Out and About

A couple of weeks ago we popped up to Matakana for a weekend.  It has a pretty good Saturday farmers market and just out of town there is a craft market too.

It's been a few years since I was at Matakana and it's moved from sleepy country village on the way to the beach at Omaha to popping visitor destination.

 St Andrews church by the craft market. Reminded me we live on a Pacific Island

 I'm a sucker for a tree tunnel

Brisk winter walk along the beach at Orewa

An amusing crocheting interlude

Auckland has those pesky motorway on ramp lights that are turned on in peak times and allow one car per green light through. My 25 minute commute to work would be 15 if it weren’t for these traffic lights.

Each night for 10mins I whip out the crochet, turn up the radio and inch along in traffic fairly happily.

Last night on my way home, the man in the ute next to me was having a great time laughing away. Then he beeped his horn and started gesturing to me and to the car in front of him.

This was kind of weird – us Aucklanders tend to sit eyes front in traffic and pretend there is no one else around. Good grief – what if we made eye contact and had to acknowledge each other?!

On a whim I threw away acceptable sitting in traffic ettiqutte, I rolled down my window and asked what was going on – he pointed at my crochet and at the sticker on the car in front of him and totally cracked up.

I inched forward, craned my neck and read the sticker. 
It read: “Stay Alive – Don’t knit and drive”

Teeth Itching Finger Clenching Creativity

Sometimes I feel like I have amazing creative things just busting to get out, it makes my teeth itch and my fingers clench.  Lately I felt the need to have a change of pace with my crocheting, I wanted to be more creative... I've started several things (as usual).

These are the most successful of the experiments.... not quite ready for WOW (World of Wearable Arts) but maybe a step closer :-)

Purses...

Cup Cake Door Stop.....

Crochet for the home....

...... and it's not even kitsch (well, much anyway)!

I'm a bit of a hoarder and keep any bit of yarn that is more than 30cm long. I started this blanket a month or so ago (this was the 4th attempt) and it's made up of all of my remnants.  

My nephew says it's "gangsta" which made me worry about being kidnapped by gunpoint whilst I was napping on the couch.  Or maybe it's like Arthur Dents towel and instead of being full of nutrients it has different drugs in it (not sure I want to risk sucking on it though!)  It's a kind of log cabin pattern that I made up as I went. Pretty 'gangsta' eh? :-)

We are renting quite a new house, which is something very different to what we've lived in before.  It's very warm for one!  And it's a little lacking in character, especially the kitchen which has all those lovely clean sterile lines with quite a bit of stainless steel.  So I crocheted some nice bright cotton dishcloths (yep they're almost granny squares I couldn't help it....).

They're working out really well, some soy cotton and some cotton cotton.  Apparently they last for ages too :-)

A cold blast and a winner!

Winter has hit in full force this week with the South Island covered in snow, and hail and snow storms even further north than Auckland! It's so cool to see the pictures in the news of expressions on faces who have never seen snow falling before :-)

Looking at the blue sky Miss Jack and Mr Ber ignored all weather forecasts and headed out to the Manurewa Botanical Gardens on Sunday for a walk.  We had 3 mins of sun before the heavens opened.

Aww cute baby ducks

Congratulations to MJ who has won the give-away of slouchy fingerless mitts.  I did the random number pick on internet and the first winner was Anonymous - which I know was my sister and I already gave her a pair of fingerless mitts the other day, so I did a redraw :-D

Ultimate in Kitsch?

A toilet roll doll that is dressed in granny squares, popped in the Etsy shop this morning.

My need for kitsch ness this week has almost been sated. 

Next.... finish my macramé

Felt like a bit of Kitsch

At the beginning of the week I read a fab tutorial on how to do macrame, (thanks Mel) so that has set me up for a kitschy week.  I'm about to attempt a granny square loo roll cover doll.

In the meantime this is a collection of Kitsch I found when I did a search on Felt.  We just need a couple of pink flamingo garden ornaments to really round it off  :-)

alxmackenzie

$45.00

greyststudio

$110.00

reallyreally

$20.00

nicoladawn

$16.00

oddoneout

$48.00

reallyreally

$8.00