Almost Christmas... but still time for a bit of crafting!

So since last time I've not had a huge amount of time for crafts - my 6 month old keeps me very busy with an array of baby classes. I have managed to make an elephant and get her involved in crafts though!

Firstly, the elephant. Now I discovered some time ago whilst my baby naps I can crochet. She doesn't tend to nap without a cuddle, and if she doesn't nap gets very grouchy, so being able to crochet whilst she does so is a huge bonus!

I was at the international knitting and stitching show a few weeks back with my best friend, and Toft had a stall there. They sell luxury alpaca wool and also created the Edward's menagerie series of toys. I've liked them for a while, and now have someone to make them for! So I bought the book and some silver wool and set about creating Bridget the elephant. She didn't take long to make at all, and was very easy too. I'm rather happy with the end result, and the wool was lovely to work with. I'd highly recommend them, even for a complete beginner.  Here's a picture:

The other thing I've done recently is some painting with my daughter at a Christmas baby class. It was run by Rainbow Rhyme, a local baby class, and was great fun! There were songs, different musical instruments, and in the middle a creative bit. I was sceptical as to what a 6 month old could do, but they had some inspiration of how to turn footprints into Christmas artwork. Below are the resulting pictures - I actually think they're pretty good! (Yes, I'm one of those parents now that thinks whatever their child does is amazing!) It's amazing what sticking on a few googly eyes can do!

Anyway, this will (unsurprisingly, given the date) be the last post before Christmas so I hope you have a wonderful time with family and friends, and I'll be back in the new year when hopefully I'll have finally finished those bags I keep mentioning...

Crafting can be like buses...

So, after not much crafting in the months after becoming a mum, I seem to have been on a roll over the past week or so! And I even managed to finish a project that has been in progress for about 2 years - a heart bauble. Now to work on the rest of the ongoing projects... Though in true me style I wrote this last month and forgot to publish it! Oops.

So one thing I've made progress on is the bag I've been making. It turned out I'd cut a couple of pieces out the wrong way (if I'd used them the elephants wouldhave been on their side!) so I've rectified that. I've also managed to make the inside pockets. There are formed by sewing the rectangle so the wrong side can't be seen, then creating a box pleat in the middle when attaching it to the lining:

So back to the bauble. This might have been a bit ambitious - I started it with little colour work experience, and no experience of double pointed needles. On the plus side, being worked in the round meant minimal seems to sew up! Once I got the hang of it, it wasn't so bad, but I must admit making several mistakes and getting rather frustrated, hence why it took so long to finish! Here's a picture of it in progress, working in the round:

I discovered when I'd nearly finished that the right side was supposed to be facing outwards. Perhaps that would have meant the joins between the needles would have left fewer gaps... Should have mentioned - the pattern is from a book called 'Knit your heart out' which is a collection of heart patterns all worked in the round. The instructions weren't most clear in places, but I eventually worked it out with a bit of help from the Internet!

The resulting piece is one that isn't my finest piece of knitting, but still something that will be proudly placed on my Christmas tree (though perhaps towards the back!). Here's the finished item:

Once I'd finished that, I decided I wanted to finish something a bit easier so chose to start a new decoration - this time a stocking from a free magazine kit. This was much more straightforward, though I managed to forget a colour change so it's not perfect! It was however quick to knit, meaning I could finish it whilst my daughter slept (on me - she rarely stays asleep when I put her down).

Here's the finished item:

Anyway I think that's enough for now, next time I'll hopefully have finished those bags I mentioned in my post way back in 2014...

The waiting is over

So as you've probably guessed by now, since no one has ever been pregnant for over 12 months, my baby finally decided to make her appearance. On the same day as I posted the last update! I knew when posting it wouldn't be long, and called the hospital just after I posted it - little did I know it would be only four hours before I was holding her in my arms!

And I have to say, whilst now I wouldn't change it for the world, the first 6 weeks in particular were rather tricky as we adapted to our new lives and didn't ever sleep... Turns out sleep deprivation does strange things. But hey, we do have the most wonderful, interested baby who's become very entertaining - even if she hates sleep with a loathing passion!

As I'm sure you can guess life with a newborn (particularly our high maintenance one) isn't exactly full of opportunities to craft...  Some days simply managing to eat lunch is a major achievement! However, now she's over four months old (well that went quick!) she's more settled and I manage to squeeze in the odd session.

