Long weekend

It's the Adelaide Cup long weekend here, and I have managed to fit in a fair amount of craft and hobbies in between other things. I spent some time in the garden weeding and planting some snow pea and sweet pea seedlings, and also planted two grafted passionfruit vines (one is a Panama gold and the other is the regular passionfruit with dark skins). I've heard passionfruits grow quite well in Sth Australia, so I'm really looking forward to having a glut of passionfruit next summer.

I finally finished knitting the garter stitch wrap top that I started knitting ages ago, and now all that remains to be done is to stitch up the seams and attach the organza ribbon that ties at the back. Hopefully I'll find the time to do that in the next week.



I also realised that 4 friends of mine are all due to have babies between now and July (and one of them is expecting twins!) and ideally I would love to make something homemade for each of the babies when they are born. Not sure if I'll actually have enough time to knit that many things in such a short time but we will see! I started on the first baby present this afternoon - some little booties in a nice light purple wool (Cleckheaton Country 8ply - 100% pure wool). I'm just using the 'beginner booties' pattern that I have used previously, using 4mm needles.

My Nanna Blanket is finished at last! :-)

Since the weather has been stinking hot this weekend (39C Sat, 42C Sun and meant to be 39C again tomorrow) I have spent most of the weekend indoors trying to avoid the heat. So although I hate this kind of heat, it does have benefits as I could do some craft without feeling like I should be up and doing something else! So I finally finished the last square of my Nanna blanket, and stitched all the rows together and wove in the loose ends :-) I'm very happy with it even though it's way to hot to use it at the moment apart from taking a quick photo!



I also finally decided to unravel my 'woodland' jelly roll of quilt fabric (see pic). I'm thinking of making my first quilt as a practise run, and if that is successful then I will plan to make a king sized quilt using different colours for the new bed that my partner and I have just ordered. I've got a great book "Jelly Roll Quilts" by Pam & Nicky Lintott, and I'm thinking of trying the 'bars of gold' quilt first.

Homemade spiced apricot jam

I have never tried to make jam before, but last week my partner's mum brought over a heap of very ripe fresh organic apricots from one of her friends trees and there was just no way we could eat them all before they spoiled. The apricots were just so delicious and juicy, and I couldnt bare to waste them so I decided to make some jam. All I knew was that you put approx. equal amounts of sugar to fruit (my partner's mum gave me this ratio, she makes jam all the time). I googled a few recipes (including some yummy sounding ones on 'Food for Thought' blog) and learnt that apricots don't have much pectin (the setting agent), but citrus fruits apparently do...so I experimented a bit and this was the resulting recipe:

1.75 kg Roughly chopped fresh apricots (discard stones, but don’t bother peeling skin off the apricots.

1.5 kg Sugar (I used 1 kg caster sugar, 0.5 kg brown sugar)

Juice from 1 lemon

Juice from 1 lime

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

1 teaspoon cinnamon powder

1 teaspoon ginger powder

Put in saucepan and heat, stirring. After quite a while it starts thickening and looking like jam. To check if it really is set, get a china plate, put it in the fridge or freezer for a couple of minutes to chill, take it out and put a spoonful of the hot jam on the cold plate. Leave for a minute or so then run the spoon through the jam. If it goes all wrinkly and looks set then it is ready to bottle! :-)

And it really tastes delicious ;-) (even if i say so myself) I made 7 jars, and gave 4 away to friends and my partner started to get worried that I was giving it all away and there wouldnt be enough left for him hahaha. I'll put some photos up soon.

New Years Resolution in progress....

So, it's the end of the first week of the new year and so far I've managed to keep my new years resolution and have found time to do craft :-) I made one skirt with some beachy floral fabric that has been in my fabric stash for over a year, I finished hemming a multicoloured multipaneled skirt that I started last year, and I have cut out the fabric to make a third skirt from some red-wine coloured material from my stash. I'm surprisingly happy with the multipanneled skirt - I designed it based on my regular skirt pattern, and didnt really expect it to work as prevously I havent had much success at modifying or making my own patterns. I love the pink and green colours together.



On the knitting front I've been making some progress with the baby rug - only have 1 and a half strips to go now before I can start assembling it :-)
Some new clear plastic stamps that I bought on ebay arrived this week too ("Mindscapes" by Inkadinkado), so I sat down an made a small stash of 7 cards for various birthdays etc in the next few weeks. So all in all I'm very happy with my crafty efforts for the new year, let's see if I can keep it up :-)

2011 - the year of craftiness? :-)

My craft projects seemed to sit on the backburner a lot during the last year - probably not surprisingly since I moved house twice in 2010, submitted my PhD thesis at last, and started a brand new research project in the lab at work...
However I have decided that my new years resolution for 2011 is to make more time to do crafty things, and hopefully complete a few more projects, and try not to stress quite so much! ;-) That's the plan anyway :-)

So to prepare for 2011, I went back through my stash of half-finished projects to see what I could try to finish off, and if any of them should be un-ravelled and re-invented as something better. So I will be continuing with 1) the garter stitch wrap top, 2) the little baby blanket, 3) the sea green scarf. I will un-ravel the 1-skein snuggle scarf that I was making with some lovely yarn that my friend Kira dyed for me, and choose a better pattern to show off the beautiful wool.



Since today in South Australia it is 43C - way too hot to do anything much, I did a quick dash to spotlight to get some more yarn (I have a whole drawer full of yarn to choose from at home but somehow can't resist buying more hahaha). I chose some 4ply 100% wool called 'Bella Baby Sugar' which I am hoping to use to make a 'Baby Acacia' dress. This will be my first attempt at knitting on circular needles (hopefully not too different to normal knitting?). The pattern is absolutely gorgeous and is available from Tikki's blog.

Pictures show current status of the various projects mentioned above.

Knitted wrap top

I'm trying a new pattern out at the moment. It's for a garter stitch wrap top that you knit all in one piece - it looks very pretty and hopefully not beyond my skill level! :-) I'll post some pics when I've progressed a bit further with the project! The pattern is from a book called 'Simple knits for cherished babies' by Erika Knight, p.61

Here's a photo of the wrap top in progress (27-02-2011).

Dinner Napkins

Today I went fabric shopping to get material to make a skirt and also some dinner napkins as I'm over using the paper ones. I found some nice fabric that is a chocolate stripy jacquard material. I made 6 napkins from 1m of material, cut out as 40 cm x 40 cm squares with 5 cm hems. I'm pretty happy with how they turned out :-) I think the only thing I would do differently if I was making them again is making them slightly larger.