I've been feeling fairly productive today, lots of bits and bobs including some gardening and potting up some baby spider plants. I also made a jam jar garden:





So its a clean jam jar, with some perlite in the bottom to keep it form getting too damp in there, some soil from the garden - with lots of lovely bacteria and other lovelies hopefully! then some moss, and little unknown weeds that I picked from my plant pots. I've also put some 'cat grass' seed in there in the hope they grow.

I'm not really sure what I expect from it, but it's sweet all the same. I'm hoping the little plants will take root and grow out a bit! I have some little miniature plastic animals coming my way soon, so I might add one to the garden!

I first saw these on craftster I think, and it just said on there to water it occasionally, and if it gets misty then I'll have over watered and will need to remove the lid and leave it open for a day or 2.

more crafting!!!! I've been really enjoying it recently as you guys can probably tell. This time its home made jewellery to give to friends for christmas presents, oh and one for me!!! :-)

Purple necklace, I think I made this last winter but didn't have anyone to give it too, I gave it to a pal called Rachel at work. Its glass beads on a 22 gauge wire bent to somewhat resemble a flower, with a little extra purple bead to cover some of the wire all added to a chain.



The rest are all bracelets made from memory wire - so its already curly and fits pretty much all wrists! I just bend an end to stop all the beads sliding off - slide some beads on and bend the other end. done. :-)

Of course there are buttons on the bracelets and a whole mixture of exciting beads.

Green for my friend Katie:


Blue for my friend Fiona:


Purple for Kat:


And multi-coloured for me :-) :


Yay buttons!! :-)

I may have mentioned before that I love buttons, I've added them to many of my clothes, well a new pal of mine wanted a tie with buttons, he brought me a tie that he doesn't really wear anymore and I added some buttons:

Yesterday I crocheted Simon some hand warmers and myself a hat. I'll wait until simon is wearing the hand warmers to take pictures. I find it really difficult to find hats that suit me - I often buy one each winter and try and wear but find by the end of the winter I don't like it - so I've tried making one, I think I like this one on me - what do you think?

Thought I'd post the pumpkin carving me and some pals did on Friday. I'm not really into halloween, (we had some really trick or treaters - every single one said thank you!! :-) and most were kids out with their parents, it was nice) but had some friends over who we like to mess about with and it was a good laugh.

we got 4 little pumpkins and did one each:

Mine

it's teeth and lips are a bit skinned and it's creepy looking

Alice's


Simon's


Ian's


all together:


and out on our front steps where they are currently living


I also tried roasting the seeds - getting them separated from the flesh was lame and way too much work when you can just buy a bag so cheap. and I don't think I like roasted pumpkin seeds but I'm pleased I tried it!

Hope everyone had a good weekend!

i had forgotten and not posted anything, then I remembered and it seemed like a chore to update the things I had made, now I've made something I want to remember and want to blog!

I have a love for buttons, I think they are amazing. I love how many different shapes and sizes they come in and have quite a few bits of clothing with extra buttons on. I think this all started with playing with my Nana's button tin when I was a kid, most times when we went to see her I'd go through the tin, picking out different buttons, sorting them, all sorts of fun and then putting them all back and leaving them there for next time.

After my Nana died my mum got her button tin, and then a few years ago I went through it and picked loads that I loved and then washed them as Nana had a love for strawberry jam and they were all sticky! I spent an evening or 2 sewing them all onto a cardigan, which I wore lots when I first made it but it feel out of being worn because it wasn't very flattering, didn't really fit, I'd sewn some of the buttons on poorly, I didn't like the feel of the polyester and to top it all off, it was black and I don't really wear any black! so yesterday I picked up a new cardy that fits, cut off all the old buttons, added in a few new favourites brought from Duttons Buttons (eee!) and spent my evening creating a new button cardy.

here is a pic of the old cardy:


and here is a pic of the new cardy:



a close up of the buttons:



I cant wait to wear it now that it is back in my wardrobe :-)

i'm just lazy in uploading/taking pictures.

i've been a bit slow recently on the whole knitting/crocheting front, new job at work means life is pretty crazy and i think i've just lost my momentum for a bit. met a fellow crafter on friday though and i hope it'll spur me on a bit.

anyway, for now i made another monkey, he's much better than the first and has been flown to canada for a cousin, i hope he likes him.

this first pic was taken ages ago when i started him, i was going home for a while over easter,you can tell it was cold because i was wearing a cardigan and a coat!! this is me taking a picture because i was excited by the pretty patterns made by the wool!



and here is the crazy monkey himself, looks pretty smooth to me:



i probably finished him about 2 1/2 months ago, i cant believe this is just going up!

