Crafty Bits and Bobs

Finally Finished

2011-02-11T21:52:00.005+11:00

This blog has been very neglected since late last year but at last I have finished the ripple blanket for Avid Reader and felt that it deserved a post.

Ta Da

It fits over the top of a double bed with no overhang and as requested the ripple colours are random and every now and then a variegated ripple was added. Avid Reader is very happy with the result and I am pleased to have finished it. The super easy instructions from Attic 24 were just brilliant.

It is a nice heavy weight blanket that will be used for snuggling on the couch and an extra layer come winter time.

There will be no more posts for a while as Avid Reader and Crafty Things focus on other interests and work/study for the time being. Thanks to all our lovely visitors for dropping by.

I Was a Winner.

2010-10-18T16:07:00.010+11:00

Boy, oh, oh, boy, I was a winner in a blog giveaway run by DragonflyCrafts. Look at the lovely goodies I received.

The parcel with lovely photo card.

The contents. The sewing on these is just so even and the colours fit together beautifully. Thanks very much, Fiona.

On the creating front a few felt softies have been created. The first was an elephant - made as a sample to show a group of children. the pattern came from the very useful book on my bookcase - My First Sewing Book Hand Sewing by Winky Cherry. The patterns in this book have been ever so useful over a long period of time.

The eyes are split pins and the tail has been plaited on after the sewing was finished. The idea for the split pin eyes came from the kits I have purchased from Paper and String. The elephants sewn by the children were then decorated with glitter and fabric paints whereas mine was left very plain.

Second on the felt softie creating spree was a little car. This time I created the pattern myself with some help from some images found trawling the web. Again this was a model to inspire a group of children.

When I worked on this softie with the children we left out the split pin idea. I had tried this to see if it would look like a door handle but in the end decided the car looked fine without this addition. I did wonder about adding buttons for the wheels but have not tried out that idea yet.

Last on the creation line were some Perching Doves from Fa La La La Felt. I purchased an ebook copy of this great little book of felt Christmas decorations and chose the doves to have a go at first. I tried out several different variations before settling on the way I like to make these. They are a little addictive - I couldn't just make one!

With these two I followed the directions in the book to stitch the wing detail but I added the curve at the top of the wing and a second row of decorative stitching inside the first.

With these two I experimented with stitching on a wing that I had cut out with pinking shears but in the end found this to be a little fiddly. I also experimented with both blanket stitch and running stitch around the outside and decided that I preferred the running stitch. I love the way Amanda Carestio has designed these to be sewn onto pegs! Instead of buttons for the eyes I again resorted to split pins.

The ripple blanket is still slowly growing - lucky for me the recipient is so relaxed about when she will get the finished item!

Happy Crafting

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

2010-08-16T07:49:00.007+10:00

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!

Things Discovered

2010-06-18T06:56:00.005+10:00

Just a quick post with a few links for you.

I just came across this tutorial and am just waiting until I can try it. I like the idea of a carry strap and the lovely big button holding everything together. This is one of the positive things I admire about the crafty blog community - so many people are willing to share their ideas.

I also came across this art idea. The idea of breaking down complex patterns into easily repeated patterns that are then combined to create very interesting images was one that really appealed to me. I followed a few links and was amazed by the number of images being created.

Have you seen the envelope project coming together at Meet Me At Mikes. I am enjoying watching the window display grow. We sent our envelope off and it was very satisfying to see it in amongst all the others. Check it out over on Flickr.

Photos and Chitchat

2010-06-09T08:58:00.011+10:00

I am still working on the ripple blanket. It is slowly growing in size.

Even though winter is definitely here there is still some lovely autumn colour around. Here is an autumn leaf photo collage of some leaves that found their way into my back garden from a tree in a neighbouring garden. The colours are just so rich.

Have you read about this little project.

Meet Me At Mikes are asking for decorated envelopes to make a window display and to be part of little bit of crafting goodness and sharing. Inside your envelope the folk at Meet Me At Mikes are asking for a little bit of crafting ephemera. One lucky person will receive all the goodies after a lucky draw. Avid Crafter and I are putting an envelope together soon.

In the mail this week I received my copy of Mettazine by iHanna. It is all about art journaling and I have been waiting patiently for it to arrive after I purchased it from her Etsy shop a while ago. I love it - there are definitions, explanations, inspirations, prompts and some ephemera to get you started. I like the wallpaper cover and the touches of colour sprinkled through it. Thanks very much iHanna.

I am making some recycled books as well. They are A5 in size and all the pages are old photocopies folded in half so that the print is hidden and there are lovely white pages ready for some drawing or writing to be added. There are 15 leaves which makes each notebook have 30 pages. The covers are made from scrapbooking papers or decorated watercolour paper and the back is a piece of sturdy cardboard. They are bound with a stitched binding. Each one had a piece of brown paper tape on the front for a label. They would not be any good for collage work as the binding would not have enough flexibility.

I am thinking of putting some in our Madeit shop - the poor neglected place. Would you buy something like this? What price do you think would be good?

Skirt Sewing

2010-06-05T08:00:00.004+10:00

A request was made from Avid Crafter for a new skirt. I was shown some examples, in a few of the local shops, of skirts her friends had purchased and was asked did we have any fabric that could be used to create something along a similar idea. Next step was to hunt through the accumulated fabric stash to unearth some grey wool that had been purchased some nine years earlier and not used. It was a piece of fine merino wool suiting that had been bought to make a pair of light but warm trousers for Avid Crafter when she was much younger but they never happened. Wasn't she lucky.

The skirt style requested was of the pencil variety with front and back darts, back lapped zipper and a length of slightly above the knee. I had drafted a similar skirt for her some time earlier but when the shell was tried back on there was no wearing ease left so off to look through the pattern books we went as I was feeling too lazy to go through the drafting process at the time. We settled on a Kwik Sew pattern - no 2957.

The correct size was traced off and then I had to remember all the lessons learned a while ago to get this little skirt made. The zipper was first and it went well apart from forgetting the excellent tip I had been taught about adding extra to the seam allowance in the zipper area. If you do this it so much easier to do a lapped zipper. We have made a note to alter the pattern for the next time.

Darts were next and the back ones looked fine but the front darts were angled in an unusual way and did not look at all right. In the end I undid the darts up to the waist seam line and left them as sloped tucks. These were OK as they mimic the shape and style of the examples I had been shown. These front darts disappointed me as I had not, up until that point, bought a Kwik Sew pattern that had not met with total approval of the design.

We wanted a little bit of design detail and ended up with a red oraganza ribbon strip down the front. It is slightly off centre and has a piece of the grey wool underneath that has been put on without the edges being neatened. Three vintage buttons were added to the top of this strip.

Side seams were sewn and the waistband was added - again I forgot some of the good tips taught to me until part way through this part of the sewing but in the end the waistband was on and I had even managed to make both sides of the zipper even after they looked very uneven after inserting the zipper. Time for a fitting. All was good but we think that a little more room in the waist might be needed when the pattern is used again. A buttonhole and red button were attached rather than a hook and eye as there is no shortage of buttons in this crafting household. The buttonhole went well until the cutting time. I did not line up the buttonhole chisel correctly and cut the stitches on one side so then it was out with the needle and thread to add some hand buttonhole stitches to make sure all was OK.

The final request was for a fancy hem so we settled on creating a wide band at the bottom. This was done as the hem which made hemming so easy. Fold up the required wide band, machine tack at the bottom edge, fold back and run around it with the overlocker and fold it back down.

One small incident with melted organza ribbon was the last trouble spot. Luckily that was rescued by undoing some stitching and inserting a new piece of ribbon. Whew!!!

The end result - what do you think? The back view show how the waistband is a little on the tight side as the line from the zipper to the top of the band should be straight but I need to allow some breathing room!

There is some more vintage fabric to use up so I think there will be another skirt produced with this pattern. A top is also almost finished using the same pattern as these. The fabric is a patterned rib knit with some red in it so it may well be teamed up with the new skirt at some time.

Happy sewing.

Tawashi

2010-06-04T08:00:00.005+10:00

Have you heard of tawashi? The cute way of washing things!! I recently wandered through Ravelry looking for quick things to crochet. I needed something quick and easy to do if I wanted a break from rippling. I found lots of tawashi patterns and decided that these would be fun to create. Have a look at this flickr pool called Tawashi Town II.

In the end I chose this one. It is a great little pattern and I have made several. The first two were from cotton and the only difficulty I have was getting the size right. The first one was too small so I doubled the cotton and found that this created one that would be just right for in the shower.

Next up I experimented with some nylon net and ended up with the above cute dish scrubber. Much prettier to look at than the very practical scrubbers found in the supermarket aisle. It has been good - wearing out slowly but no more than anything else I have used to scrub my dishes. I have washed it in boiling water with no damage and the only difference now is a change of colour in some places because of the washing of curry containers.

Happy Crafting!!

Bits of This and That

2010-06-03T17:51:00.003+10:00

Wow more than a month since this little space has seen a new post. Things have been progressing slowly but steadily with the ripple blanket - probably a quarter of the way to being finished. This has been a great TV crochet. It has the added benefit of keeping me warm at the same time. No more pictures of this yet.

A book I have had on hold at the library for ages and ages was ready for me to pick up last week and that has sparked a little flower crafting. The book is called Kanzashi In Bloom and whoohoo is it one I think I may need to buy to add to the bookshelf. The instructions are very clear and the projects offer all sorts of inspiration.

Take a look at my efforts so far.

The little blue flower was the first one I tried and I added a button to it that I bought about 10 years ago in a button shop in Melbourne. I bought two of them and each one cost five dollars. I am not sure what I will do with this flower next. Maybe I will add a brooch back or possibly put it on a pretty pincushion so that I can look at it every time I sew. The big blue flower on the little board with the pegs and buttons was much larger and I found it more difficult to get a nice shape - all the petals seem to twist sideways. This is now hanging on my wall waiting for a few postcards to hang from it.

Check out the flickr pool of blooms made by people who have used the book.

Must go now. Happy Crafting!!

Wool+Hook+Pattern=Blanket in Progress

2010-04-28T08:30:00.003+10:00

With this wool:

and the help of this lovely blog - attic24

this blanket is in progress.

There is lots of rippling to go but so far I have been pleased with the progress. Hopefully when it is finished it will fit on a single sized bed. The wool is from the Bendigo Woollen Mills with some other yarns from the stash thrown in for good measure.

A bag and a felt softie to share

2010-04-11T12:33:00.003+10:00

It has taken a while but a I have made a new bag with help from Crafty Things. The pattern was Huntington Hobo by Pink Sand Beach Designs.

I had a bit of trouble with some of the instructions. The photos in the pattern instructions were hard to see as they were too small but with some help from Crafty Things I finished it. I used a different interfacing so the bag is floppier. This picture shows the back of the bag with the zipper pocket and there is another pocket inside without a zip. When I test ran the bag I found the inside pocket to be a little on the small side and some things fell out. It is going to be used for carrying books to school and probably not as an everyday handbag. I like how it looks and it is very roomy. This was the first bag I have made with zippers and these were the bits where I needed the most help. Thanks, Crafty Things.

Here it is part way through construction.

A while ago I made this cute kitty. It was a kit from Cupcakes for Clara and came with everything you needed to make the kitty. I think I might have run out of one of the threads but everything else was perfect. I wasn't quite sure if I liked him at first but he has been growing on me lots.

Applique on Drawstring Bag

2010-01-21T14:33:00.004+11:00

A quick post to share this little applique. I needed to repair a pair of denim shorts - they have been so well loved that the fabric had worn thin on the front. I added an applique flower just like the one in the photo with a smaller one on the other leg. I did some repair work to the inner leg seams with a multi stitch zigzag, some bias tape and a bit of fusible webbing and will now get a little more wear from the shorts before they fall apart. I fused the bias tape to the inside of the seams and then used the multi stitch zigzag on the outside to hold it all together.

I like the colours I had chosen for the applique so made another and added to a lined drawstring bag. This bag will come in handy to hold those little bits and pieces that need a home in my creating space.

Off to sort some of the accumulated stash of fabric, felt, yarn, buttons and other things crafty.

A New Bag

2010-01-19T20:32:00.008+11:00

I have had great fun with the sewing machine this week. A few little fishes, a few drawstring bags and then this. It all started with a little piece of patched fabric - just a few rectangles sewn together and the thought of "what will this become?"

I added two strips of osnaburg either side and then some more fabric top and bottom. At this point I was thinking of a tote. I then hand-stitched the three rows of running stitch using Perle cotton and found the the three buttons. It needed to be a bit wider if I wanted to use box corners at the bottom so I added two more fabric strips at the sides and at this point thought I would experiment with a different back.

For the back I used osnaburg with a layer of flannelette and added satin stitched ovals with two different coloured threads - the idea from this came via the book "Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts".

At this point I joined the front and back together. I added a backing of flannelette to the front as well. I added box corners on the outside instead of hiding them on the inside of the bag. I had tried this on a bag before Christmas and like to look of it. The lining was a piece of light weight cotton.

What kind of handles was the next step along with a closing of some sort. In the end I went with a drawstring top that was the same as the one I tried here. The last idea was for it to have a long strap so that I could use it messenger style - I like this style as it is hands free. As always I made the strap too long and had to shorten it by folding the strap on itself for a little bit and adding another button. I added some more patchwork to the strap but should also have interfaced it - it is a bit soft.

The end result is OK but the drawstring doesn't work very well hence the addition of some beads that can slide along and help keep it closed. I have been using it for the last couple of days and I think I will like it. I have a zipper pouch and smaller drawstring bag inside it to keep things organised. Avid Crafter likes the fabric I created for the back of the bag.

I think it is now time to get stuck in and finish the crochet food and then move on to working on some of the kits that are just waiting to be finished.

Happy crafting.

Go Fish - a gift in the making.

2010-01-16T17:23:00.005+11:00

Some sewing has been progressing and a few little drawstring bags and zipper pouches have been made. More fabric has been purchased - the stash grows ever larger and a gift has been created.

