bombed

Last week a group of kind bloggers got together to send off surprise packages to a lovely lady, nice huh?

You can read about what she thought and look at some of the other beautiful "bunting bombs" sent  here.

spreading the love

Two super blogging friends are having AMAZING giveaways on their blogs at the moment. Do check out their lovely blogs and while you are there, enter their giveaways supplied by super generous sponsors! 

image source - the golden adventures of a very dark horse

First up Stella's totally amazing Rainy day giveaway! Wow huh?

image source - green valley crafts 

Clare from Green valley crafts is giving away a pair of these beautiful shoes from All about Heidi

midday

I was meaning to post this over the school holidays but I didn't get around to it. I treated the kids to two midday bath sessions over the holidays. Once because we got a bit wet and muddy from our adventure, the other, just because!

It kept them occupied for quite a long time, playing in the bubbly water and you know what? They emerged calmer, cleaner kids! I Let them get into their pyjama's early too. An super easy not to mention cheap thing to do, a break from routine and they loved it!

crochet tips #1

So, it seems like everyone is interested in picking up a hook and having a go at crochet. I couldn't be happier about this. I LOVE to crochet and I actually have a deep need to always have a project big or small on the go. In the many years that I've been crocheting I've picked up lots of little tips and tricks. Mostly things I've learned myself from trial and error, I thought it might be helpful to share some of that knowledge here!

To start off I've picked the "adjustable ring" to share with you. Why? Well because once I discovered it I was surprised at the difference it made to the look of my crochet. You'll see. If you love granny squares you'll love this technique.Before we begin I must add that I'm left handed and I've flipped the photos to show the right handed way, fingers crossed they make sense to you right hand people out there. OK lets see what this adjustable ring thing is all about.

adjustable ring on the left - chain centre on the right

Ok from my lovely flashing gif above you can see two crochet buntings in action. On the left is the bunting triangle made with the adjustable ring method and on the right is one made with a chain centre. See how nice and tight the adjustable ring makes the centre? See how it makes the bunting a nice shape? And that sits flat? Amazing huh? It can do the same for granny squares too, making your blankets, cushions etc sit nice and flat without the need of much blocking (eek blocking I hear you cry? I'll cover that in another post!). 

To make an adjustable ring, you need to wrap the yarn around your fingers a couple of times, do the beginning chains as per pattern instructions. In the example I've chained three to stand as a double crochet, then do the required number of stitches into the ring.  Once you've done all the required stitches, put your thumb into the middle, the pull the yarn end until it's tight on your thumb. Make sure the ring is smooth and no yarn is popping up, then remove your thumb and pull tight. 

You'll end up with something like this, a nice tight centre! How cool is that? Below is the right hand pics. 

So when would you use this technique? Well for example this bunting pattern said "chain 6, then join to end to form a ring" - So in this instance you would forget about the chain part and just do an adjustable ring. It works well for hats and basically ANY pattern that suggests you "chain x amount" and then join into a ring. I find this works really well, especially if you are substituting yarn and find the number of chains the pattern suggest means that you can't fit all the stitches required into the ring. 

I'd love to share more tips over the coming weeks, and I'd love to hear from you if you've got a crochet question or something that's had you scratching your head that I may be able to help you with. 

printed

 You may remember a hand printed fabric swap I mentioned a while ago, well the last of my fabrics arrived just before I headed away to Christchurch. Once the first wee parcel arrived, with some amazing fabric and a detailed account of how they went about printing theirs I realised I didn't let me swap partners know how I printed mine! So I'll let you know in case you want to do some fabric printing at some stage, with things from around your home. It's nice and simple and a perfect wintertime activity to do with your kids, very little mess!

I've always thought the bottoms of celery look like beautiful flowers as I cut them off, seems such a waste to be popping them into the compost. So I used the base of some celery as the basis of my design. 

 I inked the celery up with some Versa craft textile inks that I had bought kind of a long time ago (crazy craft supply hoarder collector here, ahem). Easy to use and just needs to be heat set for the ink to be permanent on fabric.

I carved some simple shapes from a eraser, a leaf and a twirly scroll.I also used the eraser tip of a pencil for the middle of the flowers. I tried to keep the pattern fairly consistent across the four fat quarters that I need to print, I cut them all initially, but I think I would have been better printing on yard and then cutting. 

