I'm feeling a bit wooly

Sorry it's been a while girls. 

I've had such a busy couple of weeks. I'm back to work and with my bad back still very much in attendance the days are feeling longer than they actually are.  

Anyway ... that's enough self pity, on to my makes.

To be honest there's not much to show for these last couple of weeks, I have been hookin' when I feel up to it in my spare time, and I am trying to get ahead on the blanket squares swap.  

I am rather slow at crochet but I do enjoy it and I have got myself a small pile of lovely squares on the go.

I think it's a lovely idea and can't wait to see what squares everyone makes and swaps, won't it be nice to snuggle up with the laptop and a cuppa under a real blogger blanket once they are all sewn together.

Working with the wool again I have been itching to make something substantial.  I am a keen amateur knitter and it has been years (23, eek!!) since I knitted an actual garment, it was a 'stunning' white batwing mohair jumper with a large rose pattern on one side, it took me forever and my Mam shrunk it after it's first outing!

I am a fan of Simply Knitting Magazine and this month's issue had a jumper on the cover that I thought I could fancy having a go at, so before I could talk myself out of it I ordered the yarn and have the knitting needles on standby. 

I went for the grey yarn and can't wait to get started with it, maybe it will be ready for next winter, I'll keep you posted.

First bag make of the year

Our Annie the Felt Fairy flew through blogland recently and delivered little parcels to lots of us lucky bloggers, here was mine.

I thought that if I popped them away in my stash box they would sit there until I discovered them again sometime next year so I 'set to' and made a bag.

As the back of my stash was a little bit of fabric I really liked but hadn't found the right use for it.  I can't keep making everything into a cushion so I thought I would use this to make myself a knitting bag.

When I pulled this fabric out this mustard coloured yarn fell out onto it and I thought, ooohh that goes well so I covered the bag handles with crochet.

These bags are really simple to make up and take no time at all, I made a plain cream lining for it and shaped the bottom corners to give it some depth.

I couldn't just leave it plain so I added a little broderie anglaise and ribbon trim and a little flower brooch to finish it off.

I'm rather pleased with it, I do have several knitting bags but they are all full to bursting at the seams, and a crafty girl can't have too many bags, well can she?

Thanks Annie!

~ ♥ Back Soon ♥ ~ 

Monthly Make January 2012

Well, now I'm mobile once again I have been sewing and turned my tapestry into a cushion.

I do love this, I bought the kit on a wonderful day out with my two friends Lynda and Beki, and I spent many hours chilled out over the Christmas period sewing this.  My back pain kicked in just after Christmas so this was a welcome 'sat still' distraction.

In total I think the tapestry took about 50-60 hours and it took about half an hour to turn it into a cushion.

I snaffled up some cotton duck in the Cath Kidston online sale and used that as my backing.

Generally when I make cushions I always add a zip and I have never made an envelope style cushion I thought it was a cop out for people scared of zips, but I'm a convert, it's just fine.

I did try a few variations and it seems a 4" overlap is what works best for me.  So simple to do, this will half the time it takes me to make any future cushions.

I would like to enter this as my Monthly Make for January 2012, I have popped a photo over in the Flickr file.

~ ♥ Back Soon ♥ ~ 

Felties

I received this gorgeous little book from my friend Beki for my birthday back in December and I've just got round to reading it.

image from Amazon

I was just browsing through it and I saw a couple of makes I fancied trying, I thought I'd just check my felt stash to see if I had those colours and before I knew where I was I had made two little critters!

 Chihuahua

Panda 

Me to hubbie 'look what I've made'

him 'yeah it's cute, what is it?'

me 'what does it look like?'

him 'a badger?'

me 'NO, it's not a badger, it's got bamboo and big black eyes!'

him ' oh is it a space badger?'

me 'WTF IT'S A FU*%$*G PANDA'

him 'yeah sure it is'

*big sigh* ... that's what I get for asking I guess...

Aren't they canny though?
(A geordie word - meaning sweet, nice etc.)

I thought I'd pop a keyring chain on them as they are quite dinky and I like things to have a purpose, I'm strange like that.


In other news my back is on the mend and I have been sewing once again, I'll show my makes soon.

~ ♥ Back Soon ♥ ~ 

Calling Cross Stitchers ~ Winners

Well fellow cross stitchers thanks for your interest in my little giveaway.

I scrawled all your names down and threw you all into the cup and the first name out was

Country Rose well done x

I always feel like sending something to everyone when I do these little giveaways, so I pulled together a couple of extra little bundles and I pulled out two more names from the cup

Jill and Shirazza

Ladies please email me with your addresses and I will post your little parcels out.

You can find my email address in my side bar.

~ ♥ Back Soon ♥ ~ 

Calling Cross Stitchers

~ I HAVE NOW CLOSED COMMENTS AND WILL DRAW A WINNER THIS AFTERNOON, THANK YOU ~


I have found myself with two copies of the latest Cross Stitcher Magazine and wondered if any of you would like this spare copy.  

I have some older copies of other Cross Stitch Magazines up for grabs too.