Here is a little fish in the making. It is part of a set of ten that will be winging their way to a little nephew and niece. Each little fish has a washer sewn inside so that they can be caught with a magnet. I would love to link to the site from which the idea sprang but in the mysterious ways of the Internet it is no longer there???? This blogger has also made some and linked to the original site but has noted the disappearance of said site.

I have used the freezer paper method to create each fish and simply tucked a metal washer (I had some of these and decided to use them instead of the suggested magnets inside the fish) in the centre of the fish as I sewed around the edge of the freezer paper fish shape. There are two layers of fabric with a piece of batting in the middle add a little bulk.

Once I have sewn all around the edge I removed the freezer paper fish shape and cut outside the stitching with my pinking shears. Then I moved the washer to the mouth end of the fish and used my zipper foot to sew a curve around it - trapping it in place. I was able to reuse the freezer paper fish for each of my different fabrics as I just pressed it in place with a warm iron and then peeled it off after the stitching was done.

In the end there were ten little fishies. They will packed in a post bag very soon and my lovely Mum with help by acquiring the required magnet and pole to create the rest of the fishing game at it's destination.

I can remember making a set of fish for my own children but they were not as colourful as these. I made them from scraps of fleecy fabric (I cannot remember what used inside to be caught by the magnet) and used safety pins to add numbers to the bottom of the fish so that they could play a game and see who could catch the more valuable fish with the higher numbers to win the game. They were also just as happy to go fishing with no numbers attached - they would use my cane laundry basket as a boat and sit there quite happily fishing away. The magnet was a big horseshoe one that we tied to a cardboard tube with some very thick white cord. Not very attractive but very practical and created in minutes.

I think I will be making some more of these for me and others.

I am still creating the crochet play food and and now made pancakes and a salad bowl with lettuce, tomato pieces and onion strips but have no photos yet.

Crochet Play Food

2009-12-31T14:22:00.003+11:00

I have been waiting for some time to make some of the things from a book I purchased just before Christmas. The book is called Tasty Crochet and is by Rose Langlitz. The things made will find their way to little nieces and nephews when they are all done. So far I have tried out the mini cheeseburger, pizza slice, toast triangle, fried egg, tomato slice, lettuce, egg shell, and apple wedge. The patterns are great and very easy to follow.

Mini Cheese burger with lettuce and tomato. At this point I did not have any yellow for the cheese. That is in progress now.

Fried egg, toast triangle and egg shell. The egg can be put inside the shell.

Slice of pizza with pepperoni, peppers and olives.

Oh Dear - time passes quickly!!

2009-12-29T14:37:00.003+11:00

There has been a long time since our last post - does anybody visit anymore? Full time work for Crafty Things and end of year school doings for Avid Crafter left us very busy. Christmas crafting was confined to creating this year's cards and some decorations for the tree using my paper and string patterns. Some robins and some reindeer were added to the tree. No scans of the card design yet. It was created using my Gocco printer with some added watercolour shading once the design was printed. I drew a little robin using Inkscape to help me and then added a hand lettered greeting.

The picture at the top of the post is a collage of some photos I took this morning on our walk to the shop from our shack - along the beach and up the track. Lots of stopping for photo taking and enjoying the scenery. I was lucky enough to be able to treat myself to a new lens for my camera and now must learn how to get the best out of it. Chasing butterflies and seagulls tests it out very well!!

Relaxing at the shack is the ideal time for some crafting to happen. Some crochet food is being trialled at the moment. The patterns are from a book called Tasty Crochet by Rose Langlitz. The only problems so far have been with not having enough colours to fully finish any one item. Taking the whole yarn stash to the shack would be very hard to do!

Maybe there will not be quite so much time between posts while we summer holidaying.

Who says elephants can't be orange!

2009-11-14T12:56:00.003+11:00

This fellow follows on from my penguin that I designed earlier in my Art & Fashion class. I just tweaked the penguin patters, making the body section a little shorter and rounder, then making pieces for legs, ears and a trunk. He didn't turn out quite as I imagined, but very cute nonetheless. He is made mostly from felt, with the patterned sections coming from random scraps of fabric, his eyes are buttons, the eyelashes from dimensional paint (I was going to sew them on first, but I forgot when I was sewing him up, so dimensional paint it was!), and he has a little plaited tail made of orange wool. There are toy-pellets in the base so he is nice and weighty. The outsize ears and slightly downwards facing expression make him look like a shy, baby elephant to me.

When I make another, I think I would make the trunk shorter and perhaps curved more. I did cut a little off the original pieces I cut when I attached the trunk, but I would still prefer it a bit shorter. Also I would interface to fabric pieces with a nice soft interfacing so they didn't fray. This definitely isn't a toy for children; I doubt he would be up to much rough handling even if he didn't have 'choking hazards'.

Once again I got some lovely comments from my classmates and a few of them tried to sneak him home with them! I have a couple of requests for some more :-) I love when designs work out so well.

Sewing, Sewing, Sewing

2009-10-31T10:18:00.006+11:00

Well the bag lead to some inspiration to keep sewing. Do you get like that? Start one sewing project and then that snowballs into more so sewing becomes the obsessive activity for a while before something else catches your attention and you switch to that.

In the photo there are a couple of fabric baskets made using Pink Penguin's tutorial. In the second one I experimented with stripes as well as patchwork squares.

Browsing through my favourite tutorials and my rather large stash of fabrics led me to creating a set of criss cross coasters. I found a new tutorial for a reversible drawstring bag and I had a few squares left from the bags so I created a bag for the coasters to live in. Everyone who sews has more fabric than they could possibly use, don't they? There is fabric that just begs for a home when you walk past it in the shop, doesn't it?

Last was another drawstring bag using the techniques from a bookmarked favourite. This blog has a series of posts that document the development of her drawstring techniques. I use this often because it creates a very nice lined pouch for tucking things in.

Two new felt project kits have arrived from paper and string. The robin and the reindeer kits plus some ribbon and brads winged their way to my house from the UK. These have jumped queue to the top of the to do list. Hopefully I will get some time to start these soon but an unexpected house guest is arriving late today so I will just have to see how much time is left.

Bag Making

2009-10-24T15:51:00.007+11:00

Some more sewing has been happening. I needed a gift for a lovely friend so I decided to use a small stitching that I had just finished and incorporated it into a bag loosely based on the tote bag from the Bend the Rules sewing book. It is larger than the bag in the book and I lengthened the longer strap quite a bit. The stitching was part of a kit purchased at the Craft Fair earlier in the year. It is called Stitched with Love and is by Calico Farm Designs.

I was very pleased with the end result and it was one of those gifts that was so hard to give away. I would have loved to keep it for myself but know that it will be well used by the recipient. The bag is big enough to fit a medium sized lunch box or book and a drink bottle. I added a small zipper pouch for keeping small things in and looped that around the strap. For the zippered pouch I used my favourite tutorial by Sew Sally. I really like her construction technique and the way the zipper is on one side of the pouch. The last part of the gift was a small drawstring pouch for holding stuff. For this I used my bookmarked tutorial from happythings.

I modified the base of the bag by making a feature of the boxed corners. This idea came from my copy of the Zakka Sewing book that I was lucky enough to win earlier in the year. I folded the corners to the outside after sewing across them and added a wooden button as decoration.

I seem to have found a few tutorials that I go back to again and again. Do you have tutorials like that - bookmarked to get back to easily or used so often they become just part of your sewing repertoire?

A Little Bit Of Sewing

2009-10-17T19:05:00.004+11:00

I found another book to add to the collection last week courtesy of a post on this blog. The book is called Felties and I have created two already.

The book has eighteen little felt critters to create. Each one is pocket sized and they do not take very long to make. I adapted each one slightly as I didn't want to use beads as I am going to gift these to some little people. I also stitched rather than gluing for some of the smaller parts.

First meet Pensive Rabbit.

And second to be created was Babuska. Instead of the beads used by the author I stitched some flowers.

I have a few more on the list of things to sew. The list that is growing oh - so - loooooonnnngggg!

Kumihimo Braiding

2009-10-06T14:37:00.004+11:00

I have been having fun with our Kumihimo braiding disc and some lovely silk threads. After making a long braid with some Colour Streams silk thread I had a shorter set of lengths left over. I put these on the disc and braided it into a short length. It was just long enough to make into this keyring.

The shade is called Seascape and it has yummy pale turquoise, blue, yellow and pale jade colours within it. Sorry for the photo quality but outside it is raining again.

The Celtic knot design came from one of the books we accumulated with our braiding supplies. The book is by Beth Kemp and is called HowToKumihimo.

The silk threads are great to work with although they snag easily if your hands have rough skin. I am still experimenting to find out with thickness of threads to use for my necklace length braids. I have also made a few bracelets.

Ramblings, loooong ramblings!

2009-10-04T15:34:00.005+11:00

Hello internet, I am finally back from my travels and all is back to normal. Very sad, I know.

Crafty Things mentioned in her last post that I was selected in the Tasmanian Junior State Squash Team and spent the last week of September in Sydney competing the Australian Junior Squash Championships. This of course was right after our family holiday (which included going to Sydney), which was fantastic. I have only one photos to share because I didn't take any whilst in Sydney for squash and all the holiday photos are on the other computer.

With all my to-ings and fro-ings with Sydney I managed to miss the spectacular dust storm that was in the news all over the place, but this is the dust haze that was around for one morning while I was competing. This is the view (of the Bunnings towers!) from my hotel window in Thornleigh. It was a little creepy, but all gone by lunchtime.

The squash competition was great. I had a fantastic time, and have gained so much from the experience. As a little bonus, my results were also quite good. I would never describe myself as a top squash player or as a particularly bad one; I play because I enjoy it and train hard to improve because I do wish to play as well as I possibly can. I suppose this is summed up by the saying "If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well." The selection for the state team was a surprise and an honour in itself and going away to compete was even better. So I went into this competition curious to see how I fitted compared to the best players in the country, but not expecting to win. My goal was to gain points in every game of every match, to win one of those games if I could, to play the best shots, the best squash I could, to enjoy myself and the meet some other dedicated players my age.

I went into the opening round ranked 26th, the bottom in my age group, making my first match against the 7th seed. I warmed up for that match expecting her to be much better than me, but also hoping to stop it from being a complete white-wash. As it turned out, she did not entirely dictate the game play, I got points in all the three games, and some of my shots were ones that I could be proud of. So I came off that court having lost, but feeling as though I had won.

This continued all through out the tournament. I was getting points, although no games, and not being the player who really shouldn't have been there because they weren't good enough, one of my fears going into the competition. I came so close to winning a game in the fourth round match, and then in the warm-up for my fifth and final match something was a bit different. The girl I was playing was making as many errors warming up as I was and looking just as nervous as I was. It hit me then that this time I wasn't going in the underdog, we were at the same level.

I won that match in 3. I was amazed at elated at what I had done. I had discovered that I was good enough to compete at a National level in my chosen sport and do ok. I wasn't out of my depth. I had achieved above my goals, that I had thought were a mix of achievable and challenging. Turns out I could have set them even higher.

One feature of the Australian Junior Squash Championships is the MC Hazel award which is awarded to one male and one female player for the 'best performance' of the tournament. Each team official places votes each day for who they think should be given this award. The results are announced at the presentation function at the end of the individual events. When announcing it they read out the names of people who had achieved high numbers of votes, starting at 5 votes. I was surprised when my own name was read out as having 5 votes. 5 votes may not sound like much, but the winning level was around 11 votes and most of the players in the top groups were the players winning their divisions. Of course, winning is only a part of 'best performance', it includes many other factors, a large one being sportsmanship. I am guessing that it was my whole attitude at 'winning' even though I had 'lost' because I achieved higher than I had thought possible that was the reason for people to award me some votes.

As you can imagine, that really was the icing on the cake of one amazing week. The Nationals has left me with an ongoing sense of optimism and self-belief, that has continued past the bump of returning to everyday life (no more housekeeping to make the beds!). The whole thing was such a great experience. Now I have my fingers crossed that I will be able to compete at next year's Nationals in Alice Springs (so hot! Sydney was hot enough for this Tasmanian!) and be able to play the teams event as well as the individuals, some fundraising may be in order I think.

And to assure you that this really is a craft blog, the results of our little trip to a local handmade market :-)

It's a friend's birthday today, and since I have been away I haven't had a chance to make her a present so the next best thing was of course, buying something someone else had made!

The little cosmetic bag contains a bar of olive oil, rose and paprika soap and has a gorgeous little zipper pull:

Hopefully she likes the card and present as much as I do!

Sorry for all the crazy ramblings. it's amazing the amount of stuff that builds up in your head that you want to say!

Gosh, what a trip we have had!!

2009-09-21T13:41:00.003+10:00

We have not posted for over a month but it has been a busy one! Not much crafting because of all the other parts of life that intervene.

We had a sale in our Madeit shop - it is a real buzz when someone chooses to buy something that you have crafted yourself.

We have been on a family holiday and some of us are still holidaying. More about that next.

I have sewn some necessary squash skirts for Avid Crafter who is coming back from Sydney to go back to Sydney to compete in the Junior National Squash Championships.

The family holiday has just finished for me and DS who are back home but Avid Crafter and DH are bringing the car back and will have two more nights of holidays. We put the car on the Spirit of Tasmania and drove to Sydney via Lakes Entrance, Merimbula, Canberra, Bathurst and Katoomba. Two nights or three nights in most places except Bathurst. We ended up in Sydney in time for DS and his team mate to compete in the National Junior Robocup competition for his fifth and final time. Their team called The Covenant did really well ending up National Champions in the Premier division of the soccer competition.

A big proud mother moment for me!!

It has been a five year labour of love for our son who set the big goal three years ago with a simple statement - "In three years we will win the national competition" - after coming back from his second sponsored trip to the national competition. It has taken three years, they came close last year and then this year after a very tense Grand Final they won. The game was a very close competition with the score being level at 4 each with 45 seconds to go. A spectacular goal by on of DS's robots gave them the lead and it was a nail biting countdown to the final whistle as the ball remained in their defensive end right up to the whistle.

