It's in the bag

Last week Miss M's preschool teacher mentioned that it was becoming difficult to stuff all her lunchboxes, jumpers, spare clothes, drink cups, artworks etc into her old backpack. "I'm sure you could whip up a new bag in no time" said she. Well after that the challenge was on ;) I chose some dark blue denim from Spotlight, and a bright pink zipper. I wasn't sure exactly what sort of bag I was going to make, but at the last minute I thought I'd put in a lining and I went through my stash and found some more Spotlight fabric that was left over from covering a corkboard - luckily this actually matched the zipper colour. I drafted up a pattern on some butchers paper, estimating the size of the bag by using the length of the zipper. I've made a few bags now so the basic design was easy, but the zipper was a real challenge - I've never sewn in a zipper that I couldn't access both sides of while I was sewing, and then when I did sew it in I found that it was skewed about 1cm on each side - being somewhat of a perfectionist I was hardly going to settle for that so I picked it out and did it again! The only real mistake I made was to show Miss M, because actually I think I would have liked it for myself ;)

Seraphim

My lovely Seraphim shawl is finished, and I couldn't be more happy with it. It took me under a month, and it was a nice easy knit once I got the hang of reading the charts. It is the largest thing I've ever knit, as I've only ever actually finished scarves and socks in the past. I just love it, and I'm rather sad that I'm giving it away.





It still needs to be blocked to make the lace pattern stand out, but I can already see a resemblance to feathers :)

Crayon recycling

After two children playing with them, our collection of crayons was a sorry sight! Small grubby pieces, not a paper wrapper to be seen, lots of toothmarks... Using an idea from the CraftSanity blog, I decided to melt them all together and make larger not-so-breakable crayons.

I put them into paper patty pans, in a muffin tin, and into the oven on 250 degrees C. They only took 10-15 minutes to melt, and then I put them outside to cool (they were pretty stinky!). Then I peeled off the patty pans and gave them to the kids. They immediately got covered in toothmarks, but I think that's a given in our house. Miss M loves to sort them into piles of like colours, and Master O likes to steal them and hide them... somewhere I have yet to discover.

Knitting weather

After disgustingly hot weather for the last few weeks, we're getting some lovely cold, rainy weather - I never thought I'd put 'lovely' together with 'cold' and 'rainy', but I'm never going to complain about the cold again, bring it on!

One good thing about cold and rainy weather is that it makes me want to cuddle up inside with lots of crafty projects, especially quilting and knitting. I try to fit in at least a couple of rows of knitting every day, but lately I've really been working on a lot of different projects at once. I'm always knitting socks, and they are really handy for when I'm travelling. I also have a lovely shawl on the needles - the Seraphim shawl. I'm knitting it from Bendigo baby wool in cream, it's lovely and soft and not at all scratchy. I'm over the halfway mark for the knitting so hopefully it won't take me too much longer before I can wear my angel wings ;)



I also ordered some balls of Bendigo cotton, in honeydew, inferno and denim. Very soft and lightweight, they will be perfect for the blanket I'm slowly turning them into.


Bendigo Woollen Mills are great, they have large 200g balls and the postage is free (in Australia) once you spend $30. The wool I've bought has been lovely quality and I can highly recommend them.

More fabric purchases...

I have been resisting the urge to pop into Spotlight lately, because I have so many WIPs and way too many crafty supplies already :) But I had some time to kill the other morning, and suddenly I found myself in the fabric section of Spotlight - it was completely empty except for me and Master O and I felt so sorry for the poor bored girls who work there that I had to get some fabric to give them something to do.

I bought some more red and white polkadot fabric for my dinosaur d9p quilt, and also some cream and red pinwhale corduroy - such lovely colours, I think I'll make something for Miss M from one of my Ottobre mags. I also picked up some lovely wool blend fabric, very light and drapey - it was $18.99/m down to $4.99/m, how could I resist that!



And then I got a delivery of some beautiful quilt fabric, Soiree by Lila Tueller. I haven't taken it out of the wrapping yet because I'm putting it away for my birthday.


I got the aqua and the green fat quarter packs, there is enough there to make a full queen sized quilt if I want - I'm thinking I might back it in a nice minky type fabric so it's lovely and cuddly.

Not too bad, but this is going to have to be my last big purchase for a while, as we're looking to enrol Miss M into a local Montessori school, and that isn't cheap!

It's nearly half over

But I had to take a photo of the picture for February on my little town calendar.

This also arrived in the mail for me last week, four lovely fat quarters. Two are from the Sandi Henderson Ginger Blossom range, and the other two are from the Fresh Cut range by Heather Bailey. These are two of my favourite fabric lines, and I've been wanting an excuse to buy a bit of them for ages :)



We've also been having a heatwave in Australia, and now there are terrible bushfires in Victoria, with so many people being tragically killed, and so many others losing all they own. My thoughts and prayers are with them and their families.