finally, some time...

so, its been pretty busy round here. as you may guess from my lack of posts. sorry 'bout that. 

but see, my very good and very lovely friend got married on saturday (yay!), so its been wedding central round here for the last week and a bit. particularly the last week as we had some of her interstate and international family staying here. the beds have all been full, and even the floor in a couple of rooms has been covered with matresses. wedding chaos and wedding joy - the two seem to often be linked. but the net result is that there has not been a lot of crafting. or blogging. or blog reading.

so in between the loads of bedding and towels i am trying to get done today, i have finally managed to jump online and show off the litte crafting that has been happening. yep, owls. or specifically i finally have finished one of the two owls i am currently making:

only one more to go. (that's ok, they were only due at the end of september - oops!)

MY creative space...

ok, so i know our lovely creative space hostie is on holidays right now, but i thought i'd still creative space it up tonight. see, i'm making owls:

its the same pattern that i used for the finished owl in the corner. but i am experimenting with their faces. i'm pretty pleased with them so far, and i am hoping that they will all look different enough for terrible comfort's show (see the call out for owls - there is still time to join in, just). and if you are keen eyed enough, you will be able to recognise the gray felt. yep!  its my felted jumper! perfect for these owls.

i might be creative spacing it pretty much on my own this week, but at least i've got a few owls to keep me company... 

felted jumper project the third

ok, so for those of us counting, i do know that second usually comes after first. i have started my second project from the jumper i felted the other day, but i am kind of a bit stuck with it. it hasn't quite turned out how i was planning, so needs a bit of a rethink. so while i am doing that, today i started on with the third project. i used this pattern from allsorts (which i found via the toy society). i have a friend who had a baby boy the other day, and i wanted to make him something. it was pretty quick to make, and good fun (and if you look carefully, you can see him nearly finished sitting on the window sill in my creative space post below)

first felted project - a tea cosy (with a how-to)

yay! don't you love it when you have an idea in your head, and then when you make it up, it looks just like you hoped it would... yay! i am so happy with it, i thought i'd share it.

i wanted to make a felted tea cosy for one of my favourite tea pots, so i made up the pattern by drawing around the bottom of the pot, and then planning out the sides. i then cut out the pieces from the sleeves of the jumper i felted last week. this pattern took a sleeve and a bit. i hand stitched the sides to the base. i decided to leave the front open for the spout, but stitched up the back. (this pic is while i was part way through the hand sewing). i finished it off with yellow blanket stitch around the edges and a little feature button - also yellow (i tried a number of colours and button sizes, but i liked the simple yellow best). so there you have it, a simple felted tea cosy - to keep your tea pot warm, cosy and pretty looking...

felting success

just a quick note, as actually i am looking up crochet tutes (i am determined to get the hang of it - those butterflies won't make themselves) in recent times, i was given a mostly finished hand knitted jumper in amongst a whole stash of wool. having been inspired by this book that i got for Christmas, i decided felting the jumper was the way forward. i have all sorts of felted projects in my head to make - but the trouble was, i was not having any luck with making the felt. i had washed the jumper in the washing machine on the hot cycle a few times, but to my disappointment, it never seemed to shrink at all. so today i went searching for tutes. i found a great one by laughingpurplegoldfish here. its got a great explanation of the process and of what is required to make jumpers into felt (heat, moisture, agitation and soap). after learning this, i did a bit of a re-think. heat - i was using the hot wash, so fine. moisture - ditto, fine. agitation - well, i had been throwing the jumper in the machine by itself. it seems a lonely jumper just won't felt as it has nothing to rub up against. laughingpurplegoldfish uses gumboots. i decided to throw in a couple of old towels. soap - i had been using my gentle wool detergent. i decided instead to use a big scoop of harsh washing powder. i put on my washing machine, with the new improved felting plan and finally success!

its such a cute little jumper now - all tightly felted together and ready to be turned into other things (once it dries, of course)