I also should have taken pictures of the sleeves i'm making for a jumper, but i think i'll wait until i've got my finger out and finished the jumper so i can show you the whole thing.

hope its not too long until i update again :)

This next post has nothing to do with yarn at all but I'm proud, I've been going to a jewellery course, it was just a 10 week course and just for leisure, so no pressure! i learnt a lot about it, really appreciate jewellery more now, so much work has to go into it!

For a brief description I made a pendant out of silver (1mm thick), I put it through a rolling mill with wool on one side (aha, this post does have some mention of wool!) to get a textured side and I left the other side smoother. I cut a hole from the middle and using silver wire I suspended 2 buttons in a way that allows them to turn. Due to my cunningness I have managed to get 4 necklaces out of 1 (almost!). I say 'I' a lot in this paragraph but I was helped loads by the teacher Luis :)

this picture is me trying to show how all the combinations look (I think if you click on it a few times you get a look at a bigger picture) Its really difficult to really show what it looks like.



this next picture tries to show how I attached the buttons and also a picture of it in the palm of my hand to give you an idea of the size.



This last picture was taken while still at the lesson and I'm pleasantly surprised by it so thought I'd share it :)



no new projects started yet, monkey to be started tomorrow I think, and a hat for Simon when the hemp yarn comes through and I'll have to think of something to do with my load of hemp :)

He's finished!!!! he now has really long arms and a long stripy tail. I'm gonna make another one as a present, I'm really excited! I loved making him!!



He has a friend; alice knitted me a great monkey for my birthday (and gave me the pattern for mine!) here is a picture of them together, they are already good friends as you can tell!!



:)

the next project is so very exciting!! weeeeeee

I started this yesterday (Saturday) morning, did the majority of the head and body, then put quite a few hours into it today, I have some sore spots on my fingers because of all the friction! but I think it is totally worth it.



MONKEY!!!



I just have arms and a tail to go but I have a big problem of a lack of blue yarn left, the current blue stuff on the monkey is the sort of colour changing stuff and I love how it works on him, I especially love how only 1 leg has a bright blue stripe across the top of his purple foot, not sure if you can see it on the pictures. I'm out of the blue and pretty much out of the purple so need to scour my scraps to work out a colour for the arms and tail...will look odd but Simon has already pointed out that he looks 'goth' so maybe it wont matter :) he'll have a couple of buttons for eyes soon as well.

future plans are Simon has a hat pattern for crochet and once he orders some hemp yarn I'll give that a go. I've asked Simon to buy me some pinky hemp too and once I get that I need to have a go at something exciting with that!

there we go, up to date. I love knitting, I've spent hours doing it this weekend and it's perfect for de-stressing!

hope you are well

take care x

I don't really like this picture, it looks like I'm trying to hide my thumb and I think this makes my hand/wrist look a bit funny, but that's not the point of it! It's to show the first step in my new adventures in knitting (and possibly crochet, not explored that yet) its knitting with wire. it was quite different to wool but not as tough as I expected, in my head there are many variations on this, mainly with the addition of other pretty things like sequins or beads to make some really pretty bracelets and other bits.

I think it looks good...I'm wanting to do more.

I crocheted a brilliant bag, I've been loving using it, made it about a month ago. its made from an old single sheet that I spent 2 nights cutting up into one line roughly 2cm wide strip. that took a while and I got covered in little bits of sheet. I then took 2 nights to go round and round in circles building up a the bag.

Due to the pattern of it, it is quite holey, it looks great but I felt a little worried for my mobile phone so I made up a rough pattern for a little pouch for the little ringer and tied it to the edge of my bag so I can always find my phone when it starts to ring. it's not quite perfect as sometimes I become all fingers and thumbs and cant get into it quick enough to answer the phone!!

the 3 pictures are, 1 showing you the whole bag in its magical glory (can you tell I'm proud of it? I love my bag). 1 showing you a close up of the pattern and the other showing you my little mobile phone pouch!









there's still some more to come but I need to cook dinner so I'll do it later.

x

I should have known when I started this that I wouldn't ever keep up to date and would have to do big updates every so often. at least I'm finally getting round to it. Also have a spell checker automatically checking my spelling as I go along in firefox, means my posts should almost be readable...shame it isn't a grammar checker!

so lots of knitting done since the beginning of Feb, it being almost the end of March! first things first, Simon's scarf, it's awesome, I'm awesome for making it and Simon is awesome just because he wears it :)

that's a picture of it hanging over a door, that's right it's amazingly long, I think its probably about 8 ft long, took 4 balls of wool (2 balls at a time to make it nice and thick) and took me quite a while, though I probably finished it about a month ago.

