Actual craft work going on!
Yes, while this may seem to have become a randomly posted blog for the Scotish tourist board, over the past couple of months I have been crafting, and at a pace too I’ll have you know. To list:
- a crochet cardigan for me
- a crochet baby blanket for soon to be parents
- A sewn top for me, that fits
- a mosaic bowl from shards found at Loch Fyne
- I’ve decorated Toms new bedroom (the old guest room/work room, in fact I could dedicate a whole post to where I have secretred all my bits over the house…) and the decoration includes decorated waredrobe doors and 3 fab picture frames that I will share
- I’ve finally finished the lamp that I have been coveringfor the past 3 years and it looks fab
- I made up the 4 patchworked seat pads from the fabric swap over on Ali’s blog.
Now for pictures. Starting with my fabulous cardie. The pattern is a lionbrand pattern, click for a link, using 7 balls of Twilleys freedom gorgeous. I love this pattern, it is easy to follow and I love the way you crochet it in one piece and the gorgous yoke type neckline. I was a bit worried that it was going to be too tight, I did keep checking it, but with blocking it fits beautifully. The only change I made was to make the sleeves a bit longer and the cardie one row longer before the side splits. I am so happy with this, it was easy to do, I did it all on our 10 day holiday the other week at Gower, bits here and there, the beach, round our fire… and I love the colour, its just perfect!
When we got back I was browsing some favourite blogs and saw this on Gone to Earth. A link to make a fab little summer top called sorbetto from Colettes pattern blog. Well I’d finished my crochet and it said easy, which it needs to be as my sewing skills aren’t very good. Well I can highly recommend this pattern too! You print it off in about 25 pages, stick them all together, then cut out your size and follow the instructions. The only thing I would say, as indeed she recommends is to print the 4″ square first to make sure you are printing at the correct size, I had to adjust my printer settings to get it right. The instructions are really clear, especially the binding ones, I’ve never know how to finish off binding and have always sort of muddled it till it looks ok, the way she says is great, it works and is easy. Before I made it i checked out her link to to see what others had done. I liked the front pleat inverted so I changed that, and I used 3 buttons to both hold the pleat down a little so it fitted better, also for decoration. I used an old duvet bought from a charity shops years ago (with the aim of making some pajama bottoms, I will) so all it cost was the binding and the buttons. It is so nice to make things that work out and fit and you actually like when finished. I do have to state that this is not a common occurence, but when it happens – bliss!
More pics in the next few days, all this blogging is making me light headed!
Keeping busy
Things have been up and down around here for the last couple of months so, keeping busy is the best thing to do. And as I like to think; every cloud has a silver lining – see what I’ve been doing!
The sock blanket is finished and I love it.
I spent so long deciding the placement of the squares; randomly, tonally from the centre, tonally from a corner, opposing… Then I crocheted them all together in the sort of pale sea blue colour, finished the edging in the grey and realised the blue made it look more disjointed. So carefully unpicked the joins (with the edging till in place) and re crocheted the joins in the grey. Much better. The colours are fairly random, being left over oddments from numerous projects and I think the grey does bring some sort of cohesion to it all, and I love the lacy edging, just what I’d pictured in my head.
With it being sock wool it is really quite soft and lacy to the touch, I love it and want to do another one with lots of different patterns again, but all in cream, that would be lush!
What else…
Another good friend is pregnant so I am crocheting a blanket. For some reason I couldn’tfind a pattern I liked or a stitch. After lots of samples I decided on this one.
I wanted a pattern that was lacy but not too lacy, not flowery, not too simple or too complicated, and found this in my old copy of Vogue dictionary of crochet stitches. It doesn’t have a name but is a fairly simple 4 row pattern. I’m doing it in a lovely and soft 4 ply, 3.5mm hook.
I want to do this: (link here)
in this wool:
those eagle eyed will spot 2 balls re wound. I did 2 lines to test the tension and hook size, though the 4mm was too big so went down to a 3 1/4. I gotdown to the armholes and it was too small, aaarrrggghhhh! But like I say, every cloud… so it means I can get on and finish the baby blanket without any distractions, as I want to do the cardy!!
Lastly for today, we are away camping next week for the school holidays and everytime we go I pack all our clothes/bedding/towels in bin bags as space is a premium and proper bags take up space. So I made 4 large bags out of an old duvet cover, they fold up small and carry a suprising amount and are washable so can carry the muddy and dirty returns back home too – sorted!
Vintage Jewellery
Our broadband has been down for 5 days and I felt like my left arm had been cut off, frightening how much we rely on computers isn’t it… When the engineer did come out, it was working. I think I might have protested too much, but it definitely wasn’t working before and the lady on the phone can back me up on it, honestly. After starting to get annoyed at the pitying looks the very young engineer was giving me, he then started laughing and asking if I liked Shrek. I had forgotton that my eldest had been playing with a new photo program he had found on the internet last month and and transposed an unflattering (is there any other sort) photo of me onto shreks wifes face – and had made it our home page. Bless him.
I did use that ‘free’ time wisely though. While I am still working my way through my wool stash (summer blanket on the way, pictures soon) I thought I should use up some of my jewellery bits too. Not only do I have a few beads, I also have a largeish collection of broken necklaces, odd earrings and general shiney bits from, well, all over really.
So I got playing, sorry, I mean working
And a matching pair of earrings too
I’ve even listed them in my folksy shop too, so if you fancy some vintage glamour pop over and have a look!
