Crafting update

As Winter closes in, crafting increases. I have been industriously knitting the cot quilt WIP and I think it's finally big enough. All the rows are stitched together, but I haven't yet tidied up all the loose threads. I am contemplating teaching myself to crochet from You Tube videos so I can make a bit of a border for it. Maybe. The irony is, since I started knitting the cot quilt several months ago, I don't think SP has slept in her cot more than once or twice! Still, I think she likes it anyway!



Another WIP, the front garden design, is nearing completion too. I am reasonably happy with it. I need to sit on it for a while and think about it.


And finally, not a WIP but craft related... I have finally sold a kid's quilt on Etsy! This green beauty will be winging it's way to the UK shortly.



Happy cold weather crafting, folks!
xx

The Rug WIP continues...

Just a little update tonight on the progress of the knitted cot-rug. I have completed five lovely colourful whole rows, only another, oh, 20 or so to go. You see, the size of each row is random and determined by my feelings about the project at the exact time I cast-on each new row. Do I feel like taking it slowly and making my 'squares' nice and wide? Or do I want to whip through colours with abandon? Therefore I know I have done about 1/5 of the total rug, but not how many rows I have left to knit. It's making knitting mysterious...
SP likes to 'help' me, looping the wool through her hands and around her shoulders, or upending the bag with all the wool skeins and distributing them around the room. She gets most upset when I won't let her run away with the needles (and half completed rows) because I don't want her to skewer herself with them. Ah, toddlers!
I have set a date for completion of the rug now, too. I'm hoping I will be all finished in time for winter.

WIP #2 continued

Slightly pointless post tonight, it could have waited until tomorrow, after all! But I wanted to make a note that WIP #2, the rug I am planning to enlarge, is underway and the balls of wool are becoming neat, flat, brightly coloured rows. Except I have ummed and ahhed over it, and muttered to myself, and rearranged the original rug and placed the one completed new row alongside it, and then turned it around ninety degrees and looked at it again, and you know what? I think I like the little rug just as it is. Therefore, I'm going to leave it alone and make a whole, brand new, bigger rug. Proper cot size this time, which should be a nice lap size as well. So there you go. The evolving WIP strikes again!

WIP #2

This one is not strictly a WIP, but more an extension on a previous project. 

You see, when I was pregnant with SP I made a knitted blanket. Actually that's not quite true. I'd already started the blanket well before being pregnant, but once she was on her way I found the impetus to actually finish it. Anyway, having not had much to do with babies before I made this lovely woolen blanket -multi coloured - which was a perfect newborn/bassinet size. 

Now I have a one year old child and we're heading into winter and I have realised it needs to be much, much bigger to fit her cot. So, long story short, I've bought a heap of wool so I can enlarge it. I got carried away, of course. I set my budget at $40 and spent $55, but all those jewel colours were too pretty to resist. 

Knitting is not my forte - I am limited to squares and rectangles - but I enjoy it nonetheless, and I am looking forward to spending these autumn evenings click, click, clicking away and making the pretty little blanket into a pretty, bigger blanket.

W.I.P.s

So, what is a WIP? A WIP is a Work In Progress, an unfinished project, of which I have approximately 379 of stashed away in various cupboards and boxes. I have designated 2011 the Year of the WIP and it is my most sincere intention to get some of these projects completed (or binned, depending on my mood).

The other day, in a fit of madness, I tidyed our study and in doing so I came across one of these neglected ideas languishing in a battered shoebox. 

I'd started folding these paper cranes when I found out that I was pregnant with SP. I was going to make a mobile from them and hang the birds above the cot where they could dance in the wind. Sadly, that was never fully realised. 

When I pulled them out again I realised that something was missing. I had lots of red cranes, pink cranes, purple cranes, green cranes, but no blues, not even one.

So the very first thing I did was pull out my stash of beautiful, lovely, tactile Japanese papers. I have literally dozens of them. Some collected here in Adelaide, and quite a lot I brought home from Japan at the end of 2009. I find them hard to use. I don't want to waste them.

I started folding cranes again the other night in front of Midsomer Murders, lots of blues and few more greens and golds to round things out. 

I laid them out in their colour groups, took a few happy snaps, and then SP woke up and I had to whip them away lest they all be crushed by little hands!

They're not going to be a mobile, but I do have another idea (the evolving WIP!) and I hope it will be finished shortly and I can show you the finished product.