ATCs y otras cosas

Woolly Jumper

2012-02-02T14:28:00.000+01:00

I'm still trying to make at least one Christmas card a week. This one uses the sketch from Christmas Challenges {with sketches}, and their challenge this week has the proviso that we use some kraft. I have used kraft for the base card. The pattern paper is from a cover-less pad so I can't attribute it. I used the sewing machine to make the zigzag stitch holes, but sewed it by hand. The cream strips were recycled from a birthday card and embossed in the bug. The sentiment is a peel-off, and the image is an old favourite from Whippersnapper, coloured with pencils.

I would like to enter this for:

Christmas Challenges (with sketches) #19 - use sketch and kraft

Crimbo Crackers #8 - no people or animals

One Stop Craft Challenge #167 - use stitching

Sparkles Christmas Challenge - Anything Goes

Christmas Inspirations #40 - Anything Goes

Spotty Owls

2012-01-29T16:01:00.000+01:00

Isn't this a jolly owl image? It's a digital giftie from Laura and I have coloured it with pencils. The papers are from Anice at Funky Hand, from the Paper Blossom set. Embossing is with Cuttlebug swirls.

I would like to enter this for the following:

Fussy and Fancy Challenge #55 - Polka Dots.

Patties Creations Challenge #36 - Embossing

SS&DS Challenge - Anything Goes with a digital image
Opus Gluei #123 - Tweet, chirp, trill
Sentimental Sundays #87 - Dry embossing

Toot-toot

2012-01-28T16:15:00.000+01:00

for my poinsettia teabag card...thank you Mynnette and Jacqueline!

Christmas Challenge Card

2012-01-28T15:57:00.000+01:00

Hazel has asked us to make a square Christmas card, and Mynnette wants at least three rhinestones...
Base card and matting are Lidl card, DP is Pink Petticoat and I have coloured the Penny Black Snow Couple with coloured pencils

I would like to enter this for the following challenges:

Craftyhazelnut's Christmas Challenge - Make it Square

The CPS sketch of the week

52 {Christmas} Card Throwdown - Rhinestones

Christmas Cards All Year Round - Non Traditional Christmas Colours
Cupcake Craft Challenges - All you need is love
Cute Card Thursday - You're a Gem

Old Poinsettias

2012-01-22T19:21:00.000+01:00

I was having a little sort out of the cardboard drawers where I keep decoupage sheets and odds and ends of printed images when I found a page protector with some Christmas teabag sheets and backers that I designed in 2004! Some had poinsettias on, and I thought they might be just the thing for the 52 {Christmas} Card Throwdown that stipulates Christmas flowers...I haven't done teabag folding for years, but at one time I designed and printed teabag papers and coordinating backing papers and demonstrated folding around the Costa Blanca Craft Clubs and Fairs ... hence my nickname!

I dithered about how to add a sentiment, as my stamping is not of the best when I can't cover up my bodges and splodges with a bit of judicious painting, but then I realised that if I used a peel-off, it would also qualify as an Unstampabelles entry....problem solved!

So...backing papers and teabags by me, punched centre added to the folded rosette that is mounted on a Nestie 4 label, blue lace strip cut with Cuttlebug Ironworks set, and a peel-off on another Nestie label.

I would like to enter this in 52 CCT Theme Challenge #1

Unstampabelle's Challenge #7 - Anything Goes
ABC Christmas Challenge - A for Anything Goes

Woo-Hoo!

2012-01-21T15:12:00.001+01:00

It seems to be my lucky week; I received an Honourable Mention on the 52 {Christmas} Card Throwdown Blog for the card that I entered for their first colour challenge of the year; Black, White and a Splash of Red. Thank you Mynnette and Jacqueline.

This week's theme is Christmas flowers, so why not come and play and build up your stock of Christmas cards?

I Won!

2012-01-19T12:55:00.002+01:00

My name came out of the Big Teapot over at Funky Hands and I won these lovely papers in the Get Funky Challenge Blog Hop! Thank you to Anice and the lovely Design Team ladies!

Baby Love

2012-01-17T19:55:00.000+01:00

Very simple ingredients today; cream card for the base and a lacy strip cut with the Cuttlebug Ironworks die. Blue pearl paper, silver peel-off sentiment and a favourite image printed from a Joanna Sheen Baby CD. The check paper is from coverless pad given to me by a friend, so I don't know the make. Now I have uploaded the photograph I can see I need to re-glue the end of the ironwork strip!

I have used this sketch from Mojo Monday

I would also like to enter it for Secret Crafter Saturday Challenge - mainly blue

Crafty Cardmakers - No floral embellishments

Unstampabelles Challenge #7 - Anything goes

Crafty Calendar January Challenge - New News

It's all downhill from here...

2012-01-15T17:02:00.000+01:00

I thought I'd finish off the sheet of grey card I used for the ColourQ challenge. The sketch is from Freshly Made and I have used a digital image from Joanna Sheen's Dancing with Shadows CD; this fulfils City Crafter's request. I have mounted it onto black card. The lovely green, spotty petersham ribbon covers both requirements for the Saturday One Stop challenge and it's a birthday card so it also fits in with Winter Wonderland this week and the Joanna Sheen Monthly challenge.

Freshly Made Sketches #17
City Crafter challenge Blog Week #91 - Back to Black
One Stop Craft challenge #165 - On the spot and ribbon
Winter Wonderland - Birthday wishes
Joanna Sheen Monthly challenge - Celebration

Black, White and a Splash of Red

2012-01-15T09:07:00.000+01:00

Black card, with black and white paper and digital image from Pink Petticoat. I coloured the candy cane with my Derwent pencils and added a touch of colour to one "happy christmas".

I used Nesties to cut and mount the image, an edge die from Nellie with a little red ribbon and three red jewels.

The jewels were only 60 eurocents a sheet from the tat shop; I found them amongst the nail art stripes and squiggles!

I would like to enter this in the flowing challenges:

Sketch Saturday #190

52 {Christmas} Card Throwdown #1... Black, white and a splash of red.

Craftyhazelnut's Christmas Challenge #55...use a digital image and/or digital paper.

Blog Candy #24

2012-01-14T18:18:00.000+01:00

Blog Candy this week at the Marianne Design Challenge Blog!

Another challenge card

2012-01-13T15:43:00.000+01:00

I love this book reading mouse; he is called Cheddar and he is from Sugar Nellie. I coloured him with Derwent pencils. I can't tell you who made the papers as they came in a cover-less partly used pad from a friend who was having a clear out...

I would like to enter this in The Sugar Bowl's sketch challenge #75.

CAS Card

2012-01-13T13:37:00.000+01:00

I am showing a clean and simple card today. The scallop edge was made with a Nellie die, the butterfly cut with one from Sissix.

I would like to enter this for the following challenges;

ColourQ #119

CAS-ual Fridays scallops

Jingle Belles sketch
Let's Craft and Create butterflies

Challenge Christmas Card

2012-01-08T13:39:00.004+01:00

Apart from the base card and the peel-off border, everything on this card is recycled; the red paper for the circle and the flowers is from a used envelope, the holly leaves were punched from the green metallic foil of a cat biscuit bag, and even the yellow in the centre of the flowers came from a used post-it note. The image oval and the sentiment are from an old Christmas card... am I thrifty, or am I in line for a "World's Meanest Hoarder Award"?

The circle was cut with a compass style circle cutter as I don't have circle Nesties and the only large circle punch I possess was not the right size. I embossed it with a Fiskars plate. I made the oval by outlining it using a gold pen and an old technical drawing stencil, then cutting it out by hand.

I am entering this in:

Hazel's CHNC 54...recycle something.

One Stop Craft Challenge....bingo line of 3 from 9 choices; I went with flowers, punches & embossing.

Papertake Weekly Challenge...anything goes with the option of the theme "New"...new year, new card, new challenge?

Blog Candy

2012-01-05T20:36:00.006+01:00

Visiting some of the people playing along with the 365+1 photo challenge, I came across Hazel, and she just happens to have a card challenge blog as well! Why not pop over and have a peep? I might just have time to make a card in the morning and post it before the deadline tomorrow night.

I'm not too sure how many people will be reading this as I haven't been posting this past year and I expect my readers will have passed on to

pastures new...new blogging pastures that is, not the fields of heaven!

Edit: a card left over from this year's batch...Pink Petticoat papers and Edwin coloured to match using Derwent watercolour pencils. I often cut of his wings, but as it was Christmas I left them and added some sparkle

Spectacle case

2012-01-03T14:21:00.003+01:00

More felt, made with much the same ingredients as the heart, but to give it more substance, lined and interlined with more felt.

I cut the outside layer to the size and shape I wanted, then folded the two inner layers around a broom handle to 'take up the slack' with the black layer on the outside. I then tacked the layers together around the edge before stab stitching and lastly cutting the inner layers level with the outside edge.

