Its December!
Necessitating a visit to the loft and removal of some of our ‘loft insulation’… and the first decorations have gone up
The boys are incredibly excited, hourly counting the stockings to see if it is getting any closer by re checking the remaining filled ones. I have decided that if they don’t calm down, making December the loonngggesttttttt month ever I may occasionally empty a couple extra, then refill them that night, just to keep them on their toes, well, it’ll make me smile anyway!
I have finished all the patches for ‘Zany’ and the jumper is now completed bar the edgings and the band around the bottom. Which I think will take a while. That and the fact that I HATE SEWING IN ENDS MUM, there are 104 patches and several new balls of wool, each patch has 2 tails, that makes a minimum of 208 ends to sew in. 208! I love my mum, but do I love her that much?
I can’t show you a proper picture as I don’t want mum to get either a) excited or b) disappointed. After reading about the pattern on Raverly I was surprised that it wasn’t as difficult as it seemed but you do need some crochet knowledge as the instructions really are quite poor.
I’ll post some pics and more info when I’ve finished it, which, with 208, yes 208 mum, ends to so in, may be a while!
Happy New Year!
Another Christmas is over and we are all a little sad, especially today
they all came down to be packed away till next year. And do you know what the worst thing was? The amount of dust revealed – I blame santa entirely. (On the plus side I did find several chocolates left on the tree that the boys had hidden so well they had forgotton about them. Should I tell?
Aside from the detritus it was wonderful, family, food, drink, sparkly lights and presents – what more could you ask for? Being the muppet I am I didn’t take any photos of what I made, however all were loved, my bestest friend loved her aran cable scarf, my mum loved her neckwarmer, dad loved his gloves, though I’m not sure ‘loved’ is the right word for Rich’s crocheted glof club cover!
I did love my secret santa gifts! Organised over on the brilliant crafteroo, I sent to Gem of damselfly, and I received my beautifully wrapped gifts from the fabulous Kitty of Kitty ballistic
I received some gorgeous winter scented tealights that are lush, some fruit jellies that are hidden upstairs, way to good for boys, best of all this
talk about perfect, the colours, the details and those pins! It is way to nice to use so I am going to hang it somewhere on a bit of ribbon.
Finally for now 2 more pictures to show you. My mum and dad got me a gorgeous ring for Christmas, but the packaging was as lovely
and open
Isn’t it great, I am so going to copy it!
Happy Christmas!
We are all very excited here, I’ve got the folks coming to stay, fighting their way down several motorways and counties! So we are busy cooking and baking lots of nice treats
Have a wonderful Christmas
Love Jane xx
We’ve had snow, we’ve had snow, we’ve had snow!
I know its causing travel chaos for thousands of people, but for us, here in South Wales it has been almost cruel hearing from framily members up North about the amount of snow, their school closures and seeing the pictures on the news. We’ve had nothing, the odd frost covering, it has been bitingly cold and slightly icy but no snow!
Wa-hey, we woke up on Friday to a glorious covering of a whacking great inch, yes, a whole inch!! So I was a bit naughty and kept the boys off school for their last day (it was only a toy day), we wrapped up and went to the park.
Its amazing what you can do with an inch of snow
and with a bit of persistance look what we made!
Who needs feet and feet of snow eh!
A Christmas Wreath
The boys went out and got our tree on Saturday and it really is the best one yet! I had to trim it slightly at the bottom, which left me with some cuttings – Icouldn’t throw them away could I? So, one metal coat hanger later, a bit of wire and some beads and hey presto
a wreath!
I just used 4″ strips of wire to bind the cuttings to the coathanger that I pulled into a circle shape. I went round a few times to make it look fuller, then used these beads on wire that were off a gorgeously wrapped pressie a few years ago. Then suspended a tree decoration from the top and hey presto – a wreath! I’ve never made one before or even bought one so I don’t know how long it will last, but we love it and it makes you smile when ever you come home and thats not a bad thing is it?!
Also Claire of les bijoux de Claire blog finally recieved her Christmas decoration swap and loves it! I was starting to worry as it took so long to arrive but arrive it has!
