What a Knit Wit - A Life Less Organised......

Things have been a tad stressful in my 'neck of the woods' over the past three weeks, mostly the 'joys' of having a new kitchen fitted and coping with the major disruption to life that this entails.  No cooker for the whole time, just microwave, kettle and toaster in the conservatory, quite a challenge to try and prepare meals I can tell you !  We've frequented our local pub for evening meals on more than one occasion.

With the whole house upside down and huge amounts of dust everywhere, I adopted the route of least resistance and spent lots of time knitting and cuddling my little dog Tilly who has been upset by the upheaval.  With no space to craft and everwhere so dusty and dirty, knitting is the only crafty pastime I've been able to indulge in.  No point in trying to do any housework with all this going on - well that's my excuse anyway LOL

Here's a warm and cosy jumper I knitted for Tilly, she was feeling the cold a lot during the recent frosty spell, especially as she had her hair cut short the week before.  Her new jumper has kept her nice and warm and the added benefit is that it used up some of the yarn that had been lurking at the bottom of my knitting bag for a while.




Here she is wearing her jumper and posing for the camera !





I've also knitted a couple of little shawls, well this one is a shawl which you can wear tied at the back and it just fills the neckline of a jacket, or over the shoulders in the usual way. 

The other one is more of a cowl or collar and should have been knitted in the round on a circular needle, but my needle was too long, so I adjusted the pattern to be able to knit it on a pair of straight needles.  It turned out OK and looks like the picture on the pattern anyway !  Hard to photograph well though, but at least you can get an idea of the lacy pattern.

Although the kitchen is not fully complete yet, at least my cooker and washing machine are in place and working, so life has suddenly got a whole lot easier, just got to wait for the builders to come back and replace skirting boards and do the final fixings and we should be back to some sort of normality.  It's driven me crazy with no space to do my papercrafting.

Here's a piccie of my lovely new cooker, got to get used to using an electric hob though as I've had gas ones for most of my married life.   Thanks for dropping by today, I hope to have some cards to share with you all very soon.  There are a few challenges around which I want to enter and I need to get back to working on my DT projects as soon as I can.

Get Well Soon Lauren

As I promised you in my last post, today's project is the Get Well card I made for my crafting pal Lauren who's poorly at the moment and needs to rest and recover. 

I know she is a huge button fan, so I decided to use two sizes of button stamps from a set by Papermania and stamped them randomly on to a strip of cardstock.  I cut around the edges of the buttons at the sides to give the panel a more interesting look and coloured the buttons using Promarkers.  The sentiment is from a set by Dark Room Door and I use this set a great deal, they are great for Clean and Simple (CAS) style cards.

I've been doing more knitting whilst still in post-surgery recovery and I'll share my latest makes with you in the next few days.

A fabulous New Home

Today I'm sharing with you the card I made for a lovelycrafting pal who recently moved house.  It was hoped that they'd be moved and settled well before Christmas, but in the end they didn't actually move until January. 

I know just how stressful moving house can be, but luckily I haven't had to do it for quite a few years now.  I had all the elements for the card prepared well before Christmas, but didnt want to tempt fate by sticking everything down before I heard the move had gone smoothly ! 

I used the stamps, papers and card from a recent Little Claire's monthly kit and knew as soon as I saw the kit it would be perfect for a New Home card.

The image is coloured using Copics and I added Glossy Accents to the kettle, cooking tools and a few other elements to give them a little dimension.  I do love the red gingham and kraft papers together, they look so stylish.  The colours I used were influenced by the plans for my new kitchen as it will be predominantly cream with a few red highlights added with the kettle, toaster and coffee maker.  We have a mini range cooker which looks a bit like a baby Aga, but all electric, I just can't wait for it all to be finished.  The Home Sweet Home sentiment is from a set of stamps by Dark Room Door.

Sadly my pal is now quite poorly, I think she just wore herself out with the house move and everything and she now needs to rest and recouperate - it was such a shame that she had to miss last weekend's Craftathon in Bristol as I was so looking forward to seeing her again.  I made her a Get Well card and I'll share that with you in another post over the next few days.

Thanks for dropping by today.

Craftbubble Craftathon 2012

If you've stopped by here lately, I apologise for not having posted for quite a few days.  I'm recovering well from my recent surgery, but the whole house is totally disrupted whilst the builders are refurbishing our ensuite shower room and fitting a new kitchen.  The work should have gone ahead before Christmas, but when I got sick it had to be postponed.  I'm at the stage right now when I wish we had never started it, but I can see the kitchen coming together at last and I know it will be worth it once it's finished.  They've been working on the two rooms for the past 3 weeks and I'm finding it so difficult without cooking facilities except a microwave.  Beans on toast for dinner for us this evening I think!  We have dined at our local pub a couple of time, but there aren't too many interesting items on the menu sadly.

I spent last weekend in Bristol meeting up with some of my lovely crafty pals who are members of the Craft Mad and Loving It group on Craftbubble.  Thanks to the tireless effort by my pal Kathy, the whole weekend went really well.  We all met up on friday, everyone arriving from various locations throughout the country and at different times but all able to get together for dinner on friday evening at our hotel.  The pic on the left shows us all unpacked and raring to get crafty in the hall we'd hired for the weekend.  Who would have thought that so much stash could come out of the relatively small amount of luggage everyone (well most of us!) brought with us. 

