2012 Finished Projects

As the year is drawing to a close, I thought it would be fun to go back through my photos and remind myself of all the various craft projects I completed during 2012. I didn't realise how many projects I actually finished in 12 months until I put the photos together - 2012 has been a pretty good year for craft! Lots of little knitted projects (mainly baby outfits and booties), and several sewing projects including my first two quilts! I think I'll be making a lot more quilts in the future now that I've been bitten by the quilting bug! In the next few days I'm planning to go through all my fabric and yarn stashes and start imagining what I could make with them in 2013, and finding some time to complete a couple of unfinished projects I started this year...lots of hours of fun ahead, reading other craft blogs and books and magazines for inspiration and of course the fun of actually making each project!

Finished Puss n Boots' quilt

I have now finished the quilt I have been making for Puss n Boots - just in time for Christmas! :-) They love the quilt, as soon as they see it they want to run over and lie on it or play under it. Spoilt little muppets - I'm not sure how many cats get handmade quilts made especially for them :-)

This will most likely be my last post before Christmas - so I'd like to wish everyone a very happy Christmas and all the best for 2013!! :-)

One Year with Puss n Boots!

Well this weekend marks the 1 year anniversary of when we adopted Puss n Boots! They have grown up heaps since then, and given us so much fun and love. In turn they are very spoiled little muppets - with handmade quilted blankets, millions of toys, and given lots of our time and affection :-)

This weekend was a lovely sunny one, so I spent some time outside in the garden weeding and planting some more seedlings. Our first crop of about 20 passionfruit has now finished, but already there are heaps more new flowers on the vine - many more than last year. On the craft front I finished off the little purple knitted booties which will be a present for a friend whose first baby is expected to arrive in less than 2 weeks. I haven't actually made any headway on the hand-stitching of the binding of the quilt for Puss n Boots (not that that has stopped them sleeping on it whenever they come into my craft room...). Will hopefully find the motivation to finish it shortly, but this weekend I seem to be more in a knitting mood than sewing. 

Quilt progress

Well I'm pretty happy with the progress I've made on the quilt for Puss n Boots since the last post. I've almost finished in fact - just have to hand-stitch the edge of the binding around the quilt. Hand-stitching always takes me quite a while, so I think I will be working on it slowly for the next week or two in the evenings until it is finished. Once I've finished I will take some photos of the completed quilt out in the sunshine, but for the moment here's a few photos of the quilt making in progress - with "help" of course from Puss n Boots.

Planning a mini quilt for Puss n Boots

I have let my craft projects hibernate a bit lately, but after returning from Laos and finding myself up to my eyeballs in work again, it is time to get back into some crafty relaxation.

Yet another friend is about to have a new baby girl so I started knitting another pair of booties (these ones are a light purple colour). I know I always go back to this bootie pattern, but it is fairly straight-forward and can be knitted in front of the tv, and the resulting booties always seem to be really appreciated when I give them to friends. I love seeing the babies wearing my homemade booties too!

I also wanted to start making a quilt for Puss n Boots. Partially because I love them and want to make them a special quilt, and partially so once they have their own quilt I can wash and brush and remove all the cat hair from my first quilt and I can enjoy using it myself :-)

For inspiration for the quilt for Puss n Boots I went craft-blog surfing and found a gorgeous-looking quilt on this page of "Nerospostandpatch". I love the colours and the simple design. I then looked through my jelly roll quilt books to try to find something similar. I have decided to make a quilt based on the pattern called "Pandora's box" in my book "Jelly Roll Quilts" by Pam & Nicky Lintott. The fabric I'm using is a very colourful mini jelly roll (20 strips of 2.5inch wide and 42inch long, rather than the standard 40 strip jelly roll) that I was given by J's sister & brother-in-law for my last birthday, so it will make a cheerful half-sized quilt perfect for the muppets (aka Puss n Boots).

Photo of Puss n Boots "helping" unravel the jelly roll on my birthday (above) and testing the fabric out today (below).

Visit to the Land of 1000 Elephants

I've just returned from an amazing two week trip to Laos - traditionally known as the Land of One Million Elephants (although sadly these days I believe it is home to more like only 1000 elephants). My friend L and I started in the northern part of the country - in the region surrounding Luang Prabang, including a homestay in the Chief's house at a remote rural village called Ban Nayang which was quite an experience - sleeping in an open plan stilt house on bamboo mats, sharing communal meals, being the special guests in a traditional Baci ceremony, exploring the village and playing boules with the teachers at the nearby school and trying to talk english with one of the English classes there.

Another highlight of the trip was spending two days at "the Elephant village" (a sanctuary that rescues elephants from logging trade, rehabilitates them and provides them with a much nicer life). For two days we learnt the basics of being a 'mahout' - riding elephants bare-back and learning the simple commands to direct them while riding them through the jungle, a local village and even into the Mekong River to wash them! It was an amazing experience, Elephants are such intelligent and lovely animals, it was wonderful to have the opportunity to spend some time this close with some, and to be supporting the rescue project at the same time. This particular elephant sanctuary (set up by a German man approximately 15 years ago) also financially supports 3 neighbouring villages where they grow food crops for the elephants (banana, sugar cane and pineapples) and they have also leased some untouched jungle from the Lao government as a protected area. You hear a lot about so-called elephant sanctuaries for tourists in Asia where the animals are treated in ways that I would not be happy to support, but this particular Elephant Village in Laos really impressed me and I would definitely recommend it.

