding vows when they married in December 2005. "We said 'to love and to cwtch' instead of 'to love and to hold'," explained Steve. "We start each day with a cwtch and end with a cwtch. We're the cwtching couple of Canton!" he said. 

Here are some directions for those of you still not sure lol! 

 Maybe we should all try this welsh or not and start and end each day with a cwtch whether crafty or not.
Pip.x

3 Layer Flower Pattern

 I sort of made up a pattern for a lovely 3 layer flower which is quick and easy to make and can be used to finish any project such on a bag hairband or shoe or as I have in a picture frame. It can be made using any colours so if you have a small amount of wool left over you can use it up on this small project. I love making small items such as these as I get bored quickly and like to finish things asap. The layers can be made in any colour combination you like by just changing your wool between each row. If you have any problems just ask and il try my best to help. The next time I make one I will take some more photos so it is easier to understand.

Start by chaining 5 and slip stitch together to form a circle.

Rnd 1. Dc 10 into the circle, the circle should fill up pull around a bit while doing it to make sure there is enough room. Slip stitch into top of first dc.

Rnd 2. Chain 3 in first dc and slip stitch to the next do the same all around so you end up with 5 chain loops (petals) .

Rnd 3. 5 dc into each petal.

Now work from behind! For 2^nd row of petals  Don’t get scared lol.!

 step1.Stick your hook in and through the 2 loops behind the petal you have just finished, chain five and slip stitch through the next 2 loops on the next petal, do this all the way around so you have 5 petal chain loops again.

step2. Now work 3 dc 3 tr 3 dc in each petal around.

For 3^rd row of petals do the same as for second but chain 8 to make slightly larger and when crocheting into the petals add in a few more stitches for eg 4 dc 4 trc 4 dc .

Just experiment with the petals you can chain more or less to make petals larger or smaller, crochet more or less into the petals tr makes the petal more pointy in the centre as it’s a taller longer stitch  and change colours for each row of petals or do all the same colour what ever you fancy.

Add a button  in the middle or bead crystal etc whatever you want.

Have fun.

Pip.x

Happy Mothers Day x

Now today it's Mothering Sunday, in the UK, and I'm sat in bed having been presented with cups of tea, a bowl of porridge (I did try to get up to eat it, but was cadgoled into staying under the covers) and two lovey cards, some fab pressies which include some Hotel Chocolat chocolates mmmmm! Some sanctuary body wash ( I hope they're not hinting at something lol) which I love. From my older daughter I got a lovely Radley (yes RADLEY!!) tote shopper for my ever expanding yarn collection and a little eyeshadow compact. Really surprised! They also surprised me yesterday after going shopping in Wells with a bunch of lovely tulips and a button box. Thank you girls, thoroughly spoilt xxx

So today is my day off where I get to do whatever I like. No one has even told me to get up yet!!! Think I might start planning and organising my big project this afternoon.

Early Easter Idea


Easter is going to be early this year so I though I'd get a head start and make some thing eastery! Not sure that's a proper word, even for a welsh person (lol). So of I went again trawling through the Internet for ideas, so inspiring to just type in Easter crochet into google and loads of images come up. My girls have no idea how lucky they are having the Internet to draw from. Who remembers only having text books and having to go to the library to find out anything. Now days you just google it, and it is just phenomenal, it really is. Any how I googled and came across some cute egg cosies that looked easy and quick. The link for the pattern is here.www.allfreecrochet.com/Easter-Crochet/Chick-Egg-Cozy-Family-from-Red-Heart-Yarn# I adapted and changed a few minor things to individualised them for me. I decided not to put feet on them as I didn't like the way they looked and felt they didn't add anything really to the overall finish. I also didn't add the tails as I could see the point of them either. They were surprisingly easy and quick to make up and i really think they're cute. Perfect for topping a creme egg (a normal hen egg proved to large but maybe a medium/small egg would be ok).

Unfortunately when I turned my back on these earlier, my furry angels, Ruby and Polly helped themselves to the chocolate eggs underneath and demolished the lot!! I think they will be a little off colour for the next day or two now :-( Tx

Happy St David's Day

Happy St David's Day from the Mendip Hills! It's a lovely place to live but I do miss Welsh Wales and maybe one day we will go back, but we're quite happy where we are,for now.... I climb the hill most day with the dogs and on a lovely blue sky day you can see clear across the Severn estuary and Bristol Channel to see the coast of Wales. On a really really clear day you can just make out Twmbalrwm on the mountain in Cwmbran which is where I grew up.

So today is St David's day...celebrated all over Wales and Patagonia. I used to love St David's day in school as a kid. We all used to dress up in our welsh lady costumes and have special assemblies and eisteddfod, when we would sing welsh folk song and poems and do country dancing. It was always good fun and I always felt that my own 2 girls missed out on this tradition growing up outside of Wales, especially as the English don't really celebrate St George's day at all, it's barely acknowledged in the English schools. I did try and get them to dress up once or twice when they were in the infants schools but they didn't want too which was understandable really....no child wants to put themselves 'out there'. Still.....Dydd Gwyl Dewi Hapus!

