Patient feet

Cosy alpaca toes for the littlest, who also astonished me with his forebearance, allowing mummy to slip his feet in and out of partly completed slippers throughout the hot afternoon. (I think he was actually more tolerant than his mumma.)

Not sure how long these will stay white when goblintoes inhabit them...

 I bought a pattern for the applique alphabet, forgetting that as I'm left-handed, I've had to reverse them all - either working backwards up the pattern, or reverse engineering each letter. 

f is for faff

I've already given up, and all the cousins will be getting stars appliqued on their toes. 

Unseasonal slippers

I must be looking forward to the cooler weather, as I've spent the last week or so as Ive broken up work on the soul eater with hooking up a series of slippers.

I've now got a long list of requests, so here's hoping the mood stays with me, otherwise this could get very tedious indeed.

First up a test pair for me, from the simple cable slipper pattern.  

Cosy alpaca. Perfect for February in Australia.

These are in the most gorgeous, easy to use, and affordable alpaca yarn, sourced from, of all places, Spotlight. On clearance is was only $2 a ball (about 47m) so these sample slippers cost less than $4. 

I used them to test puff paint as a non-slip sole. The result is too ugly for words:

Words fail.

For a start, it never occurred to me that this colour choice would look less like a design decision and more like the innards of a small marsupial.

But, it works, and the stretch paint works best. Obviously. I didn't know it existed until too late.

Next, a jersey pair, better for the climate here. Not sure how comfy they are though. I can't decide.

Jersey slippers are slightly more seasonal. Slightly. 

Then cosy posy toes for DearWife. The pattern is really elegant, with the flowers added as you go. DearWife was extremely patient in surrendering her feet to fittings, allowing me to modify the heel a little as i went. 

The yarn was suprisingly lovely to work with - a cotton weave that is light and firm, but seems to retain its shape.

Pretty toes

Next up, five nephews, one niece, one son, and five assorted in-laws. Simple.

Soul eater

With amazing timing and incredible self-knowledge, I began a large Wool eater blanket at the height of my first Brisbane summer. Apparently the hottest, most humid summer in quite some time.

Daunting pile of blanket

The horrendous, and perfectly obvious thing about blankets in the round is that the closer you get to completion, the longer each round takes. Its like a maths problem from school - something about a frog? Anyway, I'm almost finished, which is to say, there's a way to go.

My state of mind is not helped by the fact that I started one of these a couple of years ago, in amazing candy brights, but the yarn was so horrific to work with I frogged the lot, and, wait for it, threw away the yarn. Yes, it was That Bad. 

Jolly colours. Jolly awful yarn.

Eggspert floristry

I seem to be spending a lot of time covered in poster paints these days as boygoblin likes to make things and at just 2 years old, is not yet to be trusted with needles and hooks. (He does like his threading beads though, so there is hope for the wee thing yet.)


Pretty flowers

This week's project was a bunch of flowers for Dearwife -  he misses her when she's as work.
We had lots of fun mixing colours and splashing about with the paint on the egg cartons.



colourific!



Then, during naptime (thank goodness for naptime) I cut up the egg tray and prepierced the bowls, ready for the pipe cleaners.



Ready for wake-up time



Pretty!


The vase is the box from mini cupcake papers, and Boygoblin picked the mama and baby stickers to decorate it.



any excuse for stickers

This was a cat-warming gift for a friend

Our should that be a housewarming gift for a cat? Not sure.

How is it that he looks smiley when I didn't give him a mouth?

It’s a simple little handsewn feltie, stuffed with crinkly plastic, and long jumpy legs of ribbon.

Looong legs

His toes and back ridges are embroidered in variegated thread (which I hardly ever see the point of, but it works well here.) and he has little yellow French-knot warts.

Warts never looked so good

He’s dangling on a piece of elastic, and jumps quite nicely I think…

Jumping!

Reggie seems to like him in any case...

Planning, and packing, and planning to pack.

Whoa! Life has been a little chaotic recently, in a good way, hence the radio silence.

Below is a post I never got around to posting. You'll see why...
 

We are looking down the barrel of a big, big move in a couple of weeks time, which will entail all of my beautiful Stuff being out of bounds for something like 3 months. Eep.

I've spent an unsatisfying few months not quite finishing things, but getting my WIPs into a parkable state for shipping. Last weekend, while the BoyGoblin had the Biggest Nap Of All Time, I finished the machine sewing on the final project I will make in the UK. I know this is true, because when I was done,  I packed up my machine, removed the needle and foot, and tucked it gently into the corner of Stuff To be Shipped. (Momentuous times call for Many Capitals.)

We ended up with 100 of these.

And it feels pretty momentous, frankly. Never mind that we have spent the last few weeks cleaning shoes, counting CDs, sorting paperwork (essential (to be shipped), irreplaceable (to be flown on our persons) and shreddable (not to be confused with the previous)) and revaluing everything from lithographs to lampshades. The moment I really felt my stomach drop was when I unscrewed the little knob on the machine and removed that needle.

I'm not quite going cold turkey as I’ve already started planning a strategy to keep me crafting throughout. Some projects will need to come on the plane, and others will be stashed in the suitcase. Some wull be stashed in the suitcase and then removed at the last minute in favour of traintracks and sticker books, and posted instead. (Its a tough call, but I think Boygoblin is marginally more cranky than I in the absence of playthings.)



BoyGoblin was quite clear he wanted to come
 in the plane with us, but he did think hard when
his train set was packed for the ship.

Some might think there are better things to plan for (job search? housing? childcare?) but I know better.

Bobbin huggers

I use a plastic box to store my machine threads in, which means I end up with bucketloads of bobbins rolling around carrying identical looking white thread – that is not identical!

Rather than risk the Dark Forces of Mechanical Wrath that ensue when the wrong thread is loaded into my usually sweet tempered sewing machine, I have spent a lot of time unwinding bobbins, and wasting oodles of thread.

Enter the bobbin-hugger, designed to keep a bobbin snuggly cuddled up to its mother-reel.

A button, a toothpick, two seedbeads and a bit of elastic is all you need. Oh, and some glue.



The materials are almost as pleasing as the result.

So, so simple, and so, so pleasing.

It looks like a bit of an ugly duckling...



...but works perfectly (and looks a bit nicer in use.)

You could use the toothpicks to hang the pairs on the wall, like a shed storage system. Ooh, the organsiational possibilities are endless... (but mine are still rolling around in that box).