Happy St David's Day

I'm not Welsh, but I did grow up in the NW of England, well in sight of the Welsh mountains, and I've always had a fondness for the place (not least because of a minor obsession with little steam trains which made up a big part of our family holidays as a child!). Despite the miserable sleet that's just started, spring is definitely starting to come up a little bit - or is it cheating to have a hyacinth on the windowledge?!

So for all my Welsh friends and followers, and for anyone just wanting a bright new addition to the still-required winter coat, don't forget there's a free crochet daffodil pattern to download here:

Download PDF here


It's a great size to be made into a brooch, or to go on a child's hat like this one.

Enjoy!

In other news...well, there isn't any. Taking a holiday is not something we're able to do at the moment, much as I could do with a break, so I've been having my regular "I'm too stressed to think" stop a bit early this year. I do this by mostly abandoning everything I can get away with and plunging into the realms of fantasy. This is a habit I picked up at about the age of 18 when I first discovered fantasy sagas stopped me worrying about revising, and it's something I've done pretty much every year in late spring to deal with exam stress (given that I didn't stop studying until 2000, it's been quite an ingrained habit and I automatically reach for the books now!). This year, I'm getting to play D&D biweekly, I have a nice collection of swords & sorcery novels, and for the last three weeks I've been submerged in the incredible Dragon Age (trailer here, game rating 18 or M, not suitable for young children). So I've been married to the XBox for at least 100+ hours over the last few weeks, and not picked up a hook or needle in all that time. Oddly, I haven't missed it - my brains really are shot to pieces at the moment. The mind-vacation will no doubt run its course eventually and I'll be back to finishing the last few orders off and making a start on some projects for Little Bump (now 24wks), as well as hopefully putting a few new bits and pieces in the shop.

Until then, you'll find me squirrelled away with dice, pencils, heaps of books and gamer's thumb...

Owl In Flight Week 5

Here's where I was last week:

Week 4

And here's the first 1/6th of the pattern completed!

Week 5

Still a long way to go, but you can really see how it's coming along now that I've completed one whole sheet of the pattern (now measures 11x17cm). The depth of shading is really fantastic...I really need to get that new daylight bulb, these pictures aren't doing it justice at all.

I've made a start on the next sheet down (where you can see the new blue patch starting), mostly to get a fairly dull bit out of the way - there's nothing but fence and sky and an owl claw here! Also because I'm too lazy to be taking the fabric out of the frame often - it's on rollers so I just moved it around and slack it off after each session.


No crafting tonight as I have a date with my beloved! But over the weekend I hope to finish at least one more commission, I'm really starting to see the end in sight now. At some point I'm going to get the machine out again and have a good fiddle - many thanks to Gail, who suggested that the plastic foot is possibly for embroidery, and to Kirstine for loads of helpful ideas. I may be picking both your brains again in future! I did actually get a bit of sewing done yesterday; K was given a "make your own" doll for Christmas, but the materials supplied (er, mostly sticky tape) meant it was an ornament rather than a doll you could play with. So we decided we'd get making our own and so far the doll has a shiny turquoise satin tube dress and a freaky fun-fur crocheted dress-thingie. K likes them, anyway! We've been drawing outfits in a sketchbook which has been loads of fun to do together. Pics next week, probably.

These Feet Were Made For...

...scaring the hell out of me, sigh.

Whose feet are those?

I have a love-hate relationship with my sewing machine, a Singer 2808C. Some days, we get on great - everything flows smoothly and the final product is something I can be proud of (and evetually ends up in the shop or being worn!). More often than not, though, I approach it with bafflement and not a small amount of terror. In theory, I know why it does crazy things like bird's nesting, but it seems to happen randomly, so each sewing session is filled with trepidation.

One of the things that really puzzles me is "what on earth are these extra feet for?". They certainly aren't in the manual! I've studied Florence's Guide To Feet til I'm blue in the face and they just aren't there. I presume the one already attatched is a standard presser foot, but what on earth are these plastic ones for? Is that big flat one even a foot? I can't see where you'd attach it. And do I need to buy more? Zips and buttonholes terrify me and it's really holding me back from tackling projects I'd love to do, so it would make sense to help myself by having the right equipment. Having bought Bend-the-Rules Sewing and One-Yard Wonders recently (not to mention a heap of fabric scraps for making doll clothes), I'm itching to sew...but the fear, oh dear.

So, lovely readers, can you help a poor addled brain and set me on the track to actually making something which isn't just straight lines?

Flower Hair Band

New design - surface embroidery on this one!

And the ideas keep coming...! I spent a lot of Monday night fiddling with this and eventually frogged it all out and started again, ho hum. I do love cherry blossoms on a blue sky, though. Said hairband and K are now off to the park with Daddy to learn how to skip, since Little Bump was less than pleased last time I tried it!