What can I make that is inspired by 'the land of my Fathers'? Well we are a rugby mad family so I was inspired to make myself a little hat to wear to the match! It was really easy to make and very quick. I selected a nice red acrylic yarn as the base colour and started working in the round (but not amugurami style) closing of each round by joining with a ss (slip stitch) at the end. I basically got this pattern for the hat from Lucy at Attic24 but changed the colours to my own. When the hat was finished all red and black, it was a bit plain to be fair. So I threaded some nice green (for the valleys) in a running stitch through the single red round between the black. Result! Looked 'stunnin'! .....but it needed more..

When you think of Welsh emblems you think of Leeks, The Prince of Wales Feathers and Daffodils. Oh and Red Dragons of course. So being girly I decided on a good old yellow Daffodil. The daff is a very large headed flower with that huge trumpet sticking out, this was going to be interesting. So I trawled the Internet for inspiration....it's such a good place, just typed in 'crochet daffodil' clicked on images until I found something I could work with and adapt. I made this up myself..
I needed 4 green leaves and 6 yellow leaves and a trumpet.
The leaves were easy, all the same pattern.
Make a chain of 10 then turn and dc in the 9 chain, then another dc into the next chain then a htr into the next and then a tr and then another tr then another htr then 3 dc into the remaining chains. When you get to then end make a chain stitch to turn and then basically do the whole thing backwards again on the other side of the leaf. Ss to finish. Did this for all the leaves, really was super fast to do.
Next came the trumpet. This was made in the round using the amugurami technique of which I am a big fan. I started with a basic chain 4 then dc into the centre for 6. Increased with dc for 12, then a further increase to 18 using dc the 2dc all the way round. I then ran round about 7 rounds to give the trumpet depth. To give the edges that kind of fluted look I increased again every 3 stitched and then did a further 2 rows so that the trumpet started to curl. Ss to finish.

The green leaves were stitched on first as background, then the yellow ones arranged on top and stitched on. The trumpet was stitched on last, but here I didn't want the trumpet sticking out so I flattened it down and held it down with some extra stitches, but you can still see the inside of the trumpet and it looks 3D.

Finished, Ta dan! = well chuffed!

 




We went the rugby and outside our spiritual home (Millennium Stadium, Cardiff) I pulled the hat out of my bag and my brother laughed at me and said ' O, you been crocheting Wales hats ha ha', I put it on and his face just turned to surprise and he said ' oh actually that's really nice, looks good'. High praise indeed.  Tx

Little Bunny for Little Lady G!

I don't know how to describe my niece to you, she's only 6 years old and her personality blows me away! She's a really, really outgoing extrovert and the mute button is really hard to find on her. I've decided to give her a nick name on this blog, so she will now for ever be known as Little Lady G. :-D she will love that! The reasons being, her initial is actually G and when she was 4, we went to Glastonbury Carnival and she was dancing in the street to Lady Ga Ga's Bad Romance. People actually stopped and watched her rather than the floats and performers....guess you had to be there but it was very funny at the time.

Anyway, Pip asked me to make her a little bunny in the amugurami style. I love amugurami crochet. It's a technique that is very popular in Japan and is used a lot for making toys and hats. It's basically working in a round (no turning or single crochet at the end). The difficulty with is is that you have to be accurate with it. You have to mark the start of each round, with a safety pin or some kind of marker, and you have to count to make sure you have the right amount of stitches the whole time otherwise the shape you are truing to make will go all wonky and look, well, weird. I like working in the round, my very first project in France was an amugurami teddy. Pip finds it frustrating.

I came across an amugurami bunny pattern in Issue 2 of Simply Crochet magazine (thanks for the subscription Pip x). Perfect! Picked out some pink DK acrylic Yarn (Little Lady G is very girly but no doubt this bunny will get washed a few times and acrylic Yarn washes and dries well) and away I went, following the pattern. I used a 4mm hook not a 3mm as stated in the pattern as I wanted it to be a little bigger. Amugurami is quite a tight form of crochet so I wouldn't use any bigger a hook than a 4mm. When you stuff your finished toy you don't want the stitches to stretch and show the stuffing inside. So if you have a go at toy making just be aware that the tension has to be quite tight.

It was a bit fiddly this one...
The head and the body were fine to make. But the arms and legs! The were so small! At some point your doing a long time with only 9 stitches...that's barley big enough to get my finger in.
And the ears, loved the way they shaped themselves but again really narrow towards the end as I was working with only 8 stitches. Fiddly, very.

So here are the finished body parts....

It's been stuffed and sewn together now and it looks....PINK!!!! Need to tone it down a bit somehow.... Accessories, always accessories....a hat...oooo with flowers. Off I went and selected a lovely yellow yarn from my stash and quickly wizzed up a lovely little yellow hat. Done in the round again and this time as I was increasing I measured where the ears were and made slits for the ears to go through. This was done by chaining 5 stitched to make a gap and then just stitching into them on the next round, so easy and simple. I increased again to ward the end to give the hat a nice girly curly edge. Green running stitch was added when I actually stitched it onto the bunny to secure it in place. Made a couple of tiny green leaves and three tiny pink flowers, stitched in to place, job done. Sooo cute now. :-)

 The ears on this are huge so I hand stitched a little flower motif on one ear just to pretty it up a bit more and then embroidered a little heart on the sole of one of it feet.

Ta Dah! Easter bunny for Little Lady G from Aunty Tam xxx

Tx