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

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.

New Cards

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!

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!

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

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!!!

Computer Hassles!!!

Sorry for the break in posts. We have been crafting but have temporarily lost our broadband connection! SOB! Hopefully it will not be too long before this glitch is sorted. Uploading photos is just sooo sllooowww with dial up that we have decided to wait for a return to broadband.

A few bags have been sewn, a little doll has been constructed, another owl has taken up residence and a few tortoises have come along as well. The bags are very simple drawstring bags that fit a rectangular ice-cream container inside. Tortoises are a crochet pattern purchased from Lis Tan-Chaong's Etsy shop - Simple Arts Planet and were great fun to make.

Pictures of these crafting projects will come soon.