Saturday 21 September 2013

Family slippers

Here they are.

three pairs of crochet house slippers
Pleasing pile of alpaca



Half of them at least.

crochet slippers
Imagine this picture with 7 pairs. *sigh
And you have to trust me that the other half were delivered because I handed them over, and then remembered to photograph them.

In a bad case of Absolutely not Learning My Lesson About Furry Yarn, I tried to make myself a pair in this.
Moda vera flurry in teal
Moda Vera Flurry. Feels nice around my toes, nasty on the hook.
 Once again, couldn't read the stitches and failed to count them accurately so I have no hope in hades of  replicating the one sad little slipperish shaped object that is slumped in a heap at the bottom of my crochet bag.


Cath kiston knitting bag ball of moda vera flurry
Sulky flurry rodent.

Friday 20 September 2013

Turns out i can(dle)

Look what I made.


chistening candle handmade baptism personalised
waxed faffage

Making christening candles is far out of my handmaking comfort zone, and frankly not anything I am the least bit interested in repeating (I don't think. However...)

It seems to me a bit odd and frankly a little grim to burn a picture of your loved one. But convention is as convention does, and I was darned if I was going to pay some other sucker to make the silly thing.

Basically, I went through a range of contortions and tricks to get the photo onto tissue paper, position it on the candle, wrap it in waxed paper, and apply heat. Easier said than done, much ink and wax everywhere.

How this actually works is that the surface of the wax melts, soaks into the tissue and then hardens again. There is no ink transfer as such, and the waxed paper is only there hold the tissue evenly and smoothly against the candle.

I wish one of the many many DIY tutorials I read had explained this, because I spent  a great deal of time searching for waxed paper, and eventually gave in and bought greaseproof on the the offchance.

I know the two are different, and can't often be substituted, but in this case they can. Just so you know...

I'm not entriely convinced it won't go up in a ball of flame if it burns down to the tissue (assuming the ribbon and sticky diamantes don't do the job), but I doubt I'll ever find out (see above: squeamishness as incinerating face of small child).

Thursday 19 September 2013

Simple little blanket

Well, not as simple as it could have been. The rick rack was frankly a bit of a faff, and is discouragingly wonky.
handmade blanket wrap rickrack
Simple little flannel blanket. Hah!

corner closeup handmade rick rack flannel blanket
Discouragingly wonky

 But Boygoblin likes it, (more to do with the diggers than the handiwork, truth be told) and it keeps his splint safe, so, job done.


articulated AFO on handmade flannel blanket
The racing boot. And a definite vehicle theme.