Yarn Bomb; now in wine format

Nummy nummy wine with a name no lover of exploding thread creativity can pass by. 

Yarnbomb x Corrina Wright, McLaren Vale Shiraz. I shall meet you again :)  

Monogram Necklace

Just a quicky kit from the January 2015 Cross Stitcher magazine.  Pretty straight forward, you stitch your little letter then stick it in the plastic frame that came with the kit. 

It came with more than enough floss and the letter choice were fairly nice. I decided to put my design on a little bit of offcut from the foam board I used when framing my Hummingbird & Morning Glories design to raise the design up. Otherwise it would have sat quite deep in the frame. I like how that turned out. 

BUT I was lazy with the glue.  I couldn't be bothered finding my craft glue so just used some random super-glue that was in the kitchen...yeah not really the best idea I've had. Smelt bad, ended up going everywhere and dried too fast so I couldn't adjust the angle of the design.  I would have been much better off finding the right glue or even not using any glue at all. The board on the back would have held it into the frame fairly securely. Sigh. My own fault.

Finished product:

Hummingbird & Morning Glories

I suppose the first thing to say about this cross stitch is that it is not in any shape or form to my personal taste. I'm not one for religion.  But I made this one for a retirement gift to a person who does hold her religion close to her heart. So yeah. Religion. 

I would have liked to do something a bit more intricate or with a nicer quote. But realistically I knew if it was too much I wouldn’t get it done before she retired and I was worried if I picked a quote it'd be from the wrong branch of Christianity.  I really have no idea. So I figured play it safe with a generic statement and a small 5x7 inch cross stitch design - I settled on the Hummingbird & Morning Glories mini by Dimensions which I picked from ebay. 

There's a few bloopers in my stitching that I worked around instead of unpicking once I noticed them. An odd stitch out of place, one of the back stitched lines is off and one of the light green leave is really out of place. (The odd blue 'leaf' in the upper right is actually as per the chart) As the errors didn't really impact the design too much and I really just wanted it done while I was still mostly motivated to finish I kept working rather than unworking the errors.

I also managed to spill a drop of coffee on it despite my best intentions. It was to be a gift, I was on my best stitching behaviour. Then I look at it and there's a blot on the aida (far edge thankfully so not visible once finished). I think what happened was I left it on the couch and tripped a little while walking past with my drink. The chart seemed to have taken the most damage.

The design has a lot of thick half stitches...At one point half way through I had a bit of a freak out thinking that my half stitches and/or crosses were the wrong way round. Normally you don't really need to worry which way the cross's go as long as you keep them in the same direction. Thankfully it was all good. I was at a point when the thought occurred to me that if it had been wrong I probably would have just given up.

I framed it up myself and actually did it properly over a mount board and weaving the back. I don't have a post framing picture but it turned out really well. The extra effort (and blood where I stabbed myself) to frame it up properly was well spent. I gave it to the recipient a couple of days later. She really really liked it :) I'm glad. I always hate the idea that I wasted my time doing something and the person I give it to doesn't like it. Makes me feel like I wasted my time.

Finished Design:

 

Work in progress shots: 

My First (basic) Granny Square

So today I spent the day hanging out with a friend and attempting to crochet.  I've made chains in the past and a scarf with a pattern I have since completely forgotten how to do but that's the most crochet experience I have. I've always wanted to try my hand at it properly though and today I took my first steps towards being a crocheter by crocheting my first granny square. 

My friend tried to show me as she's been knitting an crocheting for years (though slowly as the rug she started for her first child is still only 1/3 or so done at the birth of her third child shows) but we decided a youtube tutorial would walk me though it better and include an actual 'pattern' to follow. 

Thank you youtube :)

My granny square was created using this tutorial 'Crochet: How to crochet a granny square for beginners' by Bella Coco on youtube. Much appreciated.  I am eternally grateful for all the generous crafty people out there who take the time to share their skills, knowledge and designs on the web. It is such a great resource for learning new things that would otherwise be potentially hard to learn without a mentor.  

I had A LOT of false starts but the good thing about crochet is you can just unwind it and try again. And again. And again. As many times as you need to. And the same for the youtube video, rewind, repeat and try again. 

I used a 4mm hook and some generic acrylic wool that had been floating around  not being used for forever and a day. I had to stop and start the tutorial as I went along just so I could work on it at my own pace. But doing that seems to work well for me and I was able to complete my square with not too much fuss.

So behold my first granny square!

Hopefully it will become a rug one day. Hopefully.  

And here's one my friend made. She gave me it plus the wool used to be added to the eventual rug. So two whole squares done.  Only...??? left to do.

 

A couple of WIP shots:

  

Dimensions Daydreams Collection, Birds and Swirls

I picked this one up from 123stitch.com and finished it fairly soon after I received it.This design is from the same collection as the White Orchid I completed in June 2014. All the comments I made then regarding the ridiculous prose on the box remains unchanged. But the designs are nice and the kit has everything you need so it's forgiven for giving me the giggles every-time I think about its sales pitch. 

The kit contains thread and needle, fabric, glass pane, mat and backing board, 4 frame clips, and instructions. The total size is about 20x20cm. 

The stitching for this one was fairly straight forward. I had to do only minimal frogging and my only freak out was when I thought I'd lost one of the frame clips. (I had just fallen out in the the bag I was carrying the kit in.)

I do hated lazy daisies though. Every time I'd get one just right I'd set the kit down to check my chart for the next stitch and promptly yank the petal through. Did it so many times :( In the end I wasn’t happy with the daisies but I wasn't going to redo them either. They were good enough to live with.

The finished product:

Now living on my nan's mantelpiece across from the white orchid

The work in progress shots:

Bijoux Porcelain

I decided to do a couple of day courses at the  Centre for Adult Education (CAE) in Melbourne to explore some possible new hobbies. Some include photography with Terry Murphy, walking tours around the city and in this case some Bijoux pottery with Steven McClure. 

Bijoux Porcelain is Japanese Tissue Transfer decoration and is very straight forward and not at all difficult. You roll out your porcelain, cut your chosen shape and then wet down your chosen transfer paper onto the clay. And pretty much done. Unless you stick your transfer on upside down...which I did. But only once and in the end the design still showed up okay (it was the itty bitty rectangles you can see towards the bottom right of my picture.)

Definitely a nice day course to take for something a little different but still stress free. And at the end you have whatever you made to be turned into brooches, jewellery or decorations for yourself or for gifts. The class included a very brief history of porcelain, instructions about what to do and then we were let loose to do what we wanted with Steven watching on, giving tips and assistance as required. 

We could create as must as possible in out allotted time and the course fees were inclusive of all the materials we needed and the firing.

And behold my creations @@!

The buttons on the left are extreme rush jobs, I wanted to get as much out of the class as possible.They turned out okay though some of the button holes are a bit squished none are fully unusable.

My work and someone else’s; 

placed onto the firing tray ready to go in the kiln:

 

And a week later ready to be picked up.

I don't have a photo of mine (thought they looked much and much as the unfired pictures above just whiter) but here is some by other's in the class, really such a good idea for Christmas decorations. You can also make beads as shown below.

Pretty Colourful City Square

 

Lots-a photos here. Lots of talented people creating colour and pretties in our drab city square via wool and hard work. I just had to take lots and lots and lots of photos. It was worth it. :) Honestly makes me really want to get my act into gear to learn to crochet. And maybe knit.