It is a shocking photo, it was so dark here last week, but you get the jist.. she loves purple so I crocheted a star and sewed some gorgeous little beads along the edge to give it a shimmer when it twists on the tree. She is mad into jewellery making too and loves turquoise like me so I put in some fab glass turquoise beads and a bit of choccie to keep her warm up in the snow bounds of Sheffield!
First two parcels posted!
I said I had been crocheting like crazy for, among other things for the Christmas ornament swap and the secret santa over on crafteroo. The ornament swap is done, sent but not yet recieved, hopefully due to the immense amount of snow the receivee has had recently and not because its lost in the post!
My swapee was the lovely Claire of lesbijouxdeclaire, she makes some gorgeous jewellery, especially her wire work.
She sent me some gorgeous fimo decorations, I said I like traditional Christmas decorations and the whole Scandianavian type feel too. I think she ticked every box!
Aren’t they gorgeous, I love the detail and they are so fine too
No pics of what I sent yet then, but I can tease my secret santa though!!
Christmas Advent Calender
Its finished, its hanging and its being slowly emptyed! I am really pleased with this, I wanted something quite substantial that we could bring out every year, and it is made from favourite bits of mine that I’ve wanted to use for ages.
I cant wait to get the other Christmas decorations around this and get the tree up!
While looking for some old photos the other day I found the ones I took of the bracelets I made for this months issue of Beads and Beyond.
They are really simple to make, I just crocheted the bands in various simple patterns and pva’d them on a coke can and they retain their shape. One thing I have noticed, everything I seem to make generally has a ‘vintage’ feel and its not intentional. I think I need to ‘modernise’ my work a bit, yes, thats the next task!
For some reason this photo keeps switching position, sorry for the sore necks!
Christmas presents
Guess what horrible task I had to do on Saturday, go on, here’s a photo to help…
If you can’t guess I’ll let you know at the end of this post!
I’ve been very organised this year, mainly due to not having the computer for a while and have made quite a few bits for Christmas. Unfortunately I can’t show any pictures yet, the various people not having received them yet! I’ve signed up for a couple of swaps again both over on the wonderful crafteroo forum, a Christmas bauble swap and the secret santa so I have been beavering away!
A couple of pictures I can show though are of a pressie for my boys. They have been asking me to make them something for a while and while I know they are being lovely, I wanted to make something they would actual wear! So I decided on a scarf each, but what colour, wool and stitch to use? I can safely say this has been the most thought about and experimented on present this year! I decided on sock wool as I didn’t want it too chunky and I thought a variegated one would look nice, but finding colours that are really boyish isn’t that easy. After lots of internet searching I came across this
regia galazy sock wool. There are various colourways, but they are all supposed to knit up in this sort of galazy, swirly effect. So I got 2 ball of this one and 2 balls of a slightly darker blue, they can’t be the same!
Wool sorted, but what stitch? I was worried that I wouldn’t get the pattern so I rang my mum and asked the average stitch number in a knitted sock, 40ish it turns out so fine, that how wide it was going to be. So first I did a sample of hdc’s hoping it would be enough to get the pattern but also nice and quick to do.
No. So then I did a sample of dc and where I was seeing the pattern (ish) the stitch just didn’t look right.
So I next tried a rib, but in a finer wool it didn’t look right either. I was wanting a stitch that didn’t look to ‘handmade’, I know, its shocking isn’t it, trying to make something look machine made so they will wear it – what have I produced…
Anyway, while I can knit, technically, it would take me forever to do and would almost definitely look handmade, I remembered that Tunisian crochet has a knit stitch and that is on my list of things to do too!
So I taught myself Tunisian crochet! I thought it would be quite complicated, keeping all those stitches on the hook looked frighteningly like knitting – but I was wrong, its really quite easy! So this is the basic stitch
and this is the knit stitch! Perfect! So I have ordered a tunisian hook from purplelinda, as if I want the scarf bigger than 10 stitches I will need a proper hook!
I’ll post more pictures when I get started, fingers crossed the post is okay.