However
Crocheted and (very) upcycled coat hangers
I have been looking for old fashioned coat hangers to cover for ages but in Barry at least, its nigh on impossible. I love the look of them, it is something akin to granny squares I think, the colours, texture, associations with the past, let alone the practicality of them.
As is often the case it was the last place you would think to look that you find it. The local pound shop. A pack of 4 covered in an awful lilac nylon/polyester/god knows what for £1.99 – wah-hey!
I was going to rip off the covering, in fact I did, but then put it on again as it served as a great padding. So using up yet more remenants I crocheted a chain the length of the hanger and worked two in double crochet and 2 in my favourite up and down stitch, alternating trebles and doubles. I crocheted till it was wide enough to wrap round the hanger then I cut the end leaving a longtail to sew it together along the underside. Before I did that I found the middle of the crochet and just hooked the hanger through. I then embellished them with some flowers, ribbons and buttons.
2 in cream
and I thought, why not do 2 to match my clothes – thats not taking coathanger love too far is it ?!
Aren’t they fabulous, my favourite is one with the teal flower, it matches my favourite cardie and best of all, the ribbons are of my cardie from those annoying long hanging things you get in garments and the beads came off an old necklace!
Finally I thought I’d show you what I bought in the sales. Its things like this that make me want to get good at dressmaking, I think I’ll let the pictures do the talking!
More stash busting!
Remember this photo from a couple of months ago when I was sorting through all my scraps?
I sorted them into piles, one of cottons and one of colours that went and one of ones that didn’t. Well, I’ve made a gorgeously soft hot water bottle out of the cottons, what do you think?
I really like the uniformity of the grey circles and I do like pink and grey together, very pretty!
And out of most of the rest I started a load of granny squares, as really some of the reminents were hardly enough for a round. The aim was a cushion cover, but an idea has started developing for a bag. I know, I know, another bag, but really – its going to be gorgeous isn’t it!
I love making these and can envisage a glorious blanket however I am running out of scraps now, typical, so the idea will wait till I have gathered more scraps! It is perfect for keeping my latest crochet project (or one of them!) in and both created from scraps, recycling at its best!
A giveaway to celebrate my win!
I’m going to apologise now for the following excessive use of exclamation marks.
I won the makers-online competition with my upcycled morrisons plastic carrier bag crocheted necklace!!!!!
Really, honestly, still can’t believe it but its true!!
Rachelle Strauss of myzerowaste choose the winner and said:
Some of the entries were really stunning so I am unbelievably flattered to have won!
So, I thought in honour of this great occasion I would host my first giveaway! If you would like to win this necklace all you have to do is leave a comment with an email address so I can let you know if your the winner, and pop by occasionally to read my ramblings, see what I’m working on and leave the odd comment as they are so, so important. As much as I love my boys and OH, how can I put it, your comments are more, informative and welcome!
I’ll leave it open till Monday 6th September, the last day before the boys go back to school and they can pick the winner! Well, thats all I think, I’m off to do a bit more screaming…
Jane x
A bit more upcycling
I know its not on my list, but I saw this competition on the wonderful makers online blog
Spurred on by something I’ve been working on for a magazine article, one thing led to another and before you knew it I was cutting up plastic bags.
I kinda have done something similar for the folksy upcycle christmas challange last year, where I cut up a duvet and made that doily floor rug, but this had to be something new, so I thought more delicate.
So this
became this
became this
and with the aid of a crochet hook became this
and with the addition of bits from charity shops and an old chandelier – became this!
What do you think? I really like it, the flowers look pearlescent and rich and feel gloriously soft and light. which I think contrasts nicly with the chunky chain.
Glamorous evening wear, just don’t tell anyone its from a Morrisons plastic bag!
Green Swap goodies
Well, Emma aka bagladee has received her parcel…. and I can show you what I made!
First up is the shocking pink, organic, fair trade scarf. I saw this on Ruffles And Stuff’s blog, from a link on crafteroo and fell in love immediately with it. So simple, so recycled and plain fab! I used an old top of mine that I’d ear marked for this exact project ages ago and seeing as Emma likes bright colours, and I have like a gazillion scarves, I thought I should make it for her instead!
What do you think? (excuse the face, It was 7.30am and Rich was rushing to work, the boys were trying to sort out their breakfasts, mornings aren’t generally good etc etc…)
It is such a simple pattern, and coming in at 158 inches makes for lots of drape!
Second up is a little pot I crocheted, from an old music tape from my long and distant carefree youth (the Prodigy if you were interested!), no pattern, just sort of made it up as I went along. Although a little squeaky to work with, it is so soft when crocheted and has a fabulous sheen to it so it almost looks like woven metal. Topped off with a button from my stash. Look at the gorgeous shadows it makes
I also added some buttons in an upcycled paper bag ( an idea I complety pinched from Rachel of contented who I did the pincushion swap with and will use again and again as it was fab!), some ribbon and a lush bar of fairtrade chocolate. With it being a completely green swap I made a couple of boxes from a cereal box to pack everything in that were very bright and quirky and I like them!
Luckily Emma loves her scarf and pot and I’m sure the chocolate has gone down a treat! For this swap I was organised for a change and sent it early, with us being away last week, so when Emma sends her bits through I’ll let you have a peek!
Upcycling
26th November 09
Mad busy at the minute with replenishing depleating scarf stocks (which is great news, but not for my fingers) and trying to finish my entry into Folksy Upcycle Christmas Competition.
Its a great idea, take something from a charity shop and upcycle it! There are some great judges, Wayne Hemingway MBE and India Knight among others so i’m very excited! You can see other entries on Folksy – and here is a little taster of what i’m creating….
What do you think?