All wrapped up ready to send! I really hope that my partners liked the fabric they received from me. 

These are the amazing fabrics that arrived in my letterbox! I'm really in love with the leaf one at the bottom, so much work went into that one, inking the leaves up to print, it's really stunning! 

Speaking of swaps, did you see that the travelling stash box is up and running for a second trip around New Zealand? I missed it the first time, but I've signed up for it to stop off at my house this time round! As a great craft supply hoarder collector I'm pretty sure I can find some crafting things to add to it. 

hooked

Quite a few things seem to be flying off my crochet hooks at the moment. One is this  demi cape that I was pattern testing for a very talented local designer. It hasn't been released yet, but when it is I'll post the link. It was quickly worked up and miss E was happy to pose in the crunchy leaves. Dancing about in a skirt that I got from a local thrift store a while back, it's the "thing" to be wearing at the moment, as she's hardly worn anything else all holidays! She's quite keen to change quickly once I mention that a trip to the local skate park is on offer though! Then it's back to shorts.

named

photo by Max

Each Blogger attending the "around the table" blogging conference in Christchurch a few weeks ago were asked to make a name badge for another blogger. I was partnered with Max and as it turned out neither Max nor I took photos of our finished name badges so we've each swapped pics of them now that we are home.

I LOVE mine! It's so cute and it's currently on my bookcase till I find the perfect wall spot for it, it's kinda big! I don't know if you can tell from the photo? Thanks again Max! Max had her wee baby with her for most of the weekend and she had her badge pinned to her baby carrier, we joked that maybe people would think he's name was Max, it isn't!

There were some STUNNING badges made by other clever bloggers, it was fun looking at all of them, some, you could tell had put in lots of effort. You can see some more of them in this post by Roz, which was great for me as I didn't see some of them over the weekend, and you'll get a peek of mine in use too!

I've got one more post about the conference, promise! I want to show you some of the great things I bought at the craft market while I was there, don't worry I've got a little something to giveaway too!

one little ......

ok the third Indian isn't that little, ahem.

I was planning a wee tutorial for these Native American Indian inspired headbands. But the weather hasn't been the best for photo taking and my subjects were not so willing. I'm pretty sure that they don't really need a tutorial anyway. They are super easy project for little ones and not so little ones too.

I was trying to find enough natural feathers for this project for a softer, muted, more "nature" inspired look, but seems our local birds just don't drop that many feathers! But luckily the local dollar stores sell packets of feathers, the kids chose the brightly coloured ones, and I chose the white, to blend in with the few natural feathers I found.

Just cut a piece of card to shape any shape you like. The cardboard needs to be the type from a "box" that has the corrugations in the centre.

Decorate however you want, stick some feathers in the corrugations! Staple a piece of elastic on each end, making sure the bumpy part of the staples are on the outside so they don't scratch any wee faces.

As easy as that!  The kids loved doing them and wore them on our trip into town where they got lots of compliments! I left mine at home, but I was kind of wishing I hadn't after all the compliments they got!

royal vintage mustard

I have a soft spot for cardigans. To put it plainly I love them! Always have, I often overheat so it's nice to be able to unbutton them to cool down a bit in Winter, and I also love the "layered" look. So I'm always on the look out for good quality vintage knits in the local thrift stores. I often leave empty handed and disappointed though, but I had some luck the other week. A pretty royal blue cardigan in perfect condition! In my size too! (Also NZ made, I LOVE that!) I've been busy transforming lots of knits lately (more about that in another post) and I thought I might just transform this lucky find too!

I've sat down one night and crocheted lots of little flowers and circles, using my imagination for the designs. The next night I sat down and stitched them all on, trying hard to make a random application, to help with that I added some little french knots.I stitched them over one shoulder and down the back, hoping that the asymmetrical look would help "randomness". For the crochet flowers I used some silk/merino yarn, hand dyed by Jessicah of Spinning a yarn, it's lovely and soft and the colour really seems to work with the blue don't you think? Now I am eyeing up lots of other plain knits in my wardrobe for a similar makeover! I think it will be hard to stop at one.......