Crochet - Feeling the love

I started crochet lessons this week and I have to say I’m feeling the love.

I’ve crocheted the odd beanie in the past but found it a really difficult concept to pickup let alone continue with. And now I know why….I had learned off a leftie when I am right handed. 10 minutes into my first lesson yesterday, I discovered this as my teacher Kirsten showed me how to do it right handed and then I was away.

I dont enjoy knitting very much these days...I'm very slow and it hurts my eyes (I wear glasses). So I love the immediacy of crocheting and crocheted my way through my first granny square yesterday and am already onto my second. Our first project is a scarf – rather timely given the freezing weather we’ve been having.

And sitting in that lovely local craft shop with a group of women (and all our children crafting and playing in another room) snug with a heater, while it was dreary and cold outside was quite simply lovely.

I'm now full of ideas of what to do with all the wool I have lying around the place :-)

The House of Blues

Granny B and I have been working on a quilt for Mr B & my bed. I had great fun picking the fabric and then on we started. Granny B is an expert quilter having made quite a few before now. It's been fun working on a project together (albeit very slowly with us both working plus a novice thrown in to the mix).

The colour doesnt show up quite so well in the photos but I adore the red and blue floral fabric. It gives the quilt a really vintage feel (which I love) and the red is more of a rust colour. We are currently in the process of trying to pick another fabric to add into the mix - either with a bit more brown or more rust. We've done 7 squares so far and have another 5 or so to go before we can piece it together into the top.

I wish I could say that this has left me addicted to quilting but it's too fiddly for me. I'm not really a hand stitcher I think. Next time I will try something a bit more patchworky and not as detailed. But it has fed the crafty bug inside me and got me started on a few different projects which I'll post another day.

A knitting we will go..

I was inspired by this post by Rhonda to dig back out my knitting. Though it feels like I have been knitting this jumper forever (because I have been), I still am hopeful to have it ready to wear by winter. So when Little B became sick late last week, and what with spending half a day or two with a little monkey asleep in my lap, it's enforced some downtime.

It's been nice actually. Our house renovations have taken over our life and I havent spent any of Little B's preschool time crafting, knitting as I hoped as yet. So this time out has been not only relaxing but as Rhonda says almost a meditation and sort of soul invigorating (I'm not destined to be Bob the Builder and all this house painting etc has been wearing us down bit by bit).

So I'm excited about knitting again and fingers crossed I finish this soon. I did have a cardigan lined up as my next knitting project (I have the most gorgeous indigo wool) but think I might aim for something smaller like a wrap or shrug to keep my momentum going LOL.

Meet Betty

After much scrimping and saving, meet my new sewing machine. I've named her Betty after my crafty grandma but also for the luscious ladies in Mad Men :-) These ladies (including my grandmother) were from a different era of sewing, baking, and home making which I love. And after a morning of baking muffins, bread rolls and sewing some birthday bags for Granny B's presents, I'm feeling very 1950's house wife-ish today ;-)

Picture courtesy of www.homesweethomefashion.com

Through much research, deliberation and quizzing people, I decided on a manual machine mainly because it has a greater compatibility with off grid solar panels (a future dream of ours).

Lots of Little Projects

 I finished my first "proper" sewing project just before Christmas. This is the skirt I made during my dressmaking lessons. My teacher was fantastic and at the end of the term I felt I'd learned a lot :-)

Since then I've made a Waldorf birthday crown for Little B, lots of Christmas present bags and lots of storage bags for toys.

But now I'm itching to sew more clothes and one of my Christmas presents were some vouchers for fabric. So I've been working on this shirred top / dress. I'm just getting the shaping right for the bottom section before I decide whether it will be a short dress or top. Or I may even keep it as a dress for a while, the make it into a top. This is sewing at it's easiest as I bought the cotton already shirred :-)

I have a new kindy backpack to make for Little B.

I fell in love with this fabric but they only had 1.5 metres left (which of course I bought LOL). Originally I was inspired to make a dress from Peppermint Magazine. I've cut out the free pattern but I think somehow it's wrong (the pattern not my cut out). Or at least the way they want you to cut the fabric is wrong - you cut the back and half the front out along the selvedge and the remaining front half across the grain?? Hmmm something not quite right there.

