An old pair of jeans

What a lovely weekend :-) It started with a great day off on Friday, we went for a lovely walk around the Mount, out for brunch and then shopping. Today has been so lovely that we've had all of the windows open all day!

Yesterday was a great day for being creative. I started with an old pair of my jeans and made a bag out of one of the legs.

They were bootlegs so the bag is kind of a bucket shape. I sliced the rest of the leg to make jeans yarn and crocheted it with some ribbon yarn to make the strap.

And the same ribbon yarn has been crocheted into motifs and a kind of holster and attached to the bag to give it a bit of decoration.

For a first go I give myself 7 out of 10. The sewing is a little shoddy, and there is no clasp to keep the bag closed. A zip would have been ideal, but after the needle broke as soon as I pressed my foot on the peddle of the sewing machine, I decided that the smallest amount of sewing possible was the way to go!

I really liked the strap and so I cut up the other leg and crocheted it, now I have a jeans rope and I'm trying to think about what to do with it. Coiled up into a placemat? Cut into bits for hair bands? A skipping rope? Any ideas would be gratefully received :-)

It's a hooker!

hahaha, sorry, I couldn't resist :-)

Here is RedBerryCrochet

http://www.redberrycrochet.etsy.com/
she is an etsyhooker. I've picked the following items from her shop for these reasons: the duster because OMG who knew you could do such things wih crochet!


And the cat toys because the cat looks like our Ginger :-)

Ahhh to look into the thoughts of buyers to see why they might like our stuff :-)

RedBerry also has la great pattern for some twine baskets which I'd love to make, I've bought twine with the thought to crochet something wonderful.

I just need to know how to read patterns!

Bobbles for beads

Today is all about the crochet, (apart from the bit about the weather and the cats)

Crochet Art: I’ve put this on hold for a bit. I need to think about what to do with the background. I crocheted some flowers and glued them onto canvas. It hasn’t quite given the look that I was expecting and yes, I was a little disappointed that the idea didn’t look fantastic at the first go, hence it’s ‘on hold’. I’m enlisting Andrew’s help next. He has loads of cool buttons so we thought maybe some kind of crochet and button collage. It all seems a bit hard right now, so maybe a project for a future day :-)

Last night I discovered bobbles.
I made lots of bobbles and filled them with hobby fill, I crocheted a chain and voila, a necklace :-) So far I’ve made 3, a purple one (next door) pink one & and reddish one (down there). I’m perfecting them as I go. I think bobbles could make good beads, and I did try with the usual crochet bead necklace technique and it didn’t quite work, I found crocheting them into the chain worked best, something to think about though. I wore the purple one to work today and got lots of positive comments

Head and Fluffy.
It seems that Head isn’t the only neighbourhood cat that we are feeding. Fluffy is the other one, and we do believe he is the main culprit!
We’re trying to catch him and our landlord has almost caught him a couple of times. We both have the same tactic; lock the cat flap so once he’s in and is scoffing his face, we grab him when he makes a run for the cat flap and because it’s locked he can’t get back out. Simple eh? Except he knows! He stands outside and flips the cat flap a few times to make sure it’s going to open again before he comes in. Sneaky!

Fabulous weather!
We’re loving the blue sky and sun. It’s pretty chilly at night, nowhere near how cold it has been, and the cottage is getting lovely and warm during the day. We both have Friday off and are hoping that this lovely blue sky hangs around. The weathermen/people have a very different idea they reckon that showers will start tomorrow and carry on through the weekend. Andrew and I are banking on them getting it wrong, which seems to happen quite a bit, my theory is that it’s because the islands are so thin, (I don’t know exactly why that would matter it just seems important)

My next etsyhooker is away from her shop for a day or so, she’ll be back on Wednesday.
Sometimes the time zone thing does my head in, my Wednesday is nearly finished and she is in America so I think her Wednesday means my Thursday, and I left her a note to say I’d put her in my Wednesday post, so I wonder when that is? Anyway I’ll pop by in the next day or two and introduce you all. And if you can’t wait and your Wednesday is her Wednesday check her out here: http://www.redberrycrochet.etsy.com/

The Netherlands

Happy Monday!

