Bunny from a Facecloth

I'm working on a tutorial for an Easter project today. It will be 'How to make a Bunny from a Facecloth' not earth shattering, I know, but makes a change from a knitted chick!

Thing-a-day Day 27 ‘Nice N Sleazy’ - Glasgow Review

Becky, Isaac, Aileen 27-10-2010

Food = 7 (me 2)

Atmosphere = hostile, bad music, seedy posters.

Would recommend = not really.Wait for the Corinthian to re-open.

Fabric Flower

Tried making flowers from Suffolk puffs (yo-yo's), quite pleased with the results. A textile flower to file away for future reference.

Flea Market Finds

This morning I went over to a local town to wonder around their flea market and charity shops. My TAD is to photographs some of the things I bought.
Three Hornsea Pottery cannisters from the 1970's, six skeins of cream wool, a stoneware jar to put pork dripping in (we will never see the likes of that again!) and four metal teethed zips (to make flowers from). Don't you just love the randomness of it?

Chinese Lanterns Made from Cupcake Cases

I made a greeting card today.

Thing-a-day Day 25 - Hatastic

Okay today’s thing-a-day began yesterday when I had a weird compulsion to make some hats, I think this was down to the snow. Today I made a couple more hats, had a play about with the images and made this mosaic.

Call for Contributors – Create a Blog Dialogue

As many of you will know Anjie & I have been busy this month doing Thing-a-day. Now as we approach the end of February and the end of thing-a-day, We are inviting like minded crafty, artistic & creative people to join as a contributor to Create A Blog Dialogue. 

This is a communal blog that I set up at the end of 2009 along with Anjie from Pompomemporium.com

We intended the blog to be a space to showcase current creative work as well a place to discuss, review and document the whole creative process in whatever medium. Hence ‘A Dialogue’  So we now cordially invite you to join us on our journey – you can comment, contribute and show case as often or as little as you want.

Please contact either myself via email at thesunroomuk@googlemail.com or contact Anjie via www.pompomemporium.com  and we can add you as a contributor.

Process – The Initial Concept

Okay what exactly are we hoping to achieve here? I guess I should be blogging about it, as we go, then you can all follow what’s happening and what we are trying to create and achieve.
I first came across Anjie’s site during the summer and found a lot of her ideas to be very inspiring. I find when you work with others or at least bounce ideas off one another and feed each other inspiration new possibilities emerge and new directions can occur.  I also learned about ‘thing a day’ on Anjie’s site and this seemed like an excellent idea to me. I approached Anjie and asked if she would be interested in working on a blog format and dialoguing our creativity. The process is to undertake a creative activity every day for a month and thus instil the ‘habit’.
Now this may seem a bit strange as we both are regularly creative anyway. So to refine the concept even further another premise is to try new things that we wouldn’t normally try. Push the envelope, so to speak. Due to time commitments we have decided that January would be the best month to undertake the project. In the meantime we thought it would be good to blog about ideas, concepts, thoughts and plans.
I guess it’s like the stone in the pond, ripple effect. I may come up with a notion and blog it and Anjie may have a different take and inspire my creativity in a new direction. Rather than doing all our planning and debating offline (400 miles between us) or between private emails – we thought part of the process should be to blog from the start.
I/we also envisaged that we may just get other peoples creative habit going so they too could work on getting the habit. There is a school of thought in psychology that states that it only takes 6 weeks to establish or eradicate a learned behaviour. If that is the case or you but into that theory then perhaps it will only take a short while to develop the creative habit.

Thing-a-day Day 24 – Snow AGAIN in my garden

Very snowy again, a bit of a shock this morning so here’s my thing. Been ultra busy today and will have photographs tomorrow.

Blue Bird of Happiness Chick!

I knitted a Blue Bird of Happiness Chick today. If you want to knit one of these for Easter, I have a free pattern for a knitted chick containing a creme egg  on my website

Thing-a-day Day 23 – Crochet Poncho

Here I have just knocked up a quick chained poncho. It was very easy and quick to make and I just wanted to try out the concept. I think it would look great as evening wear or on top of a plain coat for outerwear.

Free pattern can be found here.

Flowers made from Suffolk Puffs (yo-yo's)

After making a brooch with a nautical flavour yesterday, today I thought I would play around with Suffolk puffs (yo-yo's) again. This time they look more like flowers, and the gold one compliment the bib necklace, I made a while ago.

Nautical but Nice!

Get those stripy tops out, the nautical look is back (again!). My homage to this maritime fashion is to award my self a decoration. I made my brooch from a Suffolk puff (yo-yo's) sewed on a button, with a nautical flavour, and finally attached a red, white and blue ribbon. I completed my knitted necklace too.

Thing-a-day Day 22 - Tulip

My Black Centre Tulip – hurry up spring!

Thing-a-day Day 21 – Crochet Cat

I think he needs a tail and maybe some eyes but you get the drift.

Knitted Red Cotton Necklace

I'm knitting a plain red necklace in cotton yarn, it's making my fingers hurt! I don't find cotton yarn as easy to knit with as wool, it doesn't have the same amount of 'give', especially when knitting fiddly items on DPNs. I am using larger needles, than I would normally, the cotton is quite thick, the beads are turning out to be quite substantial, good job I like a statement!

