Wordless Wednesday

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My Crazy Chaotic Crochet Space

I need some focus. I’m going batty with ideas. I am crazy for crochet right now. Ever since I learnt how to crochet and discovered the possibilities of it, I have felt like a woman obsessed. Every spare moment has been spent hooking or at least thinking about it. And this week there have been far too many crochet projects started. Fixing the blanket and Maya’s little dress were the first but now I’ve got so many things on the go I can’t keep up with them all. Now I’m not one of those freaky people who finish one project before they start another. Oh no I’m quite the opposite. I have half started projects everywhere. And it’s not that I get bored with those projects, it’s that I’m excited to start new ideas. I just feel a little out of control with the amount of projects I’ve started. I feel like I’m in crochet chaos. It doesn’t help that I find books at the oppy filled with patterns I want to crochet. It also doesn’t help that I find so much inspiration when I read your blogs and get so many ideas I want to try. I am the sort of person that needs to get started on an idea right away rather than note it for later, otherwise I loose the enthusiasm and excitement for it. So, much of my time has been spent poking about inside my big doona bag full of yarns, sifting through trying to find the perfect balls. Trying to find colours that match other colours. Trying to find balls bigger than scraps. Crocheting lots of samples. Unravelling half of them ‘cos I don’t have enough of the yarn to “waste” on a sample. Then yesterday afternoon I went and purchased more wool yarn for yet another couple of projects that I hope to start working on soon.

Will this craziness ever end?

I hope your creative spaces aren’t quite so chaotic and a bit more focussed than mine!

(This is the one crochet thing I actually finished. It’s a hat the looks ridiculous on me but gee doesn’t it make a fantastic vessel?)

A bit about me…

I have seen these Sunshine Awards floating around blogworld for ages and now I am a recipient! Thank you Brenda! (at Mira Narnie) Thank you for giving me the opportunity to tell a little about myself. Here is my 7-things-you-may-not-know-about-me list:

1. After 13 years being together, 8 of those years engaged, we are still not married. There have been far more exciting things to do like produce 2 beautiful children.

2. I had a stroke at the age of 27 about 7 years ago (just so you can work out how old I am!)

3. I work as a GIS Analyst (when I go back after maternity leave) and I studied Cartography at uni. (GIS = Geographic Information Systems and Cartography = map making)

4. If I’m not the first in bed every night, I get grumpy, feel uncomfy and have trouble sleeping.

5. I used to be a fairly organised person until the kids came along.

6. My mum’s middle name is Joy, my middle name is Joy and my daughter’s middle name is Joy.

7. I love the sunshine and follow it about as it moves throughout the day, particularly in winter. And of course summer is my favourite season.

Now to fulfil my obligation for receiving a Sunshine Award, I have to pass it on to some of my favourite blogs. A pretty difficult task when you follow so many blogs and I’m sure many of my favourites have already received this. Anyway here are just 5 of them:

Melissa at Clothwork

Tina at Tinkerbell’s Treehouse

Tracey at Bountifully

Laura Mitchell

Made of Cloth

Flea Market Finds

Just because I have been silent the last few Sundays does not mean I haven’t been bargain hunting. I have been hunting and I have found stuff, but it wasn’t until this week that I was excited to share it with you and play along with Flea Market Finds.

During our visit to the in-laws, we had the opportunity to visit a few country oppies (without the children – thanks J&B) and boy have they come up with the goods!

My favourite find was hiding high up on the top shelf. First it was the colour and then I spotted the price…far out…$2!?!? The lady told me it was $2 because it was old and a bit scuffed up! I really don’t care! How good is it to see Maya taking an early interest in vintagey stuff!

Anyway luckily I found the case ‘cos I needed it to hold all these gorgeous fabrics and wool I collected. Fabric scraps, sheets, pillowcases, tablecloths, curtains, upholstery samples… you can never have too much fabric… until you can’t close the cases or the cupboards I guess!

Then there were the books. The Crochet Book published by the Australian Wool Corporation has some fantastic 80’s patterns that I can’t wait to try. Of course there were more Little Golden books to add to the ever growing collection and Sean found a couple more Enid Blyton books to add to his collection.

And lastly there was this little white wicker shelf which will be perfect for displaying softies on my stall … after a bit of a clean up and coat of new paint.

There was more stuff than this though. I just haven’t photographed it. There was the $1 single bed wool blanket destined to be used inside a quilt, the hessian I’ll use to teach Khye how to sew, more self cover buttons, the lovely original painting complete with falling apart frame and the beautifully soft lambswool jumper for making more softies.

Hope you had a good bargain hunting week too!

My Creative Space

It's all been about vintage sheets for me lately. Washing, ironing, measuring, ripping, folding, stacking,

arranging,

rearranging,

and restacking.

And now my vintage sheet fat quarters...

...are ready for the big swap!

More Creative Spaces here.

My Creative Space

Now that the first Sugar & Spice Children’s Market is over, which by the way was fantastic and Ali did a great job organising it, there is once again time for finishing and starting more fun creative stuff. And the first project I finished this week was Maya’s little dress.

