Friday 27 June 2014

Rainbow blankets, yarn, project bags and one lonely chicken....

I bet you thought I'd disappeared again didnt you?! Still here I'm afraid ;)
The last couple of weeks have been a whirl of crafty activity ( no change there then) but I have had lots of projects that have all come together at once, shall we have a bit of a look...




This was my first big Ta-Da! A Rainbowish heirloom blanket! I love making these blankets, sorting through yarns to see what colours I have that would go next, adding a touch of sparkle to it here and there, and the lovely, heavy, reassuring weight of it when its all finished and the fabric is on. The response I have from the children is really nice too....'Ooooooh is it finished? Ooooh oh wow I love it! Can we keep it? Awwwww, I'll help model it, no I will!!'
So good to be appreciated.

There's been plenty of yarn dyeing too. This one is called Unicorn Splash ( as named by a facebook liker)




And heres some others .....



I'm starting to wonder if this clearly isn't the path for me as so far I want to keep everything I've made.

                              

I'm not too bad about keeping all of the teacups as I *may* have one or two teacups that i've already illustrated knocking the house , ahem. 
Determined to outsmart myself, i decided to make myself a project bag before I embarked on making more. The material for this is really special to me. It was in its previous reincarnation a little apron, that belonged to my very special and lovely Nana when she was little. Not being one for flowery aprons, it side stepped my Dad and made its way to meeeee. It was a fantastic accompaniment to *any* outfit, but met with some troubles along the way and lost its straps. So I decide to make it into a 'very useful and lovely project bag'.
Now my little slice of nostalgia can accompany me wherever I go.
And it also made me very marginally less wanty about these three little bags 
I do still obv have a few projects on the go- need something to put in my new bag, right?! One of them  being this something out of this amazing sparkliness
Which was the result of a yarn swap with a very special lady called Vanessa. She is over on Instagram @lynaiyarns ( incidentally I am @thecaptainandlovely - come and say hi, I LOVE instagram) 
Can you see what it is called? Its called Captain Lovely!! She named some yarn after me. Now I have to think of something truly brilliant to make with it ( probably a scarf/shawl knowing me)

And finally we had to say a goodbye to this cheeky hen 
Brooke, the brown one on the left, sadly died on Friday, she wasn't ill ( that we were aware of ) but had seemed tired for a while. So now we have one lonely little hen left, hopefully we will be getting her some friends soon as they like to have some chums around them. She is a very friendly and eager chicken, but with quite bossy tendencies, hopefully whatever other chicken we get will be able to hold their own.

Monday 9 June 2014

Weekending...

My weekend has mostly been a scramble of decorating, sewing, crochet, much much tidying up and rather a lot of football. I haven't taken any pictures of the decorating because a) who wants to see pics of decorating? b) painting over a  white wall with more white paint is incredibly frustrating! We are going to be moving house but ours needs a bit of TLC before we put it on the market, hence a large amount of 'touching bits up' filling holes and generally de cluttering ( that last one could take a while, I'm quite the collector of clutter!)

I also got chance to finish my bag
 and do some more work on my rainbow heirloom blanket ....
Saturday we had really stormy weather and spent most of the day inside snuggling and watching films..actually the kids went swimming with Martin and shopping and to the park and I did the decorating but *some* of it was spent snuggling under blankets.
the sunset was beautiful though *almost worth the torrential rain*
Sunday we took it in turns to take Jamie to various football matches he was playing in. Some people ran around the garden in their pants, and some people lounged in the sun, neither of which were me!


Right need to get on now, my 'to do' list is double sided and I've only managed 3 things so far!  xxxx



Friday 6 June 2014

Hello, Hello!

I'm back! Again!
Lets have a little catch up shall we :)

Here are the little lovelies
Here is lovely no1 Maya- now 13 ?!!! How did that happen? Yes thats a mermaid scarecrow!

Here is lovely no2 Jamie, looking casual with a parrott, he's now 10!
Lovely no3, Sonny is 8!!
And the littlest of all the lovelies Millie is 3.

How everyone has grown. Maya loves to bake and draw and sing and dance,Jamie is mad on football and minecraft, Sonny is still my lover of all living creatures, but has swapped dinosaurs for lego and bushcraft and Millie is a wonderful, funny happy, bolshie little 3 year old. We've still got our little van ( although its possibly going to be sold now due to being a very old quite poorly little van who needs lots of expensive help) we've built a cob oven in the back garden, my dreads have gone, and been replaced by short hair which is currently lilac, and me and Martin are still happily un married!


 Since my last post 2 YEARS AGO, wow, I have started a little business with my lovely friend Kirstie. Its a web based Eco shop called EcoCreate. Its an online marketplace specialising in UK, Handmade, eco friendly arts and crafts. You can create your own shop to sell your crafty creations( or just buy other peoples )  There's lots of other stuff on there too, tutes, supplies, books vintage etc etc. I could go on and on but I'll shut up!It is here if you'd like a look ;)

www.eco-create.co.uk

I've got a shop on their myself too. The Captain & Lovely where I really get to indulge myself in all things yarny and teacuppy!




I've really got into yarn dyeing recently too. So now I can supplement my yarn obsession ;)

What else do we have to catch up with, well we've still got the chickens, although only two now as Terra ran away, and we don't have the hammy hamsters anymore. Still loving the green smoothies, still obsessed with craft and still having lots of fun and mayhem with the lovelies. Lets not leave it 2 years until the next post!