Vintage craft items

I hate seeing craft/knitting items shoved away in a dusty corner in a charity shop, it makes me feel sorry for them. Inevitably I end up buying them which is why I now have two vintage swifts:

And two vintage darning mushrooms:

I have plans for the darning mushrooms, but I now I have three swifts, and I'm quite happy with my newer wooden one. I'm going to have to come up with a creative idea for the old ones I think.

Crafy Creatives - May Box

The theme this month is Glamour which I love. Although the kit isn't entirely my colours, I tend towards silvers rather than browns and bronzes, this is a fabulous box and I'm itching to get started on some of the contents already.

First there is the art card:
 

I love this one!

Then there is the kit to make a beaded hair piece:

There's some gorgeously tactile black velvet and beaded trim which would probably work well together to make an opulent evening bag:

Beads beads and more beads:

(There's some swarovski crystals in a pretty black pouch, some starbust beads, some metallic starburst, a rose pendant and a couple of silver tear drop rhinestones)

And some practical stuff, picture glue, some earring findings and a pretty lace stamp and ink set:

Here is is all together:

I already know that those teardrop beads are going to become earrings, and I think those and the hairpiece might be my task for this evening.

FO - Monochrome squares blanket

I had a friend come over on Saturday and we sat and crocheted. Well she crocheted, I sewed in some of the millions of ends on my blanket. I got loads done, its amazing how much easier it is to do something like that when you have some company.

With a little encouragement I decided that the blanket was going to be finished this weekend. Once I'd finished the seaming and the sewing doing the actual border took no time at all. It all got finished yesterday in time for the Husbeast coming home from the allotment.

Here it is:

The cage in the corner of the photo is where Speedbump my grumpy tortoise lives, when she's not hiding under furniture in the living room or trying to singlehandedly eat my lawn.

I'm also half way through a coloured version of this blanket but I've run out of wool. I'm quite impressed with the Stylecraft Special DK, it cost about £30 to do a blanket and a half, so each blanket works out to about £20. Its soft, washable and easy to work with.Best of all, when I am using it in these quantities, its cheap!

I'm taking a break from these now and going back to my 15 stitch blanket. I had a bit of help over the weekend deciding which yarn to finish it off with and if I don't do it now I'm worried its going to languish in my WIP pile forever. I wonder if I can get three blankets finished this month.... (I doubt it but it'll be fun to try)

Another FO

Following on from the last couple of evenings, last night I decided to make my kit from the steampunk Crafty Creatives kit.

This was to cover a small trinket box in decoupage. To be honest I'd only left it this long because only the Husbeast knew where the huge pot of PVA glue was and I kept forgetting to ask him.

Before I started I used the foil transfer paper on the cardboard cogs to give them a nice metallic finish and then set to it. The Husbeast tried to make me a glue spreader from a piece of milk carton but it was too stiff and didn't work so well. So instead I got mess and used my fingers, which was of course much more fun.

This isn't the greatest example of decoupage ever I'll admit, but I had fun doing it and it looks quite nice unless you look too closely:

I'm going to fill it with some skull beads I bought for someone in Lincoln and give it to then next time I see them. Because what says "I saw this and thought of you" better than a steampunk themed box filled with coloured skull beads?

Some FO's - crafty creatives box 10

I've been very good this month and actually done my Crafty Creatives kit straight away. In fact I've realised I've only done 50% of the kits straight away - 5 of them, and of those 3 involved sewing and were my favourites, that should tell me something I think.

I've been shopping recently buying more sewing stuff and one of the reasons I'm looking forward to having my craft room is that I will be able to have my sewing machine out all of the time on its own space on the desk. This is important because its heavy and whilst I can lift it up and down by myself I don't tend to much. It also means moving the computer out of the way which gets awkward if I want to do something which will take more than a couple of days. So most of the things I've sewn over the last few years have been handsewn, or quick items which only take a day or two at the most.

Anyway back to my Crafty Creatives kit. This months kit was to make a bird mobile. Its a pretty easy kit but I was doing it over a couple of evening's and I was tired and fuzzy brained and had to redo bits of it. Which explain why two of the birds have sequins on the wings and two don't. I was obsessive enough to count each type of sequin out and separate them into four for the four birds, but I then managed to sew them onto only four of the wings, enough for two birds. I liked the way they looked so decided not to unpick them and start again.

I tried to make the sequins look a little like feathers and I like the effect. I debated using beads or glitter on the other two birds wings, the box included both so it would have been easy enough but in the end I decided I liked them plain.

