Handmade gifting....

Would it be making bold statements to profess that the handmade gift giving commitment I made at the start of this year has well and truly started with a bang!?!

I started the corner granny blanket only two weeks ago and it has come together pretty darn quickly.  It is super simple to make with those rows of lovely trebles running down two sides.  I completed it with a simple red border since the recipient of this one is an Australia Day baby, hence the red, white and blue!

And all wrapped up...

I'm certain I saw this idea on Pinterest at one point - stitching names into paper doilies and then whacking them onto the gift, but for the life of me I can't find the linkyloo to it!

(yes, that's Christmas wrap... but it's Knitted!  Perfect for wooly gifts!)

I forgot to measure the blanket before I wrapped it up but it's certainly large enough for a toasty lap blanket for a grown up and since this is going to a nine year old girl I am sure it will be fine!  I used Patons Cotton Blend and went through a hole bunch of the cream but only a few balls of the blues.

Happy New Year Craft!

Ahh, Christmas.  Done and dusted for another year.  Our tree came down yesterday along with all the other house decorations.  New Years Eve saw me watching The Sound of Music on tv, barely awake myself, listening to the snores from a certain family member at the other end of the house.

 

We spent today having a wee Sunday drive on a Wednesday down to Flinders for a looksy and a picnic.  Where we got rained on.  And it was freezing cold.  Seriously, summer, wherefore art thou'?

 

I have an amazingly generous friend who gave me this beautiful felt ball wreath for Christmas.  I have hung it on my craft room door and it is never coming down!

 

 

This afternoon, post Sunday driving on a Wednesday, I managed to finish off this wee little number too... a mini granny square wreath!

 



 

I had a little foam one in my craft cupboard and this pin keeps popping up in my feed so I felt all inspired to make my own!  Six three round grannies joined together as I went.  I sewed the two ends together and then made three rounds of granny trebles on one side of six squares so it looked a bit like a cowl.  Then all you need to do is wrap it around the wreath and join the edges up.  If you look carefully in the centre of my wreath you can see the ridge from the join.

 

Happy New Year Everyone!

My entry for the 2013 Hottie Challenge

 

 

 

 

 

I posted my hottie off to Cam yesterday, just in time for the Thursday cut off date this week for the 2013 Hottie Challenge!  It was not an easy road!!!  I planned to whip up some wee granny squares, seamlessly join them into a hot water bottle cover and send it on it's way within days.  Except those little squares take longer than you think.  Sewing in those pesky ends was painful.  Seamlessly joining teeny squares is not straightforward and if I dared to show you the other side of my work you would die laughing at how messy it looked!

 

 

My first attempt at joining them made all the wee squares stick up like bubbles.  It was annoying and frustrating since they are so fidgety to put together!

 

 

So of course I pulled them all apart and let them sit on the desk in my craftroom for a month!

 

 

When I attempted it again it was with a calmer frame of mind and a looser hand and hook!  I may also have sat some heavy books on top of it all to flatten it down a wee bit (a very technical crochet process!!!).  I left the top and bottom open so it could potentially fit a real hot water bottle and be used for what it was intended for!

 

(still a bit to pouffy for my liking!)

 

On the back is a plain white granny stripe right up to the neck.  I slip stitched the front and back together inside out so all the messy bits are nicely hidden away before I turned it back out to the right side!

 

 

 

I'm happier with the finished product than I thought I would be.  I love the colours and I think it looks a wee bit like a granny square blanket that your nanna might have made you... soft, squishy, cosy and warm. Just what you need in a hot water bottle cover! 

To see some beautiful, super creative hot water bottle covers pop over to Curlypops blog or instagram feed and search under #hottiechallenge2013. 

All hot water bottle covers will be displayed at Opendrawer's Gallery from Friday July 5th to Sunday July 28th.  The address is 1158 Toorak Road, Camberwell in Victoria.  They are then sold to raise money for the Margaret Pratt Foundation Heart Lung Transplant Trust.

 

*giant doily cork board from Typo

 

 

 

 

In absentia....

Olivia the Pig fabric made into a sweet wee girly skirt.

Progress on my ripplealong rug started with a whole bunch of people over at One Crafty Mumma.

To much running equals plantar fasciitis.  Whoops.  Still running in Run for the Kids though in two weeks time.  I'm embracing the pain!  (And strapping it and having some proper treatment just to be on the safe side!)

My completed quilt top from the scrappy quilt along that was doing the rounds on instagram.  Just got to teach myself what to do next!!!

Some crochet blankety progress.  It needs to be bigger!