Oh, mum, not another picture - I'm off to the park!

I now have two willing models to try out my custom-fit theory and once I've made sure that these do actually fit people other than K, I'll be listing the whole set of patterns in my Etsy shop, Seawood Designs. I'm not intending to actually make many of these - with Little Bump on the way I'm trying to slow down the amount of actual physical making of stuff at the moment - but you know, talk nicely to me and I might do a few custom orders before he/she arrives!

Zebra Stripes and Owl In Flight Week 4

Oh dear, really not been up to much recently, hence the lack of interesting updates (sorry). I've discovered the knack of being able to sit in front of the telly without actually doing anything, it seems...not good for the workload or the creativity. I feel very tapped-out at the moment, anyway - whilst discipline is good for the bank balance it doesn't do a lot for the creative mind. Still, I got the last of the biggest orders out of the way this week and will hopefully be able to rattle through the smaller ones by the end of February. Then I can go back to actually making stuff up! I've treated myself to a few new sewing books lately, and we took a trip to Hab-Fab last week (so much for trying to be Craft Neutral this year!) for some fabric scraps. K has a doll which needs dressing and we've been designing outfits for her in a sketchbook.

K and I have also been choosing the cross-stitches I'll be doing for Little Bump to match the ones I did for her: a birth sampler, a Bothy Threads "Row of..." and a name plate for the door when they eventually share a room. I'll be ordering those after our 20-wk scan next week. All very exciting!

I have sneakily managed to make a few more hairbands for the collection, but I'm struggling a little bit with the custom-fitting. I think it's mostly my carelessness/lack of concentration that's done it, but it does mean I have to rework two before I can write up the patterns for sale. Here's one I've completed and fits perfectly, though:

Striped, ribbon-threaded hairband on reluctant model

Top view of striped hairband - you can see the ribbon threading better in this shot

Now for the Owl In Flight. Here's last week's finishing point:

Week 3

And here's last night and this morning's work:

Week 4

That fence post looks really odd at the moment in this picture, but it does look better actually on the fabric, properly lit so that you can see the shading. My daylight bulb has gone so I'm not getting much good light, I'm afraid. I really didn't get as far as I'd hoped with it last night, so at some point if I'm not so knackered this week I might put in another evening or morning's work to catch me up so I can move to the next sheet next Thursday.

Owl In Flight Week 3

Here's where I was up to last week:

Week 2 progress

And here's last night's efforts!

Week 3 progress

I have to admit to cheating a bit here. The tail part - no more than 1.5ins square, if that - has six colours and took me over 1.5hrs to do! So in order to finish off the sky parts that I wanted to do, I did a bit of extra stitching this morning. You can see in the image above that now all of the sky for this section is done; the missing parts are all part of the fence. I'm intending to do those next week and then move down to the next section the week after, which will be fairly boring, I think - it's mostly fence! Still, it's going quite well for just one night a week and overall I'm pleased with it. I've already decided where to hang it once it's done!

Not much other news this week - I've been slowly working on the commissions and have one more almost complete, just the tedious stitching together to do now. I also made K another new hairband; I'm considering making a set of patterns available for purchase if I can come up with a few more.

Anyway, we are playing host to Barnaby the Preschool Bear this weekend, so I'd better head off and entertain!

Bonus Bells

A long explanation for a small thing, this one. I really wasn't supposed to be doing any random, spur-of the-moment crafting, but did you really think I'd even make it a week without doing some?

K got one of those pop-up toy-in-a-cone things, a jester, from her preschool Xmas party. The stick promptly snapped twice and unfortunately there was no way to save it, so it was ready for the bin. At the last minute I snipped the bells off the jester - may as well save something useful. K picked them up and looked at them thoughtfully for a while, then said "I wish I could wear bells in my hair, mum." What a good idea, thought I. I could stitch them onto clips...but she doesn't wear them much at the moment. Ah, but she does like hairbands, I'm sure I've got a crochet pattern somewhere. I looked and didn't like the one I had, but I remembered that these and some other bells I had in stash would thread onto Pattons 100% cotton yarn. Last Summer I made myself a skirt trim with over 100 bells on it (yes, I was mad, yes, I drove A insane with the jingling, and yes, I've only worn it once so far).


So this simple hairband pattern was born:

The happy girl

Close-up

And now, she shall have music wherever she goes. Apparently it was much admired at preschool! Since it's a custom-fit it does do the job rather well; I'm going to make some more in different colours but this time I think I'll make them a bit wider, and some stripy ones to go with her favourite tights. Watch this space, I'll probably write the patterns up for next week!