I think it's going to be a good scarf for a long time.

I should mention that I'm not going to post a picture of my 'rasta hat' because it is really ugly, quite well made and I'm surprised at my crochet skills! shame about such ugly wool, maybe some fool on ebay will buy it!

well I think I'll separate my projects again as it makes it easier for me, there are more to come today :) which will be above this post so you'll probably have read them before this and therefore this paragraph wont make sense :)

so this is my final pics at the moment. i have a couple of other things that may appear when i find them and take pictures. this is my first real crochet project, its going to be one of those big baggy rasta hats.

i brought the fluffy wool not really realising how fluffy it would be! it seems to be looking more and more like a muppet and may well be a bit too crazy for me! might end up on ebay, we'll see.

the pattern is pretty much just based on adding a certain number of double crochets to build it out and then keeping at the same number to add length and then a bit of decreasing back to head size. yet to start the decreasing, eee.






i'll be back when more activity has happened.

have some time on a train tomorrow so hopefully get more done then!

take care and be happy
sophie x

the next projects are in working at the moment, but it thought i'd add them anyway.

i'm knitting a fantastic scarf for simon, its made out of colour changing brown chunky brown wool, simon wanted it really thick and chunky so i'm knitting 2 balls together on 20mm bamboo needles, i love knitting it because you see results really really fast and the bamboo needles are so nice to use.

its my won 'pattern' of 18 stitches, 1st row is knit 3, purl 3, knit 6, purl 3, knit 3. the 2nd row is purl 3, knit 3, purl 6, knit 3, purl 3.

so its a real nice chunky rib.

here are the pics






its probably just over a metre in length at the moment and i'm nearing the end of the wool so i need to buy some more as simon wants it real long.

i have one more current project to upload but i'll come back later and do it :) its crochet, ooo!!

x

after the wrist band thingy i made a head band out of some purple and cream wool, but i cant find it to take a picture of it. it was an improvement on the wrist band as there were no added or lost stitches and it looked pretty even!

The next project is the one that i am most proud of so far, its my knitted hair clip, got the pattern from the awesome craft book simon gave me for christmas. before i started the flower i couldn't purl, increase or decrease (by choice) so i had to teach myself as i went along, it was tough and took me ages but i think it looks great :)

I've since made another one as a broach for a work pal, it came out well, but still took ages, i need more practice!




hope you like

x

eee i wish i knew what i was doing when it comes to pictures and posting and stuff. i'm not so clued up on all of this, luckily i'm familiar with google and its magical powers and also imageshack :)


unfortunately this blog cant contain everything i have knitted as i have already given some of it away, like my knitted square for a petition and another flower (but there is an example of a flower coming). I didn't think of doing a blog until after i had given stuff away, but from now on there will be pictures before they go!

ok, my 1st attempt at something was a bracelet/wrist band thingy. I could just about knit, and i wanted something i could see results from fairly quickly. as i started knitting i kept magically picking up new stitches and not knowing how. i also didn't know how to decrease until near the end of the project, and you can probably see where it finally becomes a regular pattern. the button hole was also a mistake, but i found it handy and just threw some buttons on (of course).

I've never actually worn it as i feel it is just a bit wide, damn pesky stitches!

Hello,

I've not had a blog/online diary since I was about 14, that caused a lot of problems between friends, because we were silly and young. I'm not counting my myspace as I didn't sign up to that for a blog. Also I plan for this to be a different sort of blog to what my 14yr old one was like. This one is to be about my new obsession, knitting and crocheting and in the future all things yarny :)

For a bit of info, in Dec 2006 I could not knit or crochet, now on the 29th Jan 2007 I'll happily call myself a beginner with a few projects underway. I want to take pictures and keep a record of what I make and what was right with them and what wasn't. So it might not be that interesting for you, but I'm also hoping to build on my knowledge and so forth.

Well enough ramblings, hopefully I'll get some pics of my first few disasters, oops I mean projects up soon :)

Take care and be happy x