Inspiration

My current project - the pale pink shrug for my daughter - is travelling along nicely.  

I will show you some progress photos soon.  Today I'm wanting to write about 

my next crochet project.  I don't yet know exactly what it is....but I do 

want it to be a blanket again.  Some of my inspiration is coming from little woolie 

 and from Meet Me At Mikes and from Crochet with Raymond. 

The big question is whether to crochet stripes or granny squares?

September WIP

I've been home from work all week sick with 'flu.  Am only just feeling better today.  But two things happened to brighten my week - some new yarn and the latest edition of molliemakes arrived in the post.

The most I've been able to do all week is knit a bit, watch TV and entertain/care for my 4 year old daughter (yes - she had the 'flu too!).

The yarn are 4 lovely balls of Sirdar Snuggly baby bamboo in pale pink - to make a shrug for my daughter. A shrug (apparently) is a  little short sleeve cardigan. Something to wear over dresses.

This is my first attempt at a real knitting project - having only ever done scarves and hats. So I've done up my first ever gauge swatch and have now started on the actual project. Doing the gauge swatch was interesting.  I always thought I was a tight knitter - but the gauge swatch indicated I was slightly loose, just a bit.  So I dropped my needle size by a half - from size 4 to 3.5 - and it was the perfect tension. The yarn is lovely and soft to knit. Its certainly a real treat knitting with such lovely yarn.

Crafty photo scavenger hunt

I've had a post-it note stuck on my fridge of the 5 items I needed to photograph for Leopard Anchor's crafty photo scavenger hunt.  And while I'm a couple of days late for my post for August - oops!- here it is.

Thanks to Kirsty for suggesting this idea, as I've enjoyed pulling this photo list together.  It gets me to look at things differently and encourages me to get the camera out and work on those skills.

So here we go....

1. Inspiration...my daughter.  She loves putting bandaids on every sore she can find.

2. Something I made...Sissy the hand puppet. 

3. Motifs - birds....my rustic (more rusty) bird garden decoration











4. Supplies...my yarn basket!  Love those colours.  Please note those crocheted african flower hexagons tucked in the left hand corner.  My current crochet WIP.








And lastly,

5. Holiday/Vacation....well, no vacation to be had in mid-winter August, so instead we have a lovely photo of some romanesco broccoli (which is really more a cauliflower than a broccoli).

Because gardening in some sunshine is sort of like a holiday.

 Don't you think?

Sissy

Sissy puppet, a photo by lorimakes on Flickr.

Say hello to Sissy, a hand puppet knitted for my daughter. The pattern is from the book, Jil Eaton's Knitting School, with variations in the length and types of yarn. I used worsted weight yarn for the body and 8ply yarn for the mane and tongue. 

I'm stuck in between knitting projects.  Having been unable to source the yarn I'm wanting - a Sirdar 80% bamboo yarn - I decided to knit up the hand puppet as a quick and easy project that uses up some of my left over yarns.  The grey worsted yarn - while not the most ideal colour for a kids hand puppet - was a half finished crocheted beanie I found in my stash of yarn.  I am trying to be more economical in my yarn purchases - using what i have where I can, instead of buying more and more and more yarn.

I will most likely source the bamboo yarn from an online yarn shop.  Any suggestions of a good one?

The Nature of Tea Cosies

There is now an annual event at the bundoora homestead art centre on The Nature of Tea Cosies Exhibition.  Women from around Australia (and the world) send in their lovely tea cosies - knitted, crocheted, felted, patchwork, embroidered for display.  They are sold and all proceeds are donated to Cancer Council Victoria’s Biggest Morning Tea fundraiser.  There are now several hundred tea cosies that are exhibited.

The art centre is located in an old farming homestead - that was built when the area was just farmland.  Now it's out in suburbia - in the northern suburbs of Melbourne.

Needless to say - on my last visit I couldn't resist purchasing two tea cosies.  One of those that I purchased is the coral and cream tea cosy (called strawberries and cream) in the bottom right of this photo.  Isn't it just gorgeous.

The exhibition space is fantastic.  And being in a large room FULL of tea cosies was pretty special.  All that art and craft - most (if not all) of which is done by amazing women - was very inspiring.

I certainly plan to do a tea cosy for next year's exhibition - as it would be sooooo exciting to be part of a proper art exhibition.

Have you ever exhibited your art/craft? Or maybe you would like to join in and send a tea cosy to next years exhibition.  I will  update the blog early next year once the details are provided on how and when to send in the cosies.

Seaman's scarf

A few weeks ago I finished this lovely scarf.  It has been crocheted from superwash merino 4ply, a lovely and soft yarn that's very easy to use.

The scarf has a ribbed neck, which is done by working sc into the back loop only.  The lace section is done with treble clusters.  The pattern is from this wonderful book which contains lots and lots of crochet scarf patterns, all in wonderful designs using different techniques.

I'm pretty pleased with the result.  The colour is an iced teal (the colour doesn't come up well in the photo).

My current WIP is a another scarf - using fine kid yarn.  More on that later.

What's your current project?

end of winter garden

The last few days the weather has been warming up, with a hint of spring in the air. Our outdoor activities now involve lovely picnics in our backyard, trampoline bouncing and a bit of gardening.  The winter vegie garden is now blooming - with the broadbeans, broccoli and cavolo nero (tuscan kale) doing very well.

I had little success with the lettuces.  It seems the snails and slugs always get to them first.

These have all been grown from heirloom seeds.  The broadbeans are from my Nonno (who is an extraordinary gardiner) and the broccoli and kales are from Diggers Club (an heirloom seed club).

Soon I will be able to plant heirloom tomatoes and zucchini, once the weather becomes more consistently warm.  I always try to plant as many tomatoes as I can fit in my back yard - even taking up some empty flower beds on occasion!  And zucchini - well last year I grew them for the flowers, so I could stuff them and fry them (with ricotta and herbs and dip them in a light batter) - delicious!

When my pantry is empty, I love it when I can pop out to my vegie garden and grab something for dinner without have to rush to the supermarket.

What sort of vegies are you growing?