Now, life has been made harder my the fact someone broke into my house at the end of August, taking with them my laptop (along with most of my jewellery and handbags and some other tech). Why is this relevant here? Unfortunately I'd been drafting a blog post in Word on it, so that went with it along with photos of craft projects that were on my laptop / camera. Which also explains why the photos on this post are a lower quality than usual - I've had to use my phone as they took all three of my cameras.

So, that was a lot of waffle, well done for reading this far! The project that was going to be central to this post is one that my husband has been helping with. Basically we have a lot of colourful toys and had nowhere to put them. Looking at toybox options, they were so expensive! So being the sort of person I am, I decided the best thing to do was buy a plain one and paint it.

Now I'd already made pictures for her room (see a previous post) and thought it would be great if the toy box matched those. So we found a paint to match one of the elephants, and a contrasting one to stencil some animals on it. Luckily they had an offer on tester pots so they were a steal at £1 each.

My wonderful husband (yes, I'm biased on the issue!) then painted the whole thing in the lighter base colour.

The next step was to add the animals to it, which he kindly let me do (I suspect as this was trickier he didn't want to get it wrong!). To do this, I printed out silhouettes of an elephant and giraffe that matched the pictures, as well as a monkey in a similar style. I then used a craft knife to cut out the animal shapes. Then I simply placed them where I wanted them to be on the toybox before painting them in the darker paint.

Last step was a layer of varnish once the paint had dried to help ensure dirt from grubby fingers can be wiped away!

Here's it in progress:

It was horrible waiting for the paint to dry so I could have a look! A few bits had leaked round the edges but were easily touched up with a bit of extra paint.

Here's the finished thing:

I'm rather pleased with it. Hopefully once she's old enough to express an opinion, so will my daughter!

Now given my adorable baby takes up so much of my time, and we're doing so many baby classes, I'm going to aim for this blog to be updated once every couple of weeks for a little while. Feels more achievable! Might be less often, but we'll see how it goes. So, until next month, have fun!

Still waiting...

So baby is far too comfortable and has proved everyone wrong and is officially late. Trying to avoid induction using every old wives tale there is but I'm starting to think I'll be pregnant forever..... No signs of baby wanting to arrive anyway!  On the up side, it has given me more time to do some baby related projects.

The first project I started with, using the lovely fabric that arrived just before my last post, is a bag for myself.  Now I hadn't quite appreciated how hard that cutting out pieces from a large piece of fabric laid out on the floor at over 40 weeks pregnant would be...  As such it was extremely slow progress and a rate of one piece every hour or so! Over the course of two days the pieces finally got cut out.  I've since ironed them all and backed with interfacing so they're ready to see together. Sadly, they are still waiting on the kitchen table:

So what have I actually finished?  Well I had a lot of fabric left over so had a think about what I could use it for.  Baby's room has something of an animal theme (it would be safari theme but we have a penguin and polar bear soft toys along with an elephant and hippo, plus many teddy bear items so it kind of falls apart a bit!).  As such, I wondered how I could use the fabric to make some pictures - like every other room in our house the walls are plain cream as it was a new build and we've yet to decorate.

I came up with the idea of using the fabric as a backing and putting animal silhouettes on them before framing.  Here are the finished pictures:

They were really quite simple to make, and here are the steps to do so:

1) First, you need a frame with a mount, some backing fabric the size of the frame, some fabric for the silhouettes (I used felt) and a template for the silhouettes (I searched the Internet for something I liked and re-sized it to fit the frame)

2) With the backing fabric, I added some iron on medium weight interfacing to add a bit of rigidity to the fabric

3) Using the template, cut out the animals.  If using light on dark, multiple layers may be required (I used two for the white elephants to prevent the backing showing through)

4) If using multiple layers attach them together either by sewing or you could glue them instead if you want a quicker finish

4) Then it's a case of positioning the animal on the backing fabric - to do this lay the mount on the fabric and position it where you'd like.  I've put mine centrally.  Once you're happy with the position you need to attach the silhouette to the backing fabric - again, you could sew or glue it in place

5) Finally attach the mount to the backing fabric - I used double sided tape to do this - then frame.

I hope you like them - I think they'll look great once we get round to actually hanging them up in baby's room!  For now, they're in the cot...

Anyway, hopefully for my post in two weeks time I'll have an exciting new arrival...  or I'll be breaking records for the longest recorded pregnancy!  Lets hope its the former...

So many plans...