I had lots of fun making this, my first crochet project. There was no pattern. I made it up as I went along and used one of Maya’s existing dresses for the armhole shape and for size. I learnt heaps about crocheting, in particular how it is so much quicker and easier than knitting! Yay ‘cos I am the slowest, most uncoordinated knitter in the world.

I love the cotton yarn I bought from the oppy and three balls were just enough to finish the dress. I have only about 1 or 2 metres of yarn left over! When I was making the dress I was thinking I would sew the shoulders together but then realised it wouldn’t go over Maya’s head. So I decided to use buttons and loops to close the shoulders. I was going to use an embroidered doily to make a pocket, but instead used it to cover a couple of the self cover buttons I scored from the oppy recently. I love how the dress has turned out, I love the buttons and now I love crochet!

The other fun creative thing I’ve been up to this week is planning and stitching my postcard for the Great Big Stitched Postcard Swap. I’m running a little late but hopefully it’ll be finished this week and on it’s way to my swap partner in the US soon. I don’t have any photos of the work in progress but it is based on this photo I took a few years ago. Do you know what it is? I’ll explain and show the finished postcard later once it is finished and has been received in the US!

More Creative Spaces over here at Kootoyoo.

My Creative Space

My creative space has been very busy this week catching up after the flu last week rendered me useless for a whole three days. Luckily Khye was in care for two of those days and my wonderful mum came to stay and help out with Maya. She got up at 4:30am to catch the 5:30am train just to get here by about 8:45am! Thanks for your fantastic help mum.

Since recovering from those horrid fevers, chills, joint pain and head aches, I’ve been flat out preparing stacks of softies for the Sugar & Spice Children’s Market. There’s the usual herds of elephants, bales of turtles, towers of giraffes, flights of birds, and now a new parliament of owls,and a new colony of bunnies.
If you're near Woodend this Sunday, come and visit me and my menagerie of spunkee softies - we'd love to see you!

Sugar & Spice Children’s Market
St Ambrose Hall, Woodend
Sunday June 20
10am – 2pm
Free Entry

Shadow Shot Sunday

We had a very brief moment of gorgeous sunrise light during the week. It illuminated my sewing space beautifully and created some fantastic shadows.

More shadows over at Hey Harriet.

Opping the blues away

Friday was a freezing, foggy day and I didn’t want to face the thought of spending the afternoon saying “Khye get off Maya” and “Khye don’t pull Maya’s fingers” and “Khye take the blanket off Maya” and then finally cracking it with frustration “Khye just leave Maya alone”!!!!!! I’m sure I sound like a broken record and that he doesn’t even hear me anymore. But that’s another story for another time … sigh ... So anyway I packed up my winter blues, my hopes for a peaceful afternoon (and my cash) and took a little trip to a couple of neighbouring little towns to visit their fantastic country oppies. And rather than enjoy the afternoon on our own I invited a friend and her two kids to join us for some op shop fun.

There’s nothing quite like a bit of opping with a friend to cure those gloomy winter blues. Not only did the fog clear, the skies open up and the glorious sunshine warm us, but I found some op shop gold.

First were the brand new, still in packets, never used, all cotton vintage sheets.

Then there was the dear deer that the kids spotted, looked at briefly then returned to the shelf. I couldn’t let her go, particularly seeing as though she was only 50 cents. There were these little golden books. My favourite is the growly bear book, published in the early 60’s, and it’s beautiful illustrations. There were lots of other bits and pieces – fabric, wool, doilies, more books, kids shoes, embroidery hoops, stranded cotton, a kids coat, wire bowl for my market stall and lastly there was this. Oh my how gorgeous! And then to discover it was only 50 cents too!

Thanks AM for coming opping with us. The kids managed to entertain each other and they were even pretty well behaved, except when they ran around the shop shouting and laughing with that huge purple teddy that was bigger than them. The “Pru and Tru” ladies behind the counter weren’t very impressed though, glaring at them disapprovingly over the tops of their glasses!

Anyway hope you all found some op shop gold this week too! Check it out over at Sophie’s.

My Creative Space Full of Discoveries

I’ve discovered a few things this week:

1. My zygo cactus plants have started flowering. 2. The granny rug I fixed last week looks fantastic on Khye’s bed.
3. I can crochet while breastfeeding Maya.
4. The balls of yarn I got from the op shop for her dress were different dyelots.Can you tell? The left looks more blue and the right looks more yellow. Bugger.
5. I discovered I missed 2 rows of crocheting but I’ve ignored it and I don’t think you can tell.
6. Even though my sewing space is tiny, it can be a beautiful place to work in the early mornings.
Unfortunately this gorgeous patch of sunshine only lasted a couple of minutes.

7. If you actually stop blogging and put the crocheting away, you can get lots of sewing and stuffing and handstitching done. There are stacks of softies slowly coming to life for the Sugar & Spice Children’s Market.

Discover more Creative Spaces over at Kootoyoo.