Handmade slippers

 Despite the lack of activity on the blog, I have still been busy making. I always wear slippers in the house, but my old slippers were in a right state, just about ready to drop apart. Rather than part with at least £20 for a new pair, my other half suggested I should make some instead. So I did! I bought felting yarn (Filzit yarn, four balls), followed the wonderful pattern by Pilgrim Purse , and knitted my slippers. I felted and shaped them, stuffing them with plastic bags to keep their shape until they dried. Although you can felt in a machine, I did mine by hand so that I could ensure I got them just the right size for my feet.

Once I was happy with the shape and look of my slippers, I set about decorating them! I used my needle felting skills to add a simple colourful design.

 Needle felting is quite easy to do and not too expensive to start up - have a look at Gillian Gladrag's delightful site for some great tips and starter kits.

Once I had finished my needle felting I added leather soles to the bottom of my slippers. Because however much I tell myself that I won't go outside in them, I know I'll forget ...

I used a bradawl to poke holes through the leather at even intervals, which I had marked previously with a pounce wheel. That made it much easier to attach the leather to the soles. You can see the pounce wheel in the top left of this picture.

And here are my finished slippers! They are a little bit wider than I would have liked, but it means they are nice and airy for the summer. I think I may knit woollen liners for the winter!

Altoid Tin Earring Keeper!

 SUCH a long time since I last posted! I've been busy doing other things for a long while - four children and a full-time job take up a lot of hours - but I just had to share this as I am so excited by what I created!

Like many people I'm sure, I love my earrings. I will often match them to my outfit (as I always say, you can take the girl out of the 80s, but not the 80s out of the girl!). I have a sweet little tin to keep them in, but I suspect you will immediately see the problem:

Yup - it can take several minutes to find a matching pair! So, I spent many an hour trawling the internet looking for a solution, and was surprised to find nothing fitted the bill. Lots of ideas on how to hang up your danglies, but nothing for studs, which comprises the majority of my collection.

Then I had an idea ...

... can you see where I'm going with this? Here's a quick preview:

Ta daa!

OK, so here's what to do:
Firstly, take your altoids tin and draw round it onto the sponge:

Next, cut round your sponge. You can use a pair of fabric scissors or a scalpel (stanley knife), whatever works best for you. You may also need to cut your sponge in half if it's a big thick one. It should fit snugly in the tin, but not need "squashing" to fit it in. It should also be a little lower than the lip of the tin (note, I didn't do this and my tin won't shut with my earrings in! So learn from my mistake!)

Now take your sponge out of the tin and mark out four equally spaced lines. As you can see from the rather grubby state of my sponge I had a couple of goes at this until I was happy! My sponge is about 10cm across, and my lines are at 2, 4, 6 and 8cm.

Then, using your scissors or scalpel, cut along the lines to about HALFWAY through the sponge. Do not cut all the way through!

Next, choose your fabric. I chose one with a small subtle pattern, as I wanted my earrings to be prominent and not lost among a "busy" background. A fine cotton fabric works best; I would avoid anything very stretchy or slippery.

I cut my fabric to a generous size, about 25cm by 15cm. You need plenty of extra fabric to fit down the slits you created in the sponge.

The next bit is a little fiddly, but not as difficult as you might expect as the sponge helps to "grip" the fabric. Starting at one end, leaving enough fabric to wrap around the end of the sponge, gently push the fabric down the first slit, then continue along the sponge until all the slits are filled. If you aren't happy with it, simply pull it out and start again! You should end up with something looking a bit like this:

As you can see, I've left spare fabric at both ends to tuck round the sides.

Next, turn the whole thing over and put a generous blob of glue on each end of the sponge. Press the fabric down firmly until it sticks. (As you can see from the photo, I was rather over-generous with the glue at one side!)

Now, trim the sides down a little (if needed), leaving enough fabric to wrap around the sides and onto the base of the sponge. Add some more glue and firmly stick down the fabric, holding it in place until the glue starts to do its job. On this picture I had got one side to stick, but not the other!

It doesn't need to be really neat, just enough to hold the fabric in place. Now turn your creation over and pop it into your tin.

Looking good! You can use a cocktail stick or toothpick to neaten up the sides and get your fabric to sit just right.

Now you just need to finish off the top. If you like, you could just leave it au naturel, or you could paint it, or stick a picture on it - the choices are endless! There are lots of great tutorials out there which can give you ideas. I decided just to add the same fabric to the lid as the inside, since my tin is just going to sit on my bedside table and not get bashed about in a bag or suitcase. So I laid my tin on my fabric and drew round it:

Then I smeared glue evenly over the lid and stuck it on:

And there we have it! The final thing to do, of course, was to add my earrings.

