Assorted Babies

I am now a very proud Auntie to an adorable little girl! 

Here is Isla Margaret modelling my blanket:

I can't wait to meet her! And to be honest I'm getting the urge to get the pink yarn out... 

More science keyrings!

I've now added two new keyrings to the range: the test tube and the conical flask!!

Still I feel that something isn't right :( they just don't seem to have the professional look that I'm going for...
I think these need more work.


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Since it is now October, I have decided that it is acceptable to start Christmassy crafting!

I am now in the process of developing my fruit drying technique! My latest exciting discovery is that you can DO IT IN THE MICROWAVE! Convenient or what?!

Preliminary results shown below:

All 5 slices produced!

A close up of the 2 successful un-burnt slices!

Main findings:
- They burn if you don't pay attention.

Implications for future research:
- Try other fruits too!
- Find a way to dry them out more as they are still kind of sticky - even the burnt ones

The plan now is to see how long they last before going mouldy!

Cute things

Needles to say, I've given up on the whole jumper thing. However, I have some other, nicer jumpers which I have exciting plans for....

This week, in between the irritating time consuming thing called going to work, I've been doing a nice little bit of creating and some experimenting.
I really need more things to put in my online shop: www.thegiftlab.misi.co.uk and I decided to start a line in keyrings.

First I made this one using a pattern from the amazing book Lisa gave me:

Then I decided to experiment with making something original, cute and a little bit geeky. Here's what I came up with:

It's supposed to be an alpha particle by the way! I reckon it still needs a little tweaking before I put it up for sale, but hey that's why I call this the gift lab. I reckon I'm going to attempt some more: I have visions of bacteria, red blood cells, test tubes... so many ideas, so little time!


This week I have also been working on a cute little knitted bunny rabbit. It has brought me a lot of joy! (except when I couldn't get the head pieces to fit together, and ended up with what looked like an abscess which I had to operate on!)

I found the pattern here: http://bysmallmeans.wordpress.com/free-patterns-and-tutorials/
It's not bad for a free pattern, and fairly quick to make as it's small.

Here is my finished product:

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!

Jumping for Joy... or possibly not

Question: What do you do with a bag of old jumpers

Answer: After hours of joyful experimentation, I'm still not really sure...


It all started with a bag of old clothes from my (sadly missed) Uncle John. This bag contained several fantastic hand knitted creations (more on those to come soon), and some wonderful pure wool (yay!) Grandad-style jumpers! Surely this was a bag of creative treasure??
So, I went searching for inspiration and typed in 'upcycle jumper' into pinterest. This revealed three main possibilities:
1. Cushion covers
2. Mittens
3. Slightly weird cuddly toys

Anyway, despite this I was still excited by the prospect of turning something old and slightly ugly into something new and wonderful. So I took the plunge and lobbed a jumper into the washing machine on hot, with a big rug and lots of soap. Some time later emerged a smaller, softer and thicker felted jumper.

  I removed the collar and attempted to make a mug cosy, but that was too bad to even photograph and to add insult to injury it moulted all over me. GRRRRR!

Anyway, this still left me with a large amount of felted wool in what I thought was a quite funky pattern (going off it now mind...) so I decided to try something new. My idea? A bag!
First I started off making a little purse which I sewed a zip into:

Then I set about designing a larger bag: ideally a sort of backpack, with a drawstring to close the top. I got as far as cutting out the pieces and turning on the sewing machine before realising that the silly thing was too thick to get under the sewing machine's foot. End of project.

Oh dear I feel like a bit of a quitter now!

Online Shop Now Open!

Ta da!!

http://www.misi.co.uk/handmade/TheGiftLab.html


Phew! That was a little bit of a jump into the unknown, and you wouldn't believe how complicated! I still can't figure out how to change it from saying '1 available' to 'as many as you want if you'll pay me for them!'


That's all for now. Entertaining jumper recycling post to come...

I've been experimenting!

I found an online tutorial for a beautiful lacy crochet square. Thankfully my mum was around to help me with the German and after a few goes I mastered it!

LINK HERE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95KOwOKZSAk

Please comment/ e-mail me if you would like a written (English!) version of the pattern.


Anyway, I knew I didn't have the patience to produce enough of these to make even a small blanket! (they make great coasters though) What I did instead was design and make these sweet little boxes to make use of the daisy design and produce something functional and lovely!

BOXES ON SALE VERY SOON! (when I open my online shop :) details to follow...)

Becca's ultimate home made circular knitting needles!

