7/31, Crafty Me - Colour Tipped Scarf

And the award for the most awkward picture goes to.... me! Believe me, the other 2 shots were worse.

You know when you want some colour but you don't want a busy print and you don't want anything too bright and you just want to keep it understated so that your cats eye leopard print sunnies can steal the show and you realise that you're probably a bit too picky and maybe you overthink things like scarves sometimes? You get me? Yep. Well this is the scarf for those days. 

This was a really easy knit that was super quick and satisfying and it's really easy to wear. It's all the right shades of all the right colours and is the perfect throw it on and go kind of scarf (I am aware that no one would actually believe that I'm a throw it on and go kinda girl after I opened with that ramble). In real life the red is richer and darker and kind of redder? I like it. 5 stars, purl bee, 5 stars. 

Ravelry deets and the same awkward picture here.

Crafty Me 6/31 - Tiny Dinosaur

This one is old and I really must get better at recording these things, especially when they're related to dinosaurs. I made this costume for Pai for her 4th birthday, back in April using a pattern lent to me by one of her former preschool teachers. The pattern allows for all sorts of modifications (bear/lion/mouse) but it's from the early 90's from what I can tell and it all smells a bit too much of my own childhood. That combined with Pai's dedication to all things dinosaur, made it an easy choice.

I love handmade gifts and I love the idea of making from scratch, buying as little as possible brand-new and those nice things but let's be real. I need sleep too much to be one of those mamas. I'm not being a hater, if you want to make all your children's toys from nothing but a toothpick and blu-tack then go right ahead. All I'm saying is that despite the fact that I like to make stuff, I work full time and so 9 times out of 10, I'm going to choose sleep over lovingly hand stitching "made by mum" labels into the collars of clothing I made with my own bare hands.

Here's some photographic evidence that I made something that my kid really likes. She is wearing dinosaur slippers on her feet in a public place because I cannot say no to a kid in a dinosaur costume.

mid rawr

Til next time, I'm going to go make stuff to bed now.

5/31 - Crafty me. Kid bear cowl hood thing

So this is pretty freaken cute. A cowl, with a hood, with ears. Am I right in saying that adding animal ears to anything makes it automatically 77% cuter?

After an unexpected bereavement on R's side of the family, I found myself packing Edie's bag for a flight to Te Wai Pounamu, or the South Island of NZ. It's cold down there and as I folded teeny tees and underpants I realise my poor neglected child didn't have an appropriate winter hat. We had a too-small leftover from the year before and a couple of other cute numbers that I loved and Edie did not and so I decided to whip this up using a pattern purchased via ravelry and wool I had lying around (hoping that what I had was enough because running out of wool when I'm 90% finished a project is pretty much the story of my crafting life).

Edie likes it, wears it (the true test of success is whether contrary preschoolers accept or moodily reject finished projects) and only sometimes throws it aside in annoying places. -like that time we dropped off our rental car and were heading towards departures to check in for our flight home and I notice she wasn't wearing her hood. It was still in the rental car and Edie didn't mention that she left it behind because "she wasn't actually very cold".

Ravelry deets here.

Crafty Me 3/31 - dual tone cowl

A finished thing!  Are you proud? This one has actually been complete for a few weeks and I've managed it wear it multiple times without taking any pictures.  Crafty blogger fail.

Anyway, here are some crappy cellphone pictures of Edie in my new cowl (crappy cell pics are fast becoming a theme here, hmm). I was wearing it but there was another sun shiny "downpour" on our 3 block walk home so I handed it over, as one does when their precious child fears sustaining a drop of water on the head

Today my smallest offspring has a teacher only day which is preschool teacher code for "we have so much power we can pull the rug out from under your feet whenever we want don't ever forget it new staff induction and mihi whakatau be damned". But truthfully, I love Pai's daycare and her teachers and actually I just wish that the working world was a bit easier on parents.

So all that to say that after a brief adventure to mama's mahi, the small kid and I have the day ahead of us with out any plans. Which is a lie actually. First we have to get the 4 year check and vaccinations done and THEN the day is our oyster.

I think that post jab, we're going to need lollie pops (both) and cookies (her) and hot caffienated beverages (me). Once these needs have been met there's a high chance of craft on the horizon. Ooh! That reminds me, last night I finished a blanket that was 11 months in the making. I'll save sharing that glorious moment for another post.

Let's look at my scarf again shall we? Also: Ravelry deets here.

Crafty me 4/31 - The blanket

This one deserves a moment of silence for the momentus occasion that is its completion... (everyone else paused here, right?) aaaand let's continue. This is the project I began when I started my full time job last year. 

