WIP: Beading

I've started a new project using the awesome yarn I won recently on a Punto Reves giveaway. 

I'm making another dahlia shawl.  (Remember the wedding shawl).  

This time, to mix things up, I'm adding beads!!

I ended up choosing purple, rather than the above colours.

Testy testing beady beads.

I'm using this method of beading - with dental floss!  Check it out, I especially like the use of the word 'scrooches'.

It's going to take a million years!


A couple of other interesting reads:

• Fluffy Knitter Deb - beading made easy
• Knitty - Seduced by Beads

Check out more WIPs at Tami's Amis....

Sunday night

What were you doing with your Sunday night?

Oh that sounds nice.

What was I doing?

Oh.. just making meringues...

...yeah, I'm bad ass.

FO! Sunshine and Fairyfloss Shawl

Finished my Elise last weekend... and without further ado...

I do love my close ups.



No heads on the internet please!

Stats:
Yarn: Handmaiden Fine Yarn Silken, colourway, Rose garden.


See what I did there?  (via)

I used 250g, or 2.5 skeins.  Anyone have an idea for 50g of DK weight silk yarn??

After blocking, it measures 183cm x 87cm.


Ravelled here.


Not quite sure what I think of it.  It's an odd colour for me, not something I usually wear.  It is very pretty though, and so so soft.  I think the pattern would work much better with a lighter weight yarn.  


Check out other great FOs at Tami's Amis!

Click!

(It's Friday for me before Tami... hope I anticipated the link correctly!)

FO! Monroe shawl

I finished my monroe shawl ages ago now.  It's just taken me this long to get pictures.
When I took it off the blocker I was a bit meh about the whole thing.  I originally thought it was too long, and didnt know how to wear it. It also didn't seem to have enough drape to it, it was a bit on the skinny side for a stole.  Totally my fault entirely because I was afraid of running out of yarn I intentionally made it skinnier.

After leaving it a while it relaxed a bit and I don't mind it now.  I wear it as a big spongey scarf.  I've gotten lots of compliments, but I think it's more about the yarn than the execution of the piece ;)

The pattern is dead easy, no problemo.  I'm undecided about the edging, I don't really think it matches, it's a bit witchty-poo for me with all the pointyness. 

Inspiration, and other random things.

Once again, I sometimes spy some cute and interesting things around the internet, which I store here for safe-keeping...

You've likely already seen this.  I'd seen a couple of these pics before, but not all of them.  Irina Werning took a bunch of old photos, and re-staged them years later perfectly in a series called Back to the Future. (My favourite Back to the Future still involves Marty McFly though.).  Also, check out the Chini Project, which makes me feel totally justified taking obscene amounts of photos of The Kitten.

How cute is this crochet dress?  Spotted by Underground crafter, in a super hard to find book called Modular Crochet: A Revolutionary New Method for Creating Custom-Design Pullovers by Judith Copeland. 

Spotted these cute coasters...

Cute rainbow coasters by Isabelle Kessedjian

..which reminded me of this:

Hearts desire doily on Ravelry, sad but nice.

One of my new favourite blogs to browse is Wit and Whistle.  I'm currently having much fun just browsing through old posts, and I hope to try more of the recipes that appear.  I thought this was a particularly cute idea, and one I will definitely try!  ( I just impulse bought all the supplies I'd need from ebay.. 6 bucks for 30 mini stamps!!)

DIY garden markers

The weather has been SO nice here in Melbourne, I've feeling a bit of Melbourne pride...

Melbourne map cusion cover

And trams, ah trams.  Even though I think it wouldn't hurt to decommision the W class trams in favour of something sleeker, safer and with a higher capacity... ahhh nostalgia... 

W Class cushion from MrsBeckinsale 



W class cushion

  Recently watched the Big Lebowski.  It was heaps good, you should see it.  Now I want one of these:

Are you a Lebowski achiever?  ARE YOU??



Found one on Etsy!

  And to finish.... a bit of cuteness...

Awwwww

 

Trying new things

By my grandmotherly standards, I had an insane weekend.  Well, there were lots of grandmotherly things included, but I still did A LOT!  I'm usually such a sloth.

I tried out some cool new recipes, made alterations to some old old ones, had some success and some total failure. You know what I hate? people who recommend recipes without trying them themselves first.  So, I will only show recipes which have worked for me :D

Found via Punchfork (which is pretty awesome btw) I used this recipe and made corn dogs!  Next time I'll add a bit more milk to the batter because I think it was a bit too gluggy, but they were scrumptious!  I might also try making these with mini hot dogs, because I could only make one at a time with my puny deep-fryer.

