Year of Projects patchwork bag



 

  

My patchwork bag has been coming along slowly. The postie delivered the scrumptious yarn (Rowan Belle Organic DK) in late September, and I have only just finished crocheting the 27 granny squares. I've been away from blogging for a while but have been busy with work, family, life ... and illness. It has been a busy time for me, and only now do I feel like I'm able to recharge.

 

I've made the very sensible decision to take some extended annual leave to recharge my batteries, spend some quality time with my daughter while she's on school holidays and spend some time pottering around my house doing fun stuff like cooking, preserving and making. I've also started reading again.  

 

I've started crocheting the patchwork bag squares together, then onto the handle and making up the lining. I think I will use some of the vintage fabric I have been collecting. Ravelled here.

 

Ive also been working on covered clothes hangers from The Gentle Art of Knitting by Jane Brocket, another project on my list. An easy and portable project.

 

Here is my list for A 2nd Year of Projects.The list is part of Come-Blog-a-long, a ravelry group where we commit to our projects and share our progress (or lack of!) and challenges.



African flowers

My progress on my one a day project has been slow.  This is partly due to being busy doing other life stuff, and also cause I've been doing other crochet projects.

To get a bit of motivtion, I've pulled out a pillow fill I had in my cupboard, that is a perfect size for my african flower pillow. I've pinned it on, and am slowly joining up african flowers.

I've propped it up on my piano so you can see my progress so far....

I'm linking up with all the other one a day projects on Gingerbread Girls blog. You must go and check out some of them, maybe you'll find the inspiration for your next crafty work.

School holiday highlights

School holidays have been all about new experiences for my little one.

We had a day trip to Lake Mountain - the closest snow resort to Melbourne, where we could happily ride our toboggans, have snowball fights and build a snowman.  Her first visit to the snow.

The area was burnt out by bushfires only two years ago, the damage still evident in the tree scape. The trees in the resort area are a type of eucalypt that re-grows from their bases, so the burnt trunks stay bare of any leaves.

We had a lovely picnic in the snow with wares from the most fantastic french cheese shop in Healesville. Sooo much better than the greasy junk food available at the resort cafe.

The weekend was finished with some Pho Bo from Footscray and some kiddie yarn craft. The yarn weaving is now swinging in the breeze, providing a bit of colour in my vegie garden. I got the idea of this project from Linda at Natural Suburbia. I've made these things  many times as a child, but it has been over 20 years since I last did one! It was nice being reminded how. God's Eye is one name for them, do you know of any others?

Cheerio...am currently watching Pride and Prejudice with Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson and will now get back to it, it's quite a fun version.

Right now

Right now I'm...

:: loving being on leave from work for school holidays

:: planning activities and adventures with my daughter (think rollerskating, circus workshop and craft)

:: missing chocolate and sweet tea (as I'm challenging myself to eat no sugar in July)

:: watching Whip It for the first time, an awesome chick flick

:: flagging patterns in my many knitting and crochet books for A 2nd Year of Projects

:: packing snow clothes for our day trip to the snow (and little one's first EVER snow experience), think snowmen making, snowball fights and tobogganing.

:: mapping out my planned jaunt to Bendigo, to include op-shopping and a visit to Bendigo Woollen Mills factory...and some serious yarn buying

:: joining up my 43 african flowers into a pillow like this

What are you doing right now?

I'm linking in with gingerbread girl.

Vintage crewel embroidery

I first posted about this vintage embroidery kit I bought on Ebay back in August and I've finally finished the last little puff flower. The orange is as bright and orangey colour (garishly retro?!) as it looks in this photo. It's quite small, and was mostly done in a couple of weeks. But I sort of forgot about it for a while and it sat unloved in my sewing basket.

It's now sitting on my bookcase, between The Godfather and Groundhog Day.

It can happily sit there until I find a permanent home on a wall somewhere. I've got a nice little pile of other vintage crewel kits to work on ...  stuffed away in a drawer. I'm off to investigate and select one. Fun fun.

Best birthday ever....

Last week, my daughter celebrated her fifth birthday, along with 9 other girls and 1 boy from her class. She described it as the BEST birthday ever....which made me feel pretty proud. I did everything possible to make it the best (like staying up till 1am the night before so the cake was just right!). By the end of the day the adrenalin stopped pumping and I crashed with exhaustion.

 A kiddie birthday party was a wonderful excuse for me to finally do some of those crafty projects I've been dieing to do....with bunting being at the TOP of the list.

So, my crafting began with some bunting. I got my inspiration for the bunting from this tutorial. The best tip in the tutorial was to use fabric sash (the tutorial calls it twill?) to string the bunting flags together. It made it much easier and neater. 

The birthday cake came from the Australian Women's Weekly Children's Birthday Cake Book - which was first published in 1980 and recently re-released.

When my daughter and I flipped through the pages together she chose a Dolly Vardin cake. I was pretty excited by this choice as one must bake a Dolly Vardin cake once in your life...surely. We had a lovely day trip to Melbourne to a specialist cake decorating shop. They had cake stuff piled up wall to wall.  It was absolute heaven to be there.

While it may look like a complex cake to make, it was very, very easy. I used a packet cake mix, some lovely Vienna cream icing (pink of course) and some edible glitter. And the doll is dressed in Barbie's air steward jacket - giving her a bit of a glamorous appeal.

The party was great fun...an easter egg hunt, pony rides, a craft activity of making Easter bunny ears, face painting (by an auntie), as well as the usual kiddie games of pass the parcel and sit-down-Sunday.  My husband joked that all we needed was a clown and it would have rivalled a small country fair! Oh well. In my family we do these crazy, over the top kiddie birthday parties once every three or four years, so I won't need to do another for a while yet.

The food included fairy bread, cocktail franks with sauce, little cupcakes and sandwiches.