Yarn Tales

Two projects made from wool finished!

First a crotcheted blanket for my niece’s baby girl:

I used a pattern by Nicki Trench.  This pattern appeared in her book ‘Cute and easy Crotchet’, but I found it in issue 2 of the magazine Simply Crotchet.  I added the treble border.  The blanket measures about 36” square.  My niece was really pleased with it

I have been trying to improve my knitting.  I am very much a beginner, so my crafty friends Tash and Burnice helped me!  Here’s a 4 patch cushion I made.  Burnice knitted 2 of the squares, and Tash did 1.  See that cable block on the first photo (bottom right), that’s my first go at cabling, so I am really pleased!

We used the book: 200 knitted blocks by Jan Eaton.  (I have the crotchet one too!)  Knitted in Arran wool.

Finally, (not yarn related), but here’s a picture of Tash and Burnice our second sewing day for the charity quilts, here at my house on Tuesday:

We just about finished this scrap quilt – backed with blue fleece, and I have been quilting the other one this morning

Happy Mail

I thought I would show you lots of lovely things dropping through my letterbox lately!

Firstly, Sian’s swap.  I had a lovely small package full of ‘Very Small Things’.  I was luck enough to be sent this lovely package from Karen!  Thank you so much.  Can’t wait to use it on a scrapbook page or two!  I am particularly thrilled with the wood veneer cameras and birds!

I am loving Julie’s Notes on Paper blog at the moment (did you see her ‘Push Up Bra Blogging series?) and just couldn’t help myself when she offered 25% off her Etsy shop.  I’ve always admired her ‘Plundered Pages’ so ordered myself the ‘Numbers and Diagrams’ set:

Love how she has added a few Very Small Things as well!

And then…. Julie made this card with these wonderful stamps! Having 2 men who work in computers in my house, I just had to have them!  This little package arrived from 3DJean.

Finally, I decided to update the plates on my plate rack in the hall, so have been scouring eBay for some ‘Midwinter’ plates.  Here’s the 2 I have recently purchased:

We have a bank holiday weekend here in the UK.  The sun is shining today, YAY! and it’s supposed to be a little warmer than of late.  We’re still decorating, lots of small finishing off jobs to do!

Simply A Moment–May 2013

Decorating. UGH!  The thought of it makes me shiver!  All the mess!  But, great feeling of satisfaction when it is done.  So we started with the porch, and then decide that the hall, stairs and landing needed updating. 

So here I am standing on the landing on a Saturday afternoon swishing the roller up and down the walls.  I am standing on dust sheets, all crumpled up and covered with splodges of paint.  There’s old curtains, old tablecloths and bedspreads, and some plastic sheeting.  Here and there there are pieces of newspaper adding to the mess!

 

There are 2 colours of paint, ‘Muddy Puddle’ for underneath the dado rail and ‘Natural Hessian’ for above.  I love the gloopy liquid paint as it is poured out of the can into my tray.  (I let Maurice do that bit so I don’t spill any!)  I have a brand new roller, so I dip it into the paint and roll it up and down to get the paint even.  I then roll it on the wall, hearing the sticky swish as my roller rolls up and down.  Another dip in the paint and more sticky swishing.  I am behind the Expedit unit which we have emptied and moved to the centre of the landing so I am close to the wall and have to angle the long handle of the roller carefully.  I can feel a light spray of wet paint as I swish up and down. The wall looks fresh and clean as the new paint covers the old.  Radio 2 is on loud in the bedroom so we can hear it, and Dermot O’Leary is speaking to a new band I haven’t heard of – I like their music though. 

The next job is to cover this green paint on the wood work with white undercoat.  It took 3 coats!  But look how nice and fresh it looks now.

 

Linking up with Alexa for Simply A Moment.

Scrapbook Challenges–so far…

Not sure what has happened to my photos!  They are not very good!  But you can get the idea LOL!

This first one is for the House Challenge on UKScrappers.  The photos are from 1990, and that’s Nicholas with his cousin Michelle, in Nanny’s Garden!

The next 2 pages are for the Have I got Scrap for You? challenge on UkScrappers.  These are both pages from a holiday in 1995 to the New Forest.  Don’t you just love my little wood nymphs?  The papers are from a really old ‘Love Elsie’ page kit.

Finally, for now, here’s my take on Jennifer’s sketch for Counterfeit Challenge kit blog here. 

I’m spending quite a bit of time discovering new blogs and challenge sites. Here’s a few:

http://jennifergracecreates.com/

http://csicolorstoriesinspiration.ning.com/forum/categories/csi-case-files/listForCategory

http://www.wearcrafts.co.uk

Spring….

in my garden:

and at Arundel Castle garden:

May Craft Challenge–Scrapbooking

So, after sewing and photography challenges, I thought I would set myself a scrapbooking challenge for may.  Actually, it’s challenges.  I belong to a team (Scrap Magic) on www.ukscrappers.co.uk, and we collect points each month on the number of pages we finish.  If we join with the challenges, we can gain more points.  I always mean to join in the challenges, but don’t very often get around to it.  SO this month, I am going to join in with as many scrapbooking challenges as I can.

I am going to start with UKScrappers challenges:

UKS WEEKLY CHALLENGE
UKS MONTHLY CHALLENGE
SIMPLE RECIPES
HAVE I GOT SCRAP FOR YOU
OLD STASH NEW STASH SU
STASH BUSTERS 2013

Then there are other site challenges.  I have just rediscovered http://counterfeitkitchallenge.blogspot.co.uk/.  This site encourages you to ‘forge’ a kit from your own stash following a commercially available kit.  Great for those of us who have too much stash!  I had a go yesterday at counterfeiting the April kit.

Here’s the original, from Gossamer Blue.  I hadn’t heard of this company before, but they do gorgeous kits!  This was their March main kit.

Here’s my take on it:

It’s amazing how much better I like these papers now they are in a kit!  And I dug out my box of die cuts to find the embellishments. 

Rooting around the Gossamer Blue design team I came across this page by Nicole Harper:

which I unashamedly scraplifted yesterday:

I loved the banner flags in rainbow colours, so just had to scraplift almost identical!  Actually, all of these papers come from my scraps, and not from the kit!  The photo is a group of us who attended the same antenatal classes some 25 years ago.  I came across this photo from a get together in 2003, and decided to find all the other photos over the years, and scrap them all.

Back later with more challenges I want to take part in.  If you know of any, please leave me a link!