 

We spent some time exploring the streets and Buddhist temples of Luang Prabang (a very colourful and picturesque small city with some French colonial touches intermixed with traditional Lao. This was my favourite of the 3 cities we visited in Laos. We also spent a little bit of time in Vientiane (the Capital) and Pakse (further south).

Further south we spent some time in the area of the Mekong River known as the Four Thousand Islands. We went bike riding, took a boat trip through the islands, and even managed to sight 3 or 4 of the extremely rare (almost extinct) Irawaddy dolphin (freshwater dolphin, only about 13 in the waterways of Laos, about 50 left in the world, spread along the Mekong between Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos).

While definitely very much a developing country, Laos was very beautiful and lush, the people we met were very friendly and generous and I would recommend to anyone considering a trip to south east Asia to consider Laos. It is further off the normal tourist route than many nearby places such as Thailand and Vietnam but for me this added to the charm.

Onkaparinga snapshots

I haven't finished off any more craft projects in the last month...just done a little bit of knitting of the Purl Bee inspired blanket but haven't made enough progress to take pictures of it yet. Instead of craft pictures I thought I might share a few photos from the local area taken on my walks.

These photos were taken today and are from the Onkaparinga River mouth and sand dunes near Port Noarlunga Beach:

 

And now for something completely different....more baby booties!

I have completed the latest pair of knitted booties... these ones are for a baby boy due next month. I used just under 1 ball of the Cleckheaton Country Naturals 8ply yarn, 4mm needles, and the trusty 'beginner booties' pattern from 'Knitting for Baby'. The bows are made with light blue organza ribbon. The wool is a light blue colour speckled with a chocolate brown colour.

After the last couple of pairs of booties, my next knitting project is something different...the Purl Bee inspired blanket described in the previous post :-)

Olivewood Baby Booties

After I finished making the Olivewood garter stitch cardigan last month I still had 1 skein of the yarn left over, so I decided to make a pair of matching baby booties. I used blue organza ribbon for the laces. This is one of the trusty patterns I keep falling back on - "Beginner Booties" a pattern by Cathy Payson in a book called "Knitting for Baby" by Melanie Falick & Kristin Nicholas.

I saw a cool free pattern available on the Purl Bee craft blog this week called "Hudson Bay inspired crib blanket" http://www.purlbee.com/hudson-bay-crib-blank/. It's a stripey pattern, and knitted all in one piece on circular needles, in contrast to other blankets I've made where you have to knit lots of squares or strips and then sew them all together at the end. I've decided to make one myself, however I've chosen much more vibrant colours than used in the original pattern. The yarn I bought today for this project was Moda Vera Pure Wool 8Ply in Bright Blue, Green, Pink, Grey Blue and Yellow.

Also, I have a friend who is expecting a baby next month and so I'm going to try to find time to knit another pair of the trusty booties for her as a present! Looks like I have quite a lot of knitting to get into this month :-)

Olivewood Garter Stitch Cardigan

It's been such a cold weekend in Adelaide - perfect for snuggling up and keeping warm and doing some craft with my helper kittens. I finished making this baby cardigan which i started knitting on 21-04-2012 using some lovely hand-dyed silk/merino blend wool that I bought from "Purl Soho" in New York. It is the most beautiful soft wool to work with, plus I love the colours. The pattern I used was "garter stitch cardigan" from "Simple knits for cherished babies" by Erika Knight. I made the 3-6month size, which took 2 skeins of the yarn (I have 1 skein remaining). I had to learn a new technique (picking up and knitting stitches) to make the borders on the sleeves and the band for the buttons. I found a very useful YouTube tutorial by KnitPicks which helped me figure out how to do this. I'm very happy with how it turned out. It's well worth spending the extra money buying gorgeous hand-dyed wool when you end up with a unique handmade garment at the end :-)

My first quilt finished!! :-)

I am very happy - I finally finished hand-stitching the binding onto my quilt this afternoon...so now I have completed my first quilt! It is far from flawless but I really love it, and feel quite proud of it as it is by far the largest and most complex sewing project I have undertaken to date. It was just starting to get dark when I finished it and rushed outside to take a few photos. Puss n Boots love it too, I'm sure they think I made it especially for them, they jump on it and settle down for a snooze whenever they spot it on my craft table and now they can lie on it without pins sticking out everywhere.

Trip to the Grampians

No craft updates this week as J and I escaped away to the Grampians National Park for a little getaway! We stayed in a little (very basic) cabin in Halls Gap, right near Lake Bellfield for 4 nights and had a lovely time. It was very cold and quite rainy, but we had fun exploring various walking trails, including the 'Balconies', the 'Grand Canyon', Clematis Falls, Turret Falls, Lakeview Loop, and Sundial Peak. A lot of the other famous walking trails and some roads easily accessible from Halls Gap have been washed out in the floods in January, but as we had already visited some of these areas on a trip in 2010, we just used it as an excuse to explore a few unfamiliar trails. We also drove around the nearby areas a bit, visiting Lake Wartook and Lake Fyans (we unsuccessfully went fishing for trout at Lake Fyans), Ararat and Stawell (on the Gold fields route). There was plenty of wildlife about in the Grampians in general and also around our cabins in the evenings; kangaroos, wallabies, emu, cockatoos and heaps of little parrots and rosellas. Also although winter is nearly here there were still a few pretty native flowers sprinkled in the bush on the various trails we walked along. It was a lovely holiday and a much needed chance to relax together without the usual accompanying V8 motorsport events!