A time for everything? Really?

The next two study periods at uni are textiles subjects, so i am hoping so much that I might be able to sew again soon. Mostly though, I have written essays and made some prints in my printmaking subject.

Sadly, and to my own detriment I have done no sewing since February really - how depressing!

I have a further confession. Spotlight here, moved from it's old location into a new -big- mega warehouse space, and I have not even had the pleasure of walking into it yet - devastated!

I have done a bit of crochet here and there, nothing finished, some went very wrong and needs re-doing.

At the moment I am working on a little, retro-inspired yellow, cotton, summer, baby cardigan, with bee buttons. I'm hoping I can make the sleeves correctly, because the last time i made this pattern in a blue and white, thicker yarn, the sleeves came out quite a lot narrower than the shaped space for them, I have no idea what happened!
This time I am going to check it bit by bit and not just follow the pattern!

Theres still a lot to do, the sleeves, the neck band and front border for the buttons.
I hope you are all having way more sewing/crochet/knitting time than I am. So now I will go and catch up with all your lovely blogs before i go back to my art history essay!!

Crochet Placemats - 1 a night - a crochet binge

This week, the last week of holidays, I was taking a bit of time off the blog and the machine after the huge sewing stint to make things for the flood auctions and I went a little crazy every night with the crochet while working our way through season 1 and 2 of The X-Files til the wee hours of the morn. Now that work is starting again, late nights and lounge time are over and it's back to regular scheduled sleep for 6am alarms...eep.
So..this week I Started and finished about 14 squares from The Art of Crochet magazines I've been buying each week. I find the squares mostly boring and repetitive, but sometimes they throw in a cool one here or there just to peak your interest again. I buy it more for the other projects in the book each week, the squares are good practice but I don't think I will ever want to make the squares into the blanket.
One of their projects was a table mat. So I made 4 of them. It was supposed to have a picot edge, but I didn't like it as much as without it, so I took the picot edging off and just left the underlying plain edge.
So here are the finished 4 placemats. They just add a little bit of colour to the table I think.

Green centre, green edging.

Lavender Centre, and edging.

Chocolate Brown centre and edging.

Orange centre and edging.

I just have to dampen them and block them out properly and then they are done.
Last night I started in on some crochet slippers for my sisters 1yr old twins. They have grown SO much lately! I didn't have  a pattern to fit a 1 yr old so I read through a couple of other patterns and adapted them as I crocheted I wrote it out if it worked, or unravelled it and started again if it didn't! I have one finished, if the second one makes it to completion and looks the same, I will post the results;)

Today I made a few tiny additions to the tiny spikey christmas tree.

I made some crocheted snowflakes using 5ply acrylic (same as the star) using this simple snowflake pattern by Sarah London.
I think they turned out pretty cute, and they took all of a few minutes to make.

I've got lot's of partly finished presents still on the go...days are running out! But last night I finally finished off a Christmas present, A pair of boxer shorts for my 14 yr old nephew.

They are elastic waisted, but also have ties (made from the fabric) threaded through the casing to tighten them up a bit more.

I used Simplicity 5314

Spikey the tiny tree & beginning to feel like christmas

Meet Spikey! This year we decided to buy a real living still growing tree. Spikey will be big one day, but for now his pot is almost bigger than he is! He is small enough we have popped him up on the table otherwise he sort of disappears if he is on the floor!

We had to race out today and buy some very small, very light-weight tinsel and baubles because the larger decorations we had would have broken and bent Spikey's tiny little branches! After decorating him we realised we had no star for the top! So I quickly crocheted up an Amigurumi star following Amy's instructions.

The little star is made from a scrap of 5 ply acrylic using a size 3.5 mm hook. (US E 4)

The crochet balls I crocheted with a mind to put on our tree earlier this Christmas preparation season have been strung up across the window next to the tree instead, else the lil tree might fall over!

I finished off another present for my little cousin in the wee hours of Saturday morning- My husband went off to bed, and I simply lost track of time while I was working on it, and the next time I looked at the clock it was 4:30am!

I made several mistakes, who wouldn't while sewing at that time of the morning! For some reason it is pulling funny in the middle of the front panel.

Inside I used the red robot print from a spotlight recent sale and rainbow from my stash (spotlight a while ago). The green bias I used is pulling funny and looks all wrinkled in the photo, but doesn't look that bad in person.

The red robot part is a zippy section we put in a box of crayons but its large enough for heaps of things. The pencil part we bought some cool triangle larger sized kids pencils because he is only just learning how to use them. The blue and white striped section we put in several thin colouring books. He also is getting the pentagon ball with the J on it.