Firstly, you'll probably notice it's been more than a week since I last posted. I've made the decision that I'll update this blog every two weeks - even though I'm now on maternity leave I just don't seem to have any free time!  It all seems to be taken going to numerous medical appointments, trying to get everything sorted, and generally being "busy" without really knowing what I've done...

Bump is growing nicely (a bit too well perhaps!) and whilst there have been many signs baby might come soon for the past 3 weeks or more, baby seems happy to just stay put.  Though it was amusing over the bank holiday weekend when the Braxton Hicks were every 3 minutes (as confirmed by monitor at the hospital) as my husband started to question whether I was 1) in labour or 2) if I'd know when labour comes!  Pretty sure I will know when the time comes... Thankfully they aren't always that regular, but I have been having a lot so lets hope it's not long before baby can model all my cute makes.

Since I finished work, I had assumed that I'd have lots of time for crafting activities, but I think baby has other ideas. It's uncomfortable to sit in the same place for more than about an hour, walking / standing tires me quickly and the unstable surface of my gym ball, whilst more comfortable, doesn't really mix with knitting / sewing!

Anyway, enough whining.  One thing I have managed to finish over the past couple of weeks is (yet another) baby cardigan.  Now I come from a family of knitters, so there's me, my mum and my grandma all knitting!  I think we now have in excess of 20 knitted cardigans / jumpers...  Not going to stop me knitting though!  A picture of my latest creation:

 

 

It's knitted in a chunky yarn and simple stocking stitch / garter stitch pattern - overall the pattern was very easy to follow (pattern 8491 from Stylecraft if you're interested). It's also a larger size than most that we have, so should fit baby in winter.  Being chunky, it knitted up fairly quickly - the delay in finishing was trying to decide whether to have the version with the hood or not.  I decided against it, and I'm pleased I did (not least because it meant it was finished quicker!) 

 

One thing you might notice (and if not, skip this paragraph!) is that the buttons aren't quite evenly spaced.  Not sure what happened here, but I didn't want to undo it (lazy, I know).  The buttonholes are made using a technique I'd not used before - casting off a couple of stitches before casting the equivalent number on in the next row.  This created larger buttonholes, allowing me to use some buttons that I bought for a different project on which the buttonholes were too small.  They have a flower in the centre, but if I have a baby boy I'll pretend it's a star!

 

So, hopefully next time I write a post it will make less sense than usual because I'm exhausted from having a newborn, but given everyone said baby would be early I think baby is being stubborn!  Hopefully I'll have time to make use of the delivery that arrived this morning:

 

 

 

I have lots of plans for this, so we'll have to see how far I get!  I'll let you know how I get on...

Back, with a new agenda

So, as it seemed I was finally back on track with the blog (if you can count two posts a week apart being back on track!), life decided to get in the way again and this blog got neglected.  Now, however, I am not working until July 2016 (setting my out of office was fun!) - more on why below. In addition to the below we moved house, and I have to say I'm never moving again. Though it was interesting to move all my craft supplies and put them in one place - turns out I have A LOT (though not "too much" as I'm sure my husband would say!).  So anyway, the main reason the blog stopped was I was finding it particularly hard just to get through the day doing essential tasks whilst growing this:

And I know you're thinking, wow twins! But it's not, it's just two pictures of the same wiggly baby (a trend that has continued) that wouldn't stay still enough for the scan.  Now baby is quite a lot bigger, and makes the wiggles felt a lot more, and so my knitting recently has naturally taken a baby focus!  For those interested, as I write this I'm 37 weeks pregnant so baby's arrival is imminent - though I am on maternity leave so have more time (in theory) so I'm aiming to post every week or so, this will probably (read: definitely) go out the window once I have baby but bear with me!  Bets so far seem to be for arrival around the upcoming bank holiday weekend, as then a number of family members are enjoying themselves on holidays abroad (not jealous, not at all...) but equally baby has been awkward all pregnancy and so will most likely defy everyone by being late.

Enough talk of baby, for now at least, so lets look at something non-baby related that I've made (there will be plenty of time for baby related posts!)  Below is a project I knitted a while back, but have only recently sewn up (something of a theme with several projects).  It was a free kit from a magazine, with brown DK wool for the face and ears and a bouncy yarn for the body which gives the fluffy effect. 

It really didn't take long to knit up, but sewing up the bouncy bit was tricky and I resorted to invisible thread rather than wool.  Looking back at the face, the sheep seems somewhat perturbed, but never mind.

That's probably enough waffling for now, unless baby has other ideas I'll post again next week - I've been working on a really cute set for baby.  Until then, have fun!