Heartfelt flowers

2012-01-02T15:56:00.002+01:00

Inspired by things I have seen on Pinterest I've been having fun with felt; I made the heart as a Christmas gift for a friend, the same one as appreciated the crazy patch heart I made in 2008. That link shows a photo taken before it was finished off, but you will get the idea. The large flower shapes on this year's heart were cut using the Cuttlebug and a Sissix die, the smaller ones by hand after I tried without success to punch them with an ordinary paper punch. The leaves were made by cutting a Cuttlebug flower into sections. The beauty of working with felt is that the flowers can be attached with simple large stitches, and there is no need to worry about fraying edges. I used scraps of floss that hadn't made it into my filing system for one reason or another, but enjoyed the wild and tangled lifestyle of the plastic container of odds and sods on my cluttered work table. A little subtle bling of pearls and bronze beads, a few flower sequins and a black ribbon with a picot edge softened the bright colours, and I was happy with it.

Resurrection Day

2012-01-01T11:17:00.002+01:00

I've decided to at least again post photos of what I make; lots of little things have been made over the past year and have gone out into the wide, wide world without me keeping any record of them.

Blogger is asking me to try the updated interface...well maybe I shall, but not today, and not on this blog, I'll practice on The Test Bed!

A few photos of odds and ends

2010-03-07T16:54:00.006+01:00

On CardScraps we had a Valentine card swap; we had to send the card to our swap partner's other half. The cupid is from Winnie, and below is the one I sent to Roz's Justin.
The next two are ATC's made for a pink and purple swap. They have arrived at their destination, but the incoming haven't arrived yet.

This is embroidery on canvas that has been painted with pearlescent paint. It doesn't show up particularly well, but all the thread is space dyed.
The next is a combination Get Well/Birthday card made for a friend who had a stroke and had to spend most of her birthday in the hospital. She was allowed home for the weekend, but has to go back again on Monday. Thankfully, she has regained the use of her limbs, but her speech is still affected.

ATC Swap

2010-02-28T18:39:00.000+01:00

One of the february ATC swaps on CSnATCs was for everybody to make two cards using the same digital image of a lady in a red hat, provided by the moderator. Above is the pair I made, pure digital, and below is the pair I received from Barb.

Finished stitching...

2010-02-11T13:27:00.005+01:00

...the Wildflower Hearts square. My home-dyed threads didn't have as much variation as the Caron wildflowers, so I combined one thread of each colour to stitch the outside octagons. I should have fiddled a bit more in PS before posting these photos as the forest green looks quite dull and dark here.

Giuchie, Giuchie, ya ya dada...

2010-01-15T12:29:00.004+01:00

This time last year, I wrote about making marmalade from windfall oranges. In fact, I made two batches, and the five jars on the left, below, are all that remain. Last Sunday, a friend who is partial to my particular recipe came to lunch, and in way of a large hint, brought with him a carrier bag full of blood oranges. This time they had been picked from the tree rather than the floor, so the need to process them quickly was not so pressing.

The next time I went shopping I bought sugar. I was lucky in that instead of the usual €1.20 it was on offer at 89¢, so I bought 6 kilos. Just in case you fancy making some, here is a quick run down of my method, a combination of an old Kenwood recipe and an M&S pressure cookery book recipe.

Wash a shopping bag full of oranges (the oranges, not the shopping bag) and then weigh them. Depending on what type of oranges you have, either cut them in quarters if they are not too pippy, or leave them whole if they are proper bitter marmalade oranges that usually have lots of pips. Measure out a litre of water for each kilo of oranges, and use as much of this as you need to cook the oranges in the pressure cooker until they are soft. I usually do about 20 minutes at full weight, but my weight has a lump missing, so I gave them half an hour. If you are cooking in batches, you can use the same water/juice. Meanwhile put the remaining water in your preserving pan with the sugar. It should be double the weight of oranges, but I don't like sweet marmy, I like it tangy, so I used a little less; 5 kilos of sugar to 3.5 kilos of fruit. I then put my pan on top of the log burner, but you can put it on a very low light and let the sugar slowly dissolve in the water. This cuts out the add the sugar to the fruit and stir until the sugar dissolves stage. When your oranges are soft, drain them and add the juice to the preserving pan, and move the pan to a higher heat. If you have already cut your fruit into quarters, have a quick rummage through it looking for any stray pips. If you have left your oranges whole, you will need to let them cool a little until you can handle them, or tackle them with a knife and fork; cut them into quarters and flick out any pips that you find. Set up your mincer, hand or machine, with the larger holed plate in position, and push the oranges through. Check that all the sugar has dissolved in the water and juice and add the orange mush to it. Bring it up to a rolling boil and check fairly quickly for a set. Because the pith is loaded with pectin, and because you have only used half of the quantity of water you would need if you didn't use the pressure cooker, it will set in no time at all. I put my jars and lids through a dishwasher cycle so they are both warm and clean. Pot up and label. I can highly recommend Lakeland preserve labels. I have jars that have been going through the dishwasher since the early '90s and the labels are still intact. I just cross out the year and substitute the current one! The problem this time was that I had a sort out in the kitchen a couple of months ago, and I couldn't find them, so the jars without labels already on them now have ordinary stationery labels instead.

So here you have it...19 assorted jars of Bloody Marmalised 2010.

Not Craft ...

2010-01-06T13:37:00.003+01:00

...exactly, but art of a kind; it is Three Kings Day here, a National holiday, and the cafes were full of people enjoying a late breakfast, or just coffee and a portion of Rosco de Reyes. Our waiter takes pride in his work, and rushed as he was, he still found time to add the finishing touch...

A Little Stitching

2009-12-20T11:23:00.005+01:00

I've not felt like stitching the picture on the big slate frame, so have been working on a series of small things either in a small frame or held un-stretched in my hand. At the moment I am working on Wildflower Hearts, a freebie from Caron Threads. The original was worked in Caron Wildflower, an overdyed thread that comes in a series of beautiful colour combinations; I can't stretch the budget that far, but have adapted what I have in stash. A dark terracotta and a dark forest green matte stranded cotton, both overdyed with a red and a yellow fabric marker to give a subtle variation in tone, rather than the pronounced variation of the original.

The Rhodes stitch hearts are worked with two threads, as is the reverse faggot stitch of the surrounding square. I have used a single strand for the back stitch, and to save fastening off and fastening on for the rice stitch squares, I have made each stitch twice with a single strand. When I have finished the square, I think I shall surround it with the remains of the fabric I used as backing for these postcards. The colours are quite a good match, despite what the camera says, and I think it would make a cushion for somebody.

What else have I done lately? Not a lot, as we seem to have been on a merry-go-round of nurse-doctor-hospital-nurse-doctor-hospital, but hopefully now we are out of the loop again until halfway through January, and I can get back into my usual routine of total idleness interspersed with gentle bouts of finger twiddling.

A Little Bit Over the Top...

2009-12-06T16:34:00.007+01:00

...but what the commissioner wanted... fancy Christmas cards to make up for the fact that they are getting M&S hampers rather than individual presents....She told me exactly what she wanted to say, and where, so the labels have computer generated messages in a dark colour picked from the backing papers. It doesn't show so well in the photo, but the ribbons are brown, coffee and cream on this one, and there is a discrete amount of glitter dabbed onto the backgrounds.

The second card has the same papers in a different colour-way, and a different type of ribbon. The papers are from Artylicious. These are both Easel cards, in case you are thinking that they look a little strange; the camera angle doesn't make it obvious. As usual, I can't do a job without making a mistake; I got the gold labels mixed up and the yellowy gold ended up on the red card instead of the gold card. As you can see, it doesn't match the peel-off colour like the other one would have done...

Friendship Heart

2009-11-26T09:32:00.000+01:00

I stitched for Pam for her birthday. As usual, in my rush to send it off in time, I forgot to take a photo, but this is the one she posted to the Group, so I have snagged it...

Get Well Soon...

2009-11-25T16:06:00.005+01:00

...card made for a friend to send to her daughter. It is an easel card, and this is the first time I have made one. The background paper is Artylicious, run through the Textile Cuttlebug folder, the sentiment is cut and embossed with Nestabilities, then sponged with a little Colour Box Chalk. Flowers and ferns punched from scraps of paper with a little added bling. The butterfly was part of the remit, and is a layer of embossed plain over a layer of patterned paper, glammed up with gold peel-off.

I considered adding more flowers and bling to the base layer, but thought better of it; after all, it does have to be posted....

Try not to notice the apparent curve on the card as it is just an illusion caused by the close-up setting on the camera.

Felt Like...

2009-11-19T15:39:00.002+01:00

...Christmas postcards made for a swap on AWM. The colours in the photograph are not true to life; what appears to be a magenta background is in fact a dark burgundy red, and the bottom left background is shades of green without any blue. The dark green holly leaves are FME'ed with sparkly green Sulky, the berries and background with red sparkly Sulky.

These were made mainly from re purposed fabrics. The background cotton was left over from converting a duvet cover into two dog bed covers for a neighbour, the felt was left over from a fancy dress costume made for the child of another neighbour, and the reverse fabric was from a sample book. Even the Sulky was inherited from my friend Dot. The only thing bought on purpose for postcard making was the interfacing in the sandwich, so the most expensive bit of these is going to be the postage; 78¢ each if I am lucky and they weigh in at under 20gms, €1.38 if they are over!

A Rare Sight...

