At the moment I am....

Crochet shoes- playing around with various patterns and trying my hand at customising them....

Making a 'Bird mobile'- project from the Cath Kidston Sew! book...

Continuing to knit my way through various baby shoes/booties.... and...

Packing up to move help, with lots of help...!

Holiday Crafting

I have just got back from a fun, yet exhausting week away in France.  It turns out, sleeping in the same room as ones toddler is not the prime ingredient for an excellent night's sleep.  Add to that lots of French conversation and (attempts at) translation and we have the recipe for a tired Mum!  However, in the relaxed afternoons I did get some time to do some knitting, and it turns out sitting and getting on with a bit of tricotage is a good way of opening up conversations with people!

So. Starting in the car on the way down from Dunkirk I got earnestly stuck into the summer jumper I have been trying to make for Élysée.  I made it out of a cotton-bamboo blend yarn as I figured that would be nice and cool.

It always takes much longer than expected to sew up, and weaving in the ends is quite a slow job, but the finished product was worth all the effort...

After this, I started the first project in a while that has been for me, and I am making some wrist warmers using Sirdar Chunky wool... The best thing about this yarn is how fast it grows...

So.  I need to get on with something else now. Time to browse my new craft books. Any good project ideas people can recommend? I'm always up for a new idea...

Bags of fun

Using my new Cath Kidston Sew! book I have attempted my first project- the Shoulder Bag.
I decided to make several of these in tandem, and the project has been growing fast...

Lots of fun, and not terribly complicated for a first project.  I still need to buy some buttons to go on two of the bags.

In other news, after getting my own copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, I decided to start simple, and so made Potage Parmentier for part of my dinner.  Oh so simple, but absolutely amazing and highly recommended.

Right. On with those Crochet baby shoes that I am attempting, and which seem rather difficult....!

Watch this space...

This year, most of my Birthday presents fitted in with a general theme...

I feel very well equipped to start on some more crafty projects. In the mean time, the second in my ever-growing list of baby shoes that I am trying out was a pair of roll-down cabled booties. They are a fairly easy knit but with a few bits in the pattern that took a bit of grappling with. The pattern can be found at: http://www.knittingonthenet.com/patterns/babybootscable.htm 

 









So. I must stop writing this blog, and use the precious nap-time and get on with my first project- the bag as featured in the Cath Kidston Sew book... Watch this space....

Sunshine and summer crafts

Yesterday was filled with a lot of my favourite things.

Here are some lovely flowers that were part gifts, part offerings from my parents' garden, part finds from my own garden, and part mint, given to me by a friend earlier in the week.




I got to spend some lovely (and rather crafty) time with my parents, making some pretty coloured handy tissue holders with my mum....

 

    

I had some great fun following an online tutorial to make a handy "envelope" in which to keep handy bits and bobs (found at http://www.boltneighborhood.com/ - 06-07-2010).

I took advantage of the lovely hot sun and made some mint sun tea... whilst Élysée decided that iced tea was the way forward to cool down on a hot day...

I also started trying out some of the vast array of free patterns for baby shoes/booties that are available on line.  These ones were found at http://www.knittingonthenet.com/patterns/babybootiesmjshoe.htm and are a very easy knit.

All in all a delightfully enjoyable day!

A cushy little number and a trusty ol' Singer.

Last night it occurred to me that cushion covers don't actually take very long to make. Couple that with the fact that I don't particularly like some of the ones we have, and that I have a box full of lovely material just waiting to be used and bingo- an evening's activity.

Singing away.

I am very grateful for my trusty Singer sewing machine. It belonged to my grandma- Nanna, and she gave it to me as a wedding present, in a beautiful hand-made table that my Grandfather (Bumpa) made her for their own wedding, now over fifty years ago.

It has seen many decades of use by Nanna, and five years of (somewhat sporadic) use from me, and it's still going strong.

At present I have a very beautiful view from my 'sewing area', although next month we hope to move, so who knows what the view will be then.

Bloomin' Brilliant

Chocolate is very important to me. I like it in lots of forms, but I am definitely a fan of Brownies.

Another thing I am quite a fan of is Jamie Oliver. Whenever one of his cook books comes out I want to buy it, despite the fact that I already don't use all of the ones that I have!

However, Jamie does boast 'Bloomin' Brilliant Brownies' and I have to say I agree...

This time I added some chopped up glacé cherries and some chunks of milk and white chocolate, but it's also very nice with chopped nuts, raisins, or grated orange zest (not that I have made this very many times....!). I recently made them gluten-free for my sister's birthday, and couldn't taste the difference.

So. Give them a go- they're bloomin' brilliant.

Without a draught

With little time to spare since Élysée's nap was soon to finish I decided that a little project would be just the way to spend a bit of time doing something fun (after a LOT of housework)...

I bought some beautiful Cath Kidston material a few weeks ago and it's been sitting in the bag, too pretty to use...

No longer! We had an old draught excluder that I have never desperately liked the cover of, and so a few quick seams later, we now have something a lot prettier.  I closed one end with poppers, and plan to buy some nice pink or blue buttons to sew on decoratively above them.

Who knows, it may even get used as a regular (if rather long) cushion now, as it's far too lovely to put on the floor!

It's in the bag...

For a friend's birthday recently, I decided to embark upon my first crochet project... A lovely little Clutch Bag ( "In Bloom"- The Happy Hooker).

It proved a fun and very doable first project, although I had to try the flowers a few times until I got it right...

I lined the inside with some red floral fabric I had in my material box

Much fun for a first project, and a nice little gift....