Sunday morning cuppa. (Milo, for the curious. Best with honey.)
Mmmm… Donut.
Fooled? No? Look closer:
Niamh followed her own tradition of absconding with the crafty goodness:
Don’t worry, I saved her before she managed to stick the needle in her mouth 
PS. Should you feel the need to make your own delicious pincushion/kiddie playfood – mine is based on the Craftster tutorial found here. Enjoy!
November 05 2007 | Kid Crafts and Other Craft and Sewing | 4 Comments »
With the exception of today, Melbourne put on a lovely show of weather this week. Yesterday afternoon, while Niamh was sleeping off a bad case of the grumpies (please let it be teething, oh please let it be teething – I can’t cope if she’s going into the tantrummy-twos already), Finn and I sat under this:
Finn (with liberal amounts of help) worked on this:
I worked on this:
(which incidentally I finished off tonight, but the photos I took were a bit on the crappy side, so I’ll have another try in some decent light over the weekend).
Later, I went along to this (you can spot me in one of the pics on the blog if you squint), and I stitched on this for a bit:
Fun fun. The design is an ’06 Christmas freebie by Hillary Lang, and there is a matching boy-elf, so I’ll be stitching the pigeon pair to make up as Christmas gift bags for the kiddos. Cute, huh?
Have a great weekend – we’re off up north to celebrate Fathers’ Day with multiple fathers!
August 31 2007 | Counted Stitchwork and Family and General Ramblings and In Progress and Kid Crafts and Other Craft and The Kids | 8 Comments »
When I was in primary school (or was it early secondary school?), these friendship bracelets were all the rage for a while. I built my first (small) DMC stash making these. Some time after, hair-wraps became the in-thing, and I used my floss stash for those as well. So DMC and me, we go way back!
I made this one today for Finn, as a replacement for a peyote stitched wristband I made for him a while ago. The beaded wristband has broken twice, and I figure this will be more durable for a small boy. I only realised how ‘Halloween’-y the colours were when I started tying the knots. Looks pretty cool, don’t you think?
October 30 2006 | Kid Crafts and Other Craft | 6 Comments »
I redeemed my most-excellent-Mum status yesterday 
?! You know, it struck me that this creative streak I’ve been on lately is actually my equivalent of that ‘nesting’ thing other women get. I always thought it was a myth, or I’d been completely overlooked when they handed out the nesting gene. During neither of my pregnancies have I been overly interested in home improvements (aka “doing the baby’s room”) or excessive housework 
But I realise now that at about this point last time I was going through a bit of a ‘make-stuff’ phase as well. Amongst other things, I made a squishy frog toy for Finn, and hand-stitched a felt counting-book, which he still adores. I’d better start thinking of something along those lines to make for Small.
Finn has been wearing his ‘monkey shirt’ with pride today… it rapidly acquired yoghurt stains, but never mind that! He had complete artistic direction over that one – green with a monkey, please Mum! The orange one was more of an afterthought – I thought I’d have another try at the low-water immersion technique, but I never seem to get this exactly how I like it… I’m more of a control freak than this allows! The giraffe design was, um, nicked from the Internet somewhere (shhh), but the monkey is all mine 
And yes, there was also more floss dyeing 
And here’s part 2 of “Ask and ye shall receive”. I’m working on an 18-step colour spectrum from which you will at some point soon be able to purchase (with pastel shades to follow). The following 6 skeins have been evicted from the line-up. Not because they’re bad colours, but because they were too close to others I already had. So… six of you lucky ducks get to grab a freebie. All you need to do is comment below – mention which colour you’d like (so that commenters below you know what’s been taken) then email me your address and I’ll have it in the mail asap. Easy!
Vital info: Skeins are 6 meters in length, as I’m keeping a portion for my records. To avoid confusion, let’s call them (left to right): magenta, purple, blue, green, orange, red (which is actually more of a dark orange). The purple does have some slight smudges of blue in places… let’s call that a Finn original!
PS. Forgot to add, it was pointed out to me by two someones that the Caron heart can be found here. Enjoy!
March 14 2006 | Dyeworks and Kid Crafts and Other Craft | 6 Comments »
Ha… lured you in with the promise of ‘fascinating’, didn’t I?! Well, maybe it’s not fascinating so much as ‘quirky’. Finn and I had a great time making sock puppets yesterday. Well, when I say we made them, I of course mean I made them. Finn was the project co-ordinator, and made all of the important colour decisions. So may I introduce to you ‘Pip’, on the left (otherwise known as the ‘trial run’, in which we discovered that glue didn’t cut it, and I was in fact going to have to use needle and thread), and ‘Loggin’, on the right, who has pointy ears “just like you Mum”! (Yes, I do indeed have a pointy ear… just one though. I must show you sometime )
Small joys like sock puppets and a three year old boy who plays ‘pretend’ all day are helping to make my week better.
See you when I’m a ‘Master’
February 11 2006 | Kid Crafts and Other Craft | 1 Comment »
My sewing machine and I became reacquainted this weekend. It’s not like an old-friends-reunited kind of thing, nor do we have a love-hate relationship. My sewing machine and I have at times through my life merely tolerated one another for long enough for me to run off some simple crafty thing, or even try my hand at sewing my own clothes – sometimes with wearable results, sometimes notsomuch. I’ve given up on the clothes thing, at least for myself, though I do fully plan to try sewing up some children’s clothes when I have more time (ha!). But my latest little venture was into the world of patchwork. I give you… my first block:
See, my mother has decided recently she’s going to take up another hobby… I’m quite sure it’s just another excuse to spend money like there’s no tomorrow As luck would have it, we have a nice little quilting store not 5 minutes from here (actually, it’s awfully lucky there isn’t a different kind of needlework store 5 minutes from here, or my budget would be in serious danger). Anyway, while we were browsing in there the other day, I forget how it came about, but the proprietor of the store announced that, as a cross stitcher, I would never make a quilt. Hmmm. Odd way of drumming up business, that. Anyway, I decided to scramble up some various fabrics to make up a block or four, basically just to prove I could. And I can. And no, quilting is definitely not for me. Too much messing about with measurements, too much precision, definitely too much ironing (ick, ack, ptuey!) But hey, I can do it, so there, lady! I made four blocks – one more identical to this, one the same in pinks, and a random-ish block made up of leftover half-square triangles and whatnot. I doubt they’ll ever find a home in a quilt, so perhaps she was right after all. Though I did rather take a liking to these imperfect squares that I found – they seem more my style
I decided while the machine was out (since it is a fair ordeal to haul it out of the top shelf in my wardrobe), I would run up the drawstring bag Finn needs for borrowing books when he starts 3-year-old Kinder in a week’s time. Much less precision, much more fun, and I love this harlequin-y fabric?! This is 30x45cm as requested by Kinder – can’t wait to see the giant books he must be going to bring back with him!
Apart from that, the closest I got to stitching this weekend was also hauling out the overlocker to edge some various pieces of fabric for upcoming projects. I’ve finally decided on the fabric for my planned Lilly Conversion – Sapphire Sky from Silkweaver. Whether it will be my next new start though, I can’t say. Lots of my stash is screaming at me to be stitched, and I Just. Can’t. Decide!
January 29 2006 | Kid Crafts and Other Craft and Sewing | 3 Comments »