What you wish for

Every Sunday before we leave VT Ella wishes that we didn't have to go.  This week, she got her wish. She and I got very sick on Saturday night with a raging sore throat and sneezing.  Rather than drive home on Sunday evening, I decided to have an extra night and drive home early Monday morning.   Which I somehow did.  Since then I've been basically bed ridden.  Planning on going back to bed any minute, but thought I'd better check in here first.

  It also gave me time to finish the floors. (although I am sure you are all sick of photos of my floors!)

 I was glad, actually, as it also gave me a chance to peel off the painters tape that I'd put on over a week ago.  I used green tape this time as it was cheaper, and they say that it can stay on for 8 days without damage, but it must have been exactly 8 days, and it was pulling off paint everywhere, which meant that I had to do lots of green touch ups.  You can see how the floor is already marked.  This is an old dusty house which is impossible to clean thoroughly.

 I'll start putting some furniture back in next week. I just wanted to give the paint a chance to cure.  I put a chair into the bathroom too soon after painting and the feet stuck to the paint.

I also finished the cowl.  As Ella and I were taking it easy, there was knitting time, with movies of course.  It think it is really pretty.  And so warm.

Saturday morning

Ella has gym last period on a Friday, so we've been a bit sneaky a few times this year and I pick her up from school early, before gym, so we can head up to VT together and miss most of the Friday evening traffic. The girl does 5 dance classes and one martial arts class a week; one period of gym isn't really going to matter.

It also means that we can get up here, have dinner and I still have time to do some work on the house.

Last night, I wanted to get as much of the floor done as possible. It's tricky working out how we can still use the stairs, how I can do one coat of primer, and two coast of paint (with a long drying period between as I'm using exterior paint) all in one weekend.



Some of this still needs a second coat. But gosh it's looking good. It shows up shinier in the photos than it is to the natural eye, and once it starts getting walked on that sheen will come down even further.



I love it. And I'm tempted to do the two bare floors as well. But I do have lots of other jobs that need doing, so for now I'll just stick to covering up the hideous maroon floor that was. I still have a small strip down one side of the stairs.



I'm also loving how my knitting is growing. This stitch is so lofty and almost like a waffle stitch. I find when I'm knitting continuously like this with very little stitch variation, I can sometimes get bored, but I just want to keep knitting this to see what colour is coming next, and to feel more of the lovely springy texture of the stitch. I will reward myself this evening with a bit more knitting, but first the floors!



Posted from my ipad

It's seasonal

 It seems that I have a seasonal affliction.  Come spring time, I am itching to spin.  Even if I haven't touched my spinning wheel for a whole year.  Spring time just seems the right time to spin.  [I also tend to make all my quilts in spring, and I have one in the works waiting to be put together, but I'm waiting until I finish working on the dreaded blanket so that I have enough room to lay it all out].

 So this week (even though there are SO many other things I could/should be doing) I spun up the last of my dyed fleece (I still have 3 bags of gorgeous alpaca that my mum sent me-thanks mum!-but I'm saving them for something special).  It's a bit of a mix of colours, but I actually really love the muted-ness of it.  It looks almost grey with a bit of colour.   It's a mix of different fleeces; alpaca, angora, wools of various breeds.  My desire to get back into spinning may have been sparked by this amazing book that I got out of the library which made me realise that I actually know very little about spinning.  And during the process, I was reminded that my spinning wheel needs a bit of work and I need to glue my bobbins back together (all manner of squeaking could be heard, and it was hard going at times).

 And then, of course, I had to start knitting with it.  What I love most about spinning wool like this, with lots of colours, is the surprise of seeing what it will look like when knitted.  This is such a lovely soft wool, that I decided to knit another cowl, even though I don't need any more of them. Maybe I'll put it on Etsy, or maybe I'll give it to someone as a gift.

I'm loving the subtle striping so far.   I am using the same stitch that I used to knit this cowl (2 photos below), but because it's on smaller needles with a finer wool, the stitch pattern is much more visible. 

  I live in this cowl; in fact I'm wearing it right now (although this is an old photo of it). I love to have the warmth of it on the back of my neck, and have it dangle down more at the front.

Oh, and apparently this is my 1001st post on this blog!  Feel like I should have a party or something.

weekending

Playing with thread.  I started this last night as I wasn't in the mood to knit or crochet and we were watching a movie.  Freehand fun.  Didn't want to put it down. Been doing lots more today.
Yesterday I also showed Ella how to make a simple doll's quilt on my sewing machine ; she stitched the squares together.  And we made a collection of new earrings together.
Hope you had a lovely weekend too.