Both families made the trip to Sydney to cheer them on and became very involved with the tense atmosphere of the final. Shaking hands and breaths held as the other team kept leveling the score. Big cheers for every hard fought goal and then a very vocal count down of the last seconds - hoping that they held on to that very slender lead of one goal for the last 40 seconds.

We are so proud of the efforts the boys have put in over three years, fitting it in around school, sport and normal teenage social activities.

Avid Crafter got her first taste of Sydney. We had booked and organised our holiday before finding out that she had been selected in the state squad for the National Junior Squash Championships. This had led to the silly situation where she is driving back from Sydney to be home for one night before heading back to Sydney so her second taste of Sydney is going to occur right after her first! Life does get interesting at times.

On the crafting front we were able to visit a couple of craft related shops on our travels. One of these was at Bathurst. We got to browse in The Home Patch. This is the store next to where those lovely Hatched and Patched stitcheries were designed. Oh was it a nice place to browse. Avid Crafter and I got to look around and spend while the car went to a local car wash. The main purpose of adding Bathurst to the itinerary was for two others to have the opportunity to drive around the Mount Panorama race circuit but visiting The Home Patch was a splendid side effect of that!

In Sydney we spent lots of time in Morris and Sons to come away with some silk thread and stitching kits.

Sorry no photos yet - I am waiting for my camera to come home with those still on holiday.
Will stop now as the eyes are getting fuzzy - 4:30 start to get to the airport this morning.

Still here and trying to craft in amongst other stuff!!

2009-08-17T13:14:00.006+10:00

Yes, it has been a while since an update on this blog. If anybody is still visiting - sorry but life gets hectic and the blog languishes!

A new item in the crafting supplies was a Kumihimo braiding disc.

I first saw these a few craft fairs ago but paid little attention to them. Avid Crafter had the chance to do a workshop at this year's craft fair and that was enough to encourage us to obtain several to experiment with.

Along with several round discs we bought a square disc (yet to be used) and two lovely books. The books had plenty of ideas to get us started. Avid Crafter will most likely share her experiments in a post soon. I have made a few key chain decorations with thicker cord and some adjustable bracelets with thinner cotton thread. I have tried hand dying the thread first with some success although the colours in one bracelet faded considerably after a trip through the shower. Sorry no pictures of the bracelets yet - the weather has been very bad for photos.

So far I have tried cotton thread, wool, thick nylon cord and ribbon. Each one had it's own unique characteristics when braided and I really liked the ribbon combined with the cord. That experimental piece might becomes a bag handle one day.

I have sourced supplies from Punch with Judy and Braid and Bead Studio. I love the gallery on the Braid and Bead site.

What do you do when stuck at home with the lurgy?

2009-07-12T14:14:00.003+10:00

Why, craft of course!

I came down sick with a sore throat on Thursday and have been sniffly-snuffly and fuzzy headed since then. Leaving the house is about the last thing I want to do. So with all the extra time on my hands I got the perfect chance to craft. It also helps that it is far too wet to tackle the growing mound of laundry, even if I could be bothered.

This card was a quickly-made commission from Crafty Things because she had to work, poor thing. It is for her father's 70th birthday, if my lurgy-fied brain is remembering right. All the supplies were her own. Card, yarns, rub on alphabet. Couldn't be easier. It turned out nicely, I think. Simple, elegant and certainly not too girly.

Of course simple is best when crafting with the lurgy. Otherwise it is far too easy to make heaps of mistakes that just have to be fixed later.

This cross-stitch fits the bill. Nice blocks of colour and a cute design. I've been working on him for a couple of weeks now. He makes the perfect project to stitch on while watching a movie, and because Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince is about to be released there have been plenty of Harry Potter re-runs for me to watch. I love watching the first movies, they all look so young in them.

Anyway, this teddy will eventually have the words "Days... to remember" next to him. He is the the last kit from Crafty Thing's stash that I have to stitch but don't worry, I picked up a new one at the Craft Fair when it was here the other week. This adjustable hoop/frame system came from the Fair too.

It works with several different sized sections that screw together to make different sized rectangles. Then a plastic strip with little teeth is clipped onto the sides of the rectangles. You stretch the fabric over the frame and the teeth hold it in place. The handles then clip over the top to make it comfortable to hold. You do have to make the rectangle the right size to go around the edge of the whole design because the fabric ends up with little holes in it where the teeth grip it. So you need a decent amount of spare fabric. This teddy design only just has enough, it gets a bit hard to end of threads at the edges of the design. That's the only problem I've had aside from a little difficulty putting the aida on. Evenweave fabrics are much easier. I think a little practice will help. The whole frame is lovely and light though, and doesn't lose tension like my Q-snaps tend to do.

There's one other project I have been working on, but it deserves a post of its own. Besides, my lurgy-fied brain has just about had it. Time for some more stitching!

Finished Blanket

2009-07-09T20:34:00.003+10:00

In amongst lots of other things I have finished my crocheted blanket. It is lap sized and very snuggly. I really like the colours and the technique of joining as you go was a great one to learn.

On the go at the moment is a stitching from Calico Farm Designs - sorry but there are no pictures - and another neck warmer using Frog Tree alpaca yarn. I am experimenting with a little bit of the lacy pattern from another scarf pattern in the crossed over section of this scarf.

Finished Some Knitting

2009-06-28T12:09:00.010+10:00

A recent purchase from Bendigo Woollen Mills led to the knitting needles getting to work again. Part of the purchase was some very soft Alpaca in colourway Dusty Coral. Cruising through Ravelry led me to this pattern and here is the finished scarf.

The crochet hook is also busy at the moment with some Granny Squares. These are being made in to a blanket. The yarn for this is Bendigo Woollen Mill's Luxury in 10 ply. The colours I am working with are Leaf, Lake, Autumn Glow and Ghost. Sorry no photo as the one I tried to take does not show the colours well at all - will try again soon. I stumbled across a new way to join the squares as you go - quite nifty! Being 10 ply yarn the squares are quick to make but it is being fitted in amongst all sorts of other tasks so progress is slow.

An enjoyable day at the Craft Fair led to the acquisition of some new pieces of fabric, a couple of patterns, a mini iron for applique, a new applique mat, some silk ribbon for more dyeing experiments and another set of good pinking shears. Now all I need is the time to create some things with all these acquisitions!

Time for a Happy Dance!!

2009-06-20T15:22:00.004+10:00

You know what that means! Warning: This is a picture-heavy post!

Uh huh! The Spring girl is finished, the lucky last in the whole set. Here they all are together:

Don't they look good all together like that. I haven't worked out yet exactly how I'm going to put them together, or what they will actually end up being, but that's ok, there's no rush. There's plenty of fabric around the edges of each girl so I have plenty of room to move. Of course, I immediately moved on to something else, and finished it too! (ok so that's because I finished the Spring girl a little while ago, but hadn't taken any photos yet but shhh, no-one needs to know that!) So here is a cute May Gibbs bookmark front and back:

It is based on her famous book Snugglepot and Cuddlepie. Crafty Things had the kit sitting around for years, so I ended up stitching it instead.

And yes, I have the next one all ready to go :-)

In between doing those cross-stitch projects I made these from a pattern produced at my local-ish quilt shop.

Meet "Moggy" and "Sproggy". (No I didn't think of those names, they were on the pattern. Wish I did though!) They are not very big and only took me a weekend to make. Plus I did them all myself, no help needed :-) My machine-sewing skills are improving slowly!

So until next time, off I go to do some proper work.

Drawing Day 2009

2009-06-04T14:42:00.003+10:00

Calling all those who love to draw. Why not participate in Drawing Day 2009 by creating a drawing on June 6th and uploading it to flickr, your blog or one of the other particpating sites. Check out the information on the Drawing Day site.

Playing with Inkscape

2009-06-03T12:24:00.004+10:00

Crafty Things has been playing with a new little computer program called Inkscape. It is a vector drawing program. She made me a tag for my blog posts.

Ta Da!

Cute or what?

2009-05-24T15:00:00.003+10:00

I am really enjoying my Art & Fashion class. First was my book and next is this gorgeous fellow.

Everyone in the class has an opportunity to make a softy. The teacher has a copy of the book, Softies that most people use patterns from to make theirs. Because I've made a few softies before, had a little experience so to speak, I took the chance to design my own. That's right I made this fat little penguin up out of my head! I drew a picture of what I wanted him to look like and tried to make pattern pieces that resembled that picture, and on the whole it worked! He is made from felt, with buttons for eyes, and the main body shape is made with a square base and four leaf-shaped pieces with squared ends to give him lots of roundness. He's only about 20cms tall and has toy-pellets in the bottom to stop him falling over.

I'm so pleased with him and got lots of comments from my classmates who all wanting to take him home with them.

In other news, Spring Girl is finished! All four seasons are now done! Hopefully I'll have some decent photos to show you soon. Today is all grey and no good for photos.

Mother's Day Crafting

2009-05-17T21:39:00.003+10:00

Now that Mother's Day is done and at last my own Mother's Day present has been given to my wonderful MUM!!!! I can share some of what I have been busy with. This year I have been lucky to be working with a couple of classes of children and so the same Mother's Day gift was created by both classes ( all up I think about 55 were made). I got the initial idea from an art idea at this site. One of the posts on this site created a little wooden frame from wooden tongue depressors.

I modified the frame and added two pegs to the bottom to change the frame into a note hanger.

This one became the prototype for trialling art materials to add the wording. As per usual I forgot to get a photo of one of the finished products from all those that were made.

There are two different sizes of sticks used -two larger waxing stick are at the back and this meant that there was plenty of space to drill two holes for the hanger. My Fiskars drill came in quite handy for this. Over the two larger sticks eight smaller waxing sticks or tongue depressors (the name depends a bit on where you buy them from) are glued on and then some black gesso was put on by masking an area off. Lastly came the pegs and decorating.

Pony beads and cotton were used for the hangers. Little punched flowers and buttons were added for decoration. One of the classes punched and dyed all of the flowers. In the end we used opaque white paint pens and soft coloured pencils to add the wording. In the prototype photo I trialled coloured pencils, crayons and white drawing pencils.

On to the knitting status. I have finished one more neck warmer and have two almost finished. The finished one was made with some lovely purple wool and given to my Mum as part of her present - the other part was a "Mum's Notes" board.

Shop Update

2009-05-07T11:47:00.003+10:00

Ok, the first set of luggage tags are now for sale in our Madeit shop!

This pair is pocketless, since we're still figuring out how to make the card stay in the pocket.

So easy to use, you just thread the hairband through the zipper pull and loop it over the tag! Simple, but effective!

Now I'm off to the couch to cross-stitch with Marley & Me, and nurse the rotten head cold I've picked up.

Aaaand, a short one!

2009-04-27T19:11:00.005+10:00

Everythings going well in the world of craft over here. The Spring Girl cross-stitch is progressing nicely. The luggage tags have been worked on (one set is very close to being in the shop!). Smiles all round. Hopefully there should be some photos for you soon.

I'd just like to give a little shout-out to another wonderful crafty, stitchy blogger. Daffycat is holding a fantastic double giveaway over on her blog! That's right, she's offering not one, but two sets of gorgeous hand dyed fabic just waiting for some pretty stitching on them. Entries close on May 4th, so get over there and enter, people!

A very L-O-N-G post!

2009-04-19T13:24:00.003+10:00

Hello, I'm still here! Amazing how general life gets in the way of blogging sometimes hey? Anyway, it's the weekend so I finally have time to post.

So I haven't been posting much but I have been crafting!
The third of my Seasons girls cross-stitches, Winter, is done. Wheeee! Only one more to go and they will all be finished!

I really like the colours in this one, the photo's not that great but the blues are really pretty. This one also included white glow-in-the-dark thread as well as normal and variations threads. It's used in the snow in the corners, and you know what - it actually does glow-in-the-dark! It looks quite weird actually, with random glowing spots over the design.

I was all ready to go with Spring, the last girl but as I was ironing the Aida (you wouldn't believe the creases in it!) I found a dirty patch. So that needed a bit of cleaning. I couldn't get rid of it completely but in only really shows on one side so I think we'll all just pretend it isn't there.

Most of my crafting time in this past week has been spent on making this book. It's for my Art & Fashion class at school, a fantastic subject - I get to spend it doing crafty things!

It was taking ages to make it just at school and I want to move onto the next project there (softies!) so I brought it home to finish off. It's quite a simple design really and I'm thinking of making more to sell in our MadeIt shop. Some of the pages are made from decorated paper. I painted some of mine and ripped up and stuck sheet music on some others. The style of binding the book ends up with the tails of thread so I decorated mine by knotting some beads on.
Part of the project guidelines was that we had to put some stuff in the book. I have no idea what I want to use it for so I just decorated some of the pages, sticking to my turquoise colour scheme.

I went through my stash and pulled out everything that was turquoise and used it. The drawn pages were done using my new Inktense Derwent pencils. I love these pencils and have a big tin of 72 now to go with my set of 72 Studio Derwent pencils. Inktense pencils are similar to watercolours but they are brighter and look more like ink than watercolour pencils.

Lastly, Crafty Things and I have been working together to come up with these:

They are patchwork luggage tags! Crafty Things made a set when we went on holidays last September. I'm sure you all know how hard it can be to distinguish your bags from all the other ones on the carousel. These tags make it much easier to spot. They are about 11cm by 6cm with an elastic hairband used to attach them. The set we use is just patchwork front with a plain calico back. The ones we are working on now (pictured) have a little pocket on the back so that you can add a name and address on a card if you want, in case they get lost.

We were thinking of using clear plastic at first but decided fabric was better. With plastic anyone could see your details, and these days you don't particularly want this. This way, the card is hidden but still there just in case. (Are we slightly security-mad and paranoid perhaps?)
We just have to figure out the best card to use so that it won't fall our, because that would just be useless! Once that's sorted they will be up for sale in our shop. I think we'll make a few pocket-less sets (maybe with some crocheted flowers on the back) and they will probably be there sooner. I'll let you know, watch this space!

Supporting other Bloggers

2009-03-31T19:01:00.002+11:00

Just a little post about a giveaway at Clare's Craftroom. She is offering a lovely stitching design as a prize for leaving a comment. This is one of the very positive things that I love about the world of craft bloggers - the generosity of all.

