A light bulb moment - my own screen printed simple satchel

I had light bulb moment this morning as I ferreted through all the drawers in my craft room looking for some tissue paper to wrap a custom ordered softie.

Remember those placemat sized calico pieces I printed on at the screen printing workshop I did in April this year? Yep. DING DING DING DING!!

Wouldn't it be nice to present a handmade softie in a handmade bag? I picked one of the bigger pieces and whipped up a simple tote/ satchel bag. I would have liked to put in some drawstrings but I don't have any at home (or they are buried in the mess that's my sewing cabinet, it's hard to tell). 

I also purposely left the selvage and raw edges in the side seam to give it that old time charm.

I did want a closure of some sort so I used a craft knife to gently cut 4 little slits at the top of the bag so I could weave a small ribbon through. 

The result is charming which I think is fitting for the occasion. This custom softie holds great sentimental value to my customer so I want to wait until he reaches his owner before showing more proper pictures of him.

Next time I have another one of these bags, I will take more photos! Until then I have another project to sink my little mitts in...

Stitch with Love!

Facebook page news feed setting - how to make sure that you get all the updates from your favourite pages!

I have just discovered that when you like a page on Facebook, you DON'T automatically get all the news feed...

So here are two simple steps to get all the updates from your favourite pages:

Step 1: Hover your mouse over the Page. A little box will pop up. Hover over the Liked button. Click Settings

Step 2:  Click "All Updates"

DONE!

I haven't figured how to do this on the mobile devices which is a shame cause I would imagine the percentage of people accessing Facebook on a computer are less than those access via their phones! Very few things annoy me but this has!

Look! I jumbo-sized the Monkey!

A couple of months ago I posted some photos of my amigurumi zodiac family on my Facebook page. The responses were overwhelming, so many kind comments, so much so that I had a request for a custom order Monkey (as inspired by Journey to the West story).

I thought "okay, I wanted to test the pattern again so this would be a great opportunity..." then I was kindly enquired if I could make him bigger... oookay... how big are we talking about? Brace for it - A giant jumbo size Monkey pretty please?? Roughly the same size as a standard pillow??

I thought, hmm this would be an interesting project cause I had never resized a pattern before and why not give it a try. BE INTREPID! as Liat Gat of KnitFreedom.com has said recently.

So to put things in perspective, the original Monkey is tiny, he stands just a hair over 12cm so I had to work out the jumbo sized shaping.

The result is pleasing! He stands 44cm tall with a cute pot belly... not quite as big as a full size pillow (3 quarters) but when I sit him up on my lap, he comes to just over my shoulder - so still very huggable!

I know! I went a bit trigger-happy with the camera and it's been difficult to just pick a few to show on the blog. After all there were 48 photos in total from start to finish... but I wanted to make sure that I captured them two together... you know, I won't see him again in the near future as he is going to be with his new family, who lives in another country, more than 8 hours away... by plane! did I say he was going far away?

Well with that, I say "Safe journey, Monkey! you will love the East!"

Stitch with love!

Mixy the happy bunny

Meet Mixy the deliriously happy bunny wabbit!

I would be happy too if I was swimming in a pile of yarn! Mixy loves a good time especially when she is hanging out with her mates... 

 

As the weekend drawn to a close, I thought sharing a pic of two of someone like Mixy would gear us all up for the last week of the financial year...

Have a great week! Stitch with Love...

Craft & Quilt Fair Sydney 2013

Last weekend a friend and I went to the annual Craft & Quilt Fair in Sydney. As with previous years there were loads of talents and endless inspirations.

I was pretty restrained in terms of spending this year... really I was, only a small loot - SEE!

Instead, I did walk away with many ideas and not to mention a great fun day with a friend! This is also the first time I took a class and what great fun it was - don't know why I never did!

I did the carving and stamping workshop with Lisa Walton of Dyed and Gone to Heaven. It was an hour class, from concept to carving to stamping or rubbing with crayon in my case! I even managed not to stab myself with the carving tool! The hour went by way too quickly but that's the nature of events like this. I enjoyed it nonetheless, learned about the really cool tools (Ezy carve rubber block, different dyes and paints etc) available and played around with the different dyeing techniques. I will definitely be keeping an eye on Lisa's classes as lucky for me, she is also in Sydney!

It would be wrong of me not to mention the quilts on show. They were amazing! Many traditional pieces and some innovative ideas. We also attended one of the master classes called Adding Layers by Material Obsession. So refreshing to see these modern quilting ideas. I love the use of felt pieces for bursts of colours and texture.

