Launceston Adventures begin!

So I'm heading to the wonderful land of Launceston (renamed Snuggleton by my lovely friend Abby) very soon and I'm feeling a mixture of excitement and dread!  Excitement because I will be living in a lovely little flat which I am looking forward to making really beautiful, dread because I will be leaving my lovely boyfriend down in Hobart, and a mixture of excitement and dread as I will be starting a new job as a Social Worker at Launceston General Hospital!

I am also feeling a bit sad as I will be leaving my lovely Crochet Collective gals, and will be completely without a knitting/crochet group.  Hopefully if I hang out in enough knitting shops someone will take pity on me and invite me to their group!

What I'm most excited about, is that because I don't know anyone in Launie and my work is 9-5 I will have a lot of free time in the evenings to go absolutely nuts finishing off (and starting new) creative projects that I have put on hold due to lack of free time!  In particular I'd love to really get into dress making and maybe take a class or two so that I can really get the hang of making my own dress patterns.

I also found this lovely quote on pinterest which I am really loving at the moment:

I'm just generally really loving Pinterest - you can follow me at http://pinterest.com/annoushkha if you want to see what I've put up :)

Preparing a FairIsle Norwegian Jumper: All Pain and very little Gain

 

Well I've done all the fun bits of the jumper (i.e. the actual knitting) , and after a long period of just looking at the pattern, sighing, and then putting it down again I have decided to start on the decorative stitching, the blocking, cutting a steek and finishing the collar.

 

Scary stuff.  I've put some tutorials up here, mainly just for me to be able to find easily.   

 

 

 

There's a good tutorial for cutting a steek (this is where you baste a line either side of where you want to cut arm holes in your jumper).  Very scary stuff.  I honestly don't know if I'll be able to cut into my jumper without doing a little girly scream, I'll let you know. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 I've also found a daggy tutorial on blocking jumpers

 

 

 

Wish me luck!!

Crafty As A Fox Quilting

Inspired by the wonderful Pip Lincolne and many excellent books, I decided to use her idea for a fox quilt, and just make one square.  The plan is to make more squares with different animals, but I am struggling to fit different animals into the same sort of quilting square setup.  If anyone has any inspiration please let me know or comment below!  Hopefully I will work something out and put some more little animals up.  I would quite like to frame them and have them lined up together in my room. 

 

Sewing adventures

Since I've been doing so much more sewing and knitting lately, I thought I should make a few practical things for myself to make everything in my sewing room a little bit easier!

 

Here is the little sewing caddy I made, and a knitting bag as I'm just about to a big knitting project and will need a good place to put all the bits!

 

Dressmaking Adventures

I have accidentally discovered the genius that is Pinterest!  (I know I am very behind the times)..

This has started a terrible dressmaking frenzy that has cost me more than a few late nights and pin jabs.  But it's so lovely to be able to make something to wear for a party or bbq or whatever.  And it also helps to have friends that give lots of compliments even when the skirt turns out a little strange or doesn't fit very well or bits of it fall off mid-party (which has happened to me already!).

Here are a few of my attempts at making clothes for myself without patterns - some success and some failures!

I went to a clothes swap a couple of months ago, and came home with a whole pile of awesome stuff that just needed a few adjustments.  I found a maternity dress that had a beautiful neck and was made of beautiful fabric but was absolutely huge and shapeless, so I have made it into a short skirt and a top.  I found the beautiful dragonfly button at a craft market a few years ago, I'm happy I finally found a good spot for it!

Dragon Fly Skirt

Shaped top

Close up of Dragon Fly Button

Yesterday I went to Spotters and found this beautiful light fabric for $4 a meter!  I think the design is supposed to be trees, but I think they look more like lollypops.  I also found some beautiful lace for $2 a meter.  So all in all, this skirt took me about two hours and cost me a little over $10 and I had something new to wear to the pub that night!

So here is my lollypop skirt!

Ready to go out on the town!

Skirt (not sure why it's bunched up on the side in this though)

Close up of the fabric

Confetti Quilting

 

I've been experimenting with some confetti quilting, using free motion quilting ever since I got this fantastic book for my birthday:

 

 

 

It's an absolutely amazing book, with some really interesting ways of capturing colour and light by using thin strips of fabric. 

 

I gave it a go, but I think my complete lack of talent in the drawing and painting department let me down!

 

Anyway, freeform quilting is the boss.. so should be fun experimenting with these kinds of techniques!