It's no secret that I'm a bus crafter, I like to have a commuters project on me for my 40 minute bus ride at each end of my work day. This blanket, however quickly became too large to be taken on my daily ride and so after a good start (such energy!  Such intention! Such a short attention span!) It became something of a drag. I'd pick it up and work a few rows while watching a movie but often found other important things  my hands needed to do (like eat popcorn, priorities) that impeded my progress. To consider making a blanket as large as this as a first blanket is probably not the smartest thing when you are quick to give your love to new smaller projects. I'm a sucker for the gratification that comes with a quick easy pattern and so my relationship with this blanket was very troubled with much on again/off again.

which makes this finished product one of my absolute favourites. It's beautiful and it shows I have stick-at-it-ness. If that's not a win-win I don't know what is.

Let's have a look at her shall we?

2/31 DIY Needle Felted Pom-Poms - A Kinda Tutorial

We live in one of those houses that has a LOT of white walls. This is mostly cool with me, white is a good base to decorate and add colour to and it looks nice and bright. The one (teeny tiny) part of this whare that I'm not a fan of is the toilet ( we're talking about a separate toilet and bathroom here). It's a litte white cell with no character or personality and because it's tucked away at the back of the house we've pretty ignored much it (apart from the obvious necessities). It gets cleaned and used and that's about it. 

I decided to try and make this yucky little claustrophobia-inducing space a little bit pretty. The beginning is this pom-pom garland but I have a few more ideas (brightly coloured crochet lace curtains and some kind of wall art perhaps).

As I do with most things, I figured this out as I went along and hoped for the best.  It really was the quickest, easiest afternoon project, I didn't have to restart it a single time!

If you're familiar with needle felting already then you probably don't need a how-to but if you're not here's a quick run down of how I made my garland. Be warned, this is the cheap, figure it out as you go along guide to making felt pom-poms. If you want a proper tutorial with pictures and correct official instructions and terminology, I suggest you go put those words into a search engine because I don't do those things here. Disclaimer aside, here we go: 

1. Take your needle felting needle, which probably has a proper name but I'm not one for technical terms when you all know what I mean anyway. Needle felting needles look like this and are really sharp. Don't go poking yourself in the fingertip with these ones if you can avoid it.
2. Take your needle felting wool, which again, has a proper name that I don't know. It looks like this but you really only need to grab off a little bit of it, don't use a whole big bunch like in those images.
3. Take a large piece of foam or sponge to put under your work - this helps to avoid stabbing yourself with those sharp needles I mentioned.
4. Roll your wool into a vaguely round shaped ball and start stabbing at it with your needle. Needle felting needles have little grooves on the sides of them which catch the wool fibres and kind of mix them and smash them all together to create this wonderfully dense felted thing. 
5. You'll notice as you go that the more you stab, the denser the area gets so you're going to want to roll your work around in your hand so that you can stab it evenly all over for an even, smooth surface. 
6. If your pom-pom is feeling a little small, or a bit lopsided, tear off some more of that felting wool and place it against the part of your work you want to join it to and stab some more. The stabbing will again, mash those fibres up into one lovely mess of a thing that is hopefully looking circular by now. If not, stab where you want it to shrink and add more wool where you want it to grow. Stab more to smooth it all out. 
7. Repeat until you have a nice pile of felted pom poms to make into a garland. I made 9 in navy and purple because those are the colours I had sitting around. 
8. When your pom poms are stabbed to satisfaction (very therapeutic this needle felting thing, hey?), thread a needle (a regular hand sewing or darning needle) with the yarn or thread of your choosing (or whatever you have lying around, like me) and push that sucker through the centre of your pom-poms. 
9. You can knot the space in the thread next to your pom-poms if they don't feel snug enough to stay put but mine didn't need this so I skipped it. 

And you're done! Super quick, super easy and super likely to make all the felting gurus out there cringe a whole bunch. I think if there was a needle felting god, I would totally be banned from needle felting heaven because of my sins against wool fibre crafts.

About 31

Whether or not anyone has noticed or not, I thought I'd share what the 31 project thing is all about. If not for nothing else than to get it clear inside my head. So here's the run down

• I turn 31 this year. In September. I am completely comfortable with this. I'm mostly not scared of ageing and feel better in my 30 year old skin than I ever did at 21. 

• In June last year I was a full-time Stay at Home Maker. I had 2 busy online stores and stocked multiple shops as well. I was always creating.

• I went to work outside the home in July.

• After starting my new job and once our family had adjusted to the massive upheaval that it was, I had mega makers burnout. I was uninspired and lacked any kind of motivation to be creative

• Now, 9 months later I'm ready to be creative again but I still need to push myself at times to make it happen. I get enormous satisfaction from making stuff but between 2 kids, a full time job, study (I study te reo Māori and attend night classes) and a partner, creativity gets pushed aside all of the times out of 10.

I decided during my (wonderful, wonderful) 10 day holiday break in January that I was going to get my craft on in 2015 and the idea of completing 31 projects before 31 seemed achievable (seemed being a key word here). Being creative is where I find my shiny happy (not the only place I find it but yeah) so I decided to make it a priority for myself.

And that's it, 31 before 31. That's the plan anyways...