2009-11-13T16:03:00.002+01:00

...as it is not often that I feel the urge to bake, but last week a friend gave me a lemon that he had picked up from beneath his lemon tree after a stormy night; and what a lemon it was, as it yielded the 4 fl.oz. of juice needed for a lemon meringue pie, not to mention acres of peel for grating into the gloopy bottom layer. I can't show you a picture of the inside because it has all gone. Mention in passing that you have made a lemon meringue pie, and the gannets start to arrive...

Christmas is coming...

2009-11-03T17:16:00.002+01:00

...and the Christmas card making season has come round again. I'm just not one of those organised people who start their Christmas cards in January. Here is a group made with Pink Petticoat papers from the 'Tis the Season set, Magnolia and Polly Craft images, 2Peas Block font greetings and assorted punched and cut-out embellies.

A few Postcards....

2009-09-19T16:44:00.005+02:00

....have been made and sent this past week. They were for three separate ArtWeMail swaps, but they all went to Indiana. It seems that the Indianapolis girls have been recruiting new members in their neighbourhood...I would give you a sneek peek, but Blogger is being Bolshie and won't let me upload. I'll edit when it has calmed down.....
Edit; Mea Culpa...I hadn't noticed that I have to tick a box now before I can hit upload...

It's nearly a month...

2009-08-27T15:11:00.004+02:00

...since I blogged anything! I am blaming the heat of course, not idleness....

This is the card I received from Sue on the Cardscraps Group.

We had to create a card using a different fold from the basic fold it in half.

She sent me a version of the Star Book, with a tag in the pocket of each of the four sections. She has added a feather to the ribbon fastening.

This was not a straight swap, so my purple card with a Teabag medallion went to Winnie in Norway.

Harbour

2009-07-29T16:28:00.005+02:00

Thanks to Eve, who sent me the hank of Anchor floss I needed, I have now finished another inherited cross stitch picture. The photo is a bit lopsided because I had it pinned to the curtain, but you get the idea. Eve didn't want anything in return as she said it was returning favours from the past, but I can't resist finding homes for my orphans, so I sent her this heart, stitched as a try-out for some space dyed threads.

There is too much tone difference in the pink, but I can soon add more colour to the pale sections of the hank so that the fuchsia doesn't stand out so much.

The next inherited UFO is already on the frame; it's a birth announcement picture of two mice and a pair of tulips, with half a mouse completed. This had been left in a hoop and was quite grubby, but it has washed well enough to be finished. The one mark that didn't wash out can be covered by an extra bee. This is a picture of the finished article that I found on line.

It's too hot...

2009-07-25T18:53:00.004+02:00

...to do owt but estivate...

Friday Sketchers and Dare U2 Digistamp

2009-07-11T15:39:00.004+02:00

Dare U2 Digi Stamps Friday Challenge this week is black, white and pink. I have combined it with Friday Sketchers Challenge to use this layout:

The B&W background paper is by Pink Petticoat, the cross strip is embossed with the Cuttlebug Divine Swirls folder, and the image is from Polly Craft's Cherry Kisses digi set, coloured with watercolour pencils. The little glass hearts were in a box of embellies given to me by my friend Dilys as a thank you for knitting some second sizers for her due-last-Tuesday-but-not-yet-arrived, great grandson.

It's too hot to do much of anything...

2009-07-05T15:12:00.006+02:00

...but I have been doing a little light stitching. When my friend Dot died last September, I inherited a number of started stitcheries pushed into a bag with a tangle of threads. Then a couple of weeks ago another friend passed onto me a couple more she had been given by a very elderly neighbour who was in the process of clearing the decks before I die...again, in the bag, was an assortment of un-numbered threads; some wound around cards and others in a tangle.

I have been able to finish this one of hedgerow flowers, as luckily the packaging and charts were in the bag with the cloth. It took the best part of an afternoon to untangle the threads, sort them into colours, and with the help of an ancient Anchor colour chart (lots of the newer numbers are not on it) loop them through the appropriate hole in the cardboard strip that was provided. Why this had not been done originally I have no idea. I have been stitching away for weeks now, on and off. It was very grubby, and had rust marks down one edge where the needles had been left in. I soaked it overnight in warm water and washing up liquid, but it is still not what one would call pristine. I may have to apply a little gentle agitation in a second wash before I do anything else with it. The rust stains haven't washed out of course, but they won't show if I decide to have it framed with a mat. If it doesn't come out clean after the next wash, I shan't bother with the expense.

The next one is already on the slate frame; Harbour View it is called. The instructions call for a lot of half cross stitch with a single strand on sea and sky. The stitcher has ignored this and stitched full cross stitch with two strands over the sky with the result that there isn't enough thread left to stitch the sea. There are only two shops in town that sell embroidery threads, and they both only stock DMC, not Anchor, so I have had to substitute from my stash. Having done quite a bit of stitching last night, I can now see that the thread I chose is a shade too light and hardly shows at all against the white Aida, so it is snip not stitch tonight...

Two for the price of one...

2009-07-04T15:57:00.008+02:00

This fulfils the conditions for Charmed Cards' Crafty Goings On blogcandy as it has a digital download image that has been coloured. Why not pop over there and check it out?

Secondly, this week's Dare U 2 Digi Stamp Challenge is to use embossing on your card, either dry embossing or heated embossing. The background paper and the large circle are from a Funky Hand CD. I used the Cuttlebug to emboss a piece of dusty pink pearl card, the image is from Polly Craft's Cherry Kisses digital set and the sentiment is a Cuddly Buddly stamp. The image and sentiment have been coloured with watercolour pencils. I had problems matching the colours in the background paper, and the close-up shows that I need to learn to be a bit less wishy washy with my colour, but I'm getting there...slowly! The flower and braid are from my re-cycled stash...the braid was once on a dress, and the flower was originally in a bathroom vase.

I'm the lucky bunny...

2009-06-24T17:45:00.004+02:00

..who's name came out of the hat on the Funky Fairy Challenge #21....

...and I have won a lovely paper download from the Funky Fairy shop! Thanks a bunch FFs!

Funky Fairy Challenge #21

2009-06-21T16:43:00.004+02:00

The challenge this week is to make a Christmas card using at least one item from Funky Fairy. I have used the snow paper from their Blue Christmas free download, a Winter Tilda and a computer generated greeting. I'm not sure what happened to the perspective in the photo; the card looks a bit wonky, but it isn't in real life...

Another card

2009-06-19T16:28:00.004+02:00

Made with a free flower image downloaded from Mel Stampz and background paper from Artylicious.

Cuttlebug Challenge #36

2009-06-19T15:52:00.003+02:00

This, my first entry into a Cuttlebug Challenge, is for a man's card. All the men I know prefer simplicity in their cards, and they don't come much simpler than this!

Hanging

2009-06-02T16:09:00.005+02:00

This was taken at 9am this morning, when this Northish facing lobby gets a glimpse of sunlight. I think it's too high, but Bossman said he didn't think the bottom should be covered up by the plant stand in the corner.

The orchids seem just as happy here as they were in the Southish facing snug, although they have all finished flowering apart from this one...

Ready for hemming

2009-06-02T09:36:00.000+02:00

This is the piece pinned up ready for me to hand stitch the tan binding to the back. I think the easiest way to hang it will be a pocket on the back and a curtain rod of the type used for hanging net curtains. Hopefully the next post will be a photo of it in situ.

Progress

2009-06-01T09:13:00.002+02:00

Turquoise border.

Layered up.

Safety pinned.

I have the unaccustomed luxury of using batting rather than blanket this time, as I inherited some bits from my friend Dot. I have had to herringbone them together, but they are making the whole thing so much lighter.
I don't have a walking foot on any of my machines, so my machine quilting is very tame. I shall quilt in the ditch. Having done the basic pinning in the centre of each patch with a safety pin, I then use the pintensive method of pinning each ditch at 2" intervals with straight pins just before I stitch it.

Sacrifices have to be made...

2009-05-31T16:07:00.004+02:00

...when the Patchwork Goddess demands turquoise;

And from the back of the same wardrobe came a soft green cotton wrap around skirt that will do nicely for the backing.

The result of my excavations...

2009-05-29T17:37:00.003+02:00

...in the turquoise mine was a very large zilch. No turquoise sleeping bag liner, no turquoise of any description large enough to go around the modest circumference of my Broken 9's, but poking out of the box below was a largish piece of tan cotton sheeting that might just fit the bill. I have pinned it up to consider the effect. Bossman's comment when asked for his opinion was that he felt that there was a war on. When asked to elucidate, he said that it was like sleeping in a bedroom with blackout curtains, and when was I going to finish it? I gave him the usual answer that a true artist couldn't be rushed, and that anyway my sewing machines have decided that they will only work in the mornings now that it is practically June...

A Fruit Crate of Bus Monkeys...

2009-05-29T15:59:00.003+02:00

Paula asked what a fruit crate of bus monkeys looked like, and being in an obliging mood today, I took this photograph as I excavated my way to the box marked Green and Turquoise.

You can tell by their expressions that they were very glad to see the full light of day after being at the bottom of the pile for so long. Paula's second question asked what a Bus Monkey was, and that requires a little longer than the time taken to press a shutter, but I did say I was in an obliging mood....

