Any owl thing.

Between visitors and lots of things going on after work, it's been a very busy week. Admittedly, the following took only a few minutes to throw together. A couple of phone charms - the one with the tape measure is for my sister, a seamstress. The one with the owl is for me, because, you know, owls are cool.

I then expended enormous effort attaching an anchor charm to some chain, along with a clasp, to make a dinky necklace. 

Slim pickings this week, I know. You'll have weeks like that. While I'm here though, a tip for anyone who likes to make necklaces like the one above. Chain can be quite expensive when bought in specialist craft shops. If you're not picky about what the chain is made of (i.e. you don't require it to be silver or nickel plated or anything like that) keep an eye out in shops like Penney's or New Look for necklaces like the following. You can pick up quite a quantity and variety of jewelery making material for as little as 75 cents.

Have an awesome week everyone.

I've been framed.

Has everyone had a good week? I had a fabulous time last weekend in London, and here's a picture of some of the lovelies I picked up in Loop, a lovely yarn shop in Angel. No specifics for now, but I have a plan for each delicious skein (well, they were skeins before the nice people in the shop wound them up for me), so you'll be seeing them again at some point.

For now, content yourself with what I've managed to squeeze in between all the travelling. I picked up a couple of men's shirts on sale last week, though so far I've only resized one.

Close-up on shirt detail.

I exhausted my supply of cotton working on a baby blanket. I've nothing for scale in the picture, but it's around 16inches across now.

The following is for my housemate. It's not finished yet, so this is just a teaser!

On Friday last, I picked up a cheap wooden frame in a charity shop, perfect for decoupage. Right now I have some pressed flowers in it. Does anyone have any other ideas for preserving flowers? I was given some beautiful roses last week and would like to continue to enjoy them for as long as possible. Here it is, with some close up of the corners. It's not perfect, but there are a lot less wrinkles in the paper than my previous decoupage projects.

i was hugely idiotic in making this, in that I orientated all the pictures the wrong way up to the hook on the back. In that, if I wanted to hang it on a wall, it would mean all the pictures on the frame would be upside down. Maybe it will just add to its quirkiness? Ho-hum.

Have a great week everyone.

I felt so small

Greetings! I'm going to be away from the internet for a week, but when I come back, I shall hopefully have some delicious yarns form London to inspire us all. Pictures from my trip will probably be few, as my memory card seems to have gone for a wander. With the aid of another's camera, I hope in the meantime you'll join me in chastising this cheeky handknit sock which sneaked into a normal wash. Please ignore my carpet - we're out of hoover bags.

For comparison, here it is next to its 'big' brother.

Bad sock. Bad.

Rocking out

I mentioned last week, I think, that it was my lovely housemate Mo's birthday. As a special treat, her parents delivered a rocking chair she's had since she was 15. It's a bit different from the typical rocking chair I would think of, being much lower with no arm rests. I've always loved rocking chairs, having often imagined myself spending a pleasant evening knitting while rocking back and forth. This is not exactly the type I envisaged in my knitting daydreams, but it is the perfect chair to spend an evening spinning.

Have you ever seen anything more delightful? You may remember from this post that, when teaching someone how to spin, I kind of realized what I should have been doing with my hands when spinning in order to draft as I spin, as opposed to completely pre-drafting the fiber before simply feeding it into the wheel while I turned the treadle. I used some grey roving I'd picked up from Pippa Blue and am delighted to report that yes, I did indeed manage to draft as I spun, at least to some degree. To do this I had to concentrate quite closely to what I was doing with my hands, which predictably led to the treadling (i.e. making the wheel turn by moving the foot paddle) being somewhat sporadic, so the grey yarn is still quite lumpy and bumpy. But I believe I am improving, so am much pleased! 

I then spun the last of the Blue Faced Leicester which I bought from This Is Knit in Dublin. With my new found skills, I raced through this, the last of my spinning fibre. I can't wait to get some more. At the end I spun on the last of the grey fibre I had lying around the floor.

I then plied them together to make a kind of candy strip yarn to match this yarn I spun/plied here.

As I'd spun them so thick (despite my best efforts) I didn't end up with a huge amount of length. I randomly treble crocheted these lengths together with some kind of mini scarf in mind. It's still a bit short to be anything useful, so I'll probably join my next homespun adventure onto the end as and when it happens.

The shopping bag continues. The stretched out corner is really annoying me now that the rest of it is coming out so well. I don't know what happened, it must have got snagged on something in my bag and got stretched when I pulled it out. Sigh. Hopefully I'll be able to sort it out when it comes to sewing the sides together.

Have a wonderful week everyone.