Firstly I’d like to say thank you to everyone for your very kind comments over the last week or so. Things here are still nowhere near back to normal but as the saying goes, “This too shall pass” and in fairness the worst certainly seems to be past us. I am frantically grabbing at the door to touch wood right now!

Secondly, I would like all of you with young children to head on over to Amanda of Kitschycoo fame’s blog, in particular this post and this post. You see, a month ago I bought this pattern and Amanda also sent me the pattern for her Matinee jacket asking me to test it for her. The pattern pieces are still sitting cut out but unsewn – a month after Amanda asked, I haven’t had two minutes peace to finish it. The thing is her patterns are fantastic! Very easy to follow, beautifully put together and unlike anything I’ve seen anywhere else so when I saw she was doing a giveaway I thought, “I must let my readers know about this!”

Thirdly, I finally managed to get my Time for Tea swap goodies posted off today although I’ve missed the last collection. Sue has been very patient with me as the world collapsed around my ears and I just hope that she’s as happy with what I’ve sent her as I was with her package which Sue blogged here. I actually wore the earrings the night my package arrived and they’re just gorgeous so thank you again, Sue!

This is what I sent to Sue – the candle is made from beeswax and is made in a vintage teacup with matching saucer. This was my first attempt at candle making and in fact I made another to burn myself and make sure it was okay! The silver caddy is filled with Faerie’s blood tea from my favourite little teahouse and there’s also a packet of shortbread fingers as I believe shortbread to be the best biscuit in the world

I also made a little bag with a felt cupcake appliqué and Japanese knot-style closure which I’m very proud of!

What do you think?

Posted under general crafty updates, sewing, swaps

The bright sparks over at Crafteroo organised a challenge with a twist at the end of January, the premise being that members were paired up and had to then produce a gift item utilising both partners’ crafting skills. I was paired up with the very lovely Debbs and we decided that she would make a brooch which could be pinned onto a knitting bag that I’d make but which could also be removed and used elsewhere. This is the final result (with apologies for the not fantastic photograph!)

The bag will be going into the Comic Relief shop on Folksy which is stocked with donated handmade items from Crafteroo members – please have a look! There are some absolutely gorgeous items there from some really talented crafty people.

So what do you think? Would you buy it?

Posted under general crafty updates, sewing

Phew! What a week!

Everyone who has signed up to the Time for Tea craft swap should now have received an email from me with your partner’s information. As I’ve had no emails complaining vociferously, I will assume everyone is happy. For the record, the swap partners are allocated as follows:

Apryl and Kathryn
Julia and Tor
Megan and Kat
Erin and Helen
Julia and Eileen
Hannah and Amanda
Courtney and Chrissy
Laura and Kathryn
Ali and Izabela
Anne and Sam
Jen and Kerry
Gill and Katie
AnnieB and Laura
Sue is stuck with me!
Pennie and Emma
Nadia and Fiona (currently blogless)

All participants should have been invited to the Flickr group but if not please wave and yell in my general direction so that I can get an invite sent out.

I encourage everyone to have a look at these wonderful blogs, it’s a very creative bunch of people that are participating in this swap!

In other news, I will be back later tonight with successful muffins, not so successful oatie biscuits and a craft challenge completed item that I’ve been working on

Posted under general crafty updates, swaps

First off, the Time for Tea swap sign-up is now closed! I will be emailing all participants tonight with a questionnaire and I will also email the newer signer-uppers with an invite to the Flickr group where we can share photographs of our works in progress and swap parcels. I’d like to use some of your photographs at the end of the swap so if you’d rather I didn’t, please let me know. Signing up to flickr is not mandatory, just another excuse to get to know each other a little better.

Today’s post is for me to do a little showing off. When I was trying to decide what to make for Annie in the Owl Swap I came up with the idea of a bag she could keep her knitting in. Now for me the critical element in a knitting bag is that it MUST be able to fit my knitting needles in it. Also, personally I don’t like record-style bags – I’d prefer something a little more upright without losing any space. Now with apologies for the less-than-fantastic photographs – this is what I came up with:-

I also liked the idea of being able to close the bag over but still have a little access to the contents, so I made one large strap that can be slung over a shoulder, and another smaller strap for the large strap to go through and hold it closed.

Of course, this bag still had to have some relevance to owls really so I had my first attempt at appliqué. For a first attempt I was pretty pleased with myself although I’d have liked my stitches to be neater.

I only wish I was a neater seamstress because if ONLY I could sew in a straight line, I would make and sell these bags. Ah well, if wishes and all that! What do you think? Would you use it if you were a knitter?

Crafty plans for this week include my first ever attempt at making a cake with fondant icing, a little work on some longies I’m making for the new baby and a start on a couple of patterns from the fantastic Amanda at KitschyCoo. Luckily I will have my partner in crime Kat here to help me out tomorrow. Hooray!

Posted under general crafty updates, sewing, swaps

I promised pictures of the wool that I’d dyed last week and here it is. I was thinking about this actually – would a step-by-step guide to dyeing with koolaid be helpful to any of you?

Bob bought me a few books on natural dyeing for Christmas last year and I still haven’t got round to trying any of the ideas out. Truth is that natural dyeing will take a bit more preparation than dyeing with kool-aid and so I put it off. In a similar fashion, I also bought some acid dyes over a year ago with great intentions and have still not used them. No excuses there, I just haven’t got comfortable with using them yet!

Truth be told I don’t know if I’m in a great hurry to dye again. I really enjoy the end product but it’s so messy, and one little slip of the hand can wreck an entire skein but then it can be so worth it when you get it right! I’m going to reskein these to show the colours better and maybe take more photographs.