So with all that inspirations, I came home and got crafting on the Sunday! I am just in the process of sorting through the photos as that's just a whole different post - hopefully this afternoon!

Until then, happy stitching!!

Keeping track when crocheting in the round...

There are many ways to keep track of your work and many notions available for this task but I have found that this way is by far the simplest when crocheting in the round.

Remember the tail? I normally keep a pretty long tail (around 15cm) when I cast on.

1. Just before the first stitch after the first round (set up round), I position the tail to the back of the work (not the side facing you). Crochet as normal.

2. Just before the first stitch of the next round, I flip the tail to front of the work (see the arrow closest to the centre). Continue to crochet as normal

* This is the marker for the beginning of the round *

3. Then continue to work the increase rounds until no more increase is required.

4. At the next round, just before the first stitch, I flip the tail over so it is now on the inside of the work (see the arrow near the edge).

5. Keep crocheting in the round until the next increase or decrease round.
 

In the example here, which is the body of an amigurumi (more to be revealed soon!), as I had to decrease evenly at different intervals, I just flipped the tail back and forth marking the start of the round. This makes it all easier to count the rounds crocheted as well.


When it is all finished, just snip the tail somewhere near the start of the work (circled in blue above), be careful not to cut the actual project! Reach inside, pull the tail through and just leave it sitting inside. All will be hidden once the body is stuffed!

Hope this makes sense! I am hoping to put more tutorials together in the coming months, might even try recording a short clip...

Stitch with Love...

Merriwa Festival of the Fleeces

We just came back from Merriwa! And what a wonderful trip we had!

Last year when a friend told me about an annual event in country NSW called Festival of the Fleeces, I was instantly intrigued! The idea of having 100 heads of red socks wearing sheep walking down the main street of a country town just tickled me silly.

Merriwa is about 4 hours north west of Sydney and the event is being held over this June long weekend - perfect! Hubby planned his work schedule ahead of time and I took an extra day off work so we could drive up on the Friday. We stayed at the Sandy Hollow Tourist Park and what a great find! More on that after the photos of Merriwa...

Main street of Merriwa at around 9:30am, people are just preping for the day!

Sheep dog demonstration and I had an overwhelming urge to call out "BAA RAM EWE" but that would just be silly!

It would be sacrilege not to have scones with jam and cream at the CWA (Country Women Association) morning tea now.... and they didn't disappoint - YUMMY!

Met Angus the sheep with this owner who would later be leading the 100 heads of sheep parade -  he was such a great sport treating everyone on the street! And check out his red socks!

Unfortunately this is the only picture I have of the actual sheep parade cause silly me pushed the wrong button when I thought I was recording the possession but I turned it off instead - DOH! Anyway, I can just see them lining up behind the men in white coats (don't really know who they were - hopefully not butchers...)

Riding club

The band - got to have the band!

Small dog jumping competition - that's really funny but I didn't stand close enough to get good pictures!

Met Gail from Pleasant View Fibres, a family owned business in Mount Pleasant (near Singleton NSW). They have Angora goats and coloured merino/ bond sheep. They process their own fibres on their property and they sell saw fleeces, hand dyed fibres and hand spun yarns. Gail was really friendly and helpful, she even invited us to email her if I have any questions at all... so I think a trip to Singleton is going on the calendar soon!

So Sandy Hollow - I am so glad we got to stay there! The hosts David and Chun are very friendly and knowledgeable. The 1 bedder cottage we stayed in is spacious, clean and modern with all the necessary amenities. It has beautiful views of Mount Dangar, part of the Goulburn River National Park, even on misty foggy days! There are plenty of nature walks around too.

They have a paddock that housed 3 girl sheep who are fully grown and very cute...

... or so I thought until we met Troy, the baby lamb. He is just epic cute! Troy has been adopted by David and Chun because his mum died so he stays with his adopted family at their main house and has his own patio. They are hand feeding him until he is big enough to join the ladies in the paddock.

Well, I had never been this close to a baby lamb before and naturally I was completely smitten. We were allowed to pat him, to feed him and wait for it... to walk him! Yep, I had a happy "SQUEAL" moment!

When Troy saw his human run, he picked up his pace and boy he can run!

Well I can go on and on but the internet seems to be cutting in and out and I really have to do something about dinner so I will wrap up here: We are definitely doing this trip again!

Next time, we will factor in some time to visit Tocal Homestead where they have the Back to Back Wool Challenge! Gail from the Pleasant View Fibres mentioned above was one of the spinners!

I did do some crocheting over the weekend and started to draft a post about one of my favourite techniques on keeping track of the number of rows when working in the round. Hopefully I will get that post up later on this week.

Stitch with Love xx