Tea Cosies and Abby & Hoot

Hi guys,

I have needed a teacosy for ages, but have been completely overwhelmed by all the wonderful pattern options on ravelry.com.  Then I was sitting watching something rubbish on TV and thought I might use a section of a fair-isle jumper pattern I had seen and make up the pattern as I went.  I'm pretty happy with it, although it's a bit hard to get on and off!

My lovely friend Laura has a gorgeous son, Patrick who is obsessed with Giggle & Hoot so Miss Abby and I decided to make him a Hoot toy.  For all those of you who have somehow escaped the Giggle & Hoot machine, or don't know anyone under the age of 5 (it equates to the same thing), here is a picture of the actual Hoot toy:

I find the show fairly terrifying, but little kiddies love it so who am I to judge.  I will just say that when I was growing up we had Duckula, Danger Mouse, The Trapdoor and many other highly quality shows that made us nineties kids the high-functioning, responsible and well adjusted adults we are today.

Anyhoo.

Finished Hoot

We were pretty happy with the results given we didn't use a pattern! And Paddy was also psyched according to Laura :)

High level of excitement at the Picture Gallery

Sewing Machine Cover

My beautiful Singer machine came with a really ugly plastic cover which I have been meaning to do something about for ages..

Just the thing for Anna the Cheerfully Unemployed Social Worker!

I ordered an embroidery foot ages ago, so that I could try out some free motion quilting, and while I was going through my stash I found some really lovely 50s style fabric in the bottom of my stash which I thought would make a lovely cover.  Sorted.


I used free motion quilting which was a lot of fun - the shapes started out random and then I experimented with following the prints on the material loosely.

I hand embroidered the little animals on some calico and some blue bias binding for the edging...

Ta da!  

Hopefully I will get some more free motion quilting done soon and will put it up.

Lady of Leisure or Slacker? You decide.

After a crazily busy last couple of months I now have the opposite problem...

 complete and utter unemployment.  

Which is really really horrible.

I always imagined that once my social work degree finished I would have a few blissful weeks of unemployment in which I would wear flowy skirts and lounge about in the sun (why I thought it would be sunny in September in Tasmania I don't know).  I would drink G & Ts with friends and sleep in and stay up late and indulge in all kinds of slack things like sitting and reading a book entirely uninterrupted.  And I probably managed that for about a week before completely crumbling under the pressure.  First of all, if you're unemployed you can't afford the G to go with your T, if you sleep in and stay up late after a while your body clock becomes in sync only with possums and the chaps who work at the 24 hour Food Stop.  Your sleeping patterns become the opposite of what everyone else is doing which means you don't get to catch up with your friends as they tend to sleep at night and work during the day.  Plus one of the most wonderful things about knitting jumpers, crocheting toys and sewing dresses is that these are all things that you do when you really should be doing something else.  Faced with an afternoon of studying social policy, sewing takes on an illicit and forbidden quality that is much more satisfying.  Once you can do these things all the time it's a lot less fun.

At least it means I have had lots of time for baking!

Afternoon Tea at Crochet Collective

And thank goodness for the gals of the Crochet Collective!

However I am a firm believer that there is no such thing as a bored person, only a boring person.  When my little sister Cat was really little she used to wander around the house complaining that she was 'boring'.  I think she meant that she was bored but we all used to have fun reassuring her that she wasn't that boring.

This is a Yoshitomo Nara painting that pretty much captures what my sister looked like all the time between the ages of two and five years old.  I'm sure she'll appreciate me pointing this out.

So while I try and find this elusive social work job I wanted to keep myself occupied with a creative task every day.  I know lots of blogger type people set themselves the task of creating something every day.  However I think this works better if you are a photographer or visual artist - it becomes a bit of a problem when you work mainly with textiles (although I'm sure there are knitters out there who can go for hours and hours).  So in order to avoid looming RSI I have chosen to work on a couple of bigger projects and a few little ones every week - just enough to keep me busy and motivated.

I actually decided to do this a week ago, but typically do not have the level of organisation required to blog every day, or even every second day.  Once every couple of months is about as much as I can manage.  However, given I have NOTHING TO DO ALL DAY EVERY DAY I will try and be more vigilant and post once a week.

I've been working on a jumper for myself for the past month and a half which uses a pattern from a Norwegian pattern book:

It's all about crazy fair-isle style patterns that can make you go blind or at least knitting-rage-quit if you don't take regular breaks.  This is the pattern that I am following - hopefully I won't look as put out wearing it as the ethereal looking lady in the photo

I've just finished the body which took  me about 2 months - it's bunched a little where the tension is uneven but this should clear up once I've blocked it.