 



 

I have not been here.  I have been everywhere else instead.  Mostly working (relief teaching) and lots of running with a little bit of parenting thrown in for good measure.  And some craft. 

So while I may not have been physically here I am actually still here.  Reading all my favourite bloggy things, wasting time on Pinterest, instagramming till the cows come home.  Basically as much procrastination as you can possibly imagine.

 

I would looooove to have a big clean up here.  Getting a real person to show me how to pretty this place up.  Use an actual camera for photos instead of repeated instragram ones.  Commit to blogging more regularly.  It takes time though, and that's just not on my side at the moment. 

 

I say thank goodness too that this revolting Melbourne hot spell appears to be coming to an end tomorrow as well.  Can everyone give me a halla-bloody-lujah!?

My creative space... ta da!!!!

My (Isaac's!!!) Crochet Mario Blanket is done!!!!!
3 months late and finished in the heat of a Melbourne summer.  Perfect timing really.

252 five round granny squares joined as I went along.
Ends sewn in over the last few days.
One round of double crochet in each stitch then one row of treble stitches around the edge in pale blue!

8ply 100% pure wool from the classics collection at Bendigo Woollen Mills.

Inspiration drawn from here.
Pattern drawn from here.
And here's where I first started it.

I first started doing this in May 2011 and had planned on giving it to Isaac for his sixth birthday in October, for which we had a Mario themed party.  Life in general kinda got in the way a wee bit, I kept running out of wool and having to order more and I basically got sick of the sight of it!  It appeared to be this never ending project that I wanted to ball up and throw in the back of the cupboard never to be seen again!

I'm glad I perservered in the end because he really does look wonderful!  He is frightfully huge and ridiculously heavy but clearly Isaac can grow into him!

Layed out on my king size bed, just so you can understand his size!

I asked him to pose nicely on the blanket... he farted and then couldn't stop giggling so I guess you could say the blanket has been 'boy' christened!

Lucky he still likes Mario or I would have been in a whole world of trouble!

These are all the ends snipped off after I sewed them all in.  That's at least 2 ends per square - 252 squares x 2 = 504 ends, plus one or two extras for the edge and the occasional run out of wool mid square!  I actually stayed up very late the other night sewing and sewing and sewing whilst watching Carrie on Foxtel.  Freaky movie!  Did you know John Travolta is in it?!

 

Now, I know there is a tradition in blog land of hurling finished crochet rugs into the sky and photographing them beautifully as they parachute to the ground but since this thing weighs a ton I give you this instead....

"Come hither... Mario and I are waiting for you!"

 

Other beautiful creative spaces are right this way.

My creative space...

I had big plans this week to get the Mario blanket finally finished, but then my husband pulled our entire kitchen out and that kinda got in the way of me sitting on the couch and crocheting all day!

 



This is actually the last square so I really could do the big reveal but I want to crochet an edge on first and see how many of those ends I can get sewn in.  Come back next week maybe?!



I have double crocheted right around the edge in that sky blue colour and am now going to treble around that a few times till it looks about right.

Sewing those ends are going to do my head in!!!

 

 

And in my husband's creative space...

 

the old kitchen cabinets came out and the new ones are going in!  Tis a bit exciting!

 

Visit some other creative spaces over this way.

Simply Crochet!

I simply could not wait for this magazine to arrive in Australia so downloaded a version onto my ipad this morning. 

 

Source: simplycrochetmag.co.uk via Sonia on Pinterest

I made it to page twelve before I let out my first wanton squeal!
 

 

Source: heals.co.uk via Sonia on Pinterest

I don't think it is too much to expect Darren to sleep in this!  It even comes in king size which is perfect for our bed!  And at only 120 pound, so afordable (according to the google money convertor that's $183.14!).  I'm sure they'd happily ship me that rug too!

My creative space...

Isaac turns 6 tomorrow!

 

Clearly this... 

 

 

... is NOT going to be finished!

 



Those four missing squares at the bottom there... once I have done those, I'll be halfway...as long as I don't count the weaving in of those dastardly ends or coming up with a border of some description!

 

Want to create something similar in crochet? Three round grannies are your answer... even four would make this project a little less, um, lengthy! 

 

Five!  It's a wrist killer! 

 

 

Photo a day in October... something close up

 

How could I not do a close up of a granny?

 

 

They still do it for me in a big way!

 

 

By the way, I survived my first day back in front of a classroom today! 

Really, how frightening can 17 six year olds be?!

 

A work in progress

I had a dream....

 

(don't mind my shoes!)

 

I think my dream got to big.

He is currently just shy of the width of our king size bed.

I still have 164 squares to do and join. 

The ends to sew in

An edge to do.

 

Each square is taking me about 16 minutes.