Here it is, the finished object, I'm pretty happy with it. It looks like its hanging slanting but that's just the camera angle. I struggled getting a picture of it because I don't have anywhere to hang it up yet. Its going to go in my craft room but I wasn't going to wait that long to take a photo.

I also managed to make the bug/butterfly out of the jumping clay (badly!):

It looks like something a five year old could have made better I know. I wasn't great with clay at school either so I things like this aren't my forte. Good job I never wanted to be a potter when I grew up!

Finally when we got back home on Monday the Husbeast bought me some tulips, even though ti was his birthday. They are past their best now but still beautiful.

These have made me happy every day I've looked at them, aren't they beautiful.

FO - Colourful stripy crochet blanket

I don't think I've even done a WIP post on this blanket, it just seems to have come together so quickly. Especially seeing as I took about five days off to do a couple of cowls and then went away at the weekend and did some knitting.

This blanket has taken me 25 days, three days quicker than the last one. Not bad considering I do actually have a job! I knit this whilst watching the remainder of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I've been reliving my youth. I started it whilst crocheting the grey blanket and finished it on the same day I finished this blanket.

I've now started watching Angel, which I never watched the first tome around, whilst working on a third crochet blanket. There are only five series of Angel, compared to seven series of Buffy, so I doubt I'll finish another two blankets whilst watching it. Not to mention the fact that the next blanket is slightly more complicated and time consuming. More about that another time though...

Here it is in all its glory, my colourful stripy blanket:

I did this in exactly the same way as the last blanket, although this was more fun to crochet. The colours each only repeated three times within the blanket so it was more exciting seeing which colour was coming next. Towards the end of the grey blanket I was very bored of the colours but this was much more fun.

I love the bit towards the end of the blanket where it's big enough to drape over yourself and use it to keep warm as you crochet. That's been very handy the last few days as the weather has been so cold.

This blanket is intended for my craft room, whenever that eventually gets sorted. For now though its just going to be in whatever room I'm siting in as the Husbeast has claimed the grey blanket as his. Its very flattering that he's so fond of something I've crocheted, but it does mean I'll have to make another one for me now. Still I planned on making two anyway, I just might not let him know that...

I also made a little penguin for a swap parcel:

 He's a cute little thing.

FO - Crochet Cowl

This week I made a couple of quick crochet cowls. One is for my sister for her birthday, the other is for me.

My sisters is in Posh Yarn Sylvia Aran which is a merino silk mix, in pinks and oranges and all sorts of lovely colours:

The one for me is in Posh Yarn Bonnie Aran, which is pure Blue Faced Leicester wool, in a wonderful deep red:

Its very simple just rows and rows of UK double crochet stitch. I made it it one long piece and joined the two ends together with some slip stitches.

Nothing fancy, but I've really enjoyed making them. They each took a couple of days to make and they were nice easy crochet, perfect for hooking whilst I watch TV etc.

The red one has ended up a couple of inches longer than the pink one and the difference between crocheting the cowls was surprising. The silk mix just flew through my fingers, where as the BFL felt slightly sticky and seemed to take more effort to crochet. Its probably worth it though as the finished product feels more durable and long lasting than the silk mix.

The red dye also came off on my hands. I do sometimes have dye come off on my hands but not usually this bad, it made the Husbeast laugh when he saw it. It gave the saying "caught red handed" a whole new meaning as there was no way I would have been able to pretend it'd been doing housework when I'd been crocheting! Not that I ever do that the Husbeast is far to well trained (bullied) to think I should do housework instead of craft!

Crafty Creatives - March box

I'm getting in earlier with the post this month!

The theme for this months box is steampunk, which is fantastic, I think for me this comes second favourite only to the Gothic inspired box.

I am secretly a little Gothic at heart. My favourite colours are red and black, my favourite music is  a type of German Heavy Metal, and I love my Doc Martens. Not quite enough to make me a full blown goth, I haven't the dedication to do the full make up and hair dye etc, but this box does definitely excite me.

Inside the boxes are:

The art card

Leather pieces
Tweed fabric

Lock and Key fasteners
Copper wire
Leather cord
Tiny watch parts

Crackle glaze
Metallic transfer paper

And the kit, which this month is to make a decoupage box, which I think will turn out quite cute. Its another craft I've not tried out before which makes it more exciting.

The unexpected side effect of this box was finding out that the Husbeast didn't know what Steampunk was. I've taken him to loads of Gothic belly dance festivals where there are always steampunk fans, and yet he still didn't have a clue. My poor little main stream Husbeast, he's learning bless him.