An update on everything(nearly…)

Wow, what a wonderful reception to come back to! Thanks everyone!

Firstly, that picture I showed you last time is a giant slice of cake with eyes! The dark pink is jam between the layers of sponge, and the light pink is icing.

Secondly, I had a great time moving, and I now have a chest of drawers to hold all (most!) of my crafting supplies. Here’s a pic of it. (Usually that bag of yarn would be in it as well, I just needed to get at my crochet hooks!)

The top drawer is misc and cross stitch, the other two drawers hold knitting yarn. Not all of it though, as you can see of what’s storied outside of the drawers! No more yarn for me for a while I think!

Not that that’s going to be too much of a problem, as I’ve started making my own! Meet John, my first drop spindle.

I’m completely loving spinning, although it makes my right arm ache if I do too much in one go! And of course, I’ve bought some fabric to make a cover for it! Even if I can’t use my mum’s sewing machine, so I’ll have to do it by hand! I’m thinking a simple bag made out of the blue fabric on top

I’ve also been knitting socks, and have 2 more finished pairs to show off, another pair of jaywalkers

and some rainbow socks I’m calling ‘Pooling, thy name is wtf’

I’ve also started a scrap blanket to use up all my sock yarn scraps from socks. Can you recognise the yarns used so far?

I’ve done more work on my knitted cardigan, but that totally deserves a post of its own, so that’ll come along later on! Another thing I can’t share just yet are Christmas plans- I’ve changed my mind about what I’m doing again, now it involves sewing. But I think that one of my friends is planning on reading this soon, and she’s getting a Christmas present, so that’ll need to be hush-hush until Christmas!

Although, speaking of Christmas, I have started sewing some Christmassy juggling balls, so here’s one ready to be stuffed!

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Friday Flurry of Finishes

The first is just my sister’s graduation card, finally put onto a card!

I’ve also finished socks

and more socks!

I also knitted myself a cover for my earphones

That was very annoying, and I hope that I don’t break these earphones any time soon!

And finally, a set of pyjamas ready for Winter. They’ll be living in Salisbury, and so next time I’ll be going home is for Christmas, so I needed to finish them. Ta-da!

Since these pyjamas are a big thing, I’ll be continuing my habit of discussing what I learnt from this project.

• Sewing machines don’t like sewing over 4 layers of fleece!
• If something doesn’t seem to be running right, stop and figure it out. Don’t keep going until it becomes a big problem!
• Gathers aren’t so bad. Sewing them is a right pain, however!
• If a gather seems rather large, stick a finger in the middle of it and scrunch it down into a few smaller ones
• Fleece doesn’t fray. Which is wonderful when the machine decides it’s tasty and makes a hole 😦
• Mums are magic! I can’t remember what mine fixed for me this time around, but still, it’s always worth mentioning!
• Pins don’t hurt, so stop moaning about it!
• Don’t sew Winter clothes in the Summer, when it’s a right pain trying them on!

I think that’s everything this time!

What I’ve been up to whilst at home

With my mum’s sewing machine!

I’ve managed to sew the main pieces of a dressmakers dummy pin-cushion. It doesn’t really look right, but I’ll chalk it up to experience and maybe make a better one next year. And the year after…I might start a trend here!

This pattern comes from here. It’s a video tutorial, which I found a little annoying, but it’s well explained and the printable is a pdf directly underneath. Now I’ve made it, and brought it back up North to stuff, it needs to do South again so I can borrow the glue gun to finish it! Talk about long-winded!

I also sewed two triangles together, and then hand sewed it into a little container. This is going to be an ort container, and I have some buttons to sew onto the fold over bits.

This pattern comes from here, and I’m really tempted to make myself one as well! They’re just so cute!

But not everything was completed with the machine. I hand sewed the last of the blue jugging balls. Now they’re just awaiting stuffing, and then practise with more than 3! I can’t wait 🙂

I keep forgetting to mention, so I’ll stick it here. There’s a pdf with a load of different juggling ball designs, here. So far I’ve only made the 4 and 8 panel shapes, but after stitching all these, I may try some of the others. They’re excellent palate cleansers, between larger projects.

I also cut out some of my butterfly and orange fabric, to make 7 balls, They’ll get sewn up after my small Christmassy ones, but that is probably going to wait until I’ve finished my mum’s birthday bits. I’ve still got lots to go 🙂

Before I went home, I knitted up another pair of toe-up matching jaywalkers 🙂 This time they even fit! (Not like my zombie ones!)

