Tag: craft

And they’re off!

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The 2008 craft marathon is off to a flying start thanks to a bout of food-poisoning that has kept me at home for a few days.

The Lace Ribbon Scarf is coming along nicely, if slowly. Here it is, roughly pinned out to show off the lace.
Lace Ribbon Scarf

The scarf is currently about 18 inches long (unstretched) and has taken an entire ball of yarn. I am hoping 3 balls of the yarn will be enough since I really want to make something for me with the other balls. I had thought that I would use the rest of the yarn to make a second scarf for me but I am not sure that I will want to knit another one straightaway, although, it looks so pretty that I am sure I will make more eventually!

I’ve got a couple of the origami wreaths done for Christmas cards:
Origami Wreaths

These three only took a single evening to fold so I should be able to get the rest done in plenty of time for Christmas. I still need to practise varnishing them and attaching them to cards though.

Finally, the wedding table centrepieces are coming along. We bought a couple more vases and the proper paper arrived.

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There are currently 9 flowers folded in the left-hand vase in the picture, so nearly two centrepieces’ worth. Which reminds me, I really should check with the venue just how many tables there are going to be!

Creative overload

Susan1 Comment

2008 has been a busy year already and it does not look like it is going to get any less hectic with 2 professional exams and the wedding still to go. It also looks like being a busy year craft-wise.

Current projects include the knitted lace scarf for my Gran, my Double Vision blanket and the origami flowers for the wedding table centrepieces. So far, so good.

The list of projects currently under consideration runs a bit longer though. At the moment it stands as follows:

  • Wedding shawl for me
  • Wedding kilt hose for Steven
  • Presents for a friend’s baby due in November
  • Origami Christmas cards

Let’s deal with these in order:

The wedding shawl: despite the problems that I’m currently having with a simple lace scarf, part of me still thinks this is a good idea!

The kilt hose: do I really want to knit two gents’ knee-high socks? I love the thought of Steven wearing kilt hose that I’ve made him to the wedding, although I don’t know how he feels about it, but gents’ socks take a long time.

Baby knitting: unfortunately, I Knit had a special offer on a beautiful baby pattern book when I went to the knitting group last night. I’ve ordered a copy so haven’t had a chance to take a proper look and decide on particular patterns but from the quick look I had, I’m considering making a hat, jacket, blanket and bootees for the baby and a nursing shawl for mum. All of which would need to be finished the same week as the wedding shawl and kilt hose. I think this could be considered “too much stuff”.

Christmas cards: I love making my own Christmas cards. Christmas has become so commercial that I really like being able to send people something that I’ve genuinely put some thought and effort into. Last year was the first year for several years that I haven’t made my own cards, due to lack of time, and I wasn’t happy sending out bought cards. I bought an origami book recently that had a pretty modular origami wreath that my trial runs suggest would look great on the front of a card. I only have about 15 cards to make and the wreaths only require 20 separately folded modular sections each so that’s not that many, right?

Let’s have a look at the timeline:

Immediately – the lace scarf for my Gran has to be finished before the middle of June so doesn’t really impact on anything else.

Next 3 months – I’m studying and wedding-planning but should still have reasonable amounts of free time. I just need to juggle craft stuff with volunteering for DP.

August to mid-September – Exam season. All other bets are off but some mindless knitting will probably be a good thing. Unfortunately, all the knitting I’d like to do involves concentration.

Mid-September to mid-November – Run-up to the wedding. Any organising that hasn’t been done will need to be done now. Looking at my list of proposed projects, I’ll also be knitting till my fingers fall off!

Mid-November to start of December – Honeymoon! I’m pretty sure not much of anything will get done at this point.

December – Can I make my Christmas cards in the period between getting back from honeymoon and the last Christmas post? During which time, I’ll also be writing and sending wedding thank-you cards. Hmm, it seems unlikely.

So, in conclusion, I need to spend the next 3 months doing all the the things on my craft to-do list to be sure of getting them done in time and hope that I don’t come up with any new ideas over the rest of the year. It’ll be interesting to see how many things I actually manage to get done. Watch this space!

Paper flowers …

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… coming soon to a wedding near you?

A little while ago, I spotted some beautiful origami table decorations for a wedding over on the Style Me Pretty blog. Being me, I saw the decorations and immediately thought, “I can do that”, despite not having done any origami for years!

Since it’s a typical rainy bank holiday Monday, Steven and I spent this morning folding flowers.

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We’ve been experimenting with different styles and different ways of displaying them and think we may finally have hit upon our favourite combination.

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All we need now are some pretty vases and the patience to fold many dozen more identical flowers!

Edited to add – Looks like we might have found the vases:
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Woolly Flowers

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Earlier this year I looked into ways of either knitting or crocheting a bouquet of flowers and couldn’t really find any patterns that I liked. I wanted reasonably realistic looking 3-D flowers that could be combined into a bouquet but most patterns that I found were for 2-D flowers as accessories or decoration on other items. The only other patterns I found were for lilies. Since I was investigating the possibility of making flowers for decoration at my wedding, lilies just weren’t an option because in Scotland they’re traditionally associated with funerals.

I can’t remember how I came across it but I eventually ordered the book “The World of Flowers in Wool”. The book uses a knitting cast-on around a wire attached to an appropriately sized piece of wood to make each petal individually. You then remove the wood and shape the petals and combine them into the finished flower. The book demonstrates a couple of similar techniques and then is basically a set of recipes for combining different types of petals and leaves into lots of different types of flowers.

I had difficulty finding appropriately sized (and shaped) pieces of wood and, in the end, bought some modelling wood and made my own. (Part of which involved me sawing wood on a desk in a bedroom in a Marriott hotel but I probably shouldn’t say any more about that!) Given that I’m not known for my wood-working skills, I wouldn’t let the thought of this put anyone off trying it.

And here’s the finished result:

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I’ve only managed a single rose so far but have just bought more wire so will be trying out some of the other patterns as well. I still haven’t decided if it’s a practical way to make decorations for the wedding or if I’d have anything like enough free time to do enough in time but I’m still tempted.

Encyclopedia of Needlework

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One of the books I’ve been most proud of during my time so far with Distributed Proofreaders has been The Encyclopedia of Needlework. It really was a labour of love (and a little hate) over about a two year period.

It’s a 19th century text, which hasn’t been out of print (in English) since then. This is the English translation of the original French and there has been a German translation as well. The German version is planned to go through Distributed Proofreaders as well (if it hasn’t already started). The text covers most forms of needlework including knitting, crochet, macramé, lace, embroidery, tapestry and others. It gives details of tools, techniques and patterns and is heavily illustrated throughout (which is what made it so difficult to process).

I’ve already received comments from various people on how useful it will be and how pleased they are that it’s available but today I got a message from a friend about something completely unrelated that led me to take a look at her blog. I hadn’t been there for a while so had a little wander round and discovered that she’s actually working on a needlepoint lace project from the Encyclopedia! I spent so long working on these illustrations and thinking about how beautiful some of these pieces would look that I’m just unbelievably chuffed to discover that someone is actually using it to make something. I can’t wait to see the finished piece.

If you’re interested in other books like this, the crafts bookshelf on Project Gutenberg is a good place to start looking. There are lots of non-needlework crafts on there too; taxidermy, anyone?