New York!

I have just returned from a fantastic week in New York! I have never been to NYC before, and I was quite surprised how much I loved the time I spent in this city compared to any other city I've visited in the US before. The city is full of amazing architecture - old buildings and cobbled streets mixed in with ultra modern skyscrapers. It was the perfect time to visit too, as all the spring flowers were just starting to bloom - terrace gardens, curbside flower boxes and parks were full of daffodils, tulips and many other bulbs, and there were numerous streets and parks lined with gorgeous trees covered in magnolia or cherry blossoms. I spent most of the time in NYC attending and presenting at a science conference which was amazing, followed by a couple of days free time to explore the city. I spent a lot of my free time walking the streets, sometimes with a specific destination in mind, other times just wandering where ever my feet took me, taking in the general feel of the city. Some of the highlights for me were: Central Park (beautiful place), the view from the top of the Rockefeller building, seeing the Lion King in a Broadway theatre overlooking Time Square, the Chelsea Markets (gourmet cheeses, breads, meats, chocolates, coffee, seafood....mmm food heaven), the Highline (elevated old railway line converted to walking path and gardens with views over the city and the dock lands), the Met Museum, the Explorer's Club headquarters....I also visited one of the most awesome craft shops ever, "Purl Soho" (associated with the Purl Bee blog), which was just full of every imaginable colour of beautiful hand-dyed wool, and quilting fabric etc. I could have spent all day (and a lot of money) in that shop. I selected a few really lovely yarns (merino and silk blends) which I can hardly wait to start knitting something special with.
The time passed so quickly in New York, leaving me with still many things to see and do and eat, so hopefully I will return there at some point and take up where I left off this time. Here's a few photos from my wanderings in NYC.

An outfit for baby Eliza

Over the last few months I have been working on a couple of knitting projects to make an outfit for my friend Hannah's baby who was due early March. Baby Eliza has now entered the world, and hopefully both Eliza and her mum will like the little shoes and matching beanie :-)
Now they have received the outfit I can share it on my craft blog :-) The shoes were made following an online pattern: Saartje's bootees www.saartjeknits.nl and the beanie was made following a pattern in a book I have called "Simple knits for cherished babies" by Erika Knight.

Since my last post I have also finished knitting a scarf for a birthday present that I will be giving in the near future, also started making another scarf (this one is for me), and also started knitting some little baby projects using some of the beautiful hand-painted wool that Hannah sent me earlier this year from Purl Soho in New York. Pictures of these projects will be posted soon. :-)

A new bag

I made a new shoulder bag today. It is fully reversible so I made the two sides in contrasting fabric: blue with gold flowers, and gold with blue flowers. I've made a few of these bags over the last five years or so...they are just a very handy size & easy to make, and very comfy with the wide strap so you can cart everything you could possibly want with you without the strap cutting into your shoulder. The pattern was kindly given to me by a lovely crafty lady from the Big Sur mountains in California. If you want to see some of her work check out her etsy store Coast Mountain Crafts.

My first quilt top finished!

I have now finished the top layer of my first quilt (see photos above). I am pretty happy with how it has progressed especially for my first attempt at making a quilt! Now I need to choose a backing fabric, binding fabric and the padding for the middle and figure out how to put the whole quilt 'sandwich' together. My little helpers were actively involved in a lot of the quilt making, which was obviously quite exhausting for them (see photo below).

Starting my first quilting project!

Back in January 2011 I was all inspired to start getting into quilting...and I bought a couple of great looking books about making quilts and my first 'jelly roll' of quilt fabric on ebay. Finally, a year later I have started making my first quilting project. I'm following the 'bars of gold' pattern from the book called "Jelly Roll Quilts" by Pam and Nicky Lintott and using the 'Wee Woodland' jelly roll fabric described here . Last year I initially had a grand plan to make a king-sized quilt as my first project, but now I have decided to just make a smallish quilt to master the basic techniques first, then work up to doing a massive quilt for our bedroom.

The jelly roll has 40 strips of fabric in it. I have sewn these together in batches of 5 strips each, ironed the seams, then cut 5 x 7inch sections from each of strips. Then the fun part of laying all the pieces on the floor and deciding which order to put them together in to make a nice random pattern. My little "helper" Puss seems happy with this layout (see photo). Next I'll need to stitch the pieces together vertically, and buy some fabric to make the borders and backing and binding etc.

Cushion covers

This weekend started off with picking up a surprise parcel at the post office -  Hannah had sent me a big stash of the most lovely wool, buttons and ribbons from America! The yarn is all 100% merino wool hand-dyed beautiful colours, and the buttons and ribbons match perfectly. What a lovely present! I can't wait to start knitting something with the wool!  I have been trying to finish off a scarf I'm making for a present, once that's done I plan to start making something with the gorgeous new wool. Thanks Hannah! :-)

This weekend I also made 2 new cushion covers - I've had the cushion inserts sitting in a box for years, and the fabric I bought about a year ago but somehow haven't actually sat down to make the covers until now. The  cushion covers are made from a dusky pink-brown striped fabric, so they kind of match our old pink couch set, and also the pink flowers on the other cushion covers I made over a year ago. Here's a photo of Boots surrounded by the cushions this afternoon :-)

Dusting off the sewing machine

This weekend I decided to pull the sewing machine out and have a go at making some cute baby slippers from a fun craft book called "Meet me at Mike's" by Pip Lincolne. I haven't done much sewing in a while, and have never tried to make these baby shoes before so I ended up making a 'trial' pair first, then a much more successful second pair. They look pretty cute. The blue turtle fabric is part of a huge surprise stash of gorgeous Japanese quilting material that my friend Hannah sent me last year. I love all the different Japanese designs, but so far haven't had the time or patience to make a proper quilt. Maybe now I've dusted off the sewing machine to make these slippers I might attempt a small bed quilt or a quilted pillow cover or something like that... :-) This weekend I also made a matching baby bib to go with the slippers. I simply covered the bottom half of a white bib with some more of the turtle fabric, made a hem and sewed around it. Very easy. Together the slippers and bib will be a present for a friend whose baby boy is due later this month.

I also can now post up a photo of another homemade Christmas present. I had an idea of making 'team Teleport' shirts for my brother and his girlfriend to wear on their little junk rig yacht 'Teleport'. I found the boxing kangaroo logo online, and figured out what I'd like the design to look like. Then rather than trying to cross-stitch the design by hand, I asked J's Mum if she would be able to 'digitize' the image and embroider the design using her fancy embroidery machine. She did this and the result was great!  The shirt colour I chose is a dark green to match the hull of their yacht. My brother and his girlfriend said they loved the shirts :-)