The week of elving

I am particularly enjoying SouleMama's week of elving this week.  Today is fabric gift bags, which I love - I did a few last year and hope to do more next year, but this year I just don't have time.  Also there were little trees made from fir branches stuck in clay - memo to self: try this with the kids!  Our Christmas tree has disappeared to be with lots of others at a Christmas tree festival, representing the knitting group and therefore covered in knitted decorations.  I am greatly looking forward to seeing them all at the weekend.  In the meantime, and to help Hannah with her 'we need to get ready for Christmas don't we Mummy?' fixation, we need a substitute, and these look like a great idea.  I'll have to get out and see what branches I can find.  I'm thinking a big one for decorations and little ones for the kids to glitter.  We haven't had the glitter out yet this Christmas, and we need to. I feel a glittery making moment coming on.

Pin wars

I bought myself some new pins the other week, because I don't have enough left in the old box for most projects.  I thought they were pretty much the same as the old ones, a pin's a pin, right?  Apparently not.  These pins are rubbish, the attrition rate per project is astounding.  Worse than slightly bent pins is what happened to these two:

 

That kink went right down between the feed dogs and got stuck.  I've never seen that happen - usually either the pin or the needle breaks.  I've since had one more do this, and then one that shattered, and I mean shattered, the needle (think bits flying everywhere and Chris threatening to make me wear safety goggles).  

So, I've gone back to the old pins.  No problem there, and I've now finished the mini-quilt project I was working on, and yes, it did get finished in time for Saturday.  It was a 90-patch quilt, for my Nana's 90th birthday:

For the observant among you, the other 9 patches are on the back.

Lastly, I managed to get a photo of the pinwheel blanket in progress, as I was transferring it onto the next size cable:

 

It's quite a bit bigger now, each round is over 300 stitches, and I've gone up to the longest cable.  I'm going to try and keep going till I've finished the ball, no point having a small amount of yarn left over now is there?

Currently working on...

Time for the usual (occasional) round up:

Reading - Colour: Travels through the paintbox by Victoria Finlay. 

Found this in the Oxfam bookshop and am enjoying it a lot, especially as I've just finished indigo and am now on violet (my favourite colours).  Very interesting, even if it is more about pigments than dyes.  Next up is the reading group book, The Family Tree by Carole Cadwalladr, which will probably be a breastfeeding book, if I can remember how to read while feeding.

Knitting - Pinwheel blanket, as blogged earlier.  I've finished the squishy baby blanket, which has turned out very soft and squishy and worth doing even if the yarn was a nightmare, so I can now concentrate on the pinwheel.  Currently it measures about 12 inches across, so a fair bit more to go then.

Sewing - currently in between projects, I've just finished felt monsters (had the craft workshop today, and had lots of kids making monsters - they were brilliant, loads of creativity and perseverance and quite a bit of good sewing!) but there is another project in the pipeline, though as the deadline is next Saturday and the baby is due on Wednesday, I may have left it a bit late.  Ooops.

A plastic-free Christmas?

It occurred to me this year just how much we use plastic in the disposable bits of Christmas - namely wrapping.  So I determined to try to reduce the amount of it I used.  So, how did I do?  Well, I still used sellotape (sorry, sticky tape) and paper to wrap up most of the presents.  A few got wrapped in homemade fabric bags, tied with a fircone glued on to a pipe cleaner.  The beauty of this system was that the tag could be threaded onto the pipe cleaner, and it made a nice Christmas decoration once off the present. 

The fabric bags themselves were an attempt to find an alternative to cling film in which to package sweets (homemade fudge and the like).  In the past when giving these sorts of gifts, each piece has been individually wrapped in cling film, a very tedious, and plasticky, process.  I thought about boxes, but didn't have time to make that many.  So fabric bags it was.  I think I made six in all, out of red gingham material so they could be reused for anything (plus its cheaper than Christmas material).  I think they looked pretty cool (eco-chic maybe?!) but I think some in the family were a bit bemused!  I stuck to paper for the kids, after all, what's Christmas if you can't rip the paper off presents?

Next year my goal is to abolish the use of sellotape so that the paper can at least be recycled, or even (horror of horrors) reused if it's big enough.  I have abiding memories of my mother assiduously cutting the sellotape off wrapping paper on Christmas afternoon so that the (usually very crumpled) bits of paper in the middle could be reused the following year.  How come it never occurred to us not to use sellotape in the first place?

catching up 3: craftyness

And now for the third installment: what we have been up to on the crafting front.  Well, me mainly.  And this might be more than one post...

Firstly a couple of presents for friends' children's birthdays:

A cross between fuzzy felts and Mr Potato Head.  The recipient liked it though.

And a crayon roll, I love these and H has already put in a request for hers.  I particularly like the flowery/fruity fabric, so much so that I used it on another project:

This is a sandwich wrap, something I've been thinking about for a while now and I finally got around to making one (well, two actually, otherwise the kids will fight over who gets it).  I'll go into it more another time.

 

My birthday present from C was a day's dyeing course with Debbie of DT Craft and Design, which I thoroughly enjoyed.  I'm now hooked!  The top picture is a sample I bought home from the day and knitted up into wristlets - I'm very chuffed with the double x pattern that's come out, couldn't do that again if I tried!  The second picture is some wool I dyed the other day for a Christmas present - excellent fun and even more personal than buying ready dyed wool.  I love it.  I love playing with colour - just need to buy some more dyes now... and some more wool... roll on Christmas!

We've been busy...

Wow, a whole month since I last posted - oops! But in my defence, we have been busy.

The major thing was a holiday, a long camping trip down south. Not only was there major packing to do, but I was also making this:
The reason for the trip was my gran's 90th birthday, and the appropriate family party accompanying it. The quilt was a gift for her, and my first attempt at a (nearly) full sized quilt. I quite pleased with how it turned out, and it was fun to do, just a little bit rushed. I set up the machine on the kitchen table together with the laptop and watched stuff on 4od and iplayer whilst sewing - very civilized!

But before the family stuff we camped on Hayling Island, somewhere I know quite well from my youth, and somewhere I never thought I'd go on holiday! But we had a great time, visiting old haunts and finding new ones.

Since then we have been happily surprised with the news that we are expecting a third little Goodhew sometime in the New Year. So I am now in the throes of those first trimester goodies of feeling very tired and icky. Mmmm.

This month is also busy with appointments and reports for Hannah as nursery prepare to apply for her statement. The dynavox has broken and we are missing it a lot; we don't know when it will be repaired. And we've had the Hadfield Carnival (very soggy) in which we were involved on three stalls - it went well despite the weather but was very frantic. We have the church camping weekend this weekend (most of the stuff is still packed!) and a few other bits and bobs happening as well.

So, I'd better go and do that form I've been putting off. Eeek.

The latest project

Okay, so this was me set up for an evening's sewing last week. Table free of stuff (it's piled on one of the chairs), makeshift ironing board (two towels), iron on, and inspirational flowers in the background. And what you can't see is that the kettle is on as well. Ah, bliss.

And what was I making? Well, this:A blanket for my freind's little boy, who was one two days before Steffie. (Not that his present was ready on time. But near enough.) I couldn't resist that fleece when I saw it in the shop.