Miaou

It’s been a long while since I posted - mainly because I have had a lot of problems with access to viewing this blog, as many people are unable to see it. Therefore I have taken the decision to move over to Blogspot which seems to be universally accessible to all! Here is my new blog address: http://miaoucrafts.blogspot.com/ - please come and see the new site (and subscribe to the feed!). This blog will still be here for some time and I will probably put some of the previous posts onto the new blog for reference, but this blog will no longer be updated.  See you on the new blog!

Things have been rather quiet on the blog front - I have been busy putting together a dress for Eilish for a school project. She wanted a traditional spanish dancer’s dress. I used an old T-shirt of mine, 4 metres of plain blue cotton and 3 metres of spotty. I cut the t-shirt down, cut the polka-dot material into strips and hemmed them, then gathered them and added them to the plain blue fabric (which I had cut so that it was narrower at the top than at the bottom. Then I ran a seam up the side to join the skirt, gathered and pinned the top and sewed it to the bottom of the t-shirt (which I had cut shorter to make it waist length). The only spanner in the works was my *!?$&* sewing machine which would not sew through the t-shirt material and kept skipping stitches - I struggled through altering the body of the t-shirt, but when it came round to the sleeves and to adding the skirt, I gave up and sewed it by hand! Consequently, I ran out of time to add ruffles to the sleeves. Ah well.

It might seem like a lot of work to do for a school project, but Eilish had been wanting a long frilly dress for ages (and shops don’t sell them above the age of about 4!), and it will come in again for the Town Gala Fancy Dress Competition in the summer (for which I might have recovered enough patience to add sleeve ruffles). She is very pleased with it and it went down very well at school too.

A rather prolonged absence from blogging with the odd sporadic post, but I’m determined to get back to it now! I’ve had several rather long-term projects on the go and I’m often a little shy about sharing WIPs. So to start with I will share an almost finished one:

(no, not the boy. He’s nowhere near finished )

Euan needed a new hat. I had two thirds of a ball of yarn that my mum gave me, left over from a cardigan she had knitted. I thought it was probably just enough for a hat. So I knitted him a hat. The gauge was wrong, and it was too small. So I frogged it and started again (let me tell you, it’s pretty yarn, but it didn’t frog well - however I think that’s down to my odd knitting technique rather than the yarn!). So I tried again, with a different style hat, using a “toddler” pattern. Euan is 16 months old and is small, so I thought this would be ok. But no - still too small! So I ripped back to the increases, put another couple of increase rows in, and knitted until I ran out of yarn (amazingly I managed to keep back exactly the right amount to cast off - I had about 8 inches left!). Perfect. Except when I put it on his head, it doesn’t cover his ears. Sigh. I will add a brim later I think.

And just because I’m sure you are dying to know what else I’ve been up to, here’s a couple of glimpses into two big projects which are nearing completion:

This one is a green stole, the second of a series of three I am embellishing for a newly-ordained minister. I have used several different colours of green silk here and am adding appliqued oak leaves. It’s almost done so you should see the finished product in a few days.

Now this one is (literally) a labour of love:

Ninety one squares altogether! Please note, I did not knit all these squares! I think I did about a dozen in the end. This is a collaborative effort of a group of knitters which I organised and co-ordinated. As a punishment reward for doing this I get to do the sewing up and add a border. Actually, I love sewing up, though it’s a bit of a challenge with this one as the squares are all knitted by different people, so there are a few size discrepancies! Anyhoo, this is all you get to see until the blanket is finished and presented to the recipient, so you will have to wait patiently to find out what it’s all about!

Ok, so - number of projects underway in my last post: four

Number of projects underway not in my last post: a further four

Number of projects completed since last post: none

Number of new projects started since my last post: erm …

But - I did complete one!

Look - I made a messenger bag for Eilish’s best friend for her birthday:

Bag for Erin

I made it really quickly last night, and finished it off this afternoon. I used the first messenger bag tute I came across, which happened to be this one , which was incredibly easy to follow and the bag was a great size when finished. I had just enough purple material for the outside of the bag, and used a light denim fabric to line it and make the straps.

There was a wee bit of the purple left to make a pocket inside too:

Close up of the pocket

Eilish is thrilled with it, hopefully Erin will like it too! She happened to mention that purple was her favourite colour, but I didn’t have any purple fabric. Then the following day I was walking along the promenade when I came across a garage sale at one of the houses on the seafront. Hey presto, vintage purple fabric for a small charity donation. Serendipity, aye!