Upcycling- Holes to Hats

Whenever a tshirt gets a hole in (a regular occurrence in this house for some reason) I put it in my to do pile ready to reuse the material. The pile was over flowing so I finally started to do something about it today!

Really simple to do too...just how I like it!
Lay out a tshirt and draw around a hat. I used the bottom edge of the T as the bottom of the hat so I wouldn't have to seam it!

Sew right sides together, turn inside out and DONE!! Told you..easy peasy!

Knittingwise there is some progress...

One gauntlet...one on the needles still!

and a hat! There is a neck warmer to go with the set too that I am considering but am a bit bored with the cabling at the mo so might do a different project in between!

Lastly, I finally took a photo of my sewing corner!

Just enough room for what I need it for! (do you like my side table/sewing stool??)

See you soon!

Man Down...

We are having an accident prone month, by we I mainly mean #2-my monkey girl.

Cute huh?

Anyways... last Saturday she was climbing on a climbing frame and decided to jump off...from about 6 feet up...onto a concrete floor...and shes 3...
luckily (for her) I was next to where she was climbing (as I know what she is like) and managed to catch her arm and lower her gently to the ground...well so was the plan, unfortunately there was a metal bar between me, her and the floor. So Monkey Girl had a slightly rougher landing than I planned but got up and ran to climb again and mama spent the afternoon getting x-rays and a week of doing no knitting! No breaks but muscle and nerve damage, ouch.

Then when dancing at Grandmas she spun herself dizzy, fell over and got a nice hearth shaped bruise across the top of her butt cheeks.

Then she fell out the bath...nice bruised leg.

Then yesterday..the worst sound in the world...BUMP, BUMP, BUMP and SCREAM. Thank God for the scream though. Yep down the stairs she had gone, from the very top to the very bottom

Egg head

and this was after doing the same at Christmas with slightly messier results

Oh, look same place!! (sorry for pic quality its a mobile)

And lastly today, Monkey Girl was on the other end of the pain, she gave poor quiet #1, my Freckles, a split lip by throwing a book at her!

All in all not a lot of knitting or crafting getting done...

See you soon with better luck I hope!

Looming Marvelous!

Look what my lovely darling hubby made me!! My very own loom! Its very basic and knitting productivity will be limited but we have ideas on how to make changes/improvements. He will hopefully make a loom with the pegs in a circle/rectangle with a hole in the middle for knitting in the round too, its all in the drawing board of his mind!

The loom itself was easy to make, just an off cut of wood (rescued from a skip at work!) and some wooden dowels. In this case 15mm dowels were used, it makes for a loose knit when DK weight is used so will be using bulky or perhaps fabric strips in the future.

This is the wood marked out for drilling, there are 12 pins along the top edge, 8 along the bottom and then 2 at one edge. This gives three options of knitting...cool hey?

The pegs have a hole drilled through the bottom and a loop of wool is passed through. Wind your wool in and out of each peg, back and forth across the board to till the pegs are full then simply lift each peg and slide the loops off the peg on to the yarn. (make sure the yarn is knotted at the bottom so the loops don't fall off the end!)

In progress

Finished sample, it looks loose but is actually a fairly firm fabric with little movement. I thought it might make a cute potholder!

I am off to experiment with different yarns and tensions. Will update with any progress!

See you soon x

W.I.Ps

Once again I seem to have found myself with a number of different projects on the go.
I have managed to finish some but on such tight deadlines I didn't get photos. I was seaming baby shoes at 11.30 this morning ready for a Christening at 1pm! Talk about a rush job! I blame hubby, he received the invite a long time ago from a work colleague but I wasn't informed until Thursday evening. So a panicked rummage through my stash produced some Wendy Beach Baby in lovely pink, yellow and purple and this hat was cast on. I then made these to go with it. Fingers crossed for a photo in situ!

I also made this as a part of my nieces 6th birthday present. She stayed with us for Christmas and complained of a cold nose when out playing with 1 and 2 so I made her a "nose hat". She loved it so much, that when I saw this on Ravelry I just knew I had to make it for her!!
Here it is modelled by yours truly as neither of my monkeys would!

I had to resize from the original pattern to fit her little face but it was a case of downsizing yarn and needles! (if you look really closely in the top left corner there is a photo of my niece on the bookshelf!)

I am also working my way through this...

And lastly a sneak peak at what Hubby dearest is making me...

Can you guess what it is?? I am soooo excited!

See you soon x

Wedding Fever!

Hello, I am very excited about the royal wedding tomorrow! We are planning a garden party to celebrate, we have bunting and Union Jack plates and cups and a competition for the best crown!! Fingers crossed it stays sunny please!

#1 is having a wedding themed day at school today, she only went back yesterday after the Easter break and they are off again tomorrow and Monday, so the teachers decided to have a fun day. They get to dress in wedding attire and will be doing all sorts of fabulous things! We had a slight panic when her dress from September (when she was a flower girl) didn't fit anymore but we found a better long dress so she has gone dressed as a bride instead!

From September

This morning! A bit bleary eyed still, bless her!

I made the flowers last night using crepe paper, clear wrapping paper, pipe cleaners, ribbon and some thin protective foam wrapping that our new DVD player came in! Random right??

They were really simple, cut 3 circles of paper in decreasing sizes for each flower (I used 2 clear and a pink crepe in between and made 3 flowers), pinch together at the centres and attach to pipe cleaners (I used tape as it is hidden). I then cut out leaves from green tissue paper and arranged around the flowers, securing again with tape. Then I cut a circle of thin foam with a slit to the center and rolled it into a wide cone around the flowers and secured with ribbon. Done!

I also made a quick veil! using the same thin foam, I simply cut a rectangle, pleated one end and stitched the pleats in place. I used wool to stitch to prevent it ripping.

I left tails of wool to tie it into her hair and cut the bottom edge into a slight wave. When I put it in her hair I tied a ribbon over the pleats to make it look even prettier!

Simple and free so if it get trashed at school, who cares???

Need to go and do some baking for tomorrow, it going to be very English...cream cakes, cucumber sandwiches oh and Pimms of course!!

See you soon!

Finally some knitting...

Hello! Hope your Easter has been fabulous! We are inundated with chocolate here so we will be doing some choc based baking in the near future, Yum!

I finally managed to finish a knitting project that has been on the cards for nearly a year and which ended up taking just an evening to complete start to finish. I feel a little ashamed that I have taken so long to do it especially as it was requested my friends beautiful daughter!

So here it is, Ruya's Hairband...

It is super easy and there are similar patterns out there but this is how I did mine

With DK on 4.5mm dpns cast on 3 stitches and work about 6" i-cord

Inc in each stitch

K1,inc 1 across (9st)

Work in moss stitch (K1,P1) for desired length, (from the bottom of one ear to the other in this case)

K1, K1tog across

K2tog across

Work i-cord to 6"

Weave in ends. Done!

I added a knit flower too but embellish as you see fit!

Without flower

With flower and a button.

Can't wait to give it too her, I hope she still wants one!!!

Am super excited as Hubby has just finished making me a sewing area! Can start working through my stash of material at last :-)

See you soon!

Update...

Hi, just a quick one to show some photos of the finished newly named teatowel caddy! Excuse the photos but there is still a lack of nails so the washing line obligingly stepped in as a prop!

The striped one is one I ran up this morning in about 15 mins tops! So much easier as all I had to do was fold them in half and stitch them together!

Am also including some pics of #1s Easter card she made for school, she drew the outline, I glued and cut the wool to length and then she went all designer on me! One proud mama!

See you soon!