Making them matchy-matchy was a challenge, but great fun 🙂 I’ve got this yarn in a darker shade (it’s heart and sole) to do a pair in the same way- toe-up matching jaywalkers, but first I needed a break from matching, so I’ve started another completely different pair. One of them matches one I’ve already knitted, so I’ll get a pair and an odd sock out of this 🙂 I picked up the other yarn when I was in town…I have no idea how the yarn is patterned, which makes it great fun and a lovely surprise as I knit. No doubt sooner or later I’ll get a repeat, which will spoil it somewhat, but hey ho!

I also started knitting a cover for my ear-buds. I’m using cotton sport-weight, and my 1.5mm Karbonz. Yes, I am slightly insane 🙂 It’s taking way longer than I thought it would (big surprise 😛 ) but I’ll get there. I’m loving the colour repeats on it, so it’s all good!

So what have you all been up to over Easter? Any tips for getting back into working mode after the holidays?

FO Friday- finally I manage it!

So for once I actually manage to both have something finished and post about it on Friday!

I finished my juggling balls!!!

Yes, I can juggle. No, you’re not going to get a video of me juggling on here. Yes, those are some Karbonz knitting needles in the top corner. Yes, they will be showing up later, along with some other lovelies 😀

I am pretty darn impressed with my balls:) Some of the corners are pretty damn good, even if I do say so myself

but some leave something to be desired. Ahh well, I clearly need lots more practice!!

Lots and lots more practice! So, naturally I’m already digging through my limited fabric stash for some more to make some awesome juggling balls with. I’ve got some gorgeous Christmassy fabric I think will be used next 🙂

But that’s something for another post. I’m off to do some juggling 🙂

A flurry of finishes (but still no knitting!)

So, what does everyone think of ‘flurry’ being the collective noun of finishes? I think it suits really well 🙂

I finished the cat, and it’s absolutely gorgeous!

I want to make loads of these now, with different cat styles. They’d be great stash busters 🙂 And then I remembered how much confetti/backstitching there is, particularly in the flowers, and decided I needed to lie down until I stopped wanting to do that!

Then, while high on endorphins for finishing something, I decided that I didn’t really need to press my juggling ball, so got on and finished that (one juggling ball totally counts as a finish, right?) Getting my corners to line up proved to be impossible, but maybe with the next two I’ll improve 🙂

It’s partially filled with rice, to give it it’s weight. I’d better get a move on with the other two, I want to start juggling with it already 🙂

I’ve also been doing more on my ‘love is’ piece- it’s now got their faces! I’m not enjoying all the backstitching for their hands, but it’s so totally worth it 🙂

Hopefully that’ll be finished soon! So quite a few finishes from me, really 🙂 And just a few days ago I also finished the cross stitch for my Mothers Day card. I went to Hobbycraft to get a quilling kit, so here it is in all it’s finished glory 🙂 I loved making the hearts, but I’m certain I need more practice! Lots and lots of practice! The book in the kit I got also has some really cool projects to make, so at some point I’ll have a go at them 🙂

Now I’m off to spend the rest of the day on my butterfly…I wonder how far I’ll get 🙂

 

Hello November!

So, this morning I received the next part of the OUAT sampler, so that’s what I’ll be working on this weekend!

After giving out too many clues last month, this month I’m going to be a lot stingier! Don’t worry, it’s a well known fairy tale!

It was written by a French man, and it was included in the Grimn brothers fairy tale collection (not surprising given the level of violence in it!).

Over the years it has been re-written, and watered down many times. The most notable ‘sanitising’ changes the fate and behaviour of the main bad guy.  In the original version, he ate the main character, and was later cut open (thereby releasing the main character) and stuffed full of rocks, which killed him (but y’know, the cutting open? Totally fine!), but later versions has him merely lock the main character in a wardrobe or some such thing, and then get chased off by a supporting character!

Let’s see what you make of that, and next week hopefully I’ll have finished the cross stitching which will probably give the game away a little!

The other day I was in town, and I found this absolute gem of a book. I had to look online at when it was published (1947!). It’s a general book on embroidery, knitting, crochet, dress making and home upholstery! It’s lovely to look through, especially when it says things like ‘Tweezers […] Buy the ordinary small toilet kind from the sixpenny stores.’!

I’ve also done a couple of lines of stitching on my juggling balls- not very much, but there’s no rush!

So now I can sew these bits together, and I’ll have half a juggling ball! Which is probably going to have to wait until December, because of the jumper! I might have slightly cheated and started it yesterday… but who really minds? I’m not going to be working on it this weekend because of OUAT, so it all works out :).

