Week Off Work Week 2: Days 4 and 5
18 Mar 2012 Leave a Comment
in Sewing Stuff Tags: cross stitch
I’ve been making progress on the cross stitch that I bought these for:
The pattern is the “Easy as abc” alphabet sampler from the February edition of Cross Stitcher magazine (and the P is meant to look that wonky!).
5 letters done, 21 to go…
Week Off Work Week 2: Day 3
15 Mar 2012 2 Comments
in Craftyness Tags: blanket, crafty club, Crochet, cross stitch
Yesterday I was off to Sarah’s for a crafty day. I think we’ve got a pattern to these now: a mid morning start, much playing with baby Peter (who is growing taller and cuter by the day) and lots of chat, a bit of craft post lunch whilst he’s napping and then more play/chat. I love these days so much! They’re just so much fun.
Highlights of yesterday include:
- Squeezing in Peter’s first trip to Hobbycraft. I mean, what 6 month old doesn’t need to know the range of craft supplies available down the road?
- Sorting out the layout of my Blue Block Blanket – each row is now bagged up ready to be put together
- Feeding Peter lunch and a) him eating it all and b) not getting it on the walls or ceiling
- Purchasing these gorgeous colours for a cute cross stitch pattern I found in a magazine
- Giving Peter a bottle and him falling asleep on me
- Much chat with Sarah, especially getting ideas for trees to go in my garden (not that I have one – I’m getting way too carried away here, following the trip to see houses on Monday). We’re thinking witch hazel for winter colour and (I think) snowy mespilus for its gorgeous blossom.
- Chatting with Ben once he got back from work and getting an outside opinion on the second development we saw on Monday (go for Plot 3)!
I’ll say it again. It was an ace day!
Week Off Work Week 2: Day 2
13 Mar 2012 Leave a Comment
in Crochet Tags: blanket, Crochet
Week Off Work Week 2 has been pretty busy so far. OH and I have visited 2 housing developments and ruled one out with the jury out on the other. I’ve cleared out and reorganised a closet and taken huge quantities of stuff to storage. All of my and OH’s bank accounts are now registered for online banking, even the one that required setting a passcode, registration number, memorable picture, memorable date and not one, not two, but three security questions and answers (!!).
Ooof. It’s been a busy few days so the crafty side of things has been on the back burner a bit. I’ve made a few more snowflakes for my snowflake blanket, but my big achievement is _finally_ blocking the remainder of the blocks for my Blue Block Blanket. They’ve been staring at me for weeks and I’ve just never got around to it, but it’s done now.
I do love how nice and square they are once they’re blocked.
Now they’re all packed in shoe box awaiting the fun that is me trying to sort out a layout…
101 Things: #26 Make a piece of jewellery
11 Mar 2012 5 Comments
in 101 Things Tags: 101 Things, jewellery
This steampunk bracelet was a kit that I picked up recently in John Lewis, which is somewhere that I really, really shouldn’t be allowed to go unsupervised (especially as I’d only gone there to return things – bad KT).
I had a bit of a problem with the jump rings jumping out of my hands into the black hole that is “under the coffee table”. But other than that, it was really simple to put together.
I did have to battle my symmetrical/non random issues though as there weren’t enough charms to do symmetrical. So this is *gulp* a random layout. Go me for surviving a foray into the big scary world of randomness!
Oh and on another note, it’s holiday time again, yay! OH and I are staying put which means it’s time for another Week Off Work Week. I’m hoping that without the distractions of Skyrim, this one will be more productive than the last one, but watch this space…!
Recaptcha is driving me insane
24 Feb 2012 5 Comments
AAAAAAAAARGH. And breathe.
I’m being driven round the bend by blogger’s recaptcha spam prevention c**p technology. If I want to comment on the majority of blogger blogs, I’m having to jump through a warped two word hoop to “prove that I’m not a robot”.
Any guesses what this says?
Or this?
Or how about this?
I spent 15 minutes just now trying to comment on a blog and failed miserably. The other night I even had to grapple with Hindi, pi and fractions. How, pray tell Mr Google, am I meant to enter that?
I am not a robot. But right now I’m not able to be a commenter on blogs either, and that sucks.
The beginnings of a blanket
20 Feb 2012 4 Comments
in Crochet Tags: blanket, Crochet
5 down, 54 to go…
Punching butterflies
04 Feb 2012 5 Comments
in Craftyness Tags: papercraft
Towards the end of last year, I was quite light on the making a blogging front but I did get a few things done that I want to share. I’d pinned some wonderful paper punch arty thingies, like this and this, on Pinterest and thought I’d try my own version.
I cut the card to size, marked the locations of the butterflies with pencil then punched the butterflies and stuck them on. To give the butterflies a bit of lift I used thick sticky pads and bent their wings up a bit. That’s really all there was to it!
All in all it was a pretty cheap project. The frame came from Ikea, the white card and foam sticky dots from Hobbycraft and the butterflies were punched from paint colour cards.
I do l.o.v.e. how this turned out. I decided one of our bookcases could do with some arty things to break up the books, and this fits the bill so well. I didn’t want to end with a crappy photo of my bookshelf after all the pretty butterfly ones, so I had some fun with picassa filters and came up with this…
101 Things: January ’12 round-up
01 Feb 2012 1 Comment
in 101 Things Tags: 101 Things
Here’s January…
Key: In progress, Completed
#15 Crochet a blanket
All blocks done and most blocked.
#34 Watch at least one film a month or cancel the LoveFilm subscription
Unknown (that’s the film called Unknown, not that I can’t remember!)
#69 Try 2 new recipes every month
I managed 3 and all in one day!
- Chicken with wine and peppers (from The Slow Cooker Cookbook)
- Donut muffins (sadly disappointing)
- Homemade dough balls with homemade garlic butter. Totally om nom nom.
Hmm, that wasn’t a very productive month really – nothing crossed off and no more in progress. I’ll need to do better in February.
Snowflake pattern adjustment
29 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
in Crochet Tags: blanket, Crochet, hexagon
Both my test snowflake hexagon and first real one came out a bit ruffled round the edges. For such a little thing, it was driving me mad and I kept trying to smooth the ruffles out only for them to bounce back into place.
There’s _no_ way I could cope with a ruffly blanket as I would spend all the time trying to smooth it out and get grumpy when I couldn’t, so I decided to try tweaking the pattern a bit. I removed a tr from either side of the dtrs in round 6 then reduced the number of stitches on each side in the remaining rounds by 2.
Much better. Flat edges = no smoothing = happy me!
Definitely not…
29 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
in Crochet Tags: blanket, yarn
A large squishy package may have arrived chez KT this week…
It’s totally not a joint order, by Anna and myself, for snowflake blanket yarn…
Definitely not…