Body of Jumper

This photo refuses to be up the right way no matter what I do with it so I've given up.

Close up of the pattern

Anyhoo,

Will hopefully be able to do a couple of little projects on top of this bigger one and won't destroy my hands in the process.  Wish me luck!

Hedgehogs Say No

Just had to share this with you all..

(best read out loud with a John Lennon Liverpudlian/Scouser accent).

Shambles Brambles Beret

So I've just finished my brambles beret -  possibly more of a shambles than brambles (I had to go there - those kinds of terrible puns are impossible to resist.)  To be fair I did most of my work while sick with the flu, so there was definitely a couple of hours of knitting done while I was fairly feverish!  That's my excuse anyway.  You can find the pattern for this one at http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEdf10/PATTbrambles.php

It's by Amanda Muscha and it's extremely awesome looking (if you follow the pattern in a non febrile fashion).  Mine ended up finishing in a weird peak, so I made the most of it and attached a lovely pompom. 

Here is how it's supposed to look:

Very pretty.......

Mine ended up looking like this:

Sorry about the weirdly flashy photos.  Photography is not my strong point!

Oh well..  I have had an excellent month of discoveries, including a particularly good jumper that I found at Salamanca Market - I don't know if I have come across a more awesome jumper design ever.

Plus it's reversible - so if you get sick of having the apple isle on the front you can always swich around to have this!

Anyone who can understand what is being depicted in the left hand corner deserves a special prize.  cows in the snow?  With love hearts?  And what has that got to do with Victoria?  But really the intrigue just adds to the awesomeness.

It was D's birthday a couple of weeks ago and the lovely Abby Road (smallcraftalert@blogspot.com) made him a lovely beard beanie (for the modern gentleman who has neither the time or the resources to grow a beard quickly himself).

  Here it is modelled by D and Abby's husband:

Doesn't get much more manly than these beanies.. Very Mawson. 

Anyhoo, that's about it for this month - I will leave you with the awesome cover of McCalls Easy Sewing Book - found by the lovely Abby Road. 

I don't know that those kittens entirely know what they're doing.

Miss Marlo Dress

Ooh forgot to share with you Pip Lincolne's book Sew La Tea Do, that I mentioned in my last post..
Here it is!!

Make sure you check out Pip's blog though before you attempt the Miss Marlo dress (which is the pattern I used) - as the scaling is completely wrong on the pattern in this book!!  I didn't check Pip's blog first, and spent all day cutting up lovely fabric while watching Pride and Prejudice, only to discover that none of my pieces fit together and that I would have to buy more material and do it all again!  Heartbreaking.

Quilting Extravaganza!

So obviously I'm fairly slack with the blogging - so I'm going to try and just put up a few pictures every now and then to show what I'm up to rather than trying to use words and whole sentences.  Way too exhausting.

I've been getting into quilting a lot lately, I have been making lots of little patchwork quilts for different things, and have started cutting up all the squares for the double bed quilt I have supposed to have been making for this Winter!

This is a blanket I made for a friend's baby - the beautiful Finlay Gillespie!  My lovely friend Liz very kindly took this photo for me to show you all :)

This was my first real go at getting bias binding right on a quilt - but didn't really turn out as I'd hoped.  Still I was pretty happy with the colours, as I wasn't sure whether I was making this for a little boy or a little girl!  The red-riding hood prints are particularly gorgeous I think.

Here is my quilt plan before I sewed everything up..

I also used the red riding hood fabric to make a dress using Pip Lincolne's pattern from Sew La Tea Do:

And a close up of the fabric :)

Now that Winter is coming up, I think I'm going to need to focus mainly on getting enough woolens to last me through a Tasmanian winter!  So hopefully I will put up a whole pile of beanies and scarves soon - including a really wonderful beret pattern I found on ravelry.com which I will share with you all (hopefully) next time!

Toys from last year (2010 & 2011) Part 2

These are a few more of the toys I made last year based either directly on or inspired by patterns from the books Super Cute: 25 Amigurumi Animals by Annie Obaachan and Amigurumi by Lan-Anh Bui & Josephine Wan.

 These are miniature versions of the bunnies and elephants I've made before

 Monkey wearing pants (naturally)

 The sleepy mushroom and psychadelic snails are little rattles and are smaller so that toddlers and little ones can grab them and bash them against things.  They are also completely child safe which I was pretty chuffed about!

Ballerina Bunny

Another little rattle, based on the same pattern as ballerina bunny but smaller :)

Present for my dad's birthday! (he's a fan of chooks)

Present for Miss Abby Road's Ph. D. Graduation!!