European Badger

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 This little guy is really hard to photograph.  He looks so much better in the flesh (fabric?).  The third photo is closest to how the colours actually look.

 I think it's the high contrast between the black and white.

The black fabric is a fine corduroy that was actually a dark green that I over-dyed black.  I was really lucky last week and picked up a MASSIVE pile of remnant fabrics at the thrift store for $5.  Some of them had that musty-been-sitting-around-somebody's-house-for-a-while smell, but washing them in hot water and dyeing some of them made them like new.
[Had another thrifty score today.  Picked up 11 DVDs, 9 hard backed books and an audio book for $14 at the library book sale.  I love our library- it is actually recognised as one of the best in the country].

American River Otter

 My iron on adhesive arrived yesterday.  River otter finished today.  He is in a lovely soft tactile velveteen.

Recyle

 I love repurposing things: giving tired old things a new lease on life, finding new ways of making things out of what, would otherwise, be thrown away.

 Firstly, this is a basket made from paper shopping bags.
I cut the bottom off the bags (and pulled off the handles that were on some) and then cut the bag into 3 pieces width ways.  I then had 3 tubes and with a snip across, I had 3 strips from each bag.

 I then used some spray starch (not sure if it was necessary, but it helped to get the wrinkles out of the bags) and ironed each of the strips into double folded bias strips [fold both edges into the middle and then fold in half].

I then zig zag stitched down both edges (and spent nearly a day trying to fix my sewing machine after it became very temperamental) so that I had lots of sewn strips. (16 in all I think)

I then made a base by basket weaving 5 strips one way and 5 strips the other way, then sewed the remaining 6 strips into loops which I lowered down over the other strips, continuing to basket weave to the top.  The left over bits at the top I just folded under and stapled.  Having never made a basket before, it was all a bit of trial and error and a lot of fun discovery.  It's not particularly sturdy, but would work as a place to put all my reusable shopping bags.

Secondly, I made another union jack pillow. I just love the look of them.  This one is made from the leg of an old pair of jeans, the leg of an old pair of karate pants and an old cushion cover that ripped.  The fabric on the back came from the thrift store, and the stuffing I still had from the many VT cushions that I've been recycling.  I just cut out the strips and zig zagged along the edges so they are all kind of bitsy and fraying, which is the look I was going for.

 My poor sewing machine.  It's a wonder that it keeps going.  I do ask for a lot out of it.  It's about 6 years old and only cost me $120 when I bought it.  When I took it in to be repaired a few years ago, the guy in the sewing machine shop was very disparaging and said it wasn't much more than a plastic toy machine.  And we have our disagreements, my machine and me: it is temperamental and sometimes just needs a rest.  But we get a LOT done. 

pillow design

I've been doing quite a few new pillow designs over the last week or so.  I really love these, and while I can't say that they are selling like hot cakes, I think they have a lot of charm, and I really enjoy making them.

I thought I'd share my process with you.  

First, I start with a sketch of how I think I'd like my animal to look.  I usually start by looking at some  photos, and work from there.

 From there I trace around one of the two squares I have for the two different sized pillows that I make, so that I have a template to work inside, and do a larger sketch.  This usually involves a lot of erasing, to get the lines just right, and both sides of the face symmetrical.

 I then go over those lines in a dark pen, and work out what the different pieces of fabric will be.

 Then I decapitate!  I cut out the pieces, as I will sew them and trace around them onto card.  This creates my templates, so that I can make the same pattern again if I wish. I have to think carefully about the order in which I cut them, as I do over lap a lot of the pieces.

Once I have my pattern, I use iron on adhesive and trace over the pattern pieces (it has paper on one side).

 I then cut these, and iron them onto my various fabrics.  When it's time to sew it all together, that paper peels off and there is more adhesive, so it's just a matter of ironing everything into place.

 Even though the adhesive is pretty strong, I also sew around every edge.  The iron on adhesive prevents the edges from fraying, and keeps the pillows looking good for a long time.  I've used this adhesive on many t-shirts for the kids and they hold up for years being washed regularly.  I usually spend the most time positioning the eyes.  The eyes are very important to the over all finished look.

 And here is my finished fox.  A vixen, I think.

I have these two little guys in the works too (an American river otter and a European badger), but I have temporarily run out of my iron on adhesive.

