Back to blogging!

I am inbetween jobs at the moment, so I have no excuse not to post about all the crafting I've been doing to  fill in the 'when I'm not job hunting' time.

Rather than tell you all about everything all at once I thought I'd stretch it out a bit.

Todays pics are fowers made from egg cartons which I think turned out alot better than I thought they would.

I got the instructions from watching a few different YouTube videos.

A Mulitcultural Festival and Crafty Day

Today I had a craft stall at the Buddhas Day Multicultural Festival at the temple in Botany Downs.

My sister convinced me it was a good way to use up some of our fabric squares whilst getting some good karma (all proceeds to the temple).  So off I went with a bag full of squares, needles, scissors, felt and brooch backs.

We made $85 (which wasn't too bad for gold coin donations) whilst teaching loads of people how to make fabric flower brooches (the majority of them kids, which aggravated my child allergies).

A lot of the parents told me how they had had to learn basic sewing at school and they thought it was great we were teaching the kids because they don't learn the basics any more. I wonder why these parents aren't showing them?
 
The day also including eating some gorgeous vegetarian food, making paper fish and my favourite; a Chinese knot dragon fly - I feel a renewed urge to learn macramé :-) 

I also feel like I need a weekend to recover!

Flowers & Scrumbles

This morning I was packing my bag for a weekend of wedding meriment in Wellington after a brief stop off for work in Napier.  Once I'd decided on the wedding outfit (I'm still unsure..) next was deciding how much yarn to take and which project to work on for the weekend.  I also added an extra ball of purple acrylic to make flowers. 

Over the past year, whenever I've been on a plane or in the departure lounge I sit and crochet flowers and give them to my fellow passengers.   As I picked the yarn I thought I'd share this wee thing I do because I really get a kick out of the smiles I see when I give them away, it feels good :-D

HerHook's influence is all over this

except it's like we're yarn bombing people instead of things!  

The freeform crochet is coming along -  I have found that it looks better on certain days. It's in 3 bits (called scrumbles) at the moment. We get to join them later on, or, when we feel like it.  This is the biggest bit/scrumble on a good day. 

Adding a piece of cloth and learning how to crochet around it, and adding something that wasn't anything to do with crocheting or sewing  has been the highlight so far, even though it meant lots of needle holes in my fingers.  

A Flower Necklace

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas with their friends and family.

Yesterday I wore my orange frock and needed just a little something to joosh it up a bit. So of course out came the crochet hook, some embroidery thread and a button and voila :-)

A Long Weekend

Long weekends are worth going to work for.  Love them!

The spectacles case c'est finis (practising my French for the rugby later tonight)

 

Other things on the crochet front: well I woke up this morning thinking about Christmas Presents and then I started to get flustered.  So it's time to write a list and think about what I can make this year, a little worried that I can't top the slippers from last year, I have a couple of ideas, just not sure how to make them :-D

And being inspired by the beautiful flower pictures that T@Poppy Place takes I thought I'd share a picture of the orchids that we bought in Pukekohe the other day (at $3 a stem - a real bargain!)

What ever you're doing for the Rugby World Cup Final tonight, enjoy it.  And yes it would be nice if the All Blacks won :-)

Flower Power

A new addition for the Felt Shop

Flower Power head bands for grown ups

They make pretty cool necklaces too :-)

Messy Afghan & Pretty Flower

I think that this is a Camelia. It's so pretty, the bush is outside the front door and has loads of buds on it :-)

I've done various things with the end bits of all the balls of yarn I've used, including making a couple of very colourful scarves.  The other day I had a message from Grandmother Carolyn on Zibbet telling me about (and showing me) a fab afghan that her grandmother had made from the odds and ends of yarn. It was very beautiful. 
So, erm.... here is the start of my much messier version!

I quite like it though :-)

Flax Flowers

It was my mams birthday last weekend, so this weekend my sister and I are going to her house to cook dinner. We're having a curry night, with dahl, onion bahji and other curried yummies :-)

Yesterday I learnt how to weave flax into flowers as the Maori do. So this evening I've made a small flax flower bouquet for my mam (since I'm potentially going to be unemployed in a few weeks and we are being thrifty hahaha).

I am only a beginner, though I am quite happy with my first wee bouquet , I added some beads to the centres and as the flax dries it will have more shades of green.

We had a fabulous day at the races on Saturday. We put on our glad rags, packed a yummy picnic with some bubbles and took a few dollars to have a flutter. Sunday morning came as a great reminder that number 30 SPF sun cream needs to be reapplied during the day and to do it before you put your frock on in order to get the best coverage.

I find the bra straps the hardest to place in just the right spot so that they won’t aggravate the red bits.

And so with the onset of summer down under I thought I might make something summery for both my shop and the markets. A lovely lady at work was complaining about sarongs coming undone and having to fiddle with them, so the other day and I bought a wee bag of metal suspender clips from

www.FunkeyMonkeySupplies.etsy.com to try out an idea.

I crocheted some pretty flowers and got the hot glue gun out (always a danger for me with my clumsy ways) I glued the flowers on to the clips with a button in the middle of the flower to finish it off. I thought I might try some fabric flowers as well. bluejulesews blog has a great tutorial, I’m not a good sewer, but she makes it look so easy! http://bluejulesews.blogspot.com/2009/11/tutorial-ii-fabric-flower.html The next thing is to try them out and see if they work!