Take a wander over to Meet Me At Mikes and read about her lovely book launch and then wander through the archives to see more of this generosity at work.

I seem to have come down with my first cold for the year - stuffy nose and woolly head! Just in time for Easter.

A potpourri of sites I have wandered across lately

2009-03-29T10:03:00.003+11:00

Just wanted to share some of the sites I have explored lately.

Heather, from Ragged Old Blogger:Bits and Pieces has posted some pictures of her mixed media work. She has used photographs as the base but then extended these. I think I like the third one best.

If you like creating art with kids then have a look here. I love the way a lot of the art activities are related to an artist or piece of work. Another place for art ideas I stumbled across. In one of her recent entries she reviews a great picture book called "ISH" which I have on my shelf to remind me that things do not have to be perfect.

Then there is the wishing I had one of these on the bookcase. Another crafty book to put on the wishlist.

Knitting is still happening. Sewing has slowed down but ideas are gathering. Finally some photos just to give this post some colour.

Eating the apples in our backyard and looking so beautiful, bright and colourful.

Another shot of my mushroom. This one was taken outside in amongst the wood shavings.

More Playing Around with Wool

2009-03-26T19:46:00.006+11:00

I have been trying to create a few different spooligarumi to inspire the children I am working with at the moment. The latest experiment was this little mushroom. After making the lengths of corking I wound, stitched and shaped to get this final product.

The stalk was made first and stuffed lightly to keep it firm. The red part of the top came next and this sits on top of the stalk. The little patch of white was done last and is a piece of two pin spooling. This is stitched to the stalk to hold it all together. I didn't put any stuffing in the top of the mushroom but might try this another time. French knots form the little white dots on top.

A Little Bit Of Knitting

2009-03-21T20:59:00.004+11:00

I have been doing a little bit of knitting. Last year at the Craft Fair I bought some yarn from one of the stalls and it came with a pattern to knit a very simple neck warmer. I got around to trying out the pattern at last using some Jo Sharp Alpaca Kid Lustre in a very nice blue - I think I would call it a denim blue.

The pattern was created by Prudence Mapstone. She is a very talented fibre artist and she has published several books.

It takes only one ball and is done mostly in garter stitch with a little bit of rib. The rib is hidden in this picture by the flower. Nice and quick - just the thing for knitting in front of the television.

I have started another one using some Jo Sharp Alpaca Silk Georgette in a very pale salmon colour. In this photo I have starting working on the first ribbed section.

Another Spooligarumi

2009-03-17T20:12:00.003+11:00

Here is another one of Noreen's spooligarumi. This one is a little bear. I made the scarf using her two pin spooling technique.

Lucky Me and Some Creating Has Been Happening

2009-03-10T12:13:00.006+11:00

It is always a great day when there is mail other than bills. Today the postie brought me a parcel -it came my way from the US. Inside was this lovely book.

Therese from the lovely blog Softies Central ran a very generous giveaway in January and I was one of the lucky winners. The book was my prize. It was on my wish list to own and I felt very happy when Therese picked me as one of the winners. a top addition to the bookshelf!!

On to some crafting. I have been experimenting with some corking again. I have introduced another class of children to the lost art of corking - also known as french knitting or spool knitting. I am trying to encourage them to make something more that a great long length (that however seems to be the passion at the moment!) and have shown them the book I wrote about in this post (I have just checked the link I gave on that post and is no longer working. It looks like the book is no longer in print).

I was also lucky enough to read about Noreen Crone-Findlay's latest e-book. It is called Spooligarumi and has some great instructions in it for creating some little corked creatures. Of course a copy found its way into my inbox very quickly and it was just the thing I was looking for.

I have created three little spool knitted critters this weekend with the aim of trialling some different techniques for making critters from the lengths of spooling. The first was a very little bird. For this I made a length of spooling and sewed it up by winding it around a texta and stuffing a cotton ball inside. I added wings with two very short pieces of spooling that were joined to make a loop.

He stands about 2cm tall. The eyes and beak are cut from card and glued on.

Next was the crocodile\alligator which has pipecleaner supports threaded inside the tubes of corking. This is from the Corking book by Ann Sadler. The aim here was to see if it could be done using the most basic of all corkers - the cardboard roll with four icypole sticks attached. When the spooling was done passing one thread over one thread the end result was not firm enough so I experimented and tried passing one loop over two and this gave a much firmer result that was great for adding the pipecleaner supports. For the difference look at the tail and then the rest of the body.

Instead of following the instructions in the book to the letter I trialled adding the pipe cleaner supports as I knitted. This was good for being able to measure the size of each piece needed. All in all a very successful experiment. The finished critter is a little larger and thicker that the one in the book but it still looks fine.

Last to be created was this little guy.

He is made from the instructions in Noreen's book. I was very happy with the end result. The corking was created with a cardboard roll tube and I used the one over two technique again to get a good firm piece of knitting. I hope that I am being clear about what I mean by one over two. I have three loops on each stick and lift the bottom loop over the top two so that the stitches have a better tension.

All in all a nice crafty weekend.

Oh dear...

2009-03-08T19:59:00.002+11:00

... it has been an awful long time since my last post! Oops. I hope you didn't think I'd vanished completely. What sort of blogger doesn't post about their biggest finish in ages until a whole month after it is done? Umm, that'd be me.

That's right, my 'Underwater' cross stitch is finished! Woohoo! Happy dance time!!!!

It took me approximately 10 months to finish (March '08 - January '09), very quick for me. Unfortunately the colours turned out really weird in the photos I took - this is the best I could touch it up. I'll try again tomorrow. Even in this photo you can see the lines in the blue background where the threads were slightly different colours. I didn't notice until it was too late. Oh well. I'm proud of it all the same. Next up is a little research to find a local framers that do a good job with large embroidery. I've never stitched anything so large (approx. 40 x 20 cms I think) before let alone got it framed so I'll have to get some local advice. The wall space for it to hang is already picked out, the colours should match it perfectly. They are absolutely gorgeous, the photo doesn't do them justice.

Since it was finished a while ago I have already finished the next couple of cross stitches.

These two cards were made from a magazine cover kit. I'm not entirely sure whether I like them or not. They're a bit too 'busy' for my liking. The bows were cross stitched and the kit had everything else in it, it just needed to be cut out and put together.

Lastly, I finished this cute design today. I bought the kits for all four seasons and this is the second I have stitched. I started with the Summer Chic design. They're great designs, done on 11 count Aida cloth which makes them incredibly quick to stitch. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with the set but I've still got two seasons to decide!

School's been back for nearly a month now, so hopefully things will settle down a bit and I'll have more time for blogging. I want to post more often, even if I have nothing new to share. Don't hold your breath though!

Photo Sharing

2009-02-19T10:51:00.005+11:00

As there is not much crafting happening I will share a few of the photos I took while we were holidaying. The weather was great for most of the time - we had some hot days but took refuge inside with the air conditioner when it was tooo hot. On a couple of afternoons a sea mist rolled in over the water and it was very beautiful. The water would go very still and the surroundings became muted and grey. Very peaceful. On one of these afternoons the pelicans gathered at the boat ramp to feed off the remains of some fish that were being caught. I grabbed my camera and spent a good half hour taking shot after shot - 187 in total. Here is a collage of some of them.

I like taking pictures of pelicans and by now probably have far too many but they are such great birds to photograph. I love watching them come into land and the way that they ski along the surface of the water.

Another day, Avid Crafter and I went rockhopping and came across this little fellow.

He scuttled away as we stepped on a rock and we were lucky enough to have time to take this shot as he squeezed into a crack between two large rocks.

One to leave you with. Pelicans can also look pretty silly when they need to scratch their necks!

Hello - We are still here.

2009-02-17T12:16:00.005+11:00

Sorry for the long break between posts. we have had a great break. Three weeks of rest, relaxation and reading for me. Avid Crafter indulged in rest, reading and water fun plus a little crafting. I indulged in my love of photography by taking many photos. I hope you will indulge me while I share a few of these in some later posts. Unfortunately the break went all to quickly and then it was back home and into the routines of school and finding out what work I might pick up this year. I am a teacher and I pick up relief (emergency work) and short term contracts and as such my work load varies greatly.

Late last year Whipup posted about a site called Red Bubble. Red Bubble is a site which provides a place for artists and photographers to display and sell their work as cards, prints and calendars. Whipup.net created a calendar using the Red Bubble site which showcased 13 craftpeople who had been featured on Whipup.

I became fascinated by the vast array of amazing art and photography that is displayed on the site and joined. I have put some of the photos that I feel are the best I have taken up on my Red Bubble page. They are there for sale as cards and some are also for sale as prints.

On to some crafting. Before Christmas I created this card. If you need a card in a hurry then this is a very versatile design.

I used a page from an old atlas to get my map and cut this to create a rectangle across the front of the card. The rectangle looks best when it is placed just below centre. Two lines of silver gel pen top and bottom give it a border and then the tag gets added. The tag was cut with my very handy tag punch from Fiskars and then I just hand lettered my greeting. The idea for the clip came from a cardmaking magazine I was reading at the time. Sorry I can't remember which one. The thread is some pearle cotton and the tag is stuck in place with some foam tape to lift it up from the map.

Instead of the map you could simply use a pretty piece of patterned paper or even part of a photograph. The tag could hold a number, Thanks, Thinking Of You or any other greeting you might need. I also added an insert of white paper for ease of writing my message inside.

There is a stitching project in progress but no photos yet. The crafting bug lay dormant for a while but is slowly warming up again.

How to use up a stack of sheet music

2009-01-16T10:56:00.004+11:00

One of the side effects of leaning a musical instrument is the growing pile of photocopied sheet music. Now, I could recycle it but looking at it I thought 'That could make for some interesting cards' and then never got back to it. Until yesterday.

I have heaps of the oval shaped three-fold cards. So I found some musical motifs on the computer, printed them out in bright colours, added them to the sheet music and that's the result! A couple of the musical notes are from stencils I have that I cut from card and the rest are the ones printed off, just on normal paper. I stuck them on with 3D foam tape and I love the pop-out effect it gave them.

The top two cards I'm keeping to replenish my stock of cards but the bottom two will be available in out shop. But I'm afraid that won't be until after 12th February because we're going off on holidays tomorrow and will have little/no Internet access while we're away.

The stack of sheet music doesn't look any smaller. I've got a way to go yet. :-P

Fabric Basket and Bean Bags

2009-01-15T22:05:00.006+11:00

There has been some crafting happening. Some presents have been posted - late but finished. Some sewing has been done and the stitchings have been turned into bean bags.

The idea for the bean bags and the little basket for them to be stored in came from Mel's blog - Day to Day. There are a few tutorials I have come across for making the fabric basket. The particular on I used was from the blog - Pink Penguin. I think I originally came across the link via A Spoonful of Sugar.

The basket was very quick to sew and if your were short on time it could easily be made without the patchwork squares at the top. It fits four of my bean bags in it.

Each bean bag is about 14 cms square and has a plain fabric backing of Osnaburg which has a slight texture to it. I backed both fabric pieces with whisperweft interfacing (this interfacing is good for when you still want a drapy feel to your fabric but need a bit of stability) and each one has polyfil pellets inside. The seams are topstitched and the one with the opening has been stitched over twice so hopefully the pellets will not escape. The advantage of the pellets over rice or beans is that the bags are washable. I tested one using the gentle cycle of my washing machine. I put the bean bag inside one of those little zipper washing bags before adding it to the washing machine. It has gone through the washing machine adventure with flying colours - looks no different to when it when in.

All in all I am feeling quite pleased with the end result. I will definitely be making some more of the baskets.

Yay - We got an award!

2009-01-14T11:43:00.002+11:00

Clare from Clare's Craftroom was very kind and awarded us this:

Thanks, Clare.

We are supposed to pass this on to five more crafty bloggers but how can we possibly choose from our combined list of over 200 blogs we visit? We think you all deserve it so consider yourself tagged.

Avid Crafter and

Wow, I've made more than I thought...

2009-01-14T11:01:00.002+11:00

I was very lucky to win a cross-stitch chart from Cathy at It Will Be Funny Tomorrow. Janlynn's Just-a-chart The Gift of Music arrived safely in the mail yesterday. Thanks Cathy, I love it!

In other news, one of my crafty Christmas presents is all finished!

This knitted washcloth came as a kit with the cotton and instructions - all I needed was the pair of knitting needles. The cotton felt lovely and soft and the colours are just gorgeous! It was fairly quick to knit and has a great textured finish. I learnt to do side edgings for the first time :-) It turned out not quite square, probably because of my tension which has always been very tight. I could just go to bigger needles but I don't always like the look and feel of it then, and so long as it isn't clothing I'm knitting, I don't generally bother.

The sewing machine got a workout the other day too. My grandfather's second wife recently passed away and while Crafty Things was at the funeral she was offered her sewing machine and overlocker. Crafty Things already has multiple sewing machines (4 or 5!) so suggested I would find a use for them. At the moment we don't have any to put them so my grandfather is looking after them, but Crafty Things did bring back two crates full of fabric and sewing supplies.
Inside one we found a stack of aprons, all pinned together that just needed sewing up. We decided that I would sew them up when I found time and then sent them to my grandfather who could then do what he wanted with them.
I got the stack out and found two had already been sewn up and I sewed the other four fairly quickly. Now they're all ready to be posted away. No photos unfortunately because they turned out extremely blurry (still learning to use my camera properly!)

While I had the sewing machine going I made myself a second pincushion - the pink one on the right. It's a really quick and easy pattern from a patchwork book Crafty Things has on her bookshelf. I like being able to just pink the outer edge and leave it rough.

I managed a little more stitching on my Underwater cross-stitch last night while watching the Twenty-20 cricket. It's starting to be close to being finished! I am really looking forward to finishing it, it's the biggest one I've ever attempted so it's quite and achievement.

Stitchings Completed

2009-01-12T11:22:00.003+11:00

Remember the stitchings I was experimenting with before Christmas. I have finished stitching them and they are now waiting to made into something.

The tortoise was from another Doodlebat font from Scrap'n'Fonts.