 

16 x 164 = 2624

 

2624 divided by 60 minutes = 44 hours (rounded up)

 

That's 44 hours of work peeps to just get the squares done.

Before the 26th of October.  Isaac's birthday.

 

I had a dream...

And am now having a nightmare!

 

(but, my word, how cute is Mario going to be!!!!)

My creative space: Unfinished!

 

Please tell me that I am not the only one with eleventy billion crafty projects on the go at once, none of which are recieving my full attention, all of which are strewn across the craft room floor????

 

 

 

This basket of traditional granny squares made using left over bits of yarn from various other projects.

 

 

The rainbow rug, using Lucy's granny stripe tutorial.

 

 

The rest of the colours for the rainbow rug.

 

 

 

 

And of course, the poor Mario blanket.  Which has all but been forgotten about since I ran out of the blue and it's on back order with the Bendigo Woollen Mills and since I am joining as I am going I can't continue on with the other colours without ruining my pattern of joining!

 

So of course with all of that laying about the house I'd want to start something new!

 

 

 

After seeing this beautiful scarf I had to give it a go myself.  The wool is a purchase I made on my Hobart weekend from The Stash Cupboard and my instagram pictures really don't do the colour any justice.  It is a Cascade Yarn in a lovely steel blue colour.

 

What's on your hook at the moment?

Some beautiful 'completed' creative spaces are at Kidspot.

My creative space...

Progress with my Mario crochet rug is coming along... slowly! 

I wish, I wish, I wish I had made my grannies smaller! 

But I am not undoing that bastard now. 

Mario will not defeat me!

School holidays have hit us around here so I took the boys to this giant indoor skate shed (Best $12 I ever spent!!!).  They scootered and I crocheted... for 2 hours.  Thankfully they are too young to be embarrassed by their mother's crochet skills at the skate park and, after all, I am crocheting an apparent life size Mario!!!

That's his face starting to develop right there... a beady, brown eye staring at me and urging me to get a move along!

And just look at this fabulous fabric I found at Spotlight the other day!  It also came on a green background too and I may have got some of that as well.  Cute reversible skirts are coming off the sewing machine as we speak!

On that note, does anyone have any good advice on where I can get some clothing labels made up.  They would be very basic, just with LionessLady written on them, that I could attach to things I've made.  Of course I have googled, and Etsyied but you get such a huge amount of options I simply don't know where to start! 

Other creative spaces are over at the Village Voice on Kidspot.

I spy... a Granny Square Cardy!

(image)

I knew I spied some Granny Square love on Winners and Losers the other night!

Loved, loved, loved Bec's Granny Square cardy!  Perfect fashion wear for an ultrasound with your husband, the baby daddy and the baby daddy's girlfriend!

Sad Sundays

You know those days when you wake up in the morning and you're already in a poop of a mood? 

That was me today.

It starts with a late night, over indulging on garlic bread which you wake up still tasting and then finding your three your olds little head sharing your pillow while you lay curled on your side on the edge of your bed, any sudden movement leaving you on the carpet at your bedside.

Your mood worsens as you end up standing in the freezing cold wind for over an hour watching U8's football.  Instead of being involved in the game in any way, shape or form, your child is the one who spends the entire game jumping in mud, playing with his socks and taking his mouthguard in and out, eleventy billion times!  Let's not forget the other two charming small people attached to your legs also bemoaning the freezing cold wind, their boredom and the lack of worthwhile food items.

Frankly I felt worse because it must have been Peppy Parent Day today as every other parent seemed so happy and proud of their poppets, cheering and clapping at every touch of the ball while all I wanted to do was screech across the football oval to leave his fucking socks alone, stay out of the goddamn mud and at least pretend to be interested in the bloody game!!!!

Kinder maintenance this afternoon had in no way improved my mood.  Taking cold grumpy children and a jumpy puppy to pre school to help sweep and clean was a wild mistake.  Their enthusiasm for raking waned after five minutes, poor Milo freaked the other families' little boy out and again there was a lack of worthwhile food items!  I find it hilarious that out of six families rostered on for the weekend only two managed to show up. 

My Sad (whingy whiney) Sunday is now being Vastly Improved by this large and delicious pepperminty Haighs chocolate frog, a wee bit more random granny joining and for my viewing pleasure The Mentalist and Castle.  For the ad breaks I have the sweet new Mollie Makes magazine at my side!  All the grouchy tired people are in bed, including the husband (who's snoring I can hear from the other end of the house!) so the best bit is I don't have to bloody share with anyone!!!!

First world problems really are so easily solved!

Have you had a Sad Sunday or have you had a Super Sunday?