Knitted gifts

Last year my husband gave me a copy of Susan B. Anderson's amazing book Itty Bitty Toys.

Itty Bitty Toys is an awesome book. It is very innovative and has a whole chapter of reversible toys - they are just amazing.

Anyway, I finally finished my first project from the book - a little present for my friend over at Hey Bubbles - she had a gorgeous little girl around 6 months ago - so the present was a little bit late! Hopefully it was worth the wait - I made her a set of Susan B. Anderson's Matryoshka dolls. 

Initially I used the wrong sort of wool - I always get a little confused by American patterns, but once I got the right sort of wool, it knitted up beautifully! I had trouble with the little faces because I am not very good at embroidery and I discovered that it is particularly hard to embroider on knitting. But I think it turned out well in the end -

My Dream Etsy Shopping Spree

The lovely folk over at Craft Gossip are putting on a fantastic Etsy shopping spree giveaway

This is my wish list -

This Satchel is very tasty. I am currently in the throes of an obsession with handbags

I'm also very taken with this gorgeous pendant

What a fabulous prize!!

Blog break is officially over

My blog break is now officially over. I am determined to blog again...yay!

I just finished reading the most incredible book -

It is a large book - so a big commitment, but worth every minute I spent reading it. It was even worth the funny looks I got when I was reading it standing up in the train.

Hmm. What else?

Apart from boring illnesses (of which we've had many this year), I have been doing a lot of crafting. I have some photos to upload, which I will do over the next few weeks.

Randomness

Life has been crazy so far this year.....

Along with the usual daily activities, we've had numerous illnesses, some interesting mood swings (from both myself and Little Miss Chingy Pingy) as well as some fun holidays (well mostly fun...).

Here's a short run down of some of the other things I've done in the last couple of months.

Shopping

• Lifeline Book fair - happens twice a year - I love love love it! I went along and bought a lot of books. I've been making my way through them. Sigh - so heavenly! I even managed to get a beautiful illustrated copy of the Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton for Chingy Pingy.
• BrisStyle markets - totally awesome!

Reading

• What I loved by Siri Hustvedt - I really liked this book - really beautiful prose and great suspense. Hustvedt really creates a sense of foreboding through sections of this book.
• Robin Hobb - the Farseer Trilogy and the Tawny Man trilogy - I'm not usually a fantasy reader, but these books had me hooked! I couldn't put them down.

Insomnia

• Partly caused by the Robin Hobb books! It truly sucks not being able to sleep when you know that you'll have to wake up ridiculously early to deal with Chingy Pingy and Mr McGillicuddy.
  

A lot of catching up to do....

I can't believe I haven't posted since December! Pathetic! I will try to do better this year - promise!

The first reason I haven't been posting is because my laptop broke. Dead. Kaput. Never to be used again. That has been seriously cramping my style. Even though I've been lucky enough to borrow my dad's laptop, all my photos are on the old one. My clever DH managed to copy all my data from the dead laptop, but all of this has contributed to my lack of blogging action.

The second reason I haven't posted much was Christmas. You could say I overestimated how much crafting I could complete. I had to ditch around 5 projects and go on an emergency shopping trip two days before Christmas.

But here are some pictures of the things I did manage to finish making -

some pencil rolls




A wrist bag from Aranzi Aronzo's Cute Stuff


The pencil rolls were really easy! It helped that I used home furnishing material, so I didn't have to iron on any interfacing.

The wrist bag was surprisingly tricky. I had no idea that it would be so hard to sew a curve with the sewing macine.

I did make a couple of other things...but haven't taken photos, so they will have to wait for the next installment!