The Last but not least bit of happy that happened yesterday, and then time for bed! My aunt and I have been sorting through some more things of mums, when we came across more of her stash - we'd thouhgt we'd found it all...but no, there are still surprises. Besides another cupboard full of fabrics, we found more plastic bags of yarn. We also found boxes full of threads, patterns, laces and zips and velcro and elastic.
I simply don't have the room here for it, so we made the decision to leave it there and as I make room in my stash I can bring some home with me.
Here are some of the goodies, two tins full - I couldn't resist bringing home yesterday.

Zips, zips and more zips, and some bias and velcro.

A reasonable sized biscuit tin full of zips and velcro and bias and some sort of stiffened mesh tape...not sure what thats for.

This tin is heavy, deep and bursting.

The heaviest biscuit tin FULL, BURSTING even, with laces. So much lace!
Mums cupboards constantly surprise me and I'm a lucky, lucky girl.

Once I had a secret love

Well OK since I'm blogging about it, it's not at all secret! but it is very much love.
I just adore a tiny little baby bootie, I mean really, who can resist anything the size of tiny human feet!...but these one's in particular make me...wistfully, longingly sigh. Sometimes I pick one up just to touch it's tiny tininess!

I bought the crochet pattern from hookcandy.com and I really think everyone should go buy a pattern from there, they are so very cute!

My husbands cousin is expecting a bub next year. She's a great friend as well as a cousin. She was the first person we told when we got engaged, (other than our mum's). She was our bridesmaid when we were married. Despite being too ill to make it down here, she told us early that she was  in order for us to have something happy to think about the day of mum's funeral. Since then I have been wanting to make something special to send her for her bub and now that life has calmed down a bit, I've been practicing quite a lot every night to get them right. One bootie always ends up bigger than the other!!! despite using stitch counters and counting and re-counting the stitches. It must be the tension I guess, maybe I'm tense about getting a  pair hehe.
I hear it is a common problem for beginners though to try to get two booties the same! These blue and chocolate ones are the first completed pair the same size YAY!

We don't know if she is having a boy or a girl yet so I am working on booties in combo's of chocolate, white or cream with lavender, yellow, orange, green, or pink and then she can keep the ones she wants and pass any she doesn't need to another mum and bub. I'm sure she will know lot's of mums with new bubs soon enough.

  

I'm a Crocheter of Christmas Balls too

Well the Christmas Craziness has hit!
The air con is making clunkin noises so it wont be on today despite the sun broiling down on my very hot house and all the fans trying their hardest - I sit sweltering beneath yarn.
In preparation for Christmas tree decorating day and egged on by all the bloggers crocheting baubles, I bought a pack of 12 pretty cheap sparkly, shiny balls and I crocheted them. They rock! Crochet christmas baubles! YAY!
The first parts really easy but the pulling it over the ball is tricky on the glittery ones that the yarn likes to stick to, and on the shiny ones the top part gets slippery when you try to pull it tight. Today I often had balls launching, or squirming free of my hands, catapulting my hook to the floor!

It's a really quick little Christmassy task to do though. I completed 9 working on them on and off through the day. The other 3 from the 12 pack were not normal balls, they were spirally decorative cut-out and open inside, I wasn't going to use them, but in the end I thought they should have something handmade done to them so I worked 2 strings of CH30 wrapped around the bauble and joined at the top with slip stitches around the silver hanging loop thing.

Thanks ever so much to Pip from Meet Me at Mikes for creating the fab crochet bauble tutorial and to all the other bloggers I've been reading about lately that have been crocheting their own shiny balls this month too.

Start off the week with freshly rained on grass and clean sky

Sometimes it helps to leave town for even a couple of days just to sweep out the cobwebs!
We didn't drive far, just 30 minutes out of town to camp at Wantabadgery on the banks of the very same river that runs straight past our suburb in town. It's the Murrumbidgee river.

I'd been out there once or twice as a kid to swim, but would never have thought or remembered to go there now! My husbands aunts, uncle and cousins from Sydney found it and came down to camp a while, so we joined them out there for a few days.

Our tent finally got an airing after a year or two in exile to the hall cupboard.
The campsite itself has no fresh water, BYO. A nice chilly walk to the long drop toilets! Oh my. (lucky they even had these really)
No shower, oh dear! But on the overwhelming plus side!
Happy hour each evening! Fruity wine and nibbles. Oh yeah!
Nice, yummy, comfort food - prepared and shared family meals cooked on a smokey wood fire and plenty of male-foke to tend it.

Birds, clean air, trees, everything freshly rained on before we we got there and green!

