Long Time, No Posts Probably, No Visitors but...

As always the same old excuse - things get busy and something falls by the wayside.

There has been some crafting going on but getting down to the putting it on the blog has not been happening.

Avid Crafter has made some beautiful gifts for friends. She sewed a patchwork scarf, knitted a neckwarmer, created a bag, cooked chocolate brownies and bestowed these as gifts to four of her friends. Sorry no photos at this stage - they are there somewhere but not easily found.

I have Zentangled and found that it is a great way to snatch a little relax time as you focus on just creating the pattern you are working on. I bought a little sketchbook to do my drawing in and then decided it needed a cover. I had seen something that I liked in Kata Golda's book - Hand-stitched Felt - so I hunted out some felt and created a felt cover with pockets to keep my pen, pencil and shading stub in. I had a trial create first and made the stationary pouch exactly as described in the book and then adapted this for my sketchbook cover.

They were great fun to make and I used a little bit of felting I had made for the pocket. More about the felting later in this post.

Here is one page of my drawings using the Zentangling. I am having great fun experimenting with all the patterns that are shared from the newsletters, flickr pool and various blogs.

Next bit of crafting was gifted to my mother. When the Craft Fair was in town I went and looked and spent and signed up for a felting workshop. It was to make a scarf from a long piece of wool batt to which you added pieces of wool tops and silk to create a design, wet it down, worked it over and over and over to felt it altogether. In the end you get something like this.

Next shot shows a close up of one end.

I was pretty pleased with the result. This was something I had never tried before and I enjoyed creating it. I came home with some more batting, tops and silk to try out some more but stuck to much smaller pieces than the scarf. I have used the pieces for the pockets of my book cover and stationary holder and cut some up into squares for some cards.

One last little link. I stumbled across this set of tutorials and loved the little needle book. Just the thing to keep your needles safe when travelling.

Happy crafting!