Once upon a time, long, long ago back in the early days of Blogging, before pictures were allowed, I kept a private online journal as a mental exercise and to improve my computing skills. It was mainly a record of how we spent our days, and reading it inspired the sub-title that the Other Blog still has; the boring life of two wrinklies. When Blogger announced that we could add pictures to our posts, it just so happened that I had bought a very cheap digi camera from Lidl, and I indulged in the rather old-fashioned concept of "table top photography". Some of my family are very camera shy, and so the monkeys became stand ins and stuntmonkeys, and I had fun playing around in PS. In 2007, I deleted most of the old posts, but left a couple, including this one, as that conversation just about summed up my life at the time. The little brown Mon Chi Chi monkey had belonged to my elder daughter; I don't know where it came from, but I remember her having it in 1990 when she was in hospital, so it was probably a get well present from a friend. Whenever I saw another vinyl faced monkey languishing in a 50¢ box at a flea market or charity shop I would rescue it. So why Bus Monkeys? Bossman, (a pseudonym of course) is not a native English speaker, and some of his sayings come out slightly wonky. "You're as much fun as a barrel full of monkeys" became "as much fun as a busload of monkeys", and as I was 59 at the time, there was also a comment about my soon qualifying for a bus pass, and my reposte was that I hoped the bus would be full of monkeys so I got a bit of fun...and with the arrival of Broadband, the Blog went public with a new name; The Monkey Bus Pass, and I introduced Monkima and Bossman to the world. Not to mention Bracket, Clooney, Pointy Kitty, Ninfant Griller et al....

Broken 9 patch

2009-05-28T16:07:00.003+02:00

If you have been visiting for a while, you might remember this post and the disappearing 9 patch blocks I had made with some scraps sent by Kate. I never did get as far as stitching them together. Since then, December 2007 would you believe, they have been sitting on my sewing table in a zip-lock bag, being pushed from one spot to another and back again. This morning the spirit moved me to make a wall hanging to fill the blank wall in the new lobby, and those 9 patch blocks seemed a good place to start, but they looked rather dull for the north facing space, so I decided to make a couple more blocks with some brighter colours. I could see some of the turquoise cotton I used to make Pointy Kitty in a scrap box under the table, along with the green and turquoise I used for Paula's Spudgies, and decided to use those to liven things up a bit. I added some charm squares sent by Pam and some bits sent by Paula, and here you can see the result, pinned up on my bedroom curtains. I am very lucky to have such kind cyber friends who send me goodies! I will have a rummage tomorrow for something to frame the outside. Somewhere there is a turquoise cotton sleeping bag liner left over from our boating days. I know I used some of it in a quilt, but I think there might be enough left for what I want. It will be in the cardboard box marked green and turquoise that I can see in the wardrobe from where I am sitting, but getting to the box involves moving more boxes, a fruit crate full of Bus Monkeys, a laundry basket full of assorted tat waiting to be sorted, not to mention....well we won't go into that...

I'm not going to show you any close-ups, either, because there is a very good reason I have called it a Broken 9 patch; The first set of squares were stitched on the Elna and today's were stitched on the Lervia. This noodle didn't take into account the fact that the foot on the Lervia is fractionally wider than the foot on the Elna, and as that is the way I measure my seams, there was a slight discrepancy where some of the corners met. Not enough to bother a Blind Man on a Flying Horse of course, but enough to make me hang my head.

Long time no post...

2009-05-27T18:54:00.003+02:00

...can't settle to anything at the moment, but I played about with some watercolour backgrounds last night, and this afternoon stamped up a couple of cards.

I made a mess of the third one, so I cut around the leaf and slipped in a little piece of lilac card to cover up my messy bit, then stamped some more over the top. My scanner has chopped a slice off the edge of the cards; they are centred on their backgrounds in real life.

ATC Challenge

2009-05-02T17:35:00.003+02:00

The subject on Art Pieces is Retro. This is a completely digital ATC and will be printed on photographic paper and mounted onto black card. All the images used are courtesy of Dover.

Colour Fast

2009-04-30T19:16:00.003+02:00

In the past I have tested my home dyed threads by wetting them and ironing them onto white cloth. They appeared to be colour fast. Now I am pretty sure they are, because unloading the dishwasher just now, I found a hank swinging from the top rack, its colours just as bright and fresh as when I first dyed them. Don't ask me how it got in there; all I know is that it was thread I was using until quite late last night because Bossman was watching Man U, and I can only think that it was on my person somewhere, and fell into the dishwasher as I went to put my nightcap mug in before going to bed.

Tea for Two

2009-04-18T15:16:00.006+02:00

My friend KR and I had a little fabric ATC swap with a tea theme. She sent me an elegant stamped greetings card enclosing two pretty QTCs of fused teapots set on an oriental fabric background, with added beads and gold stamping. I sent her a cross stitch teapot and cups. As quite often happens, I was in such a hurry to send it on its way that I forgot to scan it before posting, but to give you an idea, here is the pattern I used, from 50 tiny Tea Motifs by Jorja Hernandez.

Caught in the Act

2009-04-11T11:21:00.000+02:00

A seed pod on this anenome plant was just starting to split as I passed it on my way out this morning. When I returned, I caught it at the point when the next gust of wind would send the seeds flying...

Violas in the shade

2009-04-10T13:39:00.004+02:00

The deck chairs up on the balcony get a lot of sun, and because it is not in my nature to remove the cushions and bring them inside when they are not use, they soon fade and rot. The chairs themselves were bought back in the late '70's, and originally had good quality 4" foam rubber mattresses, but these eventually gave up the ghost about four years ago, and were replaced with some bought off the market, and made of polyester wadding wrapped around a 2" synthetic foam core. The covers on these rotted pretty quickly, but the worst was covered up with beach towels and Charlie cat found them quite comfortable, thank you. Sun loving Winter visitors don't get much sun downstairs because the rubber tree has grown so big, and the state of the chairs didn't do much for my reputation as a seamstress when they came up in search of a bronzing spot, so here is my reputation restored. A good strong piece of furnishing linen, 3 metres by 4, bought on the fleamarket for 12€. It had a printing fault down the centre line, but this was easily avoided, and will make cushions at some point, and I have enough left over to cover more chairs or even make curtains...

I just had to show you this pot of violas as well. My friend Elsie bought them for my birthday back in December, and they haven't stopped growing and flowering since. I do dead-head them regularly, and give them a feed now and then, but haven't they done well?

I've been tagged..

2009-03-27T14:55:00.002+01:00

...by Roz. I'm to show the fourth photo in the fourth folder of My Pictures. I think it is one that has appeared here before, of the almond tree below the snug window. Just in case you are wondering how we afford the water to keep the lawn looking so lush, it isn't a lawn, it's a putting green made from a piece of the old bowling green carpet that was destined for landfill before we rescued it. One of our friends claimed another chunk and used it to carpet all his balconies!

New layout ...

2009-03-24T16:45:00.003+01:00

and a friendly glass of lemonade along with a cyber hug, both from my friend Marion, who makes meticulously crafted cards.

I've changed the layout because those bits of foliage that overlapped the text were becoming an annoyance, and it was more fun to make a new header than to fiddle about with HTML...

Family Ties

2009-03-22T12:24:00.003+01:00

When 0j0 was last here, she found an old Paton's book of bazaar knits (that's bazaar, not bizarre) and was laughing at the knitted ties, tea and egg cosies. She then asked if I could knit a really garish tie as a Christmas present for a friend of hers, and hinted that she really needed that knitted dachshund draught excluder...

Not having anything on the pins at the moment, I was happy to tackle the tie commission, and chose a ball of turquoise, orange and yellow acrylic as I was passing through the Chinese Bazaar yesterday. The tie in the book was a silky slip of a thing; With DK I was obviously producing something much more substantial. Something that could be used to replace a fan belt in an emergency.

I cast on 6 stitches with 5.5mm pins and knitted garter stitch. The yarn was quite pleasant in texture for acrylic; quite silky and without any of the usual horrible squeak. After a foot, I increased to 8 stitches and knitted to the end of yarn, an event that coincided with the end of the programme I was watching on Beeb 2 about Communism in Czechoslovakia. I looked down at the finished article, and realised that the space dye had coincided nicely with the row length, and produced a neat yellow zigzag up the tie. I'm not sure what 0j0's reaction will be as it turned out quite attractive in its own way, and I think her intention was something a trifle more gross...

Not the Wild Things...

2009-03-21T10:28:00.003+01:00

As those of you who read my other blog will know, I'm cataloguing the weeds and wild flowers that are growing in The Bottom as it recovers from the deprivations of Ivan the Bulgarian. Because there are only so many hours in a day, there might not be any craft related posts here for a while, but you might get the odd flower photo that doesn't fit into the wildflower category...

A Scissor Keeper...

2009-03-19T14:25:00.004+01:00

...from a pattern I found on The Drawn Thread. I had some oddments of home dyed thread I wanted to test, and this seemed an easy pattern. The pink to red thread is Coats crochet cotton left over from a batch dyed years ago with Dylon Cold, the green shaded thread and the pink/yellow is a Spanish crochet cotton dyed with Chromotex T shirt pens.

I've cheated on the photos because I haven't shown just how un-square this is! I used cloth that wasn't quite evenweave, and so when I stitched the side seams following the instructions, I ended up with a rather interesting twisted shape. I don't seem to have photo of the hanging loop, either. I made it with the remainder of the red/pink crochet cotton.