I used the red transfer pencil for the two birds and a pigma pen for the tortoise. The pigma pen had a very fine tip and I used a brown colour. The red transfer pencil showed through quite badly with one of the birds but not so much with the other. The other change I made was to increase the number of threads I was stitching with to get a thicker coverage. The brown pen worked well with the thread colours I used to stitch it. I still wonder what to use with lighter colour threads - possibly a washable one is the best bet there???

You can see the pink halo effect with the paler parts of the variegated thread I used around the border.

This was the last bird stitched and I found that adding the satin stitch to the beak gave a better look to the finished stitching. This was the one I was happiest with.

Look what is growing in our garden.

Late - but I wanted to share!

2009-01-11T12:58:00.004+11:00

This is a very late but as has been said on this blog before things just got hectic. Before Christmas I was lucky enough to win a giveaway. Paper-and-String was giving away three beautiful felt penguins and I was the lucky winner.

This parcel turned up in the letterbox just before Christmas. Inside were the three little penguins in their own little felt box and some other unexpected goodies as well.

Felt ric rac and felt flowers! Wasn't that a lovely surprise. Thanks so much, Sarah from Paper-and-String. The penguins looked right at home on my Christmas tree during the festive season.

Still here!!

2009-01-05T12:55:00.008+11:00

Ok, you could be excused for thinking we'd vanished for the amount we've been posting lately but we're still here!! The week before Christmas was pretty hectic and things didn't slow down until New Year's or so and this past week we have been away with no Internet access. Hence the small number of posts. Christmas itself was really good, we got to see some family we don't usually see including the littlies, we ate (lots) and of course there were the presents:

My haul, including having one of my cross-stitches framed, clothes, camera bag, DVDs and crafty stuff. Not to mention the vouchers (shopping spree!!)

My contributing for presents for the newest littlies went from this pile of fabrics (including a gorgeous vintage? Peter Rabbit cotton):

to these:

They are from the Softies book and I love them! They were easy to make and the only problems were the arms not sewing in quite properly but some hand sewing work fixed that. The blue one has been given and although the recipient is a bit young to appreciate the idea of Christmas presents, Mum and Big Sis were happy with him.

The pink one is going a way further and is waiting for a baby calendar to be finished before she and a texture cloth with her name embroidered on the back get sent away all together. It will be a rather late birth/Christmas present by the time it gets there, oh well.

And last but not least, an update on my underwater cross-stitch:

I'm more than halfway now :-) All of the right end is finished including backstitch and the left side only has 3 fish, 2 sea-weed plants, bubbles and a whole lot of water in it. I'm hoping to get it done really quickly, hopefully before June, but it should definitely be done before the end of 2009 :-) It's the biggest cross-stitch I've ever done but it isn't taking the longest, yay!

I hope all of you had a great Christmas and New Year's and that your 2009 is full of health and happiness.

Long Time between Posts

2008-12-21T21:14:00.003+11:00

Wow, December has flown by!! Not much creating happening, serious stressing about unfinished Christmas cards and gifts!!!

I have been experimenting with some stitching after my success with the two little stitching kits I recently purchased. Being something of a fontaholic I get regular updates from a site called Lettering Delights. They recently sent a newsletter showcasing a Doodlebat font called Christmas Birds. (A Doodlebat font contains images instead of letters and can be used like any other font.) When I saw this one some of the images were just calling out to be used in a stitching. The font cost me about two dollars. I can create all the stitchings I want as long as I am not reselling them as this would contravene the license agreement for the font.

I used MS Publisher to create my templates, printed them out and then used various methods to put the image onto my fabric.

In my first try I got the size of the outline box a little bit too big for the image but was very pleased with try two. Tries three and four are here in this photo not stitched - they have been stitched but no pictures yet.

Apologies for the not so good image. Night time flash photo! What you can see at the top are the four finished stitchings and underneath are the next two ready and waiting. At the bottom are the printed doodlebats with squares around them. The one on the right had been traced over with an iron on pencil.

I am still not sure which tracing technique is the one I like best. So far I have tried fade-away pen and iron on pencil. Next on the list to try is a fine wash away pen and then after that a brown fine line pen like a pigma pen.

The iron on pencil is easy to use but the vivid red colour is hard to disguise when stitching - particularly with lighter threads. The fade away is only good if I can get all the stitching done quickly - not always guaranteed!

Hopefully after Christmas I will have time to try out some more Doodlebat ideas.

Will wish you all a Merry Christmas in this post as I am not sure how long it will be before I get back to post again. May your Christmas be all that you wish it to be!!

P.S. Check out these gorgeous critters at LucyKate Crafts. I really like the cat.

Tabitha

2008-12-11T17:57:00.002+11:00

Today we farewelled a loved family pet. Eighteen years old - first child in lots of ways - and always cantankerous. She was an RSPCA kitten who turned into a beautiful cat with attitude!!!

The loudest purr, the kinkiest tail, the most awful piteous cry (able to be heard from houses away!!!!!!) and claws as sharp as daggers are all things we will remember and miss.

Unfortunately age caught up with her - going deaf, back legs becoming wobbly and a few dental issues that she seemed able to ignore but must have been hurting and an argument with our car. She came out seemingly none the worse for wear after the argument with the car but seemed to have lost all fear of big moving vehicles - quite scary really. It was time to give her a dignified exit rather than see her go through more pain.

Farewell, Tabitha twitchit with the question mark tail.

Avid Crafter and Crafty Things and the rest of the family

Christmas is coming...

2008-12-05T10:14:00.004+11:00

We're definitely heading towards the bust part of the year now! Everything's going on now that the year is beginning to wrap up.

So, a few quick updates on what's been going on.

This photo of my 'Underwater' cross-stitch is a bit out of date but it's mostly boring blue water and the small red fish at the top that I've been working on. I'm at home at the moment with a rotten head cold so more work that usual has been done on the stitching, mostly in front of the TV. It's finally gotten to big for our little scanner so it's photos only from now on!

Speaking of photos, I've been playing around with my camera a bit and this is my favourite of the photos I've taken so far. It's of pins in my pincushion and was taken with my camera's super-macro function. I think that particular function will see a lot of use in the future somehow.

And last but not least, here's a sneak peek of something I've been working on for my new cousin Emma. It's not finished yet and you'll have to wait til after the present has been received to see what the end product will be.

Now I just have to work out what on earth to give for Christmas presents this year, and there's a birthday between now and then too! My family are getting harder to sort out presents for each year.

Some Stitching is Happening

2008-12-04T19:22:00.003+11:00

No posts lately but some stitching has been happening. I recently found two little kits that I have been slowly stitching in amongst doing all the other things that eat into crafting time.

Both the kits are from Hatched and Patched's Simple Stitchings range. The first one is called Ladybug Romp and I have finished stitching it. It is going to become part of a set of bean bags for a little niece.

The second one is called Bear In There and it is still a work in progress. I am not sure what it might end up as yet.

The little pink hoop was a new find too. It is a spring hoop that has a metal spring section that fits inside the flat pink plastic section. It is much narrower that wooden embroidery hoops and I like the feel of it lots.

The list - in my head - of things I would like to make is growing proportionately longer as the time I have to craft is growing proportionately smaller!! I have bags I want to make, fabric buckets, bean bags, bibs, a baby calendar for a new niece, more discovery bags and then there are the Christmas cards that probably should be at the top of the list.

I have made a start on some of the Christmas presents but cannot talk much about them - you never know who might drop by and read this little blog. We went digital with a few things that have previously been much more hand produced. More about that after Christmas.

Many thanks to those lovely blog visitors who have dropped by and left comments. I am thinking of creating an applique pattern for the little owl from the felt book. I am not sure quite how I will tackle it yet. The final version would be a PDF file but I am still thinking about the best way to get a good end product. I have scanned drawings before but they do not look very clear sometimes. I am wondering how others may have done this.

Book - all done at last

2008-11-19T08:29:00.003+11:00

I have put the pages together and bound them up so the book is all done. Here tis....

I love the felt ric rac that I have used on the front cover. I bought it from the UK and I seriously think that I need more. Pity about the exchange rate!!

A few imperfections in the layout - the penguin is on his way out of the book - but in my mind these add to the handmade appeal.

I used some of my hand dyed wool to do the blanket stitching around the edges and the binding is a little bit of gingham ribbon threaded through the blanket stitching along the spine.

The leaf page is very plain but maybe that adds to the contrast of styles in the different pages.

Yippee - Last book page!!

2008-11-14T18:11:00.002+11:00

Here it is - the last page of the little felt book that I have so slowly been putting together. I went with a leaf. To get the shape I used a scan of a real leaf and cut the shape out of some lovely felt purchased from paper and string. I just added a little stitched detail to show the veins.

I am now in the process of stitching the pages together and then I get to experiment with the binding. At the moment I am thinking of using ribbon threaded through the blanket stitching.

Crochet Bowl and Shop Update

2008-10-30T17:29:00.005+11:00

In amongst the other things I have been doing there was time for a little crochet. Nothing difficult but quite relaxing and great for in front of the television as I fed my addiction for TV crime shows. No one else in the family understands the fixation with any of these shows so mostly they only get watched when no-one else wants the TV.

What did I make - I hear you asking - a little double layered bowl. I crocheted it amigurumi style and then just tucked one half inside the other to end up with a fairly sturdy bowl. It will be just right as a thread catcher for the odds and bods of wool that gather when sewing up knitting or crocheting.

I stitched the two layers together in the centre of the bottom and did a row of running stitches about one centimetre from the top. The most interesting bit was making the decreases at the end match the increases at the beginning because I didn't write anything down. I just used the good old trial and error method and undid and redid the decrease until it fitted.

There was also time for a quick madeit shop update with another pair of helping hands being added. Edited Nov 17 - helping hands have been sold.

Please drop by and take a look - not just at ours - but at all the other loveliness being listed on this Australian site.

More Felt pages - well one more!

2008-10-27T10:28:00.003+11:00

After a looonnnngggg time of not feeling enthused I got back into creating another page for the felt book. Remember that way back in July I shared the first few stitchings for this little creation. As I always seem to be saying - life intervened and this little project has been sitting around waiting patiently for the next pages to be sewn. At the weekend one more was finished. This one is another bird.

I experimented with a little silver around the eye and added a daisy on the wing for detail. A second row of stitching around the body also seemed to call out to be added. The single row of green just didn't seem enough.

This little bird was first inspired by this Bird of Peace that I stumbled across late last year and used as the basis for a Christmas ornament. I took the pattern pieces I have developed and cut them from felt to make this latest little bird.

One more page is all I need to do and then I will start putting the book together. Never know it might be finished before the end of the year. Possibly by Christmas......maybe.....perhaps!

A little bit of craftiness...

2008-10-20T19:41:00.003+11:00

I saw these paint sample notebooks over on a Spoonful of Sugar and just had to make my own. And then we just happened to need to go to the hardware store to get snail pellets so I picked up some paint sample cards.

They were so quick and easy to make, and stickers made decorating them so easy too. I like the plain ones too because they show off the different colours more. They have around 10 pages in them and are 8.5 x 5cm-ish in dimension, just a little size to tuck into a handbag.

The above photo was taken with my new digital camera :-)

I have a little film point-and-shoot and I've been experimenting with Crafty Things' digital lately (She doesn't use it as much now that she has her digital SLR) but I wanted a digital for my own. My brother has an earlier model of this and it's been good for him with no troubles. We saw this one in various shops getting cheaper and cheaper with the different deals and we eventually picked it up for $113. It's a Canon Powershot A470. It's auto function is pretty good and the manual settings are simple enough to change around. The one thing I dislike is that it doesn't have a viewfinder which I like to be able to use when the sun is too bright to see the LCD screen clearly. But it takes pretty good pictures which is really all I need.

Isn't it fun to experiment with a new toy!!

We have invented a good indoor picture taking studio. My dad recently got a big daylight bulb magnifier for his fiddling with electrical circuitry stuff (they all have tiny numbers that are really hard to read) and when you put your subject on the chair and position the light above it you get quite good light for taking pictures inside.

Tote Bag

2008-10-20T16:35:00.004+11:00

Sewing is starting to fit back into the scheme of things. After the very quick whip up of the Discovery Bag the weekend before last, I found time during last week to make a very simple tote bag.

The front panel is a print from a piece of Japanese themed fabric picked up at Picture Patchwork the weekend before last. Each panel is different and I have seven more to play with. I simply added two bottom panels and then two side panels to the picture piece. I then used a piece of textured cotton for the bag and lined it with calico. I used flannelette for the inter-lining as is described in the Bend the Rules Sewing book. I like using this technique because the bag still looks quite soft. The handles are made from calico folded four times for added thickness.

The bottom of the bag has box corners. There are lots of ways to make these corners. Here are some tutorials I have come across.

Lazy Girl Designs
Craft Apple
Sew Mama Sew - Classic Tote Tutorial

One of the amazing things about today's Internet connectivity is the amazing array of ideas, how-to's and tutorials that are so freely shared.

A Little Sewing Project

2008-10-13T20:41:00.003+11:00

I managed to squeeze in a little sewing project over the weekend.

I had the opportunity to visit a little shop in Latrobe, Tassie called Picture Patchwork. Inside I found lots of lovely things to look at and some even found their way home with me. One of the things was a kit to create one of these.

The pattern is by make it perfect and is for a little thing called a discovery bag. It is a wonderful tactile hidden puzzle with lots of little objects hiding amongst the white pellets waiting to be discovered through the plastic window.

The shop had the whole thing packaged up for you so that all you needed to do was cut the fabric to size and sew it all together - too easy!! I started the cutting late on Sunday, started sewing very late on Sunday and finished it off today. There has been very little time for sewing -- - I have a stint of full-time work occupying most of my time at present --- and this was just the thing to keep the sewing withdrawal symptoms at bay.

Here is another photo showing the little laminated card that came with the kit. It lists all the things to find.

Useful Bag

2008-10-12T12:58:00.008+11:00

I made this bag before we went to WA and used it every day while we were travelling. It fitted the essentials just nicely and stayed slung over my shoulder messenger style even when I was in the car making it so easy to hop in and out. The pattern is a Melly and Me design called Sunshine.

