The hills are alive... with 50mph winds!

Today I went up Arthur's seat to be blown away by the wind, and on the way up I saw this lovely rainbow which you can just about see in the photo.

Rescue Mission

Tomorrow it is my Dad's birthday, and after his family, cake and honey the number one thing my dad loves is his allotment emporium. Originally he started off by tending my Mum's secret allotment, his empire grew to 7 at one point (helping other people set up and tend theirs) but now cares mainly for 2 charity plots for Autistic adults and his own.

But sadly, he has been very busy the past year setting up the charity plots and recovering a few dying allotments and so his own has been left to suffer. Therefore, for his bir

thday I decided we should spend a day doing what he loves and rescue it!

This is the before....

Poor sad allotment, I couldn't tell what was supposed to be here for quite a while. And this is half an hour later just as we went in to escape the sudden downpour.

We then did the second best task at the allotment, which is to sit in the shed making tea and sandwiches and talking nonsense. The idea was to wait until the rain went off, but it never did! So i cunningly suggested we should clean the poly tunnel instead.

As you can see, it's in a bit of a state. If I'd have taken this picture a week earlier you would have seen sweetcorn plants bending over and growing along the roof they were so tall!

We had a lot of rubbish so we made somewhere to put it, it's still undecided whether this is a compost bin or somewhere to dry out material for burning... we daftly but tomato plants in there and they are not good for compost...

So here is our invention with a swinging door! Ultimate recycling, i think these palettes where supposed to be for fencing but they have been there for months doing nothing. They look much happier now they have a purpose in life.

Our speedy work was then interrupted by thirst and Arthur (national newcomer champion!) so we had a (lengthy) chat about compost and welding, then went to get refreshment in the form of more tea and a biscuit in the shed.

If you have ever seen the movie "Grow Your Own" you will agree that it is very accurate as to it's depiction of allotment odd-bods, if you haven't seen it, DO!

How I turned an old skirt into a new bag!

I had this skirt. This wonderful skirt that once was a wardrobe favourite and has since fallen into disuse. I had kept it for months because I couldn't bare losing it with all those beautiful colours! But I never wore it because I don't have anything to match anymore.

I tried to give it to a charity shop, I really did but some things just can't be parted with. So instead, having been inspired by a few refashionista articles, I made my self a new book bag for when I go back to Uni in a few weeks time.

I knew what I wanted to do, but actually figuring out a design took me a surprisingly long time, the main problem was that this skirt flared out a fair bit, and therefore I couldn't cut out a flat piece of fabric from it to make the bag body. I attempted to cheat by smoothing it out every way I could think of but in the end I had to suck it up and undo the seams of each panel (painful!) and sew them back together to make a flat fab

ric. The thought of ripping out all that thread made me want to scream, but once I'd made the decision it wasn't as emotionally draining as I'd thought it would be and I actually found myself enjoying this task! It also meant I had a chance to use the zipper from the side of the waist, I had hoped I could salvage this. I don't have a good zipper selection round here so when a cool one comes my way it's too precious to waste!

Next, after much thought as to what shape the bag would be and how i would construct and reinforce the handles I decided to go for a very simple rectangle big enough to get a couple of textbooks into and sewed up the edges nice and tight. It started to look like a bag!

I had bought this dotty fabric from my local fabric heaven for 40p. It was the last 50cm of the roll and was so beautiful I couldn't leave it there (especially not for 40p!) when I new it would come in handy somewhere along the line. Fortunately for me not only are the colours a perfect match, but it was also the perfect size to line my bag and make a handle! So I whipped this up nice and quickly! I also made a quick little zipper pouch using the original skirt zipper which I sewed onto the lining fabric to keep my keys and phone safe.

The strap is just a simple tube of leftover lining material which i then pinned in between the outer and the inner fabric where the side seams where. Two lines of stitching later and a quick reinforce of the bag straps and it's good to go! 

After all the effort I put into this bag, I am so glad I didn't get rid of that skirt. 

Now I can wear it forever!

Disaster breeds innovation!

Today, after the second bread baking disaster within one 24 hour period, I decided I needed to so some crafting to wake myself up. I have so many unfinished projects (they even have their own special draw these days) that i decided they HAD to be finished.

I wombled over to my sewing machine to finish making my bunting. I had to do a lot of ironing and pinning and even more faffing trying to post string through the ribbon loop to get it done, but now that it is finished, it looks really cool! I'll get some photos of it once I've cleaned my bedroom/makers heaven enough to be able to uncover the camera. (Actually, that reminds me I still haven't unpacked my suitcase yet from my People to People tour... So THAT'S where all my clothes are!)

I still haven't decided what to make for my neighbours to celebrate their new delivery into this world (a baby boy!) I keep going from jumper, to hat and mits, to baby blanket, do I knit it or do I sew it?? Basically I'm in a creative code red. I got a book from the library the other day about quilting and patchwork so obviously I'm dying to get to grips with my sewing machine... but on the other hand I can't buy any new materials because I promised myself I wouldn't until I had dramatically depleted what I already have!

Dilemma aside, I figure a good way to use up the yarn is to make cushion covers. They are a nice easy way to use up lots of yarn in a functional yet cool way. So I put in a punch card into the machine to kill two birds by figuring out how this very useful feature of the knitting machine works and use up extra yarn! It is very snazzy indeed! But knitting 130 stitches and 200 rows on this machine is positively exhausting. I'm going to end up looking like Popeye because I tend to use my right arm all the time to move the carriage... Even at the loosest tension it doesn't seem to make it any easier today hmm...

