12 inch square CAL: July easy square

Here's my July easy square from the craftster CAL. Getting to the end now (only four left in total).


Pattern from here

More Swap Goodness

I've had quite a productive weekend this weekend (well, Friday and Saturday anyway. Sunday was a write off because my sister kept me up all night with a party...she even barged into my room at 3am and stole all my dress up costumes...then everyone jumped into the pool with them five minutes later - so she's got some replacing to do). Apart from that over the weekend I managed to:
- Tidy out my cupboard - including resorting out my fabric and washing more of it
- Clean my room
- Dust and vacuum my room
- Strip and make my bed (that would have happened anyway)
- Sort out my bookcase
- Polish my shoes
- Clean my fan
- One CAL square
- Embroidered two TAST bookmarks
- Started making some Christmas presents

My room wasn't actually that bad but now it's lovely...except for the damaged dress up box sitting in the corner waiting for my sister to sort it out.

In other news I received another parcel from the Aussie Shop the Swap (Yay!). This was from Velvet Rose and had a Rapunzel Scarf and 100g of Merino-Border Leicester Slivers. Now on with the Spinning!

Scatterday

I decided to join in the Scatterday challenge from Random Applique for a couple of reasons, to make myself take more photographs, blog more often, and also share a bit more about myself.



This weeks letter was L, and the categories were animals, food and sewing. There are four pictures because my two dogs won't sit together helpfully.

First we have animals (because I thought they'd look better next to each other) and their breed is Labradoodles (ok, so actually a cross breed but never mind). On the left is Deefa and on the right is Barney. They're getting on a bit, nearly eleven now, but still doing pretty well. One day I'd like to spin some of their fur up and make something. Ignore all the beer bottles behind Barney, my dad has just started home brewing and is collecting them. Although it would be nice if he'd move them into the garage.

Next we have food, which is lemons, because we had quite a few of them hanging around.

Finally for sewing, we have location (I may be stretching it a bit here). There isn't really a good spot for me to set up my sewing machine so it gets put in front of my computer (which is probably why I don't sew as often as I'd like). I have on occasion been sewing and tried to check my email (or craftster, or bloglines) at the same time which involves me putting my arm through the machine to use the keyboard. I'm that addicted to the internet.

12 inch square CAL: July experienced square

Wednesday's are my normal day off and it's nice having a day off during the week because you can do things around the house (eg craft) without disturbances, do a bit of shopping, and go places that may be closed on the weekend (bank, post office). Anyway, today I had to go in to work for a staff meeting. I figured since I was doing that I was entitled to spend some money at Spotlight (fairly close to work, although a bit of a pain to get to and I normally finish too late)...except I got asked to drop a dog home on my way back, which was around the corner from home so no shopping for me. I'm still trying to decide if this was a good or bad thing. Otherwise the going to work in the middle of the day did manage to disrupt me from doing anything useful.

Here's my July experienced square from the craftster CAL



Pattern from here.

Swap Goodies

I received a lovely parcel today from cyndiq, as part of the Aussie only Shop the Swap on craftster.

I got a gorgeous crochet hook pouch, which is fully lined with pockets for hooks and has a cute beaded zipper pull. I can see this will be handy for reducing the number of things dragging around with my crochet. At the moment I had various balls of yarn, scissors, measuring tape, hook roll, pattern. Now I can put my active hook, scissors, measuring tape and probably pens/pencils and bits of paper in the pouch.

I also got this lovely domino pendant. Isn't it cute! Now just to go somewhere that I can wear it.

Shawl-Collared Wrap Cardigan

Another jacket, I made this with some yarn I bought from ebay. A little hint - if you are making something, check your yardages/meterages? first. I ended up with about 10 grams of yarn left over - although the belt was skinnier than it should have been and I made a couple of modifications to the pattern - I didn't make sleeve cuffs or a pocket (not because of yarn shortages, but I would have run out if I didn't make the modifications)



It's the Shawl-Collared Wrap Cardigan from SweatBabe.com's Fabulous and Flirty Crochet and it was a fairly easy pattern to follow...I might just need to wait until the weather gets a bit warmer to wear it.

TAST Week 13: Knotted Cretan

TAST Week 13 was Knotted Cretan Stitch and I did end up using a similar idea to the ordinary Cretan Stitch.

So this one is called 'Pressed Sample 2'

12 inch square CAL: June Easy Square + Naughty Tree

I came downstairs on Saturday morning to discover a lot of leaves outside our front door and on closer inspection found this had happened...

Luckily that's not my car...and there isn't really a lot of damage. If you look closely in the picture the branches to the left are going in a different direction and are a slightly different colour...because they're off a different gum tree and came down on Thursday, cutting off the power across the road. After two reasonably sized branches have come down in a week we're getting a tree guy in to look at everything and let us know if we need to take any trees or branches down.

Anyway, I've finished June on the CAL now. Now just for July and August, although there will only be September after that so I've just got six squares left in total. Then I'll just have the TAST and hopefully I won't sign up for any other ongoing challenges after that...I also have a round robin swap and a shop the swap on at the moment...and I did want to take part in a Christmas ornaments swap this year (if anyone else is doing this and sees it come up on craftster, could you remind me in case I forget to look on the swap board?)



The pattern is from here

TAST Week 12: Couching

Week 12 in the TAST challenge was couching.



This bookmark is probably the one that's taken me the longest so far, but I'm really happy with it. It's so tactile and yummy.

Hmmmm...couching handspun yarn would be fun too wouldn't it?

A project from my first spinnings

I've been very good and used the first thing I've spun up to make a beanie.



I've wanted to make a slouchy hat for a little while and I got some compliments on this when I wore it out which was nice. The pattern was from here.

I really should get an action shot but it's very hard to take a picture of your own head and there isn't anyone else around.

TAST Week 11: Up and Down Buttonhole

Week 11 in the TAST is Up and Down Buttonhole Stitch which I had quite a bit of fun with.



I'd had a similar idea with a couple of other TAST stitches, but it hadn't quite worked out until now.

12 inch square CAL: June experienced square

So I had almost caught up in the craftster CAL, but now I'm behind again (5 behind I think, better get moving again!)


This one is the June experienced square, and the pattern is from here.

TAST Week 10: Barred Chain

Week 10 in the TAST challenge was Barred Chain and once I eventually came up with a design I then had to sew my two bits of fabric together...which was a little more complex than I anticipated - those curves are tricky! Once it was done (a little dodgily if you look closely) the embroidery was pretty quick.