I've spent a few hours cross stitching this week, embroidering a band on a guest towel for a friend's birthday; wrapped up and dispatched before I remembered to photograph it...

More holiday stitches

2009-03-11T15:20:00.000+01:00

This looks wonky because it is wonky: despite being stitched on a frame, the minute it was released from its bondage it took on a list, as needlepoint is wont to do before it is blocked. I am not sure yet what I shall do with it when it is blocked. I bought a bag of thread oddments from the charity shop, and a little kit was amongst the bits. The kit consisted of canvas and crewel wool to make a pincushion and needlebook. The needlebook was partly finished, but the crewel wool did not cover the canvas and it looked very threadbare. I found Anchor Tapestry wool in my stash that more or less matched the colours and took the pincushion canvas and pattern on holiday with me. I ran out of the red wool, and have only just got round to finishing it off. I looked for wool in Tenerife, but three different shops that stocked Anchor, Coats or DMC all said that no-one in Spain used Tapestry wool, they all used Tapestry Cotton. A rather strange statement, as I have bought it locally here in Alicante Province. Maybe that is because there are so many residents from more Northern climes. I shall unpick the crewel stitching on the other bit of canvas and restitch it in wool. It has two different birds, one on the front and one on the back, and I think is copied from a Medieval Tapestry.

Postage ATCs

2009-03-10T15:30:00.004+01:00

I had a little 1-to-1 swap with my friend KR, with a dual theme of Green and Postage Stamps. KR makes fantastic fabric PCs and QTCs, but hadn't ventured into paper based ATCs before. The first is titled Woman in Motion. How clever was she to find a rubber stamp that echoed so well the girl dancing? The second is titled Dragon from Tyvekistan...the green leaflike thing that forms the dragon's body in the second card is actually a piece of melted Tyveck, and the stamp is to celebrate the Lunar New Year...a lovely play on words. In exchange, I sent Starting Point and By the Pond.

Holiday knits

2009-03-08T15:14:00.006+01:00

The cardigan is for a friend who's daughter is expecting, and was a little experiment in knitting in the round. I enjoy a little light knitting, but always procrastinate when it comes to sewing all the parts together. I used a commercial Patons pattern for the stitch count, and started by casting on the the sleeves together on one loop needle using opposite ends of the ball of yarn. I knitted up to just before the armhole cast off as if knitting a pair of socks, making the increases at the beginning and end of the appropriate rounds. I then left these on a couple of holders while I cast on sides and back in one piece, and knitted up to the armhole shaping again. I had to do a little working out for the buttonholes, as the pattern said to knit one front, space out the buttons, then knit buttonholes to match, but that was easy enough. When it came to attaching sleeves to body, I was on a wrong side row because then I wouldn't need to worry about the pattern. I worked across one front, then positioned the sleeve so that the stitches that would normally be cast off lined up with the stitches that would normally be cast of on the body, and purled the two sets together, thus formimg the underarm seam without any need to sew. I continued across the back, attached the second sleeve and purled across the other front. The next few rows were the most difficult. Keeping the pattern correct, I knitted across the first front, then across the sleeve stitches, back stitches and front stitches, placing markers for the raglan seams as I went. I found it easiest to pull the needle loop through in the middle of the sleeves as I had when knitting them. It was a little tight for the first few rows, but as soon as I started the raglan decreases it got easier by the row. I wasn't sure what would happen with the garter stitch button band as I got up towards the neck, but I just knitted the last garter stitch with a shoulder stitch until I reached the top of the shoulders, then knitted it seperately for the last inch and a half. Apart from sewing in the ends and sewing on the buttons, this little bit was the only sewing I had to do.

The little jumper was even easier. I knitted the body in the round up to the armholes, then completed front and back and cast off. I picked up the sleeve stitches from front and back, taking them through the two layers where front overlaps back then knitted down towards the cuff. There is no shaping in this sleeve, just a decrease row before the ribbing. Again, the only sewing was weaving in ends and sewing on buttons. You will note how uninspiring the buttons are; these were the only ones in the shop that were anything close to being the right colour and the right size. I have knitted both of these in the 6 month size. The little sweater is for the boychild expected in April by our lovely clinic nurse, and he won't have much use for a pully in a Spanish summer. The little cardie however is going to Wet Wales and will come in very handy for their summer...

Phriday Photo...

2009-03-06T10:52:00.000+01:00

...especially for 0j0.

Just in case...

2009-02-23T11:32:00.004+01:00

....you think I'm slacking on the blogging front, I'm not; I'm off to this hotel in Tenerife for a week on a Pensioners' Jolly, subsidised by the Spanish Government to the tune of €17 a day. It is their way of keeping hotel staff employed and off the dole. Most holidays available are in colder areas that would not normally have off season tourists, apart from a few, a very few, that are available in the Canaries. By reading the small print on the .gov website, I discovered that instead of queuing around the block at the designated travel agent's on the designated day, it was possible to book on line from 8am on the said date, and that way I managed to get in where we wanted to go. We then only had to show up at the travel agent at the end of the rush and pay our deposit. When I told Pepa that we wanted to go to Tenerife, she shook her head in dismay, and said that we had no chance so late in the day. When I produced my booking number and said I had already booked online, she was taken aback, as she had no idea that it was possible! No doubt she will tell everyone, and next time we won't get a look-in...

Bossman's idea of a holiday is to get up, breakfast, take a stroll, lunch, sleep, bathe, dinner, nightcap and then bed to read his book. One book will last him the week because he falls asleep half way down the first page. To keep myself out of mischief while he is snoozing, I have three paperbacks and another five books on an mp3 disc, an mp3 music mix, a DS full of puzzles, wool and needles to knit something for a friend's newly expected grandchild, a small crosstitch, and my "ongoing for 5 years holiday embroidery project" of a Willow Patterned tablecloth. Oh, and a sketchbook for ideas...

Photo Phriday

2009-02-20T10:42:00.000+01:00

Let them eat cake

2009-02-18T16:24:00.002+01:00

Our Craft Club celebrated its 6th birthday yesterday. We are going through a knitting and embroidery phase at the moment, rather than the usual card making and papercraft. A couple of the ladies are continuing with the Blackwork I introduced, and others are knitting scarves from hairy caterpiller yarn bought in the Chinese Bazaar. I think I must be the only person there who hangs about on the street corners of Cyberland, as no one had ever heard the phrase Stitch and Bitch....

An award from a friend

2009-02-18T15:52:00.002+01:00

I received this from Paula at the weekend. I don't think there are any conditions attached, so it only remains to say a big thank you, and urge you to go and visit her blogs! If you like Copics, you may like her Copic challenges..

Not Old Mother Hubbard..

2009-02-15T10:48:00.000+01:00

...as my cupboard is not bare; I think I have enough marmalade for this year and the chutney choice will be added to when the nisperos are ready in April.

Photo Phriday

2009-02-13T17:37:00.003+01:00

Glenda's new stamps..

2009-02-09T20:00:00.002+01:00

Go over to Elusive Images Design Team blog to see Glenda's new collage stamps, and visit the individual blogs to see some great inspiration.

ATCs received..

2009-02-09T19:28:00.002+01:00

These are for the Postage stamp swap on CSNATCS, made by Barb.

I have not been idle...

2009-02-07T14:35:00.004+01:00

....even if I haven't blogged every day. My evenings have been spent knitting socks, and here are the results; the top striped pair were knitted in the traditional method, top down, using Regia sock wool brought over by DD2. I say traditional, but I did use the two-socks-on-one-magic-loop method. The lower pair were knitted in my preferred toe-up way, using the left over self striping wool and some grey marl that matched the grey of the stripes. Instead of the short row heel, though, I tried the round heel method thatI found on socknitters.com. I think I prefer it, as it is much better fitting than the short row method, and not baggy at all. It also allows for Sl.1, K1. for better wear. I have photographed them before I block them because chances are that if I waited, I would forget to do it at all!

Digital ATCs

2009-02-04T10:49:00.000+01:00

I don't usually do editions of ATCs; most of mine are one-offs, but I printed two copies of these because I couldn't decide on screen if I needed to add anything to them. I had originally planned to use the layered tissue paper, paint and glue backgrounds in the raw, and add paper layers on top, but when I saw the figures on Kubivet, I decided to go completely digital, and made scans of the backgrounds. The "floor" is just an adjustment layer darkening the background, and I hope the drop shadow stops them looking too flat. One of these days I'll find out how to make the shadow bend where it hits the wall....I'm sure there must be a way.

When they were printed, I decided they didn't need anything adding, and so there is a pair going begging in anyone fancies a trade...