As you can see, I left the few dangly pairs I have in my little round tin. But now I can find all my studs at a glance. No more rooting around frantically first thing in the morning!

More Adventures - this time in yarn dyeing

Wow, what a long time since I last posted! Apologies, life has been a little hectic around here. Crafting still going on (at a slightly reduced rate!) but back to normal after next week.

In the meantime, I finally got round to dyeing my lovely hanks of yarn I got from World of Wool . I got a gift voucher from there for my fortieth birthday last year, and promptly invested in  two hanks of yarn and six wee pots of dye. However I was then too scared to use them! So this week I got together with a friend and she showed me what to do.

Firstly, we dunked the yarn (and some carded fibre to experiment with first) into a bucket filled with malt vinegar. I didn't realise you could use normal brown vinegar, I thought it had to be distilled! So that was my first surprise.

This is Bettine giving my wool and her fibre a good pummelling in the bucket. You can imagine the smell for yourself! It's not really a very social activity!

She showed me some of the yarn she had dyed herself the previous week - aren't the colours wonderful?

Unfortunately I forgot to turn the flash off so some of the colours are reflected in the lustre of the yarn but you can see what wonderful vibrant colours she got! There's a mix of painted and pan-dyed yarns there.

OK - on to our experiments. This one didn't go as expected (actually to be fair, none of them did! But that's half the fun of it!). I used cherry red, crimson and orange, but it all ended up fairly much one colour.

You can see some undyed fleece in the background there. This is the fleece all dyed and ready to go into the microwave (I put it inside a microwaveable bag first to make sure we didn't coat the inside with dye!).

The next thing we did was take the first skein of yarn and pot-dye it in two colours, fuschia and periwinkle. Unfortunately I don't have any photos of the dyeing process because my hands were covered at that point! But here is the end result, with the red fleece and another piece of fleece dyed in fuschia and periwinkle, all drying on my washing line (scuse the poor photo, the light was just beginning to fade at this point)

And here's the skein all dried and ready to wind!

A lot more pink than I intended, but I was really pleased with the variation in the colour in the blue.

Naturally I wound it up and started knitting a pair of socks straightaway!

That was yesterday. Today, embolded by my success, I decided to paint my other skein (I had kept it in a bag so it was still damp with vinegar). So I laid out my yarn on bin bags and clingfilm, and started with some turquoise just dripped onto two points of the yarn:

I then took some bright yellow and dribbled that over the yarn. Then I added a wee bit of turquoise to make a lovely green, and splatted that in the spaces. I'm about half way through doing that here.

Now what I didn't anticipate was how much the colours would mix together during the setting process! Here's the yarn just after it came out of the microwave (I did it for three minutes in a 700w microwave, then did it for another minute just to make sure).

I think maybe I hadn't done it for long enough, but I was scared of burning the yarn. I took it out and rinsed it ... and all the colours began to blend! Never mind, I'm very happy with the finished result.

The turquoise is now more of an emerald green - I was aiming to have "dots" of colour when it is knitted up but I think they will in fact be wee lines of bright green - we shall see!

One thing I will say though ... I am hooked!! I can't wait to try this again!!

More vintage deliciousness

At Christmas, whilst staying with my parents, my mum pulled out a huge box of fabric she had been given by my aunty when she had moved house recently. Much of the fabric had lain undisturbed in a box for the best part of forty years. Some of it was beautiful Thai silk which my dad had purchased when visiting there before he was married.

The pink colour is absolutely fabulous, it is a combination of pink and orange and shimmers in the light!

This photo doesn't do the blue justice; it has a purple shimmer running through it.

We then unpacked lots of wonderful cottons ...

And oohed and ahhed over the fabulous patterns ...

And the oh-so sixties colour combinations!

This one is particularly fantabulous, I think:

Sadly they are mostly bits left over from dressmaking, so most pieces are barely a fat-quarters-worth.

So I shall have to be very sparing in my use of them!

Which is your favourite? Do let me know!

My first award!

Thank you to Nina at Youloveityoudo, for nominating me for my first award! It is the Versatile Bloggers Award and I am really chuffed to get it. Nina is quite new to blogging but has some lovely stuff (I am particularly in love with her VW campervan cushion!)