We're having lovely spring weather at the moment, I even got a bit rosy cheeked yesterday when I fell asleep in the sun. We had a lovely picnic by the harbour after the market, which paid it's way and a bit more, which is always great :-) I get such a buzz when complete strangers buy my creations!

A bit of a coincidence today. I was telling the complete stranger how I learnt to make my crocheted necklaces, at the same time my friend was e-mailing me, the first etsyhooker was saying yes to be on my blog, and I took the pictures of the Tui to send to my friends dad. And the connection? The Netherlands! My friend is from there, her mum from there showed me how to do the necklaces, I took the photos for her dad who lives there and the first etsyhooker is from there. If we were having carrots for tea it'd be a full house!

And so to the pictures.....

A new crocheted necklace from me, and look at these amazing items from LeChatCrochet on Etsy

Tui & Art

So I played last night with crochet as art, I think I have a way to go before I share :-)

It's the arts and crafts market tomorrow at the Bethlehem Town Centre, and if the weather is like it is this morning it should be quite busy.

I've acquired a bit of board, and I'm off down town to buy some black material to cover it in so I can hang my crocheted necklaces and bracelets on it to make them look fab! And after some recent buying activity in the necklace area I decided to make a couple of new ones last night to keep the inventory up. I'll try and get them in the shop later on today.

Just came back from a lovely walk down the lane, the Kowhai's are all blossoming and the Tui's love to drink the nectar.

They're a bit shy, I did manage to get a bit of a pic though.

Green & Team

Here is the first promo for one of my fellow etsy hookers team shops:


I was gobsmacked when I initially saw this, what a brill idea!

Help to keep your fruit free from bruising in your lunchbox with one of these fab fruit cosies.
It would make a great pressie or talking point in the lunchroom :-)

You'll find them in loads of different colours with heaps more other neat things at http://www.UnravelMe.etsy.com/ and I've noticed that there is an offer of free world wide shipping for a limited time at the moment too!

In Home New Zealand magazine this month there is a very expensive piece of artwork that is crocheted, crocheting is en vogue :-) Maybe I should frame a scarf! Fingers crossed that everyone who reads that magazine comes to the market on Sunday!

I'm playing with beads again at the moment and have made this bracelet/hand jewelry mainly out of beads that were on a broken a napkin ring, and the others to break up the colour a bit. I like the matt finish.



Hmmm, that artwork has got me thinking........

Hookers & Lamps

Another Tuesday has passed and we're almost in the middle of the working week! I've been inspired today by other Etsy people. A few people use their blogs to promote other etsy shops, how cool is that! So I thought I'd start with my team. I am a member of the Etsy Hookers Team. It sounds way much more racy than it is! Crocheting people use hooks. (sorry, bit of a let down there eh :-) ) http://www.etsy.com/search_results.php?search_type=tag_title&search_query=etsyhookers+teamThey are a great group that are so good at promoting each other. The majority of them are in a different time zone from me so I've been a bit slack being a member, and I thought I could make up for it here! I'm going to ask them if they mind me picking on them every so often and popping them on here, especially if they do things I have no patience, inclination or skill to do. Watch this space...

In the bio thing I mentioned that we enjoy shopping in thrift & op shops. As a consequence we seem to have accumulated more than the usual number of lamps, and lamp shades. Here are 2 of my favourite lampshade re-dressings.

Re-dressing lampshades is one of the few other creative outlets that can make me put down the crochet hook.

I'm working on an idea at the moment to see if I can do more

of it..... lets see if it comes to fruition

I can't take any credit for the ideas, the flowers one was inspired by a NZ artist who had an exhibition at our local art gallery and the orange pavlova was semi-insipired by a shopping trip in York, England