Quilt repairs

2009-02-03T13:20:00.007+01:00

This is a quilt I made years ago, and it has been in pretty constant use by DD2 ever since. She brought it out with her for some TLC, as quite a number of squares had disintegrated from repeated washing and wearing. The whole thing was originally made from used clothing from the charity shop , so it is hardly surprising that some parts have worn more than others. The light diagonals were all cut from a tiered cotton skirt patterned with men in Mexican style hats leading donkeys through a tropical landscape, all printed in light blue and brown. This isn't showing any sign of wear, only fading. The darker diagonals were all cut from a variety of Indonesian style cotton batik shirts. In general, the lighter ones are OK, but the darker ones have rotted, so I am guessing the dyes used may have a bearing. Where I haven't been able to find any matching scraps in my bit boxes, I have used the nearest I could find; The dark blue with white and turquoise spots on the left, standing in for the larger spotty pattern on the right,

and the light green with a tiny flower is quite close to the tone of the green and navy print on each side of it.
The top was machine pieced, but I have made the repairs by hand, appliquéing squares that have had their edges pressed over a square of card cut to the approximate size; my skills were not such that every corner met exactly! The top photo was taken outside yesterday, just before it started raining, so the colour is rather dull, but at least the wind had dropped. The only replacements that stick out like sore thumbs are the brighter blue squares, but at closer quarters they don't look so bad, and anyway, it won't be hanging on a gallery wall, but will be draped over cold legs, keeping out the icy blasts of Cumbria! All that remains to be done is to hand quilt the diagonals that have come adrift, and this is quite a pleasant job, as the filling is soft and the backing is an old flannelette sheet. When that is finished, I need to tackle the second quilt, and that is in a worse state...

Marmalised...

2009-01-29T14:25:00.005+01:00

...was how the orange trees of Valencia looked after a weekend of hurricane force winds. 80% of the fruit is lying on the ground and it is doubtful if much of the commercial crop can be salvaged for the simple reason that the farmers are only equipped with machinery to gather their crop directly from the trees and do not have the manpower to collect the fallen fruit before it rots in situe on the ground. This is not the case in this house of course; visiting offspring are roped in to gather the windfalls, and this is the result of the first batch, made with 2 kilos of blood oranges, and therefore will be labelled Bloody Marmalised. I am not a traditional marmalade maker. I do not cut painstakingly thin slices of peel and float them in a crystal clear jelly. My method is straightforward and simple. Wash 2 kilos of oranges and a couple of lemons, put them whole, with a litre of water, into your largest pressure cooker and give them 10 -15 minutes at full wack. When cooked, they will have split and released more of their juice into the pan. Use a colander to strain them over a jam pan so that the juice is in the jam pan and oranges are in the colander. Leave the oranges to cool a little while you add the sugar to the juice in the pan, turn on the heat and give it a quick stir. Leave this to bubble away until all the sugar has dissolved; it is so much easier to see that it has dissolved in the clearish liquid than it is when you have added the fruit. Set up your mincer with a large bowl ready to catch the fruit as it comes out. I like to tip my ancient orange Moulinex mincer at an angle so that the juice runs out of the mincer tube rather than back into the mincer mechanics. Start cutting your oranges into quarters. I usually start off handling the hot fruit with a knife and fork, but it soon cools enough to use hand and knife. Poke about in the flesh to check for pips, and remove any that you find. Today I found only three pips in the whole 2 kilos, but it does depend on the variety; Sevilles are usually more pip than fruit! Feed the de-pipped quarters through your mincer. I use the finest plate because Bossman likes it that way, and he eats most of it, but if you like a lot of texture, use the coarser one. By the time you have finished mincing, the sugar should have dissolved. Just tip all the orange pulp into the jam pan and give it a good stir to break up the lumps. What was an opaque whitish mess transforms into a translucent orange scrumtiousness when it hits the hot syrup. When you have brought the whole lot back to the boil, test for setting. I kid you not! The fact that the pressure cooking uses a lot less liquid that conventional cooking means that the pectin content is very concentrated, and I have never failed to achieve a good set within minutes of reaching a good rolling boil. Jar up as usual, then wash the pots ready for the next batch...but not before you have scraped out all the sticky bits and enjoyed them on a crust of bread.

Awards and Fairies

2009-01-29T13:54:00.002+01:00

I have received three lovely awards in the last week or so, but have delayed showing them until I found time to change the blog background to a better match for the season. Here they are; the One Lovely Blog award from Faye, and the Marie Antoinette Award and the Love Blog Award both from Marion.

I know I am supposed to pass them on to another set of people, but most blogs I visit either already have them, or don't accept awards for one reason or another. If you don't have them, but would like them, please consider them yours!

On the Rocks

2009-01-23T14:42:00.006+01:00

Photo found here...thank you!

I have a dozen or so blogs in the Embroidery section of my Blog Reader. Most of them I just use as eye-candy; admiring the work, but realising that I can never reach their level of expertise. When I see work by Hideko, Judy, and others of their ilk, I am full of admiration, but I am not really inspired. On the other hand, when I make my almost daily visit to The Beauty of Life, a blog that started off in the Embroidery folder, but now promoted to the Must Read "A" list, I always come away inspired by Paula's handiwork, or entertained by her writing. On Tuesday, she showed some embroidered paperweights she was making for a PIF, and referred to others that she had made in the past. In her usual generous way, she shared how she made them, and from where her inspiration came. I couldn't wait to try. My first thoughts were of lichen on rocks; the pink marble outcrops in my garden have their patches of bright yellow and silver grey, but a search of Google Images found the photo above, showing much more varied colours, although on an equally pinkish rock.

I didn't have any pinky grey felt, but I did have a felted pinky grey vest in the depths of my duster bag. My camera has its own weird take on colour. I have had to play with the following photos to get the thread colours to look anything like the real colour, but take my word for it, the pebble is covered in a bit of Gran's pink vest...

I have only used French Knots. The tapestry wool is DMC Colbert, given to me by a friend who had a few odd part skeins left over from a project. It is thicker than ordinary Anchor or DMC tapestry wool, and so ended up in a bit bag of thread I used for making needlepoint spectacle cases, rather than in the boot box that holds regular gauge needlepoint threads. I rummaged around in my stranded threads for matching colours and added a few more knots, but it all looked rather flat, so around the grey knots, I tried using a variagated lavender coloured floss, and I felt much happier with the result.

Five or six years ago, I brought some Dylon Cold Water dye back from the UK, and had great fun dying cheap white embroidery floss. Most of it has now been used, but I have some odds and ends left. Suddenly, lichen went out of the window, and I had rock garden in mind! When it became clear I would need more greens, I decided variagated was the easy way to go, but I didn't have any, so needs must when...etc.

I have some Cromotex fabric painting felt tip pens. They are cheap as chips, but they do what they say on the packet; colour fibre. I used a shallow plastic tray, scribbled patches of all my colours onto the tray, sprayed them with water and pressed odds and ends of green floss onto the resulting wetness, spraying as I went until the thread was damp enough to absorb the colour and blend it. A quick blast from my heat gun dried it and set the colour, and a swift swipe with the iron smoothed out the kinks and restored the shine. I think I need to find a source of Dylon again...I feel this may only be the first of a series of Rock Gardens...

All I did ....

2009-01-19T13:27:00.000+01:00

...was to send my friend Pam some stamped images with her birthday card, and look what happens; she sends me this wonderful RAK of charm squares, some silver love stickers and this card with an iris folded cat. Aren't there some lovely people in the world? It is especially appreciated because I know Pam isn't feeling too good right now, but she went to the trouble of making me feel good! Thank you Pam.

Just under the wire...

2009-01-18T18:31:00.005+01:00

...for the Papertake Weekly Challenge! Here's my Sunday night take on Dawny's Sketch #6.

Papers are Artylicious, base card, ribbon, corners and peel-off text from stash. The image is one of my hand-carved eraser stamps, inked up with a freebie four colour mini pad, and stamped onto textured card from a recycled Christmas card.

Thursday Challenges

2009-01-16T16:54:00.003+01:00

The challenge this week at Cute Card Thursday is to "Have a Giggle", and this Sugar Nellie image of Cheddar reading his book of Big Cats always makes me smile. Then when I read on This Thursday, it's all about... that their challenge #36 was "Something with Whiskers" I realised I had killed two birds with one stone, or two mice with one cat....

Cheddar was coloured with watercolour. All papers used are Funky Hand.

ATCs

2009-01-10T16:00:00.005+01:00

I've signed up for one of the February ATC swaps on a Group I have been dormant on for a while. The theme is postage stamps, and there has to be a minimum of three stamps on each one. In an effort to tidy my desk the other week, I sorted all the postage stamps overflowing from a Ferrer Rocher box into subject matter, and put each group into a seperate zippy. I found Mole in the Birds and Beast section, and the words molehill and mountain immediately sprang to mind. I looked for mountains in the landscape zippy, scanned in the US stamp at high resolution, and used it as a background. I added the text in my graphics programme before printing it out. The second background was done in the same manner. I used a 4"x6" photo card to print the two ATC backs, cut them out, and then added the stamps and embellishment. Just in case you make the same mistake that I did at first, the turquoise stamp below shows an ice racing skate, and not a submarine with an odd shaped sail...

ATCs

2009-01-06T16:09:00.004+01:00

I haven't made an ATC for ages, and as this blog was originally set up with ATCs in mind, I thought I would make an effort. The first one is my version of this Ismaki Challenge Sketch. The tree stamp is home carved, the swirl is Inkadinkado and the snowflake is a peel-off. The papers are scraps from my bit drawer.