So the rules of the VBA are that I must nominate 15 other bloggers to receive this award. In no particular order (and with apologies if you have already been nominated elsewhere!), here are my nominees:


PennyDog
Hapi-Ness
veryberryhandmade
Driftwood
Julia Crossland
Sal's Snippets
Hand Knitted Things
Sew Recycled
Bobo Bun
Fan my Flame
Marmalade Rose
Tizzy Crafts
Easy makes me happy!
Teeny weeny design
Maximum Rabbit Designs

Some of these blogs I have visited many times, but some are new to me ... all are full of inspiring posts and insights into some crafty minds!

The next thing I have to do is tell you seven things about me:

I live in the most northerly town on the British mainland. I can see the Orkneys from here!
As a child and a teenager I was an actress, appearing in several children's TV programmes, soap operas and even a pop video!
I was taught to knit by my next-door neighbour's granny. She was very patient when it came to sorting out dropped stitches and too-tight tension.
I have had many different jobs, including manager at Harrods in London and auxiliary coastguard.
I have rather eclectic tastes in music and am a big fan of Kate Bush and Bat for Lashes. And Debussy.
I have a degree in Behavioural Sciences. Not terribly relevant to crafting!
I have lived in 14 different places, including an island with a population of 32.

Thank you for reading, I'm now off to add my VBA button to my blog and pass on the good news to all my nominees. Have a great weekend.

Some vintage style crochet and the giveaway winner!

I love crochet. Love love love it. And I really like granny squares too. So when I came across this crochet-a-long on this lovely blog apple blossom dreams I just had to join in, even though I'm a bit late to the party! Since this morning I have crocheted 13 roses (there are meant to be 12 but I lost count! But I'm thinking I might make it 16 anyway).

Apologies for the poor photos, I took them in electric light. But don't they look pretty altogether?

I've added leaves to some and cheekily crocheted the white border even though we haven't had that part of the tutorial yet (bad me).

I'm pleased with the colourway too, I think it works really well. I will show you the finished cushion cover when it's all done! It's not too late to join in with the CAL either - just follow my link or click the button on the right and get crocheting!

And lastly, here's the winner of my wee bunny rabbit that was featured in my sock rabbit tutorial last week. Thank you all for your comments, on here and on my facebook page. We put all the names into a hat and drew out ... (drum roll) ... Driftwood!!! Please let me have your address and I'll put him in the post to you :o)

Now I'm off to have a look at Handmade Monday to see what else crafty folk have been up to ... hope you had a lovely day today.

Branching out

I'm always keen to try my hand at new things. I am most confident when it comes to working with textiles, but somtimes I get an overwhelming urge to have a go at something different. The thing I find surprising is that I often find I don't enjoy something I thought I'd love, or I develop a new passion in an area that previously held little appeal. Has that ever happened to you?

Anyway, I thought I'd share a few projects I made in the last couple of years that I've not put on this blog before. I have a passion for recycling, and there's nothing I like more than to make something great out of things that is usually viewed as rubbish. I'm very lucky to live by the sea, and often enjoy beachcombing on a good day. As a result I have lots of boxes full of little pieces of sea-washed glass and pottery. Sea glass is beautiful - the combination of sand and rolling waves softens the edges of the broken glass and mottles the surface. Most of the pieces I find are white or various shades of green, but occasionally I find the odd little bit of blue and brown (and once a beautiful pale pink piece!). I have made a few coasters using the sea glass which I use in my studio when I'm in need of a cuppa:

Also pictured is a trivet I made from recycled t-shirt material (see my tutorial on how to make a rug - it's just a smaller version of that!). The coasters are easy to do - I bought some cheap coasters, painted them white with some acrylic paint, added the glass with a little wood glue, then grouted the whole thing once the glue was dry. A couple of coats of varnish over the top ensured it was waterproof. Just make sure the pieces of glass you use are as flat as possible - sea glass usually comes from broken bottles so are often curved in shape - the smaller the pieces you use, the flatter they tend to be.

However I wanted to make something to showcase the bigger (and less flat!) pieces of glass I had collected, so I made this mirror for our bathroom:

I just love this mirror - the big piece of glass in the bottom centre fish, the different colours, the swirls - it was worthwhile. But I surprised myself by not enjoying the process of making the mosaic as much as I thought I would - I got stressed about how and where to put all the individual pieces, and worried about whether I had made the right decisions! However it hasn't put me off making them as I just love the end result. I went on to cover a large planter in bits of pottery I found on the beach too (here it is in a local gallery):

When making this one I relaxed a lot more and just shoved things on fairly randomly. You can tell! But I like the end result and so far it has survived the winter in my garden quite nicely. I attached the pieces with cement this time and used a grout suitable for outdoors.

I hope you like my forays into things other than textiles and that it encourages you to have a go at something you may not normally consider trying.