If you are interested in this mini bundle just leave a comment and if more than one person is interested I'll draw a name out of a hat tomorrow afternoon, and send hubbie to the post office.

While I'm here I just wanted to share a recent win of mine. 

I won a £50 voucher on Twitter to spend at Terry's Fabrics, I was delighted! I spent ages browsing the site and settled on a lovely table lamp and a metre of gorgeous vintage style floral fabric.  

I have not got any plans for this fabric, to be honest I thought this fabric might make some gorgeous curtains for my lounge and I thought if I had a metre to play with I could decide whether to go for it, I've still not decided...

Right I'm off to finish off my first proper make of 2012 which will be my January Monthly Make, hopefully I can show you later this week.

~ ♥ Back Soon ♥ ~ 

Cushions for others

Whilst preparing my last blog post I came across these photos of cushions I made late last year.

I couldn't show and tell at the time as they were both gifts.

This is a cushion I made for my Niece, she was 21 in December and I asked if there was anything she would like for her birthday and she asked if she could have a Kandipandi cushion,  a bit pink and a bit Cath Kidston ish.

 Cath Kidston cotton patchwork cushion, embellished with shell buttons.

This next cushion was a little make for my friend Lynda who was married in December, the photos are not briliant but you get the idea.  I do love the rose fabric on the back I must get me some more of that!

So that's it I think we are caught up, cushion wise.

~ ♥ Back Soon ♥ ~ 

A super quick make

First up thanks for all your comments regarding my little crochet dilemma, there was an overwhelming majority of you who said keep going, I think you're right I guess I just needed a kick up the bum.  I will persevere with these as and when and hopefully I will do a big reveal sometime mid 2014 :0)

Now onto my little super quick make. I bought this necklace in the Boots sale in December and thought it would brighten up a couple of my darker and dull outfits.

Was £9 reduced to £3.50.

I am a bit of a bracelet freak and I own hundreds of them, I scoured the racks for a colourful bracelet to go with this but there was nothing, so I bought two necklaces and thought I'd make my own.

So simple, just snipped the beads off and threaded them onto some jewellery elastic and added a sturdy knot.  

My hubbie is a fisherman so my knots are really good, even if I do say so myself!

Even with a sturdy knot elasticated knots need a little dab of glue.  Superglue does work but it becomes brittle in time, I like to use GS hypo cement.

I popped a dab of glue on the knot and shoved the knot inside of one of the tiny beads.

There you go, simple, I often see necklaces in the charity shops, I don't think I'd wear them but I buy them anyway and snip and elasticate them and make bracelets which I always wear!

Gratuitous boobage shot!

~ ♥ Back Soon ♥ ~ 

Work In Progress.. help

Well day 6 of back pain and I'm bored of it now.  The only time I get relief is when I'm sat still, this however lends itself to copious quantities of movies and hand crafts.

I made a start on my cushion tapestry just after Christmas and in these last few days I've completed it!  

I must have spent about 50 hours on it so far but it's done!  I have not been able to use my new sewing machine as it requires lots of moving about and leg movements (which hurt) so it's not yet a cushion, but I will be sure to show it when it is.

Once I completed that I scoured the room for other things I could do from my sofa and my crochet jumped up and waved at me.  I really feel I should keep pecking away at this.  

I love this tin!

These are little squares to make up the Springtime Throw from the Cute & Easy Crochet book.

 Image of the throw from the book.

Poor thing; I've neglected these little squares for a while.  I dedicated today to it and got a few more made up.

I'm now in a bit of a dilemma.

I'm so impatient, I started these last Summer whilst on holiday and to date I have 96 little squares.  As you can see from my photo 96 squares do not add up to much size wise, I've shown them against an average sized cushion.  

The instructions call for 432 squares in total, so I'm not even a quarter of the way there!

I've kept all the ends too!

So what do I do?  Do I plod on for another two years or do I give up and make a cushion?  I'm thinking if I make some larger squares I can mix them up and get there a bit quicker.  I would love to see this at the bottom of my bed.

What do you think should I plod on and make the throw, or cave in and make a cushion?

 I'd be interested in your opinions?

~ ♥ Back Soon ♥ ~ 

Handmade Gifts and LaaLaa's Swap

In the build up to Christmas I was making a few bits and bobs that I couldn't show as they were for others. 

My boss at work who had seen some of my makes asked me to make his wife a bracelet for Christmas, this is what I made for her,

When I took it in a few other men saw it and I was asked to make a few more for wives and girlfriends, I didn't take photos of all the bracelets I made just the first one.  I thought it was really sweet that the guys wanted handmade items for their wives, I bet it was nothing to do with having something delivered to their desks gift wrapped with no shopping involved ;0)

I did enjoy getting my jewellery stuff out again though.


In other news have you seen the swap being hosted by my friend Lynda over at Hookin' With LaaLaa?

The idea is that there is a crafty box that travels among us containing crafty items, Lynda is going to start the box off and pass it onto someone else who takes out whatever takes her fancy, but then she must replace everything she's taken with something else, and then pass it on.  
Pop over and have a look here for the full details.
I think this might be just what is needed to blow away the new year cobwebs.

~ ♥ Back Soon ♥ ~