So now I'm on the search for another dress or skirt pattern....

A Handmade Christmas

I’ve spent the last few weeks working through my list of hand made presents. We are having an early Christmas with Mr B’s family the week before Christmas day and then the actual day with my side of the family.

So I’ve been getting our gifts ready for the first occasion as a priority. Last week I made a batch of mango butter, as well as passionfruit shortbread and pfeffernusse (iced gingerbread cookies). I’ve sewed some shopping bags out of our fabric stash and sourced some gorgeous vintage reference books for other family members.

I’ve got some patterns for make up purses and scarves that I still need to make, plus some little eco kitchen cleaning kits to make up (home-made washing powder, knitted cotton & jute cloths, plus some little wooden pegs that Little B is going to decorate).

I said it last year and I’ll say it again, Christmas feels more meaningful to me these days because we try to make our gifts. Yes it’s frugal and yes it’s green but I like giving these gifts of love to family and friends. It also helps that I love sewing, knitting and baking LOL. And where it’s not possible for me to do so, I love buying hand made items from other people to give as gifts. I feel like I’m supporting a little grass roots business and it makes my purchase feel more useful.

** No pictures for this post as I have family members who read my blog :-) They’ll just have to wait for Christmas to see what they are getting *giggle*

Advent Calendar #2: Paper Chains

 Today's advent calendar goodie was a little note, "Today we will be building christmas paper chains to decorate Granny B's house". It was so gorgeous watching Little B do a happy dance when we read it out :-)

So this morning we crafted! Granny B's work gets hand me down magazines for their waiting room and in the last lot there was a series of magazines that had different kind of double sided decorated paper for craft. She saved them all and brought them home for us.

We cut them up this morning (which Little B loves to do) and glued our chains all together. We also made a few paper lanterns. I then finger knitted some cords to hang the lanterns. This was from thrifted wool from the op shop (I love that you can often find wool in baby colours like white, pale pink and pale blue). I then used some thrifted ribbon to make little handles for them.

And then we got to decorate the house.....

My Creative Space

From this

To This

Such a simple pattern but as a sewing beginner, I really love my finished product!

Traditions

I love creating new traditions in our family as well as incorporating old traditions from both our childhoods into our new one. Our main one so far is that Little B gets a new Christmas book each year in the first week of December. Now with Christmas not far away, and my new sewing buzz, I’ve decided to sew Little B his own advent calendar.

He came with me to pick the fabrics and I have a very basic pattern (which involved hearts as pockets but I’ve changed to squares).

With 24 pockets, our aim is to have half as little rolled up notes which will have things to do together written on them. Like bake biscuits, reading Christmas stories, a twilight swim at the local pool or even just visiting a fun park. The other 12 will be little Christmas gifts like wooden bugs or yoyo’s (Mr B can do a bit of woodwork). Little surprises that are meaningful to us and him as well as the time spent treasuring this age.

My hope is that he will look forward to the advent calendar each year as a family tradition. That he will remember and look forward to the time spent one-on-one as a family at Christmas before age makes it “uncool” (yes I know he’s only nearly 4). And that he may one day look back with the fondness that I do at the Christmas traditions we made as a family.

Oh oh...I think I'm addicted

to sewing :-) Have only had 2 dressmaking classes so far but can say with utmost honesty that I’m hooked and thoroughly addicted. I’ve always dabbled a little bit in sewing but basically homewares-y stuff. With the most adventurous thing being some really basic curtains for our old house.

So I love learning all about adjusting patterns and how to make a skirt (which is the main project for this series of classes). It’s all about darts and zips and lengthening or shortening the skirt based on what you like. But my mind has already jumped ahead to all the other things I want to make for myself and Little B. It’s already delving into Granny B’s fabric and pattern stash to see what I can create.

I can see that there is no way I will be waiting until the end of this course before beginning another project or two. I already have my eye on some groovy summer pants for Little B and a few tops for me! We are going away at the end of November and I want to have these things finished by then.

Another bonus is that my SIL is giving me her sewing machine. She lives overseas and couldn’t take it with her, so it’s been in storage at my MIL’s. So I will have that one as well as Granny B’s whizz bang modern one to try my hand at.