Oh and that photo at the top, I had to wash and bleach the santa wigs and beards ready for the round table christmas float, which starts going around Barry again this week – god they were manky!
Hunkering down for Christmas
I love this time of the year, I love wrapping up and walking in the crisp winter sun and I love the dark nights when you put the fire and everything glows with warmth. Its snuggly weather and I love snuggling. I love the warm colours of Christmas too, there are bits of deep red, rich greens and warm browns already making their way into our house, I know its too early for the tree, but surely not the odd decoration, we need time to enjoy them!
Jezzabel my amazing crocheting buddie has just written her first pattern on her forgeous blog for an eight pointed star and I love making these, they are so quick to whip up and it is such a nice pattern, what do you think? (and after waxing lyrical about how I love the dark winters, it is now trying to snow so it is so dark, great for taking pictures!)
I pinned them out and pva’d them to give them a bit of stiffness
And one for me too, I was messing about the other week and found a pattern in ‘Beyond the Square, crochet motifs’, that looked a bit different. Its very simple, you just increase 2 doubles in each stitch on each round for 6 rounds, then do a sort of reverse double for the final round. With the addition of some beads on wires for a bit of rigidity I was quite pleased with it, though it does hurt the hands after the 5th round!
Right, I need to crack on with the advent calander, its looking good!
I’m still here!
Its been a while, we had a computer virus that messed EVERYTHING up and it took a fair while to sort. But I always say every cloud has a silver lining and not being able to access the computer for a couple of weeks means I have actually accomplished quite a bit! It has been quite liberating, almost like a detox, initially I was so frustrated not being able to chat with fellow crafters on crafteroo, read blogs I love, just wander around for general inspiration, let alone get on with my NIGHTMARISH maths course (more about later, though it won’t be pleasant) sorting out football stuff for my youngest team (i’m the secretary, please don’t laugh) and also panicking that I may sell something from my shops and not know, so the buyers think I’m a complete shoddy operation…
However, I am back in the land of the living and having just uploaded my camera programme on the computer I can also show you some pics of recent activity.
First up, I’ve been wanting to make a reusable advent calendar for the last few years but never really had the time. Also the boys are getting older so sooner rather than later was the idea! Nothing too big otherwise I would spend a fortune filling it, but big enough to be an actual decoration.
So I cut out 50 (I know 24 seems to be the norm, but 24, that just seems odd?) red felt stockings, got my bits and bobs out, beads, thread, trimmings and started playing!
So what do you think? I’ve finished 20, the last few are going to have a bit more embroidery on, sort of Scandinavian type style I think. I am imagining pinning them to some twine with wooden clothes pegs that I may stick numbers onto, I’m not sure yet, but more photos when its finished!
I received my suprise gift from spoiltpig, remember Chrissy is doing that fantastic idea of donating all proceeds to Oxfam in return for a surprise gift, isn’t it fabulous!
Aside from feeling all warm and glowy, I get this gorgeous gift that I would never have chosen myself, but I absolutely love, its chunky and sparkles and feels wonderfully smooth in your hand like a worry stone almost. If you still haven’t bought all your xmas presents yet I do suggest you pop over to her site, she has raised £301 so far for Oxfam, like I said, its win win!
I spent last weekend making the most stunning mincemeat, really its the best I’ve ever tasted, and I made it!! Its from Ali over at very berry handmade , its so easy to do and the house smelt wonderful for the whole day! I used a variety of jars and it made 7 and should last for a year, though really it has little chance in our house. Mince pies are a favourite of my boys and every year I think that I should make these more often, why only in December? So 2011 is going to be the year of the mince pie in our house!
Finally, for now, I’ve just had my latest turorial published in Beads and Beyondmagazine. Though I can’t show you a picture as I can’t find it, when we lost everything due to the virus our friend said he managed to save the pictures, but they are hidden somewhere in the depths of the computer… but I’m not thinking about that or I may start to panic, suffice to say they are a gorgeous cluster of bangles, crocheted in cotton then stiffened to maintain their shape and they are quite vintage in style.
Well, I’m sure your cup of tea has gone cold, I’ll be back with more pics of what I’ve been creating soon x