The second ATC is supposed to be for a Christmas card collage swap on FAPATCs. As it is the twelth day of Christmas, the large decorated tree fading away into insignificance seemed quite appropriate! At the moment there is only one other name down; the person who suggested it, so this may be a one to one.

Möbius Neckwarmer

2009-01-05T10:01:00.000+01:00

The front view.

The back; or is it a hat?

I have had a small ball of eau de nil Jaeger silk and merino hanging around since the 1980s. I shredded a small amount of it to felt into leaves and seed case for a poppy, but I thought there wasn't really enough for anything useful. I came across a reference to Möbius scarves, and went blog-hopping and web-surfing to find out more, and decided I probably had enough of this soft non-itchy mixture to knit a neckwarmer version.

I hadn't realised until I had done 8 or 10 rows, just how much stocking stitch would roll, so I did another 8 rows in purl, then 8 in knit, so I ended up with quite a pleasing Michelin man effect.

Just for the fun of it, I used a hairy caterpillar yarn to continue for a round and to cast off once I ran out of the Jaeger.

If you fancy trying the magic of möbius, here are a couple of links;
Cat's cowl scarf pattern that explains her method of casting on, and Linda's version that shows you another way to start.

Get ahead; get a hat...

2009-01-04T10:21:00.001+01:00

Just a quick post of one of the odds and ends that slipped off my knitting needles over Christmas. It has been so unusually cold here over the last month or so that I needed another hat as an alternative to my frog green fleecy pull-on, so decided to try the free bucket hat pattern designed by Amy Swenson for Make One Yarn Studio. I found it at Indiknits. There is a provisional cast on, then you knit to the edge of the brim, on a circular needle, increasing as you go, make a purl row to define the edge, then knit the outside of the brim decreasing again. You next pick up your provisional cast on, knitting two together to make a double brim. The pattern stated Aran weight wool, but I used what I had in the box, a thickish red yarn called Lana, chosen because it was the nearest thing in colour to my red gloves. It is produced in China, but without any statement of content, so it is probably Acrylic. Not surprising as it cost €1.50 for 100 gms and was bought for knitting Gnomes. The Spanish word for wool is lana, but is used just as vaguely as wool is in English, to mean yarn for knitting...
Edited to add link to pdf for hat.

And my heart will go on...

2009-01-02T15:11:00.003+01:00

....and on...and one day may get where I want it to go..but in the meantime, Paula's suggestion that I embroider pansies in the left hand patch was an excellent one, but I had already bitten the bullet and repeated the buttonhole wheel. I have unpicked the orange fly stitch from the seam on the left, and it already looks better, but I still have a mish-mash where that seam meets the stars. I think the time has come to pin it up where I can see it and let it brew for a while.

Yesterday was a downer, as first thing in the morning we had a phone call to say that a dear old friend had died bang on midnight. I say bang, because as her son later told us, being determined to last the year, she went just as the fireworks started. I'm not sad for her, as she has had a painful few months, and said she was ready to go, but I am very sad for her husband. They have been married for 62 years, and he is going to find life very hard from now on. I just hope he can forgive me for wishing him a happy new year when I picked up the phone.

I'm not happy...

2009-01-01T10:00:00.000+01:00

...with the curved Herringbone seam to the left of the centre. I think I shall unpick it. I added some shiny orange Fly stitches, but they haven't improved things, just made it more of a jumbled mess...I think it needs something more regular in its spacing.

I am happy with the beads on the bush, and I decided on a buttonhole circle to fill the left hand patch's space. I still need to do a chain stitch border like this around it and the third fan. I have added some straight stitch arrows in a single strand of black, and may add something or other to the centres.

The stars at the bottom have had another layer added, and some black French Knots. I'll finish off the third star when I decide what I am doing with the centre left seam. I used the scanner to produce these pictures. I can't complain about the focus, but the colour is a bit off; in real life the colours are warmer.

Happy New Year Everyone; Happy Crafting!

Gilding the Lily...

2008-12-31T10:00:00.002+01:00

....or in this case; the pansy. This is the first stage of the embellishment. For those who haven't got any embroidery books at home, I'm going to link the names of stitches to Sharon B's wonderful stitch dictionary. The black Chevron stitch on the seam between 1 and 2 was made with two strands of embroidery cotton. This has been overlaid with Fly stitch in some shiny orange rayon thread with a tight twist, and topped with Lazy Daisy stitches with one strand of embroidery cotton from a hank I space dyed in shades of yellow. I shall probably refer to home dyed threads quite often, as I enjoy using them. Some are the result of a day spent playing with a variety of different types of thread and three tiny pots of Dylon cold water dye in a red, a blue and a yellow, others are made using fabric painting felt tips on damp thread, ironed dry to set the colour....but that's a story for another day...

I haven't done anything along the seam between 1 and 3 because it is only a small patch, and I have chosen to fill it with a pattern. Here you can see how far I have done, making stars with two strands of space dyed tan floss. This will be added to at a later stage.

Next you can see the green Feather stitch vine curving up and over the right hand side of the heart. I have tried to match the green of the stem to the green of the pansy leaf. It needed to be darker for an exact match, but I used two strands of the closest green embroidery floss that I had. The leaves/flowers, I haven't decided which yet, are Lazy Daisy stitches made with a double strand of home dyed rayon. This is a complete pain in the backside to sew with, as it has no twist at all, and is composed of many, many very fine strands that fuzz up in no time at all, but it has such a wonderful shine, and takes colour so easily, that it makes up for all the swearing. The space dying of the thread, combined with the use of two strands together leads to a wonderful variation in the colouring that I think brings it to life.

I haven't decided how I shall continue with this, but I may do something like this next picture. Having a good margin around your heart gives you a space to experiment with colours and stitches...
I have used the shiny orange rayon twist to place three Buttonhole fans along the seam of patch 5. More stitches may be added later. The seam treatment between 1 and 4 is a simple shaped Herringbone, first in black, then overlaid with a space dyed peach, each stitch just to the left of the black stitch. To mark the curve I have stitched, I used a strip of micropore tape cut to shape. I love this tape; it stays where it is put, but peels off without leaving a mark. I use straight strips with measured out pencil dots as a guide to keep my stitches even when that is needed. I shall probably add to this at a later stage, but for now I have to decide what to do with that patch of pale yellow shirt on the left. It is too glaringly light at the moment. Do I extend the Herringbone seam? Do I enlarge on the fan? Do I add an embroidered motif or a scrap of lace? A cluster of buttons or beads? Decisions, decisions....I may be gone some time, so don't wait up....I might not come back until next year...

We have the technology...

2008-12-30T10:00:00.000+01:00

....but not the memory capacity. Yesterday's how-to photos were reconstructed using the patterns I made, after I made the decision to blog the process, rather than during the process of making the heart. The next stage I can't illustrate, but at the end I shall give you some links that will explain it better than I can.

I like to assemble my pieces on a fabric background. I use the parts of old sheets that are too good for dusters. Here's how;

1. Chose a piece of cloth that gives a good 2" or 3" border around your heart. I like to try out stitches on the side. Use the negative of your heart as a stencil to draw the outline in pencil on your background. Then draw in the seam lines. If you can't see the end of your original lines on the paper, re-assemble your pattern bits inside the stencil and mark the ends of the lines. You now have your sewing lines marked on your background fabric.

2. Hold your background fabric up to the window, and copy your pencil lines onto the other side of the background fabric. Why? Because there is bound to be someone like me who cuts out her bits of fabric back to front by mistake and needs to make a mirror image....but even if you are too careful to do that, it helps a lot having the markings on both sides.

3. Use the frame you made to choose which part of your patterned fabric you want for your centrepiece. When you are happy, hold down one side of the frame with tape or a weight, and slide your number 1 pattern with seam allowance piece under the frame, until the lines match up, then hold it down while you remove the frame. You can now draw around your pattern with the seam allowance, and cut it out, knowing that as long as you keep your seam ¼" from the edge, your chosen motif will be just where you want it.

4. Tack this piece in place, right side up. I work right next to the window so I just hold the work up to the glass to position it, but you could always mark the seam allowance on your background if you don't want to eyeball it.

5. From now on it is straightforward foundation piecing. Cut out patch 2 with seam allowance. Be accurate along the seam lines, but if you intend to do a lot of embroidery or quilting later, give yourself a little extra along the outside edge; the one marked with a circle.

6. Place piece 2, right side up, next to piece 1, edge to edge, then flip it over, right side to right side, and sew along the seam line. You can pin or tape it in place first if you wish. You can sew by hand or machine from the right side if you are happy you know you can judge ¼", or your machine foot tells you, or, you can turn the whole thing over and stitch along the seam line you have conveniently drawn on the other side. (See, I told you it would come in handy..)

7. Repeat step 6 for all your other pieces, give it a light press, then place your heart stencil over the patchwork and get your first idea of how it will look when it is completed. If you are happy, tack around the outside edge of the heart through the stencil. It doesn't matter now if the outside edge is not exactly where it was originally marked, as long as you have at least ¼" allowance outside your tacking. You can see from my photo that I have changed the angle of my outline, because I preferred it that way.