Speaking of which, I want to get started on that! See you all next week

So, crafting

I went to the Romsey Show on Saturday. Did anyone else go? Originally, I agreed to go so that I could look at the heavy horses, but then got slightly side-tracked and just wandered around with my parents and my aunt. It was really very lovely, with all the stalls selling lots of gorgeous things, and my mum bemoaning the fact that she couldn’t buy me anything there as there was nothing I really wanted.

My favourite tent was the crafting one. The Hampshire Guild of Spinners, Dyers and Weavers (I think it was them, anyway…) were there, showing people how to make braids. It looked like fun to do, and the lady who asked me if I wanted to have a go was a bit surprised when I said no (I think my entire family was too…). But my logic was: that I already have so much crafting that I want to do, that adding another one to the list would be rather irresponsible.

What I already do:

knit,

cross stitch

maths (not really a craft, but it takes up a large chunk of my time, and it’s great fun!)

What I want to start doing/restart doing:

embossing (Christmas cards and gift tags)

crochet

embroidery

I sold my spinning wheel a while back too, because with the limited time I had to work on it, I just wasn’t improving enough for me to enjoy it. This way, I get to spend more time on what I like, without the hassle of thinking that I should be spending some time on it, because it’s around!

Does anyone else think this way, or do you all manage to keep your lives organised enough to work on everything you want to?

On a fairly unrelated note, look what I finished recently:

Everyone with me now: awwwww

This was sewn in about 3 hours while watching tv- I didn’t want to work on my butterfly while trying to watch tv as well, I figured that was probably a recipe for disaster! It was a kit from Hobbycraft, and I didn’t really like the threads they gave me. They just seemed rather rough and plain, especially as I use DMC threads for all my cross stitch now. I have several other keyring kits to use, which I’m not particularly looking forward to, and I know the lns (really the lcs(local craft store!)) sells keyrings this size, so when I’ve done all the kits I may do some more with DMC threads, to see how that turns out.

I’ve put my butterfly on hiatus for a while, so I can get on with my granddad’s birthday card, and then some Christmas things for everyone. I would put up some pics (having realised how much blogs rely on pics, and how much of an idiot I was for saying that WIP pics aren’t that good), but I’ve jsut moved into my new digs for my final year at Uni, and my camera and bits are lost in the realm of ‘stuff that still needs unpacking’. Dw- I know there in there somewhere, but finding them may take some time!

Anyone else sew cards?

One of the crafty thing I enjoyed more as a kid was sewing cards. You had a set pattern to follow and the results were generally the same. You probably haven’t heard of them(I haven’t met anyone who has, except the people I’ve told about it), but there’s a website (http://www.form-a-lines.net/), where you can buy sewing instructions for all sorts of patterns. They all fit on A6 cards(they’ve got a sister website for square ones), and then off you go. There are a few more technical details than that, but not really.

Form-a-lines say that you can sell the cards, as long as you have a copyright sticker on them(also available on their website), which is just awesome!!!!

You have to punch holes into the card to sew; I use a pin and a block of foam behind the card to protect my leg. I use tri-fold cards, so I can stick one side down and cover up all the evidence of my sewing(ends of threads and selotape holding the ends down). One thing I would say is that pricking more than about 3 cards in one go really hurts your fingers, as I find that using a thimble means you don’t have the precision of the pin that you need.

So for my mum’s birthday, I’m making her a set of 10 cards, using the woodland animal set. So far I’ve managed to prick all the cards (in 3 sittings, and boy did my finger hurt after each of them), and sew two. Wanna see? Of course you do.

Isn’t the cute level, like, over the roof???

I like getting all the pricking out of the way before I start sewing, mainly because I don’t like that bit as much as the sewing. 🙂

The gold thread I use for the cards I generally buy in sewing shops (I find mine with the machine threads, but it works fine) rather than ordering it on-line and having to pay p&p.

The only place I’ve found tri-fold cards is Hobby-craft, which is irritating as we live too far away for me to be able to just pop over and get some more whenever I want, but the p&p is a little steep for me, so I have to stock up on cards whenever we do go. But I do tend to nag the parents rather a lot to go, because there is just So Much Craftiness. It really is a shop I want to live near when I move out. Also, if you buy them at Hobby-craft, they come in a pack you can use to keep them clean/give them away in(if you can bear to part with them!)

The beads I got from a shop in Plymouth, where I go to Uni. Most beads would work, as long as they aren’t too big(I think these are a verging on the big side, but they’re what I’ve got), and there are lots of bead shops on-line(haven’t seen that many in brick-and-mortar shops, which is a shame).

Well, that’s everything from me(but I am very close to finishing my first decent pair of socks, so I’ll show that to you all when I finally get around to finishing them ), so see ya!