My Adventures in Felting

Back in January I took part in a Ravelry swap based on new techniques – I chose felting. I only got around to trying it out a few weeks ago but it took off from there.

The brown and pink bag is made from the Althea bag pattern and wool that I was sent as part of the swap. The turquoise and purple bag is crocheted from lopi (which I wasn’t sure would felt but did beautifully) and the odd shaped object was supposed to be a felted tie – a work in progress as my husband won’t wear anything knitted (his mum used to run a yarn shop) so I tried to fool him. Unfortunately it felted to well and is now too small and too thick to be a tie – it may transform into a snake like draught excluder!

  

 

knit one, purl two

I know I’ve been a bit quiet of late. I’ve been knitting and stitching and then doing a bit more as well as editing and running around after my son. Plus my beloved laptop had broken so I am ‘sharing’ my husband’s – which isn’t going well.

I’m going on a long car journey (and back) over the weekend so I need to think of what to take with me that I can knit/crochet in the dark (I never did get around to purchasing those light up hooks and needles.

As well as supplying the shop I need to get my Christmas orders fulfilled – only a month away!

 

Lurgi

I’ve been feeling rough for the last few days. Yesterday I lost my voice – well not totally I discovered that if I went for a very deep and slow voice I could speak at almost normal sound level. the trouble was it scared the cats and sent my son into convulsions of laughter. If I try to speak normally it comes out as a squeak!

Today I had to venture out as my son had a birthday party to attend at one of those soft play centres. With my squeaky voice I didn’t want to try and make small talk with the other mum’s from nursery whilst our children whacked each other with plastic balls and PVC covered foam shapes.

I couldn’t take my latest editing project as i did need to leap in every now and again and separate fighting children. So I took my crochet hook and some yarn. Unfortunately that sparked interest and lots of people wanted to talk to me about it. I’m not sure what it’s going to be yet – theough there were a few suggestions.

The best question was from 4 year old Jenson who said quite demandingly – ‘who taught you how to knit?’ He was unconvinced when I said ‘my grandma’. There must be a very highly regarded knitter in his life as he seemed most affronted that ‘someone’ else knew how to do it!

 

Giveaway!

Okay. I’ve been making lots of bags for my shop and I’m running out of space!

I have enough material to make another one of the bag below and I thought I’d ‘share the love’ and give it away:

 

It is made from the fabric from a pair of curtains. So you can tell everyone it’s recycled! 

All you have to do to have a chance of winning is to visit my shop, come back here and comment on what you like, don’t like, what you’d like to see more of. I’ll put all the names in a hat and pick one winner. The comments will be open until Friday 28th November at 12 noon (GMT).

 

Busy Weekend

I’ve been busy this weekend – mainly in the world of Etsy (joining groups, chatting on forums and putting pictures on flickr). 

I’ve also put another item into the shop:

 

Ooh and I bought some great fabric so there will be more bags soon too.

I’ve also set up a twitter account – you can follow me by clicking the link on the right hand side.

I’ve just discovered another feature on Etsy – the Treasury – see my top picks from my favourites and add a comment here.

 

Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3 …

A couple of weeks ago I signed up to be a pattern tester on Ravelry and here is the first project I’ve tested.

They’re really easy to make – if you can double crochet you’re done – and quite addictive once you start.

The pattern is available for free on Ravelry or on the Yarn Spaghetti for Tea blog.

 

New Site for the Textile Directory

The Textile Directory have new website.

From the website:  ‘The Textile Directory provides access to the world of creative textiles and is a comprehensive resource site designed to deliver information about textile related art, craft, fashion and interior decoration applications. Here you can contact suppliers, check events, sign up to study or improve your skills or meet with other artists in our community area.’

If you are a designer Sara and Cara say:

“… we have recently re-launched our website, which has lots of great new features for those of you who want to promote your work with us. One of the major new aspects of the site is our community area – where artists are able to set up their own blogs on the site, completely free of charge!

We get 8000 visitors each month looking for new ideas and inspirations for their textile work and our new web blogs provide a fantastic platform for you to reach these people and build relationships with them. You will be able to share your thoughts and ideas and get feedback from the readers about the work you are doing.

This is a great opportunity for you to promote yourself and your work by building up a profile and sharing your knowledge. So if you feel that you have lots to contribute to both amateur artists and hobbyists alike then why not sign up to a blog and see what it can do for you?

To sign up to a blog please click here.

Take a listing in The Textile Directory to get in touch with the textile community and be sure your work will be seen by the people who matter!

A basic listing in the directory is absolutely free and there are some fantastic low-cost packages available for those of you who would like to promote your business even more.’

As well as the directory and the blogs there are news pages, competitions, a job/work experience board, book reviews, events listings and, of course, shopping. Whether you are looking to promote your own work or for a special item or just some ideas this site has something for you.

 

Daisy

I’ve just finished this cute little top for my etsy shop. it’s for a 2-3 year old girl so my resident model isn’t in the pictures. It combines both knitting and crocheting (something which I’m still only just trying out) and is in a lovely summery colour – despite the drizzle outside.

and I’ve even made some little hair slides to match.

I really enjoyed designing the pattern for it and can’t wait to find some suitable wool to make another.  Hopefully someone else will like it enough to buy it! There will be more iems added to my shop over the next few days.

 

Why I love Ravelry.com

Have you heard of Ravelry.com?  I’d be very surprised if you haven’t as everyone’s been whispering about it for months.

It’s an online knit and crochet community which works as a personal organiser for your projects, stash, needles, books and patterns. You can link up with other ravelry users in the many forum groups. It was started in 2007 by Jessica and Casey Forbes in Boston, USA and has an international following – over 190,000 users at the last count.

To join you need to sign up for an invitation – which takes around 4 days to land in your inbox – this is so that they can control the amount of people who join each day and so they can answer any queries from new members quickly.

It is also totally free!

There is an abundance of free patterns on there (plus ones that you can buy) and lots of ‘big names’ in the knitwear design world are there. If you like the look of a pattern you’ve got in a book or a magazine – chances are you can find it on ravelry and see how other people’s experiences of knitting the pattern were – and it satisfies my nosiness to see what my online friends have been knitting. You can link your completed items to your blog posts and have your blog showing on your profile page (though only one at the moment – I have 3 4). I’ve still not explored ravelry to it’s full potential but I will get around to it.  You can find me here.

Now I just need to find somewhere to satisfy the stitcher in me 🙂

 

So excited!

My postie just delivered a parcel containing a book order I made with some of my birthday money.

In it was this and this.

I can’t wait to start on the amigurumi as I must have one of these little doggies! (I found the picture on Flickr!)

amigurumi doggie

Originally uploaded by =Monika=

 

 

Look out for one of these appearing on my blog soon I can’t wait. As for the knit for me (yes I’m the ‘plus-size’ one) that may take some time.