Christmas Presents in the making...

Life is very busy at the moment in the Crafternoon household!  I guess with two littlies, life is never going to be quiet (and come on, let's be honest- who want's a quite life?).  I am doing a little tutoring, a little child minding, and in amongst all of that, trying to be organised with Christmas gifts!

Al has been making lots of chutney.  I made several pots of Marmalade, and plan to get on with some jam and tomato sauce (great gifts for relatives who we don't necessarily see very often).  

E has been doing some Christmas stamping to help make labels for the said jams, marmalades and chutneys...

I am making good (but not speedy enough for my liking) progress on my Mum's cardi (though thankfully it is sleeveless, so I'm well over half way now.  Having said that, an hour of good old knitting time was spent today transforming that messy mound of wool into a nice neat ball (below).  I hate that about buying large balls of yarn- so often they are OK for the first little while, but then start falling apart and getting knotted.  This morning I was hanging out with my smallest one whilst the others were still asleep, and decided to bite the bullet and just unwind it and neatly ball it.

In other news, I had the pleasure today, of taking my son out for a Hot Chocolate- his treat for getting 20 stickers, and a really lovely opportunity to have some quality mother-son time.  I've been thinking a lot over recent days and weeks about how precious it is to make special memories.  This morning I was remembering how in the run up to Christmas, when my sister and I were at primary school, my Dad would take each of us out of school for a day (on our own) and do something really special.  I once had a day out in London, and remembering us going to the cinema and spilling pop corn everywhere!

What precious memories do you have?

C x

Market Treasures

On our bi-weekly trip to the market for fruit and veg today, I spotted these beautiful hand-knits!  

Gorgeous little knitted dresses just the right size for Poppy (and an absolute steal at £2 each!)

Hooray for little hand-knitted treasures.

Cx

Poppy for Poppy

With Remembrance day approaching, I, as is usually customary, bought a poppy.  This did not last long, as my seven month old daughter grabbed it, dribbled on it and tried to chew it...
As I arrived at church this morning, I saw these lovely hand crocheted wire and button poppies being sold.

Perfect! It fastens on with a catch, and is reusable.  The money goes to charity- half to the British Legion, and half to ingotec- the company behind the Dragonfly Co-operative.  Dragonfly co-operative was set up by an extremely enterprising friend of mine to fund I.T. projects for charities.  The jewellery made is largely up-cycled, and creatively knitted or crocheted together.  One for me.  One for Poppy (I couldn't pass up the opportunity of getting something with her name sake...!)

I am having fun knitting and sewing Christmas gifts and a commission, though life is rather busy, so I am having to do a little here, and a little there...

Have a lovely week.

C x

Various Crafts and Cookery

For dinner tonight we are having spinach and feta filo pie.  I used the recipe from BBC GoodFood.  It looks very tasty, and to make it even scrummier, I added some chopped chorizo (a very nice way to make a mostly vegetarian [and therefore less expensive!] meal taste slightly meatier) as one of the reviews suggested and I can't wait to tuck in later.

On the sewing front, I have just completed a gift for a family member (who I'm almost 100% sure won't be checking the blog!), which was a travel sewing case from the book I love patchwork.  I'm mostly very pleased with the results, bar a couple of things.

I enjoyed making the patchwork bias binding to go around the edge, but looking at it later, it's not quite as straight as I'd like.  I also really struggle with sewing corners with bias binding.  Any tips for this one? I generally sew the binding on the proper way (i.e. opening it out, sewing on one side, and then slipstitching the other side) but the corners are always difficult, and never seem to go the way I have planned.

I just need to pop some pins, needles and threads in it now and it'll be ready to go.

Here's a sneaky peek of something I am working towards for Christmas...

I'm totally loving the lace knitting.  It feels lovely and methodical, though I hate it when on occasion, I lose concentration and then go wrong!

I end today's post with a picture of my two littlies.  Purely because they are gorgeous, and I enjoy posting pictures of them.  Her knitted outfit is a bonus!

Happy Wednesday, friends. I hope it's a good one for you...

C x