Category Archives: Other Craft

Making…

Posted on August 5, 2009 | 4 comments

Bunting on Monday…

Bunting
Project overseen and fabrics chosen by Niamh, purchased in the recent GJ’s fabric sale – to which every craft blogger in the north seems to have been!

Cracked my first Nicole Mallalieu pattern on Tuesday…

Purse01a

Purse01b
Are you sick of this fabric yet? Not I! This is Nikki’s 90mm coin purse pattern, and not terribly tricky… though I must admit it’s not quite finished – I haven’t tackled the crimping/squishing of the metal frame yet, as there’s nothing resembling a cork coaster in the house. Think I’ll be making more of these 🙂

Revisiting “Smartie Cookies” on Wednesday…
SmartieCookies

I had some helpful comments back on this post after we used M&Ms on the last batch of these. This time we used Smarties. Hardly any of these cracked, which is good, but some of the (all-natural, as Marita pointed out) colours were altered in cooking – the green ones turned yellow, the blues went quite pale, and some of the others were dulled as well. They look like they’re out of a 70’s cookbook! Oh well. Tasty nonetheless. I think our playgroupers appreciated them.

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Posted in Baking, Other Craft, Sewing

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My Creative Space

Posted on July 23, 2009 | 19 comments

…has a glue gun in it this week. Any crafting involving a hot glue gun is awesome, if you ask me 🙂

Creative Space July 23

Niamh is the queen of cheesy grins at the moment. Another cheesy grin for the camera darling?

Niamh July 23

There we go.

We’ve been making peg-dolls today (don’t worry, I was at the helm of the glue gun). Here’s us: Niamh on the left, I in the middle, and Rohan on the right:

Peg Dolls July 23

Rohan watched (in another lovely hand-knit by my mum). He wasn’t all that excited by peg dolls, to be honest.

Rohan July 23

(I’m pretty sure he’s storing extra food in those cheeks for later!)

More creative spaces to be found over at Kirsty’s place

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Posted in Family, Kid Crafts, Other Craft, The Kids

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My Creative Space

Posted on July 9, 2009 | 13 comments

The knitting. Also Mixtape. Chucked on the passenger seat of the car in the vain hope that kids might all fall asleep, post Museum-visit, and I might sneak in a row or three. Ha!
Creative Space July 9

But look. The knitting… it grows!

I’m enjoying the knitting, actually. I’ve even knitted in public(!) and I don’t think I attracted a single strange look. The friend I was with even assumed I actually knew what I was doing(!) I’m quite pleased, and fairly convinced I’ll see it through to the end. Meanwhile, what unfinished quilt?! La la la, I can’t hear you :giggle:

Museum Kids

We did have a nice morning, despite the very busy-ness of the Museum. We met up with Marita and her gorgeous girls. Finn and Niamh were the best behaved they’ve been all holidays. Keeping them both within my sight while tending to a very wiiiide-awake-but-grumpy-and-will-not-bloody-go-to-sleep baby was a wee bit of a challenge though. I realised it was the first time I’d attempted such an outing with three children. And I’m still intact, hurrah!

Museum Babe

More spaces over at Kirsty’s place.

13 Comments

Posted in Family, Memes, Other Craft, The Kids, Yarncraft

My Slightly Creative Space

Posted on July 2, 2009 | 6 comments

Kirsty is taking a break, but I’ll show a bit of my Thursday creativity anyway… since there is some to show this week 🙂
CreativeSpaceJuly2-1

Could that be? Yes, I am actually knitting something! A non-scarf something 😮 Well, I’m trying, anyway. Knitting has never really been my thing, but I think I can do this. Whether I can finish before Rohan outgrows it is another matter entirely.

By the way, any errors you think you see are definitely intentional. I’m trying to embrace imperfection, otherwise it will never be done!