So, there you have it.  Quite a growing menagerie of animals on cushions.  Not quite sure where the obsession comes from.  But I have always liked the idea of art being useful.  All of these designs are (or will be) available in my Etsy store, of course.

experiments in printing

 I really love the look of prints. I'd love to a course in print making one day.  For my birthday my dad sent me a voucher for Dick Blick art supplies, and I took advantage of it and bought some print making supplies. Soft "lino" blocks and some printing ink.  They've sat there for months, and I've been a little scared of it all; a little tentative and I really had no idea what to do.  That blank page syndrome.  But yesterday I managed to come up with an idea and came up with this.  A bit reminiscent of Pierre Bonnard (I've always loved his bathroom paintings).

 Oscar did a print making course earlier in the year.  They focused more on screen printing (I really want to try that too), but Oscar had asked his teacher if he could have a go at lino printing.  He's had the piece of lino sitting in his room half finished for months.  I actually love it (especially the little people) - he based it on a photo he took in Manhattan (probably from the train going in judging by the angle).  So I thought that while I was making some prints of mine, I'd make some of his, so he could at least see it and work out where he wanted to work on it some more.

Ack!  I didn't realise the actual printing was the hard part.  Getting the inking right, making sure that there weren't any tiny little bits of gunk on them (which come out as massive marks on the print).  I went through many pieces of paper before I gave up for the day, without getting a perfect print of either.  But it was fun and I'm learning.

Squirrel

A new pillow design.  Will list it in my etsy store over the weekend.

Easter craft egg cosy

 I love eggs.  We use them quite a lot, and with 4 hungry, active teenagers in the house, they are a healthy and cost effective way of filling the gaps.  When we went to the tournament on the weekend, the ONLY food for sale was sugar laden baked treats (don't get me started).  Fortunately I'd had the foresight to pack some boiled eggs as well as making sandwiches for the kids.  I often boil eggs for them to take to school.  Ella, in particular loves having boiled eggs.  She still asks me to draw little faces on the eggs like I used to do with all of them when they were little.  This morning, as she packed her egg into her lunch bag, she said that she wished she had a way to stop the shell from cracking as it rattled around in her bag.  

Thus the egg cosy was born.  Now, in the interests of full disclosure, I haven't tested these out yet, so I'm not going to make any guarantees that eggs will be totally protected in these, but if nothing else, it's a fun little project that is a good way to bust my tiny little wool scraps stash, and surely no more frivolous than all those apple cosies that are out there.  UPDATE:  Ella took an egg to school in one of these yesterday and she said it made ALL the difference - not a crack in sight.

And, for those looking for a little sugar free gift for easter, wouldn't this be be cute?  You could even decorate a boiled egg and put it inside.

And since Easter is fast approaching, I made up a quick little tutorial for these this morning.  Should give those inclined enough time to make a few of these. 

Warning, I'm not so good with crochet terminology and language - please feel free to ask me what I mean, if I haven't explained it clearly.

Egg Cosy

To make these, I used wool scraps that were fairly light DK /worsted weight yarn.  I played around with both a size 4.25mm/G/6 and 5mm/H/8 crochet hook as that's what I had on hand.  While both work, I prefer the look of the smaller hook.

To start, I made a magic loop.  ( If you are unfamiliar with how to make a magic loop, there are good online tutorials which can be found here and here.  It's well worth learning as it is such a useful thing to know in crochet- I tend to use it all the time now.)

Start by chaining 2 and then continue to crochet 9 half double crochet (hdc)/half treble UK (htc) around the circle.

 Join at the end of the round, and chain 2 stitches.  In the next round, increase by making two hdc/htc stitches into each of the loops from the previous round.  (You should only make one stitch into the last hole, as when you join it to your chains, it counts as two). Join at the end of the round.  You should now have 20 stitches making a nice flat circle.

 Place a marker at this point and continue to crochet around for about 6 rows.  You don't need to join at the end of that first round, just keep going in a spiral.  This is what starts to give the piece its shape.

At this point it is helpful to get a boiled egg to measure your work.  When it reaches just past the fattest part of the egg  (roughly 6 rows), you will need to bring the shape in a little.  To do this, in the next row you will decrease.  Skip 1 stitch, crochet 4, repeat 3 more times until you are at the end of the round.

Continue to crochet with the last 16 stitches for 1 or 2 rounds.  When you get to the end of the round, chain 7 stitches and join to the following stitch in the round.  Weave in your end.

The little loop may be unnecessary, but I liked the look of it.  If you made it long enough (maybe by making 10 chains), you could use it with a button and make a closure.  I felt that these were snug enough that they didn't need it and I like that this has something you can get your finger through when stuffing that egg in.  And they'd look cute hung in a tree or a bush for Easter...you could even put a chocolate egg in them.

Now, can you guess what I'm having for lunch?