Hope you’re all having a nice weekend! Our children are all away this weekend so we’re attempting to organise our house a little. What are you up to?

Posted under dyeing wool, general crafty updates

Annie is my swap partner in Apryl‘s Owl Swap and I received her parcel yesterday. I am so spoiled!

I had told Annie during our first discussions about my love for The Owl and The Pussycat and she clearly picked up on that as she’s made and sent me these beautiful toys which are going to have pride of place on my bed under my new print. Annie also sent me some gorgeous yarn which I suspect is cotton, a flake (which was eaten immediately!) and a butterball bath bomb from Lush. I am so grateful – your gift was so thoughtful Annie and I hope you are as pleased with what I send you.

I had planned to bake today but I accidentally put 1.2kg of wool into a soaking bin earlier and filled it with water so I suspect I’ll be dyeing it later! What are your plans (crafty or otherwise) today?

Posted under dyeing wool, general crafty updates, swaps

I’m one of those people who – no matter how many compliments received – are rarely confident about their own work. When I was scouting for ideas on what to make for the aforementioned Owl Swap I had toyed with the idea of making stitch markers for my partner as she’s also a knitter (Annie if you’re reading this, look away!) so I got some supplies and had a shot. I’d bought enough to make ten stitch markers and so I donated a set of four to the Crafteroo Folksy shop for Comic Relief and they sold! Three and a half hours after being listed, they sold for £6.75 and I’m so shocked. Not only that but I subsequently had complaints from my friends that I hadn’t told them about the stitch markers because they’d have bought them!

Needless to say I’m absolutely thrilled to have made a contribution to the Crafteroo efforts and I’m a little proud that people think enough of my work to be grouchy at me for not telling them about it! These were the stitch markers I made. What do you think?

Posted under general crafty updates, swaps

I’ve mentioned before that I am a member of Crafteroo which is a UK-based craft forum, and how inspiring a place I have found it to be. The forum has liased with Folksy to open a shop for Comic Relief. It will be stocked with donations handmade by Crafteroo members and all proceeds will go to Comic Relief. Folksy have generously agreed to waive fees for these items meaning that all your money will go straight to the cause.

Please click on the photograph to go to the Crafteroo store for Comic Relief on Folksy and check back regularly as more items are being added on a frequent basis. I will be donating an item in collaboration with Kerry from PennyDog and I’ll let you know when it’s there!

Posted under general crafty updates, recommendations, site stuff

Oh. My. Goodness.

Scotland was not supposed to get this snow dump! Scotland was supposed to have light snowfall today with sleet intervals. We weren’t supposed to get this!

I have spent most of the day panicking about Bob getting home and the babies all getting back from school & nursery but at 3.15pm the last of my clan finally walked in the door and I could breathe a sigh of relief. This was of course after I’d already had a near coronary when my car drifted across the street and nearly hit a van this morning. Ah well. The kids all went out to play in it (except the baby, who has been asleep for the last three hours and now won’t sleep tonight) and I got this brilliant photo of my biggest kid building a snowman…

ANYWAY! Onto other things – the eggciting giveaway from my last post! As a refresher, here is the photograph again and I asked you to guess which row was shop-bought:



The correct answer was – the back row! All the other eggs were laid by my girls, and to answer a few of you yes the last on on the right of the middle row is a real egg. It’s laid by Meatball who is my eldest son’s hen, she’s a Cream Legbar and her egg is a nice blue colour. As soon as she’s laid me a few more I’ll post better photographs for comparison.

I collated the correct answers, allocated each person a number and ran the numbers through the random.org integer generator coming out with #3 as the winning number which was allocated to Gill from Hollingdale Designs. Congrats Gill, I’ll be in touch for your address details soon.

The owl swap I’d mentioned before will be completing this week as my swap partner Annie is finished her side too. It’s all very exciting as I’ll now be able to share what I’ve been slogging away on for the last few weeks. Wahey!

Hope you’re all safe and warm. I’ll be back later this week!

Posted under family, general crafty updates, self-sufficiency

Sod’s law, innit? I’m actually getting some crafting done and I can’t post about it until after the 14th February when it’ll be sent to the very lovely Annie from overmilkwood. Annie actually mentioned that she’d left a comment on the entry featuring my Give a Hoot mittens but it hasn’t shown up and since Hannah had already mentioned this I’m now slightly worried. If you’ve posted a comment and it hasn’t shown up please would you mind sending me a quick email so I can do some investigating? I do love getting comments and I worry that I’m missing some.

My lovely husband and I went to Stockholm for a few days last week on a very belated (well, it’s our first anniversary in three weeks!) honeymoon. It was absolutely marvellous and I’m trying very hard not to do that really dull tourist thing of coming back from holiday and showing everyone 50 bajillion boring photographs but I feel I have to share this one.

Those are the two Great Grey Owls resident in Stockholm’s Skansen open air museum. The female (Ropia) is on the left of the picture and the male (Bert) on the right, and Bert got so close to me I could have touched him. Seriously! It was absolutely amazing until they both ate some mice which wasn’t so pleasant.
Stockholm was lovely if very cold and definitely somewhere I’d like to experience again.

I will be back as soon as I have blocked out the most recent items I’ve been working on. My friend Eileen had a baby a few weeks ago and I’ve made a really lovely little lace hat for her daughter plus I must show you blocked photos of the Give a Hoot mittens.

Posted under general crafty updates, knitting, swaps