Fabric designs, crochet and tweed makes

March is still throwing some frosty mornings at me and I'm still very cold in here but the clocks will soon be changing and letting more light and warmth into our lives, hooray!

A quick result for the cat fabric, I did so so, came 85th out of 237.

More fabric has been designed for this weeks Spoonflower contest which the theme is 'spoons', I couldn't resist having a go at some simple designs.

These were the first, spoon outlines.

Next I did these which were slightly inspired by that retro, Festival of Britain type feel and colour.

I looked on the Spoonflower site and there are already lots of simple spoon outline designs so I decided not to enter any of the above. I wanted to do something a little more quirky. Two things came into my head, that lovely nursery rhyme image of 'the dish running away with the spoon', not that I could do anything illustrative like the jolly nursery rhyme books I had as a child. The other thing spoony I thought of were the Welsh Love Spoons, beautiful carved pieces with symbolic meanings. 

I looked some up and nearly started trying to draw them but I didn't have time as the deadline is today. 

Instead I've whizzed up a quick design, called Love Spoons, a running spoon with a whole lot of love to give.

I'm entering the white version, with multi colour hearts, basically because I couldn't decide which colour background I preferred.

I am still updating fabrics and adding to the collection at my Woven Monkey shop. Recent additions have been the range of Breakfast fabrics, now in new colours.

This is a completely new range on Woven Monkey, Savannah Stripes.

Moving on to crochet, I've been willing Spring to get here and I've made some spring flower jewellery. A little brooch, probably end up as a Mother's Day gift and the necklace which I'm finishing for myself.

I bought myself a new ball of wool and this lovely new crochet hook with a rubberised handle which is very nice to hold.

Finally, a couple of Harris Tweed makes for my Folksy shop, a pin cushion and needle case, this is quite a large needle case so plenty of room for stuff.

Thank you if you stuck it out!!

January making and buying

It's been ridiculously cold in the house the last fortnight and I've been making 'house scarves' and buying more long johns. Honestly I think I could set up a shop selling long johns I have so many pairs!

With it being so cold I drop into the same routine at this time of year by doing less challenging crafts whereby I can wrap myself up in layers, not think too much and just knit or crochet very simple things. You can't get much more simple than loom knitting and I started some neck warmers on the circular loom.

There is something quite satisfying about the speed you can create something and here is my first neck warmer.

This pink neck warmer was quickly followed by this bluey one, although not done on the loom but hand knitted.

I'm not much of a knitter but I have got this item on the go also at the moment, it's some sort of scarf / cowl with some interesting wool I bought in Whitby.

Continuing with scarves, this time crochet. I found a Youtube video showing how to do a type of moss stitch for crochet, it was a very good and easy to follow tutorial by Olivia at Girlybunches who has some great crochet videos.

http://girlybunches.com/

A scarf in moss stitch is a good way to use up small scraps of wool.

I didn't want tassels on the end as it's a fairly short scarf to tuck into a coat so not the neatest of finishing off at the ends but it's a nice stitch to do.

Had some of my fabric back from the printers, the Scandi Trees design, and I've sold a bit on ebay.

With some Christmas money I bought myself a nice quality rotary cutter. Previously I had a £3.99 one and it was useless but spending a bit more on this Olfa cutter is proving great for accurately and neatly cutting my fabric.

I bought some more Harris Tweed last week from the weaving lady on Harris and I'm in the throws of creating some textile jewellery and a tweed needle case.

Another needle case I've recently completed in the book style is this one, made with scraps of hand loom cotton from the Skye Batiks shop on Skye which I believe have recently taken delivery of a new batch of my designs on some garments.

Back to crochet, I found a pattern in a recent magazine for crochet buttons and I turned the basic idea into pin cushions.

Thanks for sticking with all these photos, I'll finish with some food just ahead of Burns Night. Joy of joys I found the veggie haggis had made a welcome return to Morrisons, more of a sausage shape to previous years but will make a lovely, hearty feast.

Harris Tweed sewing needle case and assorted chaos!

I'm not liking December, although touchwood, I'm back to as normal as I can be after the colds and catching up with shopping, christmas cards and chores.
Unfortunately I missed the best time of year for making festive things for my shop, I've lots of works in progress which will have to wait until next Christmas now.

One recent make was this Harris Tweed needle case for Folksy. I have started buying my tweed direct from a lady weaver on Harris. She produces lots of commission tweed orders and then sells some surplus metres through her Facebook page. Very reasonably priced at around £15 per metre, if anyone would like her FB details let me know in a comment.

The inner lining of the case is a fabric from the Downton Abbey range which Makower have produced.

We've been eating microwave food for a few days (yuk!) as I was waiting for the aga man to do a service and he's been today, phew. In 24 hours it should be warm again and ready for some nice cooking over the festive period.

It was quite an eye opener talking to the man about aga's and one as old and inefficient as this one. Maybe like a lot of people I had this romantic image of an aga in an old cottage, part of what drew me to rent this place but over 6 years later the sooner I get away from this costly thing the better.
Rather frighteningly he told me that this one uses 40 litres of oil a week, that means nothing unless you put a cost to it, somewhere between £20 - £30 a week just to run it to cook on. That's over £1000 a year for a crapped out aga, an aga we have to run pretty much all year because there is no 'normal' oven here. There's a lot in the news at the moment about oil prices being cheap, it doesn't make much difference to us as we spend so much on the aga and then the central heating on top.

Anyway there's currently no getting around it as we need to eat and we need to keep warm and I shall try to make the most of it whilst it is newly serviced and at it's peak.

The joys of living here, it's a bit worse than usual at the moment as I feel like i'm living in the middle of a building site.
I really don't like being surrounded by builders, noise and mess, compromising my privacy but that's the current state of play. 
This house is surrounded by old outbuildings in bad states of repair, almost like this house! I informed the powers that be that a roof had collapsed on a shed in summer and they said they would have that building taken down as it was unsafe. They didn't say when or give any details. Weeks, months passed and then 2 weeks ago a team of builders and scaffolding appeared. No one has had the decency to inform us what is going on, the fate of the buildings, whether we loose our coal shed / garage etc. Oh no, as is the way of the landlords, no communication just stuff going on around you as if you don't exist or have any feelings.

I've got banging and drilling going on when I'm trying to work, I'm having to keep curtains shut in the room I call my office or I'll have builders looking in on me. That in itself is difficult as it stops the ever important light for me, the bit of sun that will warm the room and it is making life gloomy. I have a builders van outside my front kitchen window which is also where the sink is so I'm reluctant to spend much time in there. It's pretty much a pain in the butt at this time of year. Oh and you should see the mud that the digger has churned up! Of course I have no idea how many weeks this will go on for, the only let up will be when they pack up for Christmas hols.

Here's a quick look at the mess and chaos and state of some of the buildings.

I think I said this last year, I do hope this is my last winter here.

Ok, rant over. I hope everyone else is having a pleasant run up to the festivities and hopefully the snow will stay away as it would add to the chaos!