8. The next step is to decorate the seams with embroidery. This can be as much or as little as you like. You can choose the same colours as are in your heart, or a complete contrast, that is entirely up to you. You can see above that I have made a start with black, because I want to blend the background of the centre in to the surrounding patches. Next time I shall show you the start of the embroidery process. For now, here's a link to a video that might help you visualise what I have been trying to explain, but if you want a Masterclass, hop over to Melissa's Blog, and read through her tute, and see how it should be done!

What kind of needles...

2008-12-29T10:02:00.002+01:00

....did I decide on...knitting or sewing? Why not have both? I like embroidery, but these days can only see to do it in daylight, so I usually knit in the evening. I'll show you what I've been knitting another day, but for now, here is the start of a crazy quilt heart. I mean to take step by step photos of the process one of these days, but for now, if you are reading Pam, here's a quick run through of how I got to this stage; I'm sure there are other, better methods, but this is how I got there.

1. Decide on the size of the heart, fold a sheet of paper in half and cut out the shape. Keep both pieces of paper.

2. Choose a piece of fabric for the centre. Here I have used a fragment of an old blouse sleeve.

3. Look through your bit bag for colours that work with your centre fabric. In this case, starting top right, we have cream crepe from a blouse I shortened, rust dyed sheeting from my first experiments, tan cotton left over from a quilt backing, pale yellow poplin from Bossman's discarded shirt, and finally, cream faux suede, again from an alteration job, this time shortening trousers. This should give you some idea of the state of my workroom....

4. Arrange your chosen fabrics until you are happy with the contrasts, then overlap each of them, working your way around the centre, so that each seam end will be covered by the next piece. Using this as inspiration, with a pencil and ruler, draw seam lines onto your cut out paper heart. Hint; a pentagon is usually a good shape for your centre piece.

5. Number each section of the heart, starting with 1 in the centre panel and continuing in the order you will overlap them. In this case, 2 is the centre right bit, three is the tan, 4 is the light patch, 5 is the suede and 6 is the crepe. I then add carpenter's marks as I call them; I draw 2 lines across the seam line between pieces 1 and 2, three lines between 1 and 3, and so on.

6. Cut along the seam lines, then take each piece, draw around it on another piece of paper or card, and add ¼" seam allowances. I add a circle in pencil to the outside edge, so I know I can leave extra fabric here if need be.

7. TIP Take your number one pattern piece again, draw around it, then cut out the centre to make a frame. You can then use this frame to choose which part of your centre fabric fits the shape.

These how-to photos were reconstructed using the patterns I made, after I remembered to blog the process, rather than during the process of making the heart.

Here endeth the first lesson....

More birthday cards

2008-12-28T10:06:00.000+01:00

From Carolyn, with a jolly dotty ribbon.
From Carol with a cheeky feline.
From Chris L with a touch of the Glasgow School!

Some Birthday Cards

2008-12-27T10:33:00.000+01:00

I am making a few scheduled posts while I am in the mood. I feel a needle itch coming on, but I don't know if it will be knitting or sewing needles yet...anyway, the first is a fabulous card from Jeannie. I think the dragonflies are peel-offs on fantasy film; the colours of the wings change each time I pick it up to admire it.

This one is from Marion; A Cuttlebug special I guess, with its Swiss dots and scalloped border.
This one is from Pam. So many layers! I love the stitched background with its variegated coloured threads. I'll show you more cards I have received over the next few days.

Cute Card Thursday Challenge #41

2008-12-26T17:46:00.002+01:00

Background paper and the swirl are from a free Rhonna Farrar download, layered up by me in PS, then reduced in size and printed. Text plate layer is computer generated as well, using the colour picker to get the green from the swirl. I tend to do these plates in batches on a white background that I later colour in to match the card, but I coloured a couple of this batch before printing. The stamped image came in a swap lot, so I am not sure who it's by. Does anyone recognise it? I coloured it using ordinary felt tips scribbled onto my desk top and picked up with a damp brush, all except the skin; I did that with a watercolour mix of yellow and red from an old box of paints.

Just to Get You in the Mood...

2008-12-21T13:20:00.006+01:00

In the Bag

2008-12-17T17:02:00.006+01:00

Last minute as usual, I was wandering around this morning looking for a present for a friend. I saw a presentation box of her favourite smelly stuff and considered buying it, until I realised how much extra I was paying for the fancy packaging.

Wednesday is flea market day, and there are some lovely stalls selling household linens. I found this creased up pink linen teacloth embroidered with pussy willow for a Euro. OK, it had a small hole, but that didn't matter for what I had planned...

Ta-Da!! A bucket with quilted gingham lining. It can hold her scented assortment now, and afterwards I'm sure she will find something to do with it...

If you are wondering about the blue tartan blanket, I'm sitting here with it wrapped around my legs because it is so cold at the moment. My seat is next to the French window and it is very draughty!

Just in case...

2008-12-15T10:08:00.001+01:00

....you are wondering why I haven't posted much this week, it is because I have had my head down batch making Christmas cards. Those for the Craft Club girls were handed out at our lunch on Thursday, before I thought to scan one, but were assorted colours of Tracey (Fredshesaid)'s freebie medallion liberally adorned with coloured glitter glue.

The Bowling Club dinner saw me distributing variations on a theme of Joanna Sheen's Elf Sleigh silhouette. Some on a restrained dark green card, some on aqua, some on cream and some, like this one, on a vivid yellow that matched, more or less, the yellow of the halo. The backing paper is the one from the JS disk, but the greeting was made by C&P-ing a rectangle of the picture, deleting the sky and substituting the yellow picked up from the halo. If I was being pernickity, I would have tweaked the yellow to match the yellow of the card, but as these will be in the bin in a fortnight I didn't waste my time. The toppers come on a mixed size sheet, so the larger ones didn't have the backing paper, but had stamped swirls instead.

I have posted an wide assortment of hand made cards to the CardScraps girls, and friends and family abroad; as usual, not scanning in my haste to get them on their way. There now only remains Spanish mainland cards to make and post, and I have until Tuesday to rustle up a batch for the Winter Club.....next year I think I shall just design something simple in Photoshop and print, fold and stuff.....but then I say that every year, and because I know I won't blog tomorrow, I'm writing this on Sunday and scheduling it.

I've lost one of my favourites...

2008-12-14T18:46:00.003+01:00

Kathy Staff has died, age 80. Last of the Summer Wine is a great favourite in this house. However many times we see repeats, and there are 243 episodes so far featuring Nora Batty, we still laugh all the way through. Dear Nora, we shall miss you, but I expect you and Wally are having some lovely outings in the motorbike and sidecar...unless Compo has come to some arrangement with him....

BBC write up is here.

Christmas Cards...

2008-12-14T15:32:00.004+01:00

...are arriving, but so are birthday cards and anniversary cards as the Teabag family like to get these things dealt with in one fell swoop, and they all fall in the one week...

People in the know make things easy by writing Birthday , Anniversary or Christmas on the back of the envelope, and these are some of those marked Christmas. Those unmarked can wait until Wednesday, my birthday, so I shall have a satisfying pile to open. These are all from CardScraps friends, who know the ropes!

This is from Carol; the red gems haven't scanned as well as I would have liked, but it is an elegant card. This next one is from Marion. She loves her Cuttlebug, and is an absolute perfectionist when it comes to finishing her cards. I wish I hadn't got it slightly skewiff in the scanner, but I have never claimed to be perfect...

Another simple and elegant card. This one is from Jane.

The next card is a beauty. Bron wanted to try something other than traditional Christmas colours, and she thought I would like them. Well she is perfectly correct; I am all for breaking the bounds...that doesn't stop me being jealous of her stamps, though!

Funky Fairy's Challenge #43

2008-11-26T14:39:00.003+01:00

There are two challenges on the FF Forum this week. The first is the sketch, and the second is to make a card in pink and blue. You can do these separately or combine them. I chose to combine them in this get well card for a friend. The papers are from the Blue Christmas download from FF's Inspiration Blog, but I have turned the snowflakes into snow flowers by adding a pink punched centre. The image is a lovely freebie offered by IngerHarding. Please visit her blog and leave her some love! I have coloured it with watercolour pencils, but Inger also has a coloured image available

An Inherited WIP...

2008-11-22T10:26:00.000+01:00

This was started by my friend Dot, who died in September. Her husband brought me a large black bin-liner full of knitting yarn and five started projects. The wool is peach acrylic, not what I would use for something that entailed as many hours work as this pattern, ( in my experience, it pills after half a dozen wearings) but this has front and back finished, and a started sleeve that I shall need to frog as the slight difference in our tensions will always show if I continue where she left off. It took a while to work out what size she was knitting, and I have become so used to knitting from charts, that the K1, P1, Drop 1 of traditional English patterns is now annoying and hard to follow, so I sat down and made myself a chart from the knitting she had done. The little string loops you can see are there to remind me where the pattern changes. Once charted, it is an easy pattern. The increases up the side are all into a moss stitch band. In from this on each side there is a 17 stitch panel of a moss stitch zigzag on a purl backround, followed by a 6 stitch cable with 3 moss stitches on each side, and the centre is a diamond cable. The 6 row increases fall nicely in line with the zig and the zag, as do the cable cross overs. Below you can see how far I have knitted in two evenings; my sleeve is on my favourite circular needles. Oh, and the colour in the top photo is much closer to reality...