Bottling the Lemoncello

It's the final stage in the making of my home made Limoncell, straining and bottling, fortunately we had an empty Limoncello bottle to decant it into. Well the waiting was worth it, it gets a thumbs up from my husband, he says it tastes authentic.

LIMONCELLO RECIPE

1/2 bottle (35cl) of Vodka
7 lemons, washed (use warm water and scrub if they are waxed) and dried.
2 cups (400g) sugar
2 cups (400ml) water
Remove the peel from the lemons with a sharp peeler/knife, carefully avoiding the bitter white pith. Please note that if ANY white pith remains on the back of a strip of peel, scrape it off. If you get any of the white part in the batch, the limoncello will be bitter and spoilt.

Put the lemon peel in a glass jar and add the vodka. Seal tightly.

Leave the lemons to steep in the jar in a cool, dark place, for 2-3 months.

I now have to wait another month before I attempt the next step.

The Syrup

Put the water and sugar in a saucepan, stir and slowly heat until it turns clear and all the sugar is dissolved completely. Let the syrup cool.

Put the cooled syrup in the jar with the lemons

Put the jar back in the cool, dark place for at least two weeks.



Bottling

Strain out the lemon peels through a coffee filter or cheesecloth and pour the limoncello into another container.

Put the liqueur in a clean bottle, seal tightly and leave for at least 1 week before using.

Thing-a-day Day 20 Raspberry Ripple Blanket

A quick raspberry ripple blanket – the photograph in no way represents the actual colour.

Thing-a-day Day 19 – Vintage Sewing Chest Roses Decoupage

 

A long time ago I acquired this wonderful vintage sewing and crafts treasure chest. It came complete with all contents lots of lovely vintage trinkets and boxes. A plethora of vintage buttons, zips, threads, needles etc and a full manicure set. Anyway long story short I think it looked hideous.

Thing-a-day gave me the impetus to make it somehow pretty and I hope that I’ve achieved that. I prepared the chest by washing it all down. Then I applied some ivory satinwood paint mixed with crimson water colour to give it a pink tinge. I then enlisted the mister to cut out many many roses from the english rose wrapping paper I had.

The chest required two coats of satinwoood. I then applied PVA glue and my roses, waited for it to dry and then varnished it with floor varnish voila job done. I think it is much prettier than it’s previous dark brown drab.

 

Forget-me-not Brooch

Following on from the i-cord flower post of yesterday, I made a forget-me-not brooch today.
I knitted two stems from i-cord, one slightly longer than the other, then attached these to the back of the flowers. I knotted the stems and arranged the flowers. I can either attach the blooms directly to a garment or back the flowers with felt and sew on a pin.

Thing-a-day Day 18 Mother’s Day Gift Pouch

Today I was trying to come up with ideas of ‘things’ I could make for Mother’s Day. This is attempt 1 a little bag/pouch which could be filled with various things lavender, pot pourri etc. Mother’s Day ‘it’s in the bag’

Knitted i-Cord Flowers

Today I'm making flowers from i-cord (or you could use French knitting). I knitted a length of i-cord 25cm (10") long. From this I formed a five looped petal flower and attached a button for the centre. I then knitted a length of i-cord, long enough to cover a hair band. When I had slipped the tube of i-cord over the hair band I attached the knitted flowers to it.

Thing-a-day Day 17 – Playing with Trellis Pattern

Today I just wanted to have a play about with multiple layers of trellis. I came up with this scarf and I do like the movement of it.

Although, as is often the case with me, I prefer the reverse of the made up pattern.

Reverse views.

Pastel Polka Dot Pots

I painted some terracotta pots this morning. I used tester pots of emulsion paint, for kitchens, I chose pastel shades. I sponged the paint on to the clean pots, sponging gives a smooth finish, no paintbrush marks. I left the pots to dry. To make the polka dots I used a piece of doweling dipped in white emulsion paint. They make me think spring is round the corner. Wishful thinking?

High Visibility Flag

Today, out of interest, I was trying different colour ways for the Union Jack flag. I tried one in pastel print fabrics, nice, but my favourite one was made from a deconstructed Hi-Vis, fluorescent, reflective safety vest, from Poundland. I liked this, I can see it could be used for safety, maybe on a child's bag or jacket. It would be interesting to try out other designs too, not just a flag. Children might find it funky forgetting it's helping to keep them safe.

How to Crochet an Egg Cosy

Hello Everyone,
I have decided to create a ‘how to’ tutorial to crochet an egg cosy.

Materials: Any small amount of double knitting yarn. Here I used red cotton. A 4.5mm crochet hook and a darning needle.
Let us begin.

Ch 3 and join with a slip stitch

Rnd 1:  ch 1, sc four times into the ring. Join with sl st. From this point forward just work in the round continually without any sl st.

Here I have placed stitch marker to know when each round begins. You can get my crochet stitch markers here or you can just use a safety pin.
Rnd 2: now sc twice into each st (10)

Rnd 3: * sc 1 st, dbsc next st,* ** rep to end (15)  

Rnd 4: * sc 1 st, dbsc next st,* ** rep to end (21)
Rnd 5-13: Work single sc into each st. I finished after row 13 but you may wish to continue if you have particularly large eggs. Break off yarn and sew all ends in.