Finn thought you might like to see a bit of his creative space too:
CreativeSpaceJuly2-2

Foil and toothpicks occupied them for, oh, at least 10 whole minutes. That only left the remaining many, many, many, many hours of today to fill in. Such a looong day. I’m trying to love the school holidays, I am, but it’s hard work when the weather and baby are both miserable 😥

(We did eventually get around to using those M&Ms on top of cookies; which reminds me, has anyone else done this and had the M&Ms crack in the oven? All of ours did. The recipe actually called for Smarties, I wonder if they are more crack-resistant?)

Righto. One more row before bed…

6 Comments

Posted in Memes, Other Craft, Yarncraft

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No Creative Space

Posted on June 19, 2009 | 3 comments

There was no creative space for me yesterday, and here’s why:

Blah Day

Finn was (and is still) home with an ear infection. It was a doozy – his temp reached 39.6°C in the afternoon before the antibiotics kicked in, he couldn’t hear a thing, and his balance was so off that I had to hold onto him whenever he tried to walk. I’m always thankful for our GP – I have never been unable to get a same-day appointment as long as I ring first thing in the morning. This time we got to be the ones going in the back entrance, masked up (well, Finn was) into temporary ‘quarantine’, since even though I was certain it was an ear infection, Finn matched two of the symptoms for swine flu (fever, sore throat), so our clinic was taking necessary precautions. Fun.

Also, Rohan picked yesterday to sleep nowhere except on my shoulder, and Niamh… well, let’s just say that Niamh is not used to playing third fiddle. And she’s three. So yeah. Fun and games for all. I may have self-medicated with chocolate. A bit.

Finn’s on the improve today (though he’s still hard of hearing, which is proving… frustrating), and should have bounced back enough to make it to the Aquarium on Sunday to meet his feathered namesake!

So in lieu of anything crafty by me (and I’m beginning to think I may never craft again!), here’s a couple of snaps of things made by others, for Rohan:

The knitted blankie seen in the last post (and here) was made by my knitter-extraordinaire mother. As was this Baby Surprise jacket:
Rohan 3 Weeks
(Mum (mostly) doesn’t follow patterns, she just looks at a piece and figures out how it’s done. In her head! Crazy talent!)

Rohan was 3 weeks old in that pic – he’s long outgrown that gorgeous jumper. He has a bunch of other knits from Mum that I should devote an entire post to, really. I love, love, love the blankie, it is getting a lot of use.

Then there’s this very cute appliqued onesie from Claire, which he is about to grow out of any day now (it is killing me how fast this kid is growing!)
Onesie from Claire
It’s so nice to have some things made just for number three 🙂

3 Comments

Posted in Family, Other Craft, The Kids, Yarncraft

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And The Weiners Are…

Posted on June 8, 2009 | 1 comment

(Winners are always weiners in our household!)

Courtesy of random.org, the winners of my SEWN giveaway are… dum ta da dummmm:

1. Simple Sewing was won by Justine (comment #35), and
2. Yeah, I made it myself was won by Sarah (comment #22)

Congratulations to you both – I’ll have your books in the mail to you just as soon as you let me know your details 🙂

Now… am off to soothe my poor throat with split pea and ham soup and take it easy for the rest of the night (I hope). We spent the weekend away with family and have brought home with us yet another random viral thing. Grrr. (No, not swine flu!)

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Posted in Other Craft, Sewing

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Giveaways Galore

Posted on June 5, 2009 | 70 comments

How did you fare in the Sew, Mama, Sew Giveaway Day? I did very well for myself indeed. Unfortunately I let the deadline for giving stuff away slip by me (which is why I’m joining in a different giveaway, see below…), but I had a ball finding new blogs and entering a couple of dozen giveaways. And I won two! Firstly, I was the lucky recipient of a voucher to Lauren Williams’ madeit store. Lauren creates jewellery pieces using fabric covered buttons. I chose these two pieces:
LaurenWilliams

And I love them both!

Secondly, on its way to join my small but growing quilt book collection, will be the learn to quilt book given away by Dianna of “Someday I’ll Be…“. Thankyou Dianna 🙂

Which brings me to my giveaway. I’m signing on to ‘attend’ the SEWN Launch party. Have you heard about this? SEWN is the new online quilting and sewing community about to launch. As part of the party, loads of blogs are signing up to giveaway free stuff, and you can win prizes at the site as well.

