A Little Bit Of Knitting

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

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

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...

... 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

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.

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.