The only problem is, now I have a giant bag of corn meal left.  Who's coming over for corn dogs??

Also via punchfork, I made this recipe for roasted tomato soup.  Ok, so it's a bit of a no-brainer recipe... but LAY OFF!  I hadn't ever made tomato soup before, as I've never liked the canned stuff.  But this recipe is very tasty.  And once you've made it once, you really won't need to look at the recipe again.  This is the second time I'd made it, and this time I added a red capsicum.  It came out very capsicummy!  mmmm

I've made this recipe for chocolate cupcakes many times before, but this time I used some super cool coffee flavoured chocolate buttons I found at Haighs.  I also subbed extra flour for the almond meal, doubled the amount of instant coffee and didn't ice them.

Exclusively Food is my absolute favourite website for baking recipes.  I have so far had 100% success rate with all recipes, and there are lovely detailed instructions and pictures for each recipe.

And, in the interests of full disclosure, I tried this recipe for bread... the idea being I would have lovely soft warm bread for breakfast Saturday morning.  TOTAL DISASTER.  I'm sure the recipe is fine, it seems to be a fairly standard bread recipe.  But mine was flat, burnt on the outside and dough in the middle!  I wish I remembered to take a photo, it was hilarious!  Oh well.. better luck next time...

My last weekend activity was testing out my green thumb. I got my little potted herb garden re-started.  I'd attempted this before, but made the mistake of putting them outside for some "sun", only to have the whole lot totally infested by bugs.  I also sowed some sweet-peas, but I will spare you the photos of a pot full of dirt.

Also, I'm sure you can tell, I've discovered a super cool Mosiac generator, making me look very professional indeed!

Do you have any recipes to share?  Any secrets of herb growing success?

The view...

 ... from my office.


9am

10 am




11 am



12 pm



2 pm



3 pm




4 pm



5 pm

 Not a very interesting day for this exercise.  Oh well.  Sometimes we get a really pretty sunset, so I'll post that as a special addendum when it happens next.

TGIF! Lots of baking and crochet plans for the weekend.  Wooo!

WIP; gratuitous pictures of The Kitten for no reason in particular

The Kitten came into our lives about a year and a half ago now, and if you'd asked me then if I would love her as much as I do now, I'd have told you not to be silly, it's just a pet.

But The Kitten is so adorable, it's now hard to imagine what life would be like without her.  She waits for you at the door when you get home.  She answers you when you talk to her.  She wriggles under the blankets in the bed of a night time.  She has more than a hundred facial expressions, many of them full of insolence.  She goes bonkers sometimes and runs up and down the house in an indescribably hilarious fashion.  She loves her blue mousey, and carries it around everywhere.

I really do need to stop talking about her sometimes when around people who just don't understand...

Now onto the promised gratuitous photos!  I probably take too many photos of her, but she's so cute!! The Kitten montage is totally inspired *coughrippedfromcough* by Alice from Crochet with Raymond.

Now onto the WIP.  I'm still working on the silky sunshine and fairy floss shawl, but you don't need to see that again.  My other main project at the moment is a wrap for my mum.  I mentioned this was on my to do list a while ago.  The pattern is the Aran Toggle Wrap.  I've made a few modifications to the pattern to make it bigger, which I'll try to note down at another stage.

It's hard to photograph, because it's so big!  At the moment I'm about half way and it's 134cm long and 52cm wide.

 Check out more WIPs at Tami's Amis!


clickety click to visit all the other lovely WIPs

Sisters

My littlest sister J is pretty cool.  Today she sent me an email saying: "K [our other sister] sent me a picture of herself doing the roger explosion wink the other day. It made me laugh lots."

Her email made me laugh.  The memory of Roger Explosion made me laugh.  I am such a huge Shaun Micallef fan (Who isn't??).  Roger Explosion is the epitome of comedy.  The makeup.  The fudged lines.  The wink, of course the wink.

Hello ladies.

If you aren't familiar with Shaun Micallef, or indeed Roger Explosion, do yourself a favour and get over to Youtube now.

Only to be shown in prisons.

Also on the topic of my sister, I bought her this today because she's a super duper fan of skeletons:

Thank you GoddessOfJewelry!