What am I giving away? These two books:
Giveaway
1. Simple Sewing by Lotta Jansdotter, and
2. Yeah, I made it myself by Eithne Farry

How do you win? Simply leave a comment on this post, telling me which of these books you’d like to win (or ‘both’, if you want to be in the running for either book), and you’ll be in the running to win 🙂 Make sure to leave an email address so I can contact you. I’ll randomly draw two winners on Monday June 8th, at (let’s say) 6pm Melbourne time. (That’s Melbourne, Australia, not the other one!) Good luck!

Lastly, I know this has been a pretty Niamh-centric blog of late, but I just have to show you her creative space! A friend gave her a sticky-foam-shapes craft kit for her birthday, and would you believe this occupied her for two straight hours today?! That is simply astounding for a three year old, if you ask me!

NiamhCreativeSpace

70 Comments

Posted in Kid Crafts, Other Craft, Sewing

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My Creative Space

Posted on June 4, 2009 | 16 comments

Have been practicing my free motion quilting. I first tried this on Saturday. Forgetting to switch to the darning foot was not a good start! I’m getting a little better. It all goes awry when I actually think about it; seems to work much better when I switch off my brain – which makes it just about the perfect activity for me right now!

Creative-Space-Jun-4

Kirsty set us a challenge to include heart(s) in our creative spaces today. Uh… no prizes for finding mine :giggle: (But click for a bigger pic if you need to). That was fun!

PS: There are two! (But they’re kinda the same)

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Posted in Other Craft, Sewing

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My Creative Space

Posted on May 28, 2009 | 13 comments

I wasn’t sure whether to show you this end:
Creative-Space-May-28-1

Or this end (eeeek):
Creative-Space-May-28-2

Of my creative space (aka “the ironing board”, and yes, that hideous green-ness is the ironing board cover, and yes, a new one is on my to-make list!) today! This spot has obviously become a dumping ground for the remains of projects past. It was actually worse than this! I had to move things to iron a pair of school pants for Finn this morning (it’s actually a rare occurrence that I iron clothes at all – but they were still damp!)

The Robert Kaufman music fabric up there is for a new bag for Finn’s piano books. They’re currently residing in last year’s school reader bag, which is becoming increasingly, embarrassingly decrepit. Must really get onto that. The other pending project involves cutting a matryoshka doll out of that fabric and appliqueing it onto a white tee for Niamh. I get fed up with all the pink-pink-pink-pink-pink-purple-pink of little girls’ clothing, so I’ve been meaning to do a few little things like this for her.

Oh, and while we’re here, how about a finished object from a couple of weeks ago? Here’s the patchwork ball I was working on in the car – it was surprisingly satisfying to hand-stitch something from start to finish. I need more handwork projects like this, I think.
Patchwork-Ball

For more creative spaces, pay Kirsty a visit 🙂

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Posted in Sewing

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My creative space

Posted on May 21, 2009 | 10 comments

Creative-Space-May-21

…won’t be seeing much in the way of creativity today. There is more mess in my house than house, so I should probably do something about that instead. But I did want to show you my (other) new baby. I finally kicked my old Janome to the kerb a couple of weeks ago and bought something with bells and whistles. I confess, I really wanted a Bernina, but for the same bells and whistles, I would have had to pay twice the price, so this is my compromise, and I do really like it… so far. I’ve had not a lot of sewing time on it yet, obviously. But what could that be in the artfully blurred background? Could it be my (finished) blocks for the Oh Fransson! Quiltalong? Why yes, yes it could. Now I need to buy sashing, batting, backing & binding fabrics, learn to quilt on this new machine o’ mine, and I might actually turn out a quilt sometime soon! (Or not soon. You know. Either is good).

Visit Kirsty for more of today’s Creative Spaces.

Now… about that mess… :yuk:

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Posted in Other Craft, Sewing

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