Well, what with it being such a nice day outside I might just have to pause from my epic "project finishing" mission for a little bit and maybe start something new.... crochet sounds fun...

People to People People

Now, I'm not going to make excuses I'm going to write down what I've been up to!

First of all, there were an awful lot more scarves to make and they have finally been sent off to China! (As of yesterday actually). Bad news is that due to swine flu the volunteer group can't actually visit Mongolia... So instead they will be in nearby (ish) Beijing and the scarves etc will be sent on to them. This makes getting pictures of the kids somewhat difficult and possibly impossible.... There is the potential for a future trip though, so hopefully I'll get to see the smiling faces of children with warm hands necks and heads at some point!

Once the final shipment of scarves was out of the way I had a day or two to pack for my P2P delegation. (An american organisation that takes student ambassadors on educational trips around the world). They get to go to some awesome places, my trip lasted 18 days and we started in Ireland, moved through Wales, England, France, Belgium and Holland. I have absolutely no pictures as I was always busy phoning ahead to restaurants or trying to figure out where I was on the various maps I had which showed no knowledge of there being many hundreds of side roads that quite clearly existed in reality! So I finally arrived home (my liverpool home that is) on monday 6th absolutely knackered and since then I have been in a state of suspension i think. Not much is happening in my brain right now and I've achieved very little other than managing to drag myself back to Edinburgh last Sunday.

Since getting back here, I have managed to plant 2 blackcurrant bushes and one Gooseberry bush as well as retrieve a rose from my little, slightly abused, garden. As well as embark on a personal knitting project which is a pair of fingerless flap mittens. I'll get a picture up as soon as I've unpacked the camera from my suitcase which is still lying on the floor perfectly full of clothes and travel paraphernalia. They are really rather nice mittens!

Long time no see...

It's been a very long time since I've logged anything down, but for good reason! I've been very busy. 

The only project I've worked on properly has been the Charity Knitting for Mongolia project (I pumped out another 5 scarves this morning on the knitting machine!) but I've done a random bit of jewellery work, felting and silly magnet making from the eco-fi I bought some time ago.

I think first thing's first is the eco-fi! I was really excited when this turned up, just look at it! It colours couldn't be any more thrilling if it tried (I know, OTT). But I did that thing were you think "wow it's here! Yay! Now what?" So I just fooled around making some magnets. The original idea was to make magnets that kids could play with on the fridge so things like zoo animals, underwater scenes, garden creatures etc. So I started with a bee (yes, I haven't put the wings, legs or antennae on yet)

Then with some fruit (a strawberry and a kiwi fruit)

And also a clown fish for good measure. I think I'll carry on with the fruit theme, and maybe try to modify the bee a little bit. This would be really good if I could perfect a reasonably easy to produce but cute looking bee design because then they could be sold with my Dad's honey and beeswax candles! I also want to try to make some birds like owls, robins, blue birds, doves...

Next thing I want to share is my button jewellery. Sadly, I left my favourite bits at home. I'll put them up when I get them back, but I still really loved making these. This was very improve, I was so taken by an idea that I couldn't bare to wait and buy some findings, so I used staples instead! Which work really well actually, and look a bit different.

I had a bit of a felting mishap this week, I got really far to vigourous with a new (very large very pointy) felting needle and put it straight through my finger in a moment of utter stupidity. That stopped me knitting for a couple of days because it was right on the tip of my pointing finger... But nevermind, I got some very cute little critters out of the experience. They all escaped without being bled on too which was lucky!

Finally, the Charity Knitting. The deadline is looming and unfortunately I head off to my summer job tomorrow so I can't do much more knitting until I get back. But here is the fruit of my recent labour.

Northern Lights

I was given a skein of Kaffe Fassett's 100% lambswool Colourscape yarn in "Northern Lights" by my boyfriend's Mum for christmas last year, and have spent the last 5 months trying to figure out what to do with it. I wanted to avoid a traditionally "easy knit" because it was such a special yarn.

Naturally, it spent those first five months in the bottom of a draw collecting dust whilst I waited for inspiration to hit.

Finally, it hit me! But it wasn't quite the plan I was expecting, it was more like one of those plans that smack you in the face and seem brilliant for about the first hour (like clearing out all the kitchen cupboards and reorganising them- I've only tried this a few times, but I still feel like it might happen again one day), and then you think hmmm... Now that I can't avoid stopping because I've dug myself too deep down and therefore HAVE to finish, was this such a good plan afterall?

I had decided that I would stop being so pretentious and trying to think of something marvellously complicated to do (that I would probably never have finished) and I would take the easy route out.... I knit a scarf.

Worse than that, it wasn't even a vaguely difficult scarf... No cables, no fair isle motif, not even ribbing!! I made a scarf (far) taller than myself, and I didn't even purl.... not once...

Yep, Garter stitch.

So what do I think? I think it's amazing! The yarn itself is so special and has such exciting colours that by making it too fancy I think I would have ruined the effect! Plus, I found out part way through that the yarn thickness changes, so it would have made a fancy pattern look daft.

The photos don't really do the yarn justice but I tried to get decent ones. Now I have something useful (very useful in Scotland), in really cool colours that is super soft and warm, and is made from something I would never have chosen for myself! 

Well, that is my excuse for bailing out anyway....

I did once try to make this skein into a lightening bolt scarf, which looked pretty cool (I will do this one day) but the gauge on zigzags is bizarre, I would have had to buy another skein to finish the scarf and I didn't want to do that, so I took it apart to make this.