Changes made were:

* added lots more length to the strap - too much it, as it happened, so I shortened it by adding a button on the strap to hold the not need length together. See second photo.

* I did not want the ties for a closure so I added a stretchy hairband that reached to the first button on the bag. This made the closure off centre but in the end I decided that I liked that. The hairband needed to be knotted to make it hold securely to the button. This first button was then stitched on with twice the number of stitches to make sure it did not fall of with constant use.

* I lined it with calico and added a layer of flannelette (as described in Bend The Rules Sewing) to the calico before sewing it all together to give the bag a little more structure without being too stiff.

Some of the fabric used had been in the stash for a very long time. It was a textured open weave in pale greens and natural tones. I combined it with a texture cotton in an off-white colour and some small pieces of patterned quilting fabrics. The buttons have been lingering in the button jar for a while as well.

Two different sized zipper pouches kept all the items inside neat and tidy. When I was in the plane I squeezed in an extra zipper pouch containing MP3 player and earphones.

Last photo is just to show the bag in use.

Busy Bees

2008-10-11T14:41:00.004+11:00

Yet again not a lot crafty is happening around here. This past week I have been playing in an Eisteddfod with my various school bands. My school did fantastically this year, getting five 1st places, two 2nd places and two Merit Certificates. I play in a stage band, concert band, flute quartet and sax quartet so I was pretty busy! It's all over now except for an awards ceremony tomorrow that I'm attending as representative from my school with another girl because we've been awarded one of the big awards! Hopefully things calm down a bit now and I can get back to crafting.

However, in slightly crafty news we recently bought a small daylight lamp for my cross-stitching which I tend to do in the evenings, when there isn't a whole lot of natural light around in our house. It's only a small lamp that is designed to clip onto the frame of a piece of stitching. I've found that my music stand makes a really good stand for it because it gives you a lot more flexibility in pointing the light different directions. It's amazing how bright the tiny bulb is, and the difference it makes to the lighting on my stitching!

We Are Back

2008-09-27T09:23:00.005+10:00

What a long time since our last post. We are back from a little holiday to W.A. (Have been back for a week but what a busy week it has been - no time for posting and even less time for catching up with my overflowing Google reader). We spent time in Perth, Fremantle, Albany, Esperance and Kalgoorlie. The weather was not the best but we saw all manner of beautiful and interesting things - scenery, wildflowers, mining history, wild windy water, a whale, tingle trees, tall trees and lots of straight roads!

This is just a sampling of the many photos that were taken.

Will post some crafting stuff soon.

Finished At Last

2008-09-06T22:28:00.003+10:00

One baby present all finished, wrapped and ready to post. I love being able to greet a new member of the extended family with lots of little handmade goodies - some practical, some just frivolous and some intended to continue a family tradition.

Name smudged deliberately.

The keepsake calendar was the one thing holding up the posting of this particular parcel as I tried hard to get all the pages ready in amongst a whole heap of work. I use Scrapbook Designer Plus (link just to show the software picture) to create the basic calendar pages and then printed these onto heavier weight card before decorating. This time I chose to make little car stencils using a car punch and some leftover laminating scraps. I added the wheels with my black Dottarific pen and a little bit of silver gel pen highlight.

The calendar starts with the month that my nephew was born in and continues through to end with that same month one year later. I decorated a wooden clipboard as a holder for the current month and opposite each month, in the book, is different decorated page for photographs. I also include a set of stickers I have created using MS Publisher to mark milestones along the way.

This is the third one that I have made this way. My initial design came from looking back at my own children's calendars - one purchased and one handmade.

Other parts of the gift have already been blogged about. There are booties, little hats - knitted by Avid Crafter, little onesies - found on special at a local shop, pram blanket and crocheted tortoise.

I received many little pairs of bootees when my children were born - all lovingly hand knitted by a very creative Aunt. She has since passed away and I think it is nice to continue the bootee tradition - even if the bootees hardly get used.

Our little trip is getting closer - this might be the last post before we head of to explore parts of Western Australia. We will see how things go.

Baby Card

2008-09-01T10:06:00.003+10:00

This is the results of around 4 hours work, and that doesn't include the time taken to do the cross-stitch - that was already done! Everything is taking a long time at the moment, I have a head cold and thinking is very hard work! I'm actually quite lucky that I haven't been sick before now as there's been lots of illness flying around the schools all winter. So excuse any waffle or mistakes, my brain isn't working.

We had the presents all ready for this new baby cousin, born late August and really needed a card. So all the supplies got pulled out and looked through it all to try and figure something out. I have a folder full of completed cross-stitches that haven't been made into anything yet and this little whale was in there and seemed suitable for a baby boy card. Then I found some scraps of blue card that fit in colour wise. And then I found the Tie-Downs that I picked up free somewhere along the line in the 'Jewel' colours. Everything sort of started to fit then. The letters are a Making Memories rub-on alphabet called 'Heidi', that I really love. The blue fluffy fibre is just cheap Chickenfeed yarn, and the cross-stitch itself was an Anchor kit I stitched up quite a while ago and it's just sat around ever since!

Now we just need to write in the card and the whole package can be sent off to bub and family.

How Charming...

2008-08-21T19:06:00.005+10:00

I couldn't resist that title!

I recently finished off a charm bracelet kit that I bought years and years ago through the school bookclub. The kit had the bracelet, beads, wire, clips and instructions to make 5 different under-the-sea themed charms.

I love the finished result, but they were soo fiddly to make!! The instructions required that at some points, 4 lengths of wire would pass through one bead each time and there was no way that was going to happen! So they worked with a little bit of instruction-tweaking, a fair dose of patience (well, sometimes), pliers and help from Crafty Things. If I was going to remake the charms I would use finer wire to make life much easier.

I started off with the turtle, and didn't really have many problems until I came to attach the lobster clip used to clip them on the bracelet. It was one of those 4-length circumstances. Hmm well, quite a bit of frustration later and it was attached safely. Next was the fish. No trouble with the charm but I'd learnt about the clip attaching now. The instructions said to attach it to the centre bead of the big fin but it already had two wire lengths through it so the fish's mouth it was. Next was the crab and I made the charm and then left it for a while (i.e. years) until I attached the clip. Instead of putting the wire through the one bead I used a few of the nearby ones to secure the clip and that worked ok. The octopus and seahorse were made in quick succession. I had a little trouble with the octopus' legs - the wire tail would go into the bead ok but not out the other side because I'd pulled the row a little too tight. The beads had no room to move and there was no way to change it. So don't look to close at his legs because it's extremely untidy. I had similar trouble with the seahorse. You make a right angle turn at the end of his head involving sliding the wire through the entirety of a previous row. The row happened to be bent and the wire refused to got through properly until we could get the row to straighten up a bit.

When I first got the kit the bracelet was quite a bit too big for me, since I've always had small wrists, but now it fits pretty well. As you can see in the top photo, the charms are pretty big (approx 3.5cm long) which makes doing some things (for example typing) difficult. But I'm happy with it.

Who knows, I might just collect myself other, smaller, charms and make it into a really intricate, full charm bracelet that isn't quite so themed.

Still Sewing

2008-08-15T13:13:00.004+10:00

Well I am still sewing along but it will slow over the next few weeks as other parts of life take priority. This time I have had some fun making lined drawstring bags as per the instructions on this blog. These are a great size for stashing small items in for packing and I have also found them useful for taking coins to the bank. My DD is busy selling chocolates to raise funds for her school band trip later in the year so many coins find their way home.

I am going to vary the size of the bags when I make the next ones. Maybe some big enough to put shoes in. They will be very useful on our trip that is getting nearer now. The fabric is a varied selection from the stash - some is over ten years old and some purchased recently.

Next little sewing task came from the purchase of this great little felt kit from paper-and-string.

A terrific little felt kit to make a little owl ornament from felt. Look at how wonderfully it was packaged and I was also lucky enough to order at a time when some free felt squares were being added to every order. Lucky me!! I wanted to start as soon as the parcel arrived last week but I was very good and finished off the drawstring bags, did the housework, went to work, taxied children and all that other stuff that intervenes with perfectly good creating time - not to mention watching lots of Olympic events on television. Anyway I have found a little time for the creative stuff of life and here is the little critter all finished up.

I enjoyed stitching it and will be creating a few extra a one is never enough for owls - you have to have a parliament or they get lonely! I got everything needed to make one owl aside from thread and needle. There was a pattern, instructions, felt, felt ric-rac, beads and ribbon. I used press and seal to cut out the pattern pieces - have found this very useful with felt. It is see through so that you can lay it over your pattern and trace of pieces and then lay it over the felt to cut out the pieces. Probably not very environmentally friendly being plastic but I get very accurate pattern pieces this way.

The weather has been very wintry this week so finding good light for photos has been difficult. There was a little bit of sunshine earlier so the little owl found its way outside for a quick pose in the trees. The pouches were just photographed inside as there were no dry spots to put them down outside. Another wintry shower is moving through as I type - wetting the clothes that I foolishly hung outside on the clothesline in a vain attempt to get them dry. Oh well they will just have to have a second spin through the washing machine later and then get hung on the clothes-airer - just have to wait for what is already on it to dry first!

Crafting is so much more fun than housework.

Sharing Some Gift Sewing

2008-08-10T19:48:00.006+10:00

I have had a great time lately making things to give away. The best kind of making there can be!

First I made two bibs for a little arrival in our street. Lovely neighbours who have helped me out on a few occasions so it was nice to just make a little something. These are based on a pattern that I made when my own two were much younger than they are now. I used to make these out of terry towelling and thought that this time I would try something different. I joined some different cottons together to get the front fabric and flannelette for the back. The bibs have a ribbed neckline. Two pieces of fabric were sewn together, turned through and topstitched before the ribbed neck piece was overlocked on to finish them off.

Second was a birthday crown, pattern from The Creative Family book, for a little fellow turning two. This was great fun to make and lasted on the recipient's head for a grand total of two seconds before it was ditched onto the floor. No matter - hopefully it will gain a second life as a dress up item down the track. Gracefully modelled here by one of my treasured bears - Alexander Growly Bear.

I had lots of fun rediscovering the joys of hand stitching with this one. I tried out a variation of a French knot to create the stars on the blue piece of felt. I read about this in my newest collection to the home library. The book was blogged about here but I had to return the library copy. Luckily for me I came across a cheap copy in one of my local bookstores so it came home with me! The stitch has a French knot at the end of a long straight stitch and it is done all at the same time. (Terrible description but I am not sure how else to describe it.)

Being made at short notice I couldn't find any braid to put around the bottom so I settled for a piece of velvet ribbon. I quite like the regal feel that it adds to the crown.

Third, a quick card to go with the birthday gift. I opted out of a little boy type card and went with a design from another book on the shelf called Punch Art Fun For Everyone 3. Lots of great, quick ideas for cards in all of these books - I also have books 1 and 2.

Still working on a few other little things but will save those for another day.

P.S. We are going to Perth WA soon!! A family holiday and a Junior Robocup National competition to attend.

Another Amigurumi Tortoise

2008-08-09T18:27:00.003+10:00

The creating is continuing, although I have not got back to my little felt book yet - still mulling over ideas for the next pages, with another little tortoise being created using the same yarn as the pram blanket. The pattern is from Simple Arts Planet and is very easy to make. I used French knots for the eyes so that it is safe around young children.

Another view - the french knot is very clear in this shot. I used to avoid french knots but have recently revisited them courtesy of all the great how-to's that are accessible via the www. I would love to link to a very good video tutorial but I didn't bookmark it. It was a very clear tutorial on making great French knots.

Speaking of knots check out this site. Another great little suggestion that I came across the other day.

Some Stuff

2008-08-06T19:59:00.005+10:00

Here's the latest of our sewing stuff. I made another little Arno Cat softy to give to my 2-year-old cousin. It's made from wool felt and was really a joint effort from both of us. I hand-sewed the face and Crafty Things did the machine sewing to put him together and stuffed him.

He is from the Softies book and is very quick and easy to make. He is the perfect size for little people to hold and play with.

Another present has also been made for a friend of mine, whose birthday is tomorrow. I thought of a bag idea that I liked and Crafty Things tried to make it up. It didn't turn out quite as I imagined but I still like it.

The front view. It has two small pleats to give it shape, a longish strap and flap held shut with a magnetic clasp. After it was finished I thought it needed some decoration near the bottom as it was rather 'top heavy' so we came up with adding the ribbon bow. Crafty Things found the instructions to make the double loops which looks more interesting than a normal one. It is on a coil-less safety pin so that it can be taken off. It is lined and we made a matching zippered pouch and handbag organizer to keep everything tidy inside.

The back view. The flap was put on after the bag was finished and lines up with the pleats, kinda by luck. Size-wise it's in between a tote bag and handbag so that the recipient can fit everything under the sun inside it! We put a layer of flannelette in between the bag and lining to make it a bit firmer, like in Amy Karol's book.

Next time, I'd make the pleated part a bit shorter and add a yoke on top so the pleats are further down and not as hidden by the flap. The strap could also be a little narrower.

The promised pictures

2008-07-29T20:32:00.002+10:00

Here they are, the pictures of my lovely mail and stitching.

First, the opening of the package:

This is how it appeared.

And this is what was inside.

The goodies! I can't wait to try them out. Unfortunately there was some strawberry body scrub that leaked on the way and so isn't in the picture.

And this is my progress on my stitching. Quite a bit more than in the last photo!

Pause in Page Creation

2008-07-28T16:25:00.003+10:00

Just taking a little pause in the felt book page creation to think about what to do on the next pages. Meanwhile inspired by the hoop sewing from The Creative Family book which I have borrowed from the library I made this.

I found some lovely bright orange hessian in Spotlight the other day, along with some cream and natural colours, and also got some of the wooden hoops that I have seen on several blogs for creating wall displays of pretty fabrics. I had just been reading The Creative Family where Amanda had described using burlap and a thick needle to teach embroidery to children and had also seen the stitching she had shown on her blog shop update post and this idea just flowed on from there. Also check out this Flickr pool - Swatch Portraits.