Cows mooing, and a bull calling out to his ladies each morning! Lazy mornings sitting around drinking coffee and flipping pancakes. Even the Paterson's curse is forgiven for its invasiveness because it looks so pretty.

Thousands of stars, falling stars, weird stars (no thats a plane), with hot choc and marshmallows over the fire along with campfire stories you would never tell at home.
A scarf that got crocheted start to finish on the banks of the river while others were out in a canoe.

Garry's cousins, two very nice, pleasant, chatty, polite teenage boys! Is this a miracle!!? It was wasn't it! They were lovely!
So, this is what 5 hours in a canoe does to you.

So now we return to town full of fresh air and a hell of a lot calmer than before we left and with a new scarf to wear on the cooler mornings.

*long relaxed sigh*

A Busy Busy Busy Busy Week

OMG! I meant to post something every night for the past week..where oh where did all those days go you may ask!
Well I worked everyday this past week and by the time I got home all I wanted to do was sleep! And sleep I did, from about 8:30 right through til the alarm next morning. I was exhausted! Where did my youthful energy go, where did that girl who went out late every night, all those crazy late night bars clubs and all night parties, how often did she see the dawn, shoes in hand...she's 33 now and...asleep by 8:30, just awake long enough to watch Masterchef on the telly...Even on Friday night I did'nt even make the end of Masterchef Masterclass! Asleep on the lounge, crochet in hand! ...boy oh boy how we change through life.
So...here is what I finished this week...I can't remember what day it was...but it was a day ending in y.
For the 12 in 12 challenge, Mays item was something with an enclosed zip.
Taadaa! the KF Everything Wallet completed!

I changed it a bit in order to line the inside of the zipper pocket.

If I were to make it again, I would make it with the correct sized zip, instead of just the smaller one I had in the draw...

I know it's not made for an iPhone, but if I made it again... I'd make it wider and adjust the velcro bit so it would close properly once full of all my cards and my iPhone, and money...

And I'm an idiot, I spent hours choosing the positions of each pocket on the fabric to cut out cool bits of patterns on the fabric to show on the edge of each card pocket...and then promptly realised once finished, that you see none of them beneath the cards..hehehehe.

Still, I love it and it's cute...and the lovely Coles checkout operator made lovely comments about it - Usecase user testing successful:)

Also at some point I think last week even, I finished off my husbands scarf, but I'm not sure If I told anyone or showed it once it was actually finished! So, here it is...modelled by a reluctant, don't-talk-about-me-on-your-blog-husband. ;)

I had to finish this one hat I started about 15 times, unpulled, changed a bit, unpulled, made a mistake, threw it in a bag, found a much better pattern...unpulled and re-used the unpulled yarn, but finally I got it right and finished it! And it was really really simple as it turns out!  I used the Art of crochet, Teresas pattern Little Darling Toddler-Youth Crochet Shell cap. I could only get one ball of this yarn, I really loved it, I wanted it for me, but I can't really make anything much for me out of one ball, I really liked it and couldn't leave it in the shop, my niece loved it because it has pink in it ;) So now she has a crochet shell cap.

Last night I started crocheting a beanie during a run of 24 episodes we were trying to catch up on, I didn't really know what I was doing with it when I started it, and really I should have been finishing off all the other projects I have on the go...but I finished it so quickly I made another one too...no patterns just a crochet hook (4mm) and pink and white and pale pink and pink left over bits of wool. I experimented with them a lot, I made them ear-flappy hats, like I had as a kid. they should fit the twins nicely, if my sister isn't too embarrassed to put them on them! I think they are cute, but I understand that not everyone likes what I like and I'm ok with that. I just say to her each time, if she can't use it give it to someone who can.

On the first one I made the pom-pom old style using two disks of cardboard, seriously painful and annoying when it fell apart while tying it up, second one I made this morning using a Spotlight pom-pom maker, a much easier process not involving cutting out cardboard:) Pom Pom makers:

I also got to use my new Birch split ring stitch markers, I know, not gorgeous beaded glittery jewelled lovelies that I've seen around the net, but they do the job and they don't get heavy or snag the wool:)

And now, to talk about the new crochet project I am starting...
These lovelies came from Bendigo Wool :

And I'm trying hard to make lil hexies...I love love love the little hexies from Attic24's lovely hexagon-howto.

Here are some of the practice ones I did, full of mistakes and perhaps I shouldn't put the two browns next to each other, but none-the-less, once I get the technique down, they will look great and I hope will make a lovely warm blankie for our brown, brown lounge.
I havent yet started anything for my May ornament for the FOSAL...oops.