During the weekend we all created a canvas (thanks to Clare who brought the necessary supplies and gave us lots of helpful tips); coloured seam binding, buttons, dominoes, old CDs and glossy paper using Alcohol Inks (thanks to Kathy who is our Purple Princess of AIs); diecut and coloured shrink plastic and turned it into jewellery, phone charms etc (great job Cherry! your Art Journal is sooooo fabulous Dahlink!)  In fact we all had a huge amount of fun. 

I demonstrated the techniques I use with Copics and Promarkers to colour images, and in the background we had a couple of  DVDs on Art Journalling running and projected on to a screen.  I think we all learned a great deal from these and from each other and the different techniques we use and love. 

Here's a close up of my canvas, I used my lovely new stamps from Chocolate Baroque, stamped the images using Rich Cocoa Memento ink and coloured with Copics.  I distressed the edges with inks and after sticking on to the canvas, I applied Crackle Glaze and rubbed over gold wax medium to emphasise the cracks.  The other elements were added using stencils, stamps, copper and gold paint applied using the edge of a piece of plastic and old bottle tops in addition to the stamps. 

I hope you've enjoyed seeing my canvas, thanks for dropping by to check out my blog today.

Life is a Journey......

I'm cardmaking a little again now and getting back into the swing of things a bit more.  I'm still not able to use my Cuttlebug and most of my punches, but I'm sure it won't be long before I will be getting back to normal.  Off to see my surgeon tomorrow so hoping he'll be pleased with my recovery so far and gives me the 'all clear' to push myself a little harder.

I've really missed entering the Less is More weekly challenges and as I needed to create a birthday card for a male pal, I thought it would be a great opportunity to try to make the card fit the challenge theme for this week, which is a sketch. 

I used three stamps from a little set which came free with a magazine recently, stamped with Momento and heat embossed with clear embossing powder (sadly the shine doesn't show up on the piccie).  I created the vertical layer using Antique Linen and Bundled Sage Distress Inks, applied using stipple brushes.  I also added just a touch of the Bundled Sage DI around the edges of the base card to distress them very slightly. 

That's it, simple but I am reasonably pleased with the final result.

Thanks for dropping by to see today's project.

and there's more..... !

Today I'm sharing piccies of the other knitting projects I've completed while I've been unwell, there is one more garment that I'm still working on, but these are the ones I've finished so far.

This one is knitted in Aran weight yarn and is the same pattern as the one I inadvertantly knitted in too big a size to fit me so gave to a friend.  The yarn isn't the same as the one I gave to my pal though, that was in a pale blue flecked yarn.  I'm wearing this tunic today and I have to say it's really cosy - perfect for this rather chilly morning.

I had a little of the gorgeous Baby Alpaca yarn left over so knitted these fingerless mittens to use it up.  The pattern was a freebie in a knitting magazine and I also knitted a pair for my Dad who was staying with me over Christmas and just after.  I know he gets cold hands when he's working in his craftroom, so thought they would be ideal to keep his hands warmer but still leave fingers free for crafting !  It's a lovely pattern and takes next to no time to knit up.

The final project for today is the mitred squares I'm knitting up using the pale blue flecked Aran weight yarn left over from the cabled tunic I gave to my pal.  I saw the instructions for knitting mitred squares in a magazine and changed the number of stitches and needle guage to make the size of squares I wanted.  When I've knitted enough, I'll join up the squares into a throw and maybe add a pretty crochet edging to finish it off.  I haven't done mitred work before but it is really easy and gives a great finished look I think.  I shall probably stitch them together in this pattern when I've knitted enough of them.




Just one more knitting project to share with you once I've finished it, I'm starting to do a little cardmaking again, so will have a couple of cards to share with you over the next few days.

This evening hubby and I are meeting up with my lovely crafting pal Kathy who is visiting Plymouth with her hubby.  We are heading off for a meal at a local Chinese restaurant this evening and it promises to be a great evening of catching up and crafty chat !

Thanks for checking out my post today, I hope I haven't bored you with all this knitting!  I think I may be recovering from my knitting 'bug' a little as I don't have a new project in mind for after the current one is completed - gasp !

Anything but Cards !

Since getting sick at the end of November, I haven't been able to do much of my cardmaking and papercrafting, but I have been knitting - lots !! 

I currently have my sixth garment on the go since November and thought I'd share a couple of piccies with you as I've been asked exactly what I'm knitting. 

This is the first jacket I made, I'd previously made one using this pattern in darker colours and liked it so much I thought I'd do another one.

As I had been well and truly bitten by the 'knitting bug' I then bought some gorgeous Baby Alpaca yarn and knitted this longline jumper with an asymetric hemline.  I just loved working with this super soft yarn and it's great to wear as it keeps me warm but not overheated and is remarkably light.  I do plan to knit more garments with this fabulous yarn.

The final project I'm sharing with you today is not quite finished as I need to press the parts before stitching up and knitting the roll collar.  I am still not able to do ironing (shame!!) so can't complete it until I can.  I put the pattern into the picture to show what the finished garment will look like.  The yarn this time is a mixture of Alpaca, Silk and Wool - nice to work with but nowhere near as soft as the Baby Alpaca, although may be a little more hard wearing.







I knitted an Aran weight short sleeved tunic with lots of lovely cabling on the front but when I'd finished it I realised it was far too big for me and should have knitted a smaller size.  So, I gave it to a friend who was delighted with it.  I have knitted myself one now and will share a pic of that another day.

Hope you've enjoyed seeing some different projects today, thanks for dropping by.