I stitched on the flowers with a small circle just around the middle and then used stem stitch in two greens of floss for the stem of each flower, reversing the colour combination on one of the stems. Just to finish it off I did a running stitch around the hoop with some of the hand dyed wool. After I had finished the stitching I loosened the hoop and removed the inner circle from the back. I put a piece of calico over the back of the stitching and replaced the hoop. This hid all the knots and made the background a little more solid. Last of all I trimmed the fabric flush with the hoop and glued some trim over it to hide the edges of the fabric. A little piece of ribbon and it was ready to hang!

Back view.

Here it is - hanging in amongst all the other assorted bits and pieces I like to look at in my creating room. Incidentally it is also where I do the ironing (when I have to!!) and I have lots of lovely things to look at. The dreamcatcher was made with my kids when they were much younger that now and I still love to have it hanging where I can see it. The cat is from the book I referred to in my post about the bird Christmas ornament. All much nicer to look at than a painted brick wall.

A quick hello

2008-07-25T19:40:00.003+10:00

Hello, long time no post. Again. Oops.

I haven't been crafting much except for a bit including a decent bit of the 'Underwater' cross-stitch. It stills seems like a small area, but really it's quite a big chunk of it that I've done. :-)

A little while back I got a lovely package in the mail, I can't believe I've forgotten to post about it! I won a giveaway over at The Felt Mouse and a little parcel of bath goodies made it's way to me. It smelt so good, and the little cupcake bath fizzer looks even more realistic and edible in real life. Such a talented lady!

Hopefully pics of both the parcel and stitching will be here soon.

Flowers for Friday

2008-07-25T09:02:00.004+10:00

Just a quick post - Friday has come quickly this week!

Here are a few photos I took recently of a flower in the backyard. I have cropped the original shots to get these images.

I loved the rows of water droplets on one of the petals and so cropped the image very heavily to get this picture.

Just liked the fuzzy bud waiting to burst open with luscious golden yellow!

The sun was shining through the jonquils and so I thought a back shot would be interesting.

Hopefully at the weekend I will get another page designed for my little felt book and maybe make a few bibs for the onslaught of babies arriving later in the year!

More Felt Book Pages

2008-07-23T23:35:00.004+10:00

A short little post while I am having a creative spurt and have finished two more pages for the felt book I am making.

This time I had a go a creating an owl and a penguin. The owl has fabric wings and the penguin has some nice glittery felt for the front of the body. The penguin was inspired by a small soft toy in an Usborne Art book and the owl was my own design but inspired by lots of different owls I have found online.

I am not sure what else I will add but I probably need two or three more ideas. Any suggestions welcomed.

Work In Progress

2008-07-21T16:52:00.004+10:00

Oh, wow! I have much more energy now that the dreaded virus has been beaten - a bit of a lingering cough but nothing like what it was like at the start of last week. It also amazing what a few nights of sleep without interruption can do for you.

I have started work on a little felt book - another gift for the impending new arrivals in the extended family. Two pages have evolved so far. One has a flower stitched onto it and the other a butterfly. Both of the pictures have been designed from scratch and I was very happy with the butterfly. What do you think?

I also practised a new stitch - a variation of blanket stitch called closed blanket stitch where two stitches are worked from the one hole to form a triangular pattern. The idea came from a book borrowed from the library called "embroidery basics - all you need to know to start stitching" by Betty Barnden. My library cover actually says "start embroidery - all you need to know to start stitching" but the inside cover says "embroidery basics".

If you look closely at this one you can see where I had to unpick one of the feelers and have a second go at it. Lesson learnt - draw a faint pencil line for your stitching to follow.

One of the hardest things that I have found with our adventures into blogging is getting good colour reproduction in the photos that I take. Note the difference in the pink of the flower centre in the top and bottom photos.

I love my digital SLR that I was so lucky to get given at Christmas but find that I am still struggling with some of the settings. Lucky for me digital means you can take lots and lots of shots in varying positions in the garden. I have started investigating how to set up and indoor studio because with a day like today there was no hope of trying to take outdoor shots.

Whilst wandering the garden I took a few tree and flower shots as well. This one is my favourite.

Dreaded Winter Ills have hit!

2008-07-14T19:30:00.003+10:00

Not a lot of crafting happening. I have been sick for a couple of weeks with a virus that just does not want to let go. It started of as a head cold but has now migrated to my chest - tight chest and dry, nasty cough that is keeping me awake most nights. Hopefully it will go away soon.

I did finish a little pram blanket which is put away for a new arrival expected in the extended family later in the year. I knitted the squares and then crocheted these together using a technique from the No Pattern Knits book I bought last year. Last of all I added a crocheted border - picot edge. It is a small blanket that I thought might useful for travelling or pram rides.

I have been very interested in Mel's sewing kit swap for kids that she has organised recently. Makes me wish my DD was just a little bit younger - wistfully thinking about how none of this wonderful blogland stuff was discovered until my kids were older.

I used the patterns and ideas from this book with my children when they were younger. They both ended up with a little collection of felt objects that they had very proudly stitched themselves. I struggled a little with the rhyming text but found the techniques to be very good.

Will stop now as the coughing is getting worse again.

Online Selling Adventures

2008-07-05T19:35:00.007+10:00

Wow - we have had our first customer at our madeit shop!! Avid Crafter's ladybug pincushion has found a home along with one of Crafty Thing's cards.

Avid Crafter has made a second ladybug pincushion and we have just finished listing this in the shop. This ladybug only has two dots and a red bead at the end of her cord legs.

Crafty Things is busy trying to get some more Helping Hands created. Two more were sewn this week and given away before pictures could be taken to say thanks to some lovely ladies who helped out. Two more have been sewn and will be listed in the shop soon. These ones will be listed as a pair.

Some more crocheted flowers have been made and some new dyes were purchased at the recent Craft Fair. I experimented with some more colours and had lots of fun. The flowers are now just waiting to be added to some cards or maybe a bag.

We have had some frosty mornings lately and inspired by some photos on Gina's blog, Gingerbread, I took a photo of the frost on my car's windscreen. What do you think?

Do you want the good news, or the bad news?

2008-06-23T18:32:00.002+10:00

Well, you'll get both. The good news first.

I am the very lucky winner of a giveaway over at The Felt Mouse. Thanks to her generosity, I'm going to receive one of these lovelies in my mailbox. It's so exciting! The first blogland giveaway I've won. Thanks soo much!!

Now, the bad news.

The computer is refusing to access the internet. Again. So I'm typing this on the clunky old laptop. Again. This time everything is worse! Nothing that we've tried has made the slightest bit of difference. Where are the good computer-fairies when you need them??

Oh, there's a bit more good news I forgot about.

My Crafty Friend and I made a second project from 'Cute Stuff', the Card Holder. Armed with a new stash of felt scraps (like I needed any more, but it was $2 a bag and there were some great colours I didn't have) we made one each.

Crafty Friend's Card holder in progress.

They resemble an small envelope with the flap tucking into a slot to hold everything inside. They were the perfect size; needed no adjusting at all. We chose different designs to applique and then machine sewed them together. Next time I'd hand sew them as the layers of felt (3 in total in the thickest part) tended to move a lot. Either that or find a walking foot for my sewing machine from somewhere.

Here are the finished Card Holders, front view...

and back.

Mine's the one on the left with the birds, and Crafty Friend's on the right with the girl and cherries. Mine on the back view shows the flap tucked in and her's out since unfortunately the cherries get hidden. We had a disappearing cherry too! One of the small red felt circles vanished and after looking in various places; the floor, underneath the book etc., we couldn't find it. It eventually turned up a couple of days later stuck to the bottom of the chair leg of all places.
They took around an afternoon to make all up. Hopefully they will see quite a bit of use.

First Shop Update

2008-06-16T14:53:00.006+10:00

Well we have started adding things to our madeit shop. Over the weekend we came up with two different pin cushion designs - a ladybug and a flower. We had great fun trying to make the circle for the petals line up using a compass that didn't want to play fair! Many holey pieces of paper later we had a pattern for a simple eight petalled flower and a cute-as-can-be ladybug. The ladybug that Avid Crafter worked on was so much easier to make than the pattern for than my "simple" flower!

Anyway have a look at the end result.

Three felt creations have now been listed in our shop - the ladybug and the felt flowers with the dyed petals and cream centres. We have a link to the shop in our sidebar. The extra bumpy looking flower was an experiment with a piece of felted knitting on the top and a circle of acrylic felt on the bottom. Putting all that under the presser foot of my machine was interesting!!

Avid Crafter is keen to tell you that her ladybug is super cute and the legs are pony beads knotted on to a length of cord that is sewn into the body of the bug. She has actually made two but at the moment only one is listed in the shop as the other is waiting for a photo shoot opportunity.

Crafty Things has to report that hand dyeing the petals of felt pin cushions is an interesting experience. Acrylic felt melts if too much heat is applied (whilst trying to heat set dye) and stuffing absorbs lots of unwanted dye if you try to dye the petals after sewing the two parts of the pin cushion together. One flower pin cushion of the three I produced yesterday is definitely staying at home - complete with little melted patch and dyed innards. It went nowhere near a camera either. The fourth - the piece of felted knitting - will also be staying home at the moment.

Avid Crafter was much more successful with her design. No troubles at all!! Her prototype was good enough to list in our shop.

The other little item we have listed is called a Helping Hand. It is a little felt clip that Crafty Things used to make many, many, many years ago (in fact probably when she was the same age Avid Crafter is now!!!) Gosh such a long time ago. The pattern was found in a basket of embroidery threads. We still use one of the original ones made by Crafty Things to hold our stamp booklets together and stop them from getting lost in the drawer they are kept in.

The clip, an old style, flat hair clip, slips inside the two felt hand shapes to make a very pretty little holder. Finding the clips was not easy - one place we asked said they had not stocked any like it for years, one was more helpful and directed us to a place selling hairdressing supplies. I remember my Nan using this type of clip to hold her beautifully done hair in place at night, under a little net scarf, when she went to bed.

We would love it if you dropped by our shop to have a look. Unfortunately, at this stage, we are restricting ourselves to Aussie buyers only.

and Avid Crafter.

Guess what!

2008-06-14T18:41:00.006+10:00

We have started up a shop at madeit to help with our fundraising idea for my school trip later in the year. We've started off very small, with two of Crafty Things' cards for sale. We created our banner from a photo of a strange grass-seed at the beach and added our name.

madeit.com.au is a website based in Australia offering Australian crafters a place to sell their creations.

Soon we plan to add some pincushions, more cards and perhaps a birthday book. We'd better get busy crafting!

An Idea

2008-06-11T13:17:00.003+10:00

Crafty Things and I were talking about a school trip I'm going on later in the year. I've been selling chocolates to raise funds to help pay for it but wanted to do something more. We thought of selling some little crafty items, pencil rolls and tote bags, through our blog. Would anybody be interested? It would probably have to be Australian residents only to keep postage costs down. I've never done this sort of thing before so if anyone could help, please let me know! Any suggestions as to how to make it work would be gratefully accepted. Our e-mail address is in the sidebar so e-mail us your ideas or leave a comment.

Some good news - we think we have partly fixed our internet troubles. Hooray! Things aren't quite up to speed but are a lot better than they were. This is great as we were all sick of slow internet!

The cutest book covers I've ever seen

2008-06-10T17:19:00.003+10:00

Here are our first creations from our new 'Cute' book; Cute Stuff. They're called Book Covers. They're a stiffened fabric rectangle with raw edges turned over, and a turn-back on each end that the covers of the book slide into to hold it in place. We adjusted the measurements to fit the size of books we typically read, for me that means fat ones! They took my friend and I an afternoon to make with a little help from Crafty Things. My friend's book cover is on the left and mine on the right.

There are four different applique options in the pattern: the panda that my friend chose, the bear that I chose, a rabbit and 'Bad Guy'. They're done in felt that is just glued on - no sewing at all. Cutting out the insides of the letters needed very pointy, sharp scissors. Our normal scissors were hopeless.

Another pattern change we made was to add the ribbon bookmarks. We cut a length of ribbon, fray-checked the end and sewed it onto the middle of the cover. Next time we'd sew it into the seam as it would look much tidier. My ribbon was determined to fray at the top too so I fray-checked that end too. Unfortunately we had a bit of a fray-check flood so the top of my book cover is rather stiffer than it should be.

They were made a few weeks ago now. It has taken me so long to get around to blogging about them!! Anyway, they seem to be holding up fairly well to use - the only repair needed has been a replacement panda ear for one that fell off.

Now I think I need a whole set for different sized books since only a few fit my cover really well, I was a bit too generous in increasing the size! A set would make a nice present too.

A Little Play with Artrage

2008-06-04T07:39:00.004+10:00

I haven't played with Artrage for a while but while looking at some flower photos I thought of using one as a colour palette. I loaded the image as a custom picker and just used random colours to create a background with the paint roller and the palette knife to blend.

I added a new layer and imported the same picture as a tracing image. I used the glitter tool to paint over the flower and erased any unwanted edge glitter. The glitter tool is so much fun when you use it with a tracing image - your picture just appears as you add the glitter to the page! It gives a textured picture that is formed from your tracing image.

The next step was to use the copy layer and transform layer functions to create more flowers - each on their own layer. I reduced the opacity of these flower layers, resized them and moved them around on the page to sit behind the main flower.I changed change the paper settings for the layers and gave the background layer some texture to end up with my finished picture.

I know that I haven't drawn the flower - that would be way beyond me to reproduce it this accurately - I just like changing the texture of the image with the glitter and also having fun blending the background colours.

Progress Report

2008-06-03T18:49:00.004+10:00

Here's my first update on the 'Underwater' cross-stitch. I've worked on it on and off since starting it in March and here is the progress to date. The biggest fish is finished and some of the seaweed too. It's quite a bit of stitching for me as I'm not exactly the fasted stitcher ever! Looking at how much white space there still is to fill though, well, there's still quite a way to go. This is the biggest cross-stitch I've started so I'm pleased with the progress. I absolutely love the colours! They're so soft and pretty! Just perfect for the blue wall where this will probably hang once finished. Hopefully that won't be too far into the future =)
Great inspiration for continuing on it is my new cross-stitch corner. There's a comfy chair, good light, room to put all my bits and pieces in easy reach and even a t.v. in this room. The wonders of music DVDs!!
I even have more time to stitch since it's the school holidays over here. How times flies! It feels like yesterday was the first day back. I plan to take full advantage of these holidays with plenty of sleeping in, reading and crafting. A pretty good combination don't you think?