Ever looked at a knitting pattern, seen that it requires a certain size of circular needle, gone to your (very) extensive collection of needles and yet found that you still don't have the ones you need?
Inevitably any circular needles you buy will only be used once and then annoying hang around being the wrong length for anything else.
Experiencing this myself, I went to the wonderful pinterest.com and searched for how to make some myself. I found a nice 'how to' guide but it not only required the use of tiny drill bits to drill into already thin pieces of wood (which the author admitted had a tendancy to break), but comments suggested that the join between needle and the cably bit wasn't smooth - obviously I wanted my home made needles to work as well as bought ones!

Anyway, I spend an afternoon messing around, and have come up with a dirt cheap, super easy and very effective method. Here goes:

You will need:

• A bamboo double pointed needle (Or a piece of wooden dowel ~20cm long) 
• Strong scissors or a little hacksaw
• Sandpaper
• Tweezers/ pliers
• Unwanted USB cable or similar electrical cable
• A small file (I used one from a toolkit but a good nail file can work too with more effort)
• Superglue

Step 1:
Using scissors score the whole way around the needle and then snap in half with your hands.

Step 2:

Cut electrical cable to required length. Remove the innards from your cable using tweezers/pliers!

 

Step 3:

Using sandpaper, sand down the cut end of the piece of needle so that it is nice and tapered. (If using dowel, you will have to shape the other end too, obviously!)

 

Step 4:
Push the electrical cable over the end as far as you can, and mark where it reaches on the stick.

Step 5: 
Using the file, work away at the wood slowly and carefully to create a sort of step all the way around so that the cable will fit snugly over the wood and meet it with no bump or gap. Make sure it is even all the way around.

 

Step 6: 
Without gluing your fingers together, glue the cable onto the needle. Allow to dry and then sand/file the join until it is perfectly smooth.

Repeat steps 3 to 6 for other half of the needle and there you have it!

Here's one I made earlier (it works really well!):

Little boxes, on the hillside...

Hello and welcome to blog post number three!
I have been creating like crazy recently, yet still I don't feel like I'm running out of motivation at all :)

Another Cushion Cover:

I wanted to make something using little flowers made like this:
http://whiffofjoy.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/fabric-flowers-by-bev.html

So I made about thirty mini ones (then got bored) and stuck them to a cushion cover using my glue gun.

Currently trying to get inspired for another similar project. Bag?

Anyway, onto the boxes...

I've been trying to conjure up some ideas for simple, sellable gifts so I made some little boxes:

 And inspired by this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/toriejayne/6109555241/lightbox/

The second one was a bit complex and floppy (even after starching) so looking for a way to make it more box-like...


Better go now - the sun is shining again, need to enjoy it while it lasts!

p.s. apologies if my spelling, grammar etc. is poor, it's too early in the day!

A crafty weekend. With mixed success!

Sometimes when I attempt a totally new craft, having had no idea how it's going to turn out, it ends up looking amazing. Often however it doesn't quite go to plan...

I decided to make a tablecloth this weekend. I couldn't decide on any of the fabrics in the shop so I brought some white cotton and some green dye and decided to attempt some batik!

Stage 1: Painstakingly applying hot wax to the fabric, drip by drip. I made a few mistakes but decided that the overall effect would still be good.

Step 2: The dyeing! To my horror the wax started falling off in the lukewarm dye bath. To tackle this problem I decided not to agitate it too much whilst it was soaking....

Finished product: (After rinsing, removing the remaining wax and ironing) I'm feeling very sad about the patchyness of the cloth and the faintness of the design. I suppose it's my fault for not stirring enough and maybe I should have used something other than tesco value candle wax... Still, it looks pretty in places!

I also made a cushion cover and, after the depressing batik results, I did some a little piece of tie dyeing!

Wow what a lot of crafting for one weekend!!

Blanket Progress...

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Why yes, It's Becca here, taking a brave step into the world of blogging. (Rather like I did with computer programming, but hopefully this time I will be more successful!)

So, what better place to start than in the middle of something:

Within three days of finding out that I was going to be an Auntie, I'd found myself down the local yarn store (k2tog in Wolstanton, great shop by the way) and bought myself large amounts of lovely soft cotton yarn.

Had a great breakthrough moment today that you get when a project finally starts taking shape. I think I crochet in an odd way because it's a bit holey in places, but I quite like the overall look so far. And with three months to go 'til the little one arrives I'm making good progress! (yes I am a little big excited) 

I'll post a photo when it's all finished (hopefully with added baby)!

Link here to the wool shop mentioned above