A Little Sewing and Pretty Flowers

2008-05-24T11:15:00.002+10:00

I got time this week for a little sewing. I have wanted to try out this little pattern for a while now. Leanne posted a tutorial about creating a thread holder for all those little scraps that accumulate when you are stitching. I had the post bookmarked and had time this week to make my own. It is a fun little project and Leanne's instructions and photos are nice and clear. Thanks, Leanne for posting the tutorial.

I have given this to my lovely daughter to use when she is busy cross stitching so that she has somewhere pretty to put all the little waste threads. It is nice to be able to surround yourself with pretty but practical things.

A picture of some flowers to finish this post. These beautiful flowers were delivered to us during the week. I am enjoying the colours so much as each flower bud opens. It is not a common thing for us to receive flowers so these were very much appreciated. They were sent by my husband's work as a 'thinking of you' gift. His father is still very unwell from a brain injury sustained at Easter doing home maintenance. There has been some improvement but there is a long road ahead to recovery and there may well be long term damage - more testing and rehab is needed yet before any final outcome will be known.

New Cards

2008-05-20T15:24:00.005+10:00

I have not created any new cards for quite a while and it felt really good to sit down and create these the other day. I was looking at the flowers that I had crocheted and decided that they would be quite nice on the front of a card. I used a piece of hessian for the flowers to sit on and a little bit of fine line pen detail to finish them off.

We are still enduring computer woes - everything else on the computer is humming along it just doesn't want to talk to the internet at all. It is weird as our little old laptop is still quite happy talking to the internet through the very same modem but this one just wants to have hissy fits constantly. We have tried all sorts of suggestions with no change and are now at the head scratching stage of not having a clue what it could be!!

Hellooo!

2008-05-12T20:21:00.004+10:00

Well, not a lot crafty has been happening for me lately. Aside from turning my teddy bear cross-stitch into Crafty Things' wall hanging, I haven't done a lot. I'm working on my 'Underwater' cross-stitch, so far I've done 1/2 the big fish and some seaweed. It's a reasonable amount since I'm definitely not the fastest stitcher in the world but it looks such a small amount on the great huge space of Aida! And I've knitted some more of my baby hats. However we've recently found out that another baby is on the way so my hat output needs to increase if there's going to be any chance of these hats being done when the babies arrive!

We still have no idea how to fix our internet problem, and I have no idea how to make pictures work on the laptop so it's looking like it'll be a while until you can all see what we've been up to, instead of just hearing about it. Hopefully all these problems get fixed soon so I can go back to using a computer that doesn't take half and hour to start up and chucks a hissy fit when you ask it to two things at once!

I don't know what I've been doing to take up time while I haven't been crafting much! It's as though all the time has vanished. I blinked and missed about two months! Looking back I've found that I haven't posted for about a month. Maybe I have been doing a lot less crafting lately or maybe I'm just forgetting to post about it. I have a few ideas buzzing around my head but can't seem to find the time to make them happen.

Well hopefully this is the end of my unintentional blogging break. If any of you have actually got to the end of all this blathering on about nothing, congratulations!

New Titles!

2008-05-12T15:30:00.002+10:00

Hooray!!! My order from Amazon has arrived. Sorry for another picture less post but the laptop doesn't have easy access to the pictures (just feeling a little lazy about making pictures accessible) and the other silly computer refuses to play fair with it's internet connection.

The next book in the Cute Stuff series looks just as good as the other with a neat little array of things to create. Avid Crafter is already browsing through it. The Softies Kit will be used soon and Making Books will be a very happy addition to the bookcase. It will be opened frequently and perused often for inspiration and techniques that I can use when I do book making activities with groups of children.

Happy Mother's Day

2008-05-11T22:26:00.003+10:00

A quick post to wish all a Happy Mother's Day. Mine has been just great - a nice picnic lunch and a visit to an animal park and a few presents from my lovely family. Avid Crafter gave me a hanging made from one of her recently finished cross stitchings and I will have it hanging on the wall very soon.

No pictures yet - internet access woes on our computer - so frustrating and not yet solved!!!

Another Amigurumi

2008-05-04T19:51:00.003+10:00

Here is my next attempt from the Kyuuto! amigurumi book that I bought a while ago. This time I tried out the pattern for a rabbit. Instead of the fluffy yarn suggested I used a smoother yarn.

Here he is posing outside. I took one shot in dappled sunshine and the other in shade and the shade shot probably shows the colour of the yarn more clearly. It is a very pale mint.

The pattern suggested buttons for the nose and eyes but I changed my mind part way through and tried out some small crocheted circles instead. My daughter thinks he needs whiskers and she is not sure about the face.

Coasters and Flowers

2008-04-30T10:31:00.002+10:00

Here are a few pictures of the finished coasters. I have had the opportunity to repeat the coaster creating with another group of children and this time I remembered to take a few pictures.

The colour combination in this one does not show up so well in this photo. The green yarn on the purple hessian looked quite good and was contrasted with a pale cream yarn as well.

I also played some more with dyeing my crocheted flowers and also dyeing some wool before making the flowers. It is addictive!!

Lessons learnt this time:

* do not put little flowers out in the hot sun to dry out. End result sunburnt, faded flowers that were re-dyed to try and make them look pretty. The vibrant colours turned very muted in the hot sun. Front and back photos were taken to try and show the difference. I still like the muted flowers but was very surprised at the rapid rate of fade.
* exploding dye in the microwave can make a mess that needs cleaning!
* plastic cling wrap is your saviour - it contains the mess.

The back view is much brighter and clearer in colour tones than the sun exposed front. I suppose I could argue that nature can look like this often so it is a good thing for my flowers to look like this.

The flowers look very different when they are crocheted with the pre-coloured wool. I made the wool multi-coloured and then crocheted the flowers. What do you think?

And last of all an arty shot of the a few blooms in a row! I love playing with my camera and feel incredibly grateful for having been given it as a Christmas present.

Long Time Between Posts

2008-04-21T11:18:00.002+10:00

Oh dear, it has been another long time between posts!

Unfortunately other parts of life have been very hectic of late and there has been little crafting happening. We have been dealing with ill relatives, funerals, work and housework and once they have been dealt with there has been little time left. Blog reading has been a welcome luxury but blog posting has just seemed unattainable.

I did do some crafting - not for me - with a class of children that I was fortunate to spend some time with. I got them all making a hessian coaster for Mothers Day. A square of hessian with the edges frayed was the starting point. They then removed a thread further in to the square and re-stitched this with some contrasting wool. This was repeated two or three times on each side to create a threaded pattern. i then backed each coaster with felt.

Here is the first side with two of the re-stitched threads done and the next thread removed ready for the third row of stitching. It was important to remove each thread one at a time and to skip a thread of hessian before removing the next thread to stitch. This helped to keep everything from falling apart. Some of the children did have difficulty with the edges continuing to fray but most coped very well. Some chose to go over and under two threads, others three and some one and each coaster looked very different. Unfortunately I have not got any pictures of the finished coasters to share.

Adding the next thread. The felt was added once all the stitching was done and then all the loose yarn threads were trimmed back to the frayed edge. Leaving them a little longer stopped them from pulling out easily. I zigzagged the felt on but another way would be to fuse the felt to the hessian.

The children also decorated a plain brown paper bag as the wrapper for their gift.

For me there had been a little order placed with Amazon. Now I have to wait patiently (oh that is hard!!) for the books to arrive. One is the next book in the Cute Stuff series, the other is the Softies kit and the third is one about making books. I read about the making book one here, borrowed it from the library and then decided I needed my own copy. Thanks so much to Melissa for posting about it.

In other the news - the apron got used very successfully at our mother/daughter adult education class and my daughter came home with some very nice recipes to add to her collection. My apron has not been made as life intervened but I had an old one that I could take.

(Sign off name courtesy of a link from this blog.)

Finished Flowers

2008-04-09T20:53:00.006+10:00

Thought that it was about time I got around to posting the pictures of the finished crocheted flowers that I posted about earlier.

I was very pleased with the end result. The flowers were crocheted out of some cream wool and then I dyed them using some lace dyes and some ink. The ink gave some very vivid colours and I will be interested to see how colour fast they will be. When I dyed them I rinsed them until the water ran clear, added some more dye for highlights, zapped them again in the microwave and then rinsed them again before leaving them to dry.

The blue and red dyes combined to create some very nice purple tones.

The last batch were very orange and I liked how bright they looked. What do you think?

For the centres I dyed some strands of wool yellow and then stitched lots of French Knots. I like how these contrast with the texture of the crochet.

Each flower was then put onto a coilless safety pin so that it could be pinned to a place card. That leads to a quick explanation of why I was experimenting with these to start with. I was asked to do some place cards by my MIL for a birthday celebration she was having and she was not looking for anything in particular so that gave me free reign to try something new and dyeing wool is something I had not tried before. The flowers were something small to practise on.

I was pretty pleased with the result and will have some more fun soon making some more flowers, dyeing them and tucking them away for later use. I was also pleased to get in some practise with French Knots - something that I often avoided stitching. Repeated practise sure helps to perfect the technique!

In Memory Of.....

2008-04-02T17:20:00.002+11:00

Mostly this blog is just here for my daughter and I to share the crafty things we get involved with but today is a little different. On Monday 31st March my wonderful grandfather departed this world. He was a gentleman in every sense of the word and he will be thought of with affection for a very long time! This week will be one of remembering for all our family - there are so many memories to share.

He was a creative man himself. He worked with metal making all sorts of wonderful things that will now be treasured by his children and grandchildren. He was the one who encouraged me to learn to crochet and it is still a craft I love. I remember using wool to make chains with my fingers - fingerknitting - as a young girl and it was my grandfather who told me that I could do the same thing with a crochet hook and that is when I started to teach myself to crochet with a little guidance from my Mum. Mum is a right hander and I am a Leftie! I will be forever grateful for that little hint that lead me to a craft that I have enjoyed so much.

Some more Cuties

2008-03-30T15:29:00.004+11:00

Here's the latest bunch of cute critters my friend and I have made from The Cute Book.

We have in the back from left to right: Sprite, Mr Frog, Lizard and Kidnapper. In front is Mr Tad (with the legs), Mr Pole and White Rabbit.
All of these took less than a day to make with spare time spent exploring an op shop, no finds today though. :-(

These ones are mine, currently decorating my shelf.

And these belong to my friend.

Also just made is Arno Cat from the Softies book Crafty Things bought a while ago. He's orange and yellow and will be a gift for a young cousin of mine if I can bear to give him up. Unfortunately there are no pictures yet.

Happy Easter

2008-03-26T11:50:00.004+11:00

Belated Easter greetings to you all. The blog silence was because we went away for Easter. Easter this year was also Avid Crafter's birthday - a double set of celebrations. She is definitely not lacking in chocolate supplies!

A little crafting happened on the Easter break but no photos yet. I had time to experiment with dyeing some of the little crocheted flowers that I make. I found some very cheap 100% wool in Spotlight and crocheted the flowers first and then dyed them. I tried out some lace dyes that I bought last year and some ink. The ink was an experiment following some information I picked up at last year's craft fair. A little ink in some water, put in the wet flower and zap in the microwave for a short time to heat set the ink. I have yet to rewash the flower to see if the dye has set. I will post pictures soon but have not yet had time to take any and today is revolting weather with no good light for any picture taking!!

Instead I will post this shot - taken in my back yard recently. Ballet dancer is what I thought off when I saw it.

Still More Holiday Crafting

2008-03-19T12:00:00.007+11:00

Oh dear it is almost Easter and I am still posting photos of the Jan/Feb holiday crafting. How silly is that?

Here is my first attempt from The Cute Book. Avid Crafter has much more experience with these little critters and they are definitely fun, addictive and cute. I now have this little bunny dangling from my handbag. Here she is posing amongst the tea-tree flowers.

Aside from finding stray photos of holiday crafting there has been some sewing happening. We both need an apron for a cooking class we have enrolled in - A mother/daughter cupcakes evening - and so far the only one completed is Avid Crafter's fruity goodness.

The pattern is Kwik Sew 2311 - View B with a few minor modifications. The fabric was a bit on the light weight side so we made it lined and that avoided all the bias binding that the pattern had round the edges. We used some pretty ribbon for the neck loop and the tie. The last little detail - not yet done - is to add two little polka dot heart buttons at the top where the neck loop is stitched on. The fabric has strawberries and cherries scattered all over a pretty checked background. What do you think?

Next up on the sewing ranks was this top for Avid Crafter. The fabric had been chosen some months ago but the style of the top was not decided upon until just lately.

The pattern is Kwik Sew 2694 - View B and is very quick and easy to put together with the help of the ever trusty overlocker. This is the second time I have used this pattern and have been pleased with the results both times. Avid Crafter happens to be wearing the other one in the headless apron shot. The pattern sits very nicely and the only modification was to stitch the crossover down to avoid gaping and embellish this stitching with a little heart button. Apologies for the backgound in the above photo but the clotheline was the ideal hanging spot - nice and sunny but the overgrown garden bed doesn't look crash hot - no gardener am I!

Note to myself - do not stitch down crossover before said recipient tries on top as then there will be less unpicking and restitching to make the top sit just so! All that aside the top meet with approval as it was worn straight away. What a great feeling when this happens.

Last note on this post - Winners of the birthday giveaway - the parcels were posted today.

Blog Birthday Winners

2008-03-18T07:40:00.002+11:00

Yes we did put winners in the title deliberately. Thanks so very much to all the people who left comments. As there were more comments than we expected to get we made a snap decision to draw out two names.

Congratulations to

Lisa Boyer was the first name to be drawn from the container and CurlyPops was the second. Zipper pouches and choccies will soon be heading your way.