So Beautiful

I finally finished my Celestarium! I can't tell you how happy this makes me - partly because it's one of the most beautiful things I have ever made, and partly because it felt like it would never, ever be done *laughs*

I love it, I want to wear it everywhere. To the supermarket, to the petrol station, even sat in my office with no one here to see it ;)

 I had quite a few beads, and plenty of yarn, left when I got to the border, so instead of doing the plain knit on border, I added a few rows of k2tog, yo, which gives a nice lattice, and added a row of beads. This plan also gave me the flexibility to block the garter stitch border into points... Which saved the headache of trying to figure out how to block a perfect circle *laughs*

This is an intermediate in-action shot, hopefully to be replaced with a proper picture of me wearing it once my photographer gets home ;)

The way I shaped the edges means it actually sits really nicely on my shoulders, which is great because I had no idea how I was going to wear it! 

I love the yarn (malabrigo sock - and I even have enough left for a short pair of socks!) and the colour, and the beads, and the pattern.... I just love it all, in case you couldn't tell!

It's my first circular project, and my first ever project with beads, so I'm really happy with how it came out.

I Published A Book!

I have some really exciting news - I have written and published an ebook *grins, a lot*

It's a story I wrote a little while ago, and I thought it was about time I did something with it. So I have published it to amazon kindle (which means that anyone with an ipad or phone can also read it, and there is even a kindle for PC service now available).

I'd like to introduce you to Brown Ben...

Brown Ben is a magical teddy bear, who finds his way to children who need him, whether that's because they're poorly, they're sad or they just need a cuddle.

The plan is to have a series of books, with Brown Ben visiting children struggling with all the different issues that kids have to deal with. This is the introductory book, and I'm so in love with it (even though I do say so myself *laughs*)

I love the cover - a friend from school is now an illustrator so I asked her to bring Ben to life, and I think she captured him perfectly.

I'm donating 50% of the proceeds from the sale of the book to an amazing charity - The Children's Trust. It's based in Surrey and provides services to children with severe disabilities, and is a specialist center for acquired brain injuries.

If you would like to know more, you can find the amazon page here. If you do read it, I'd love to know what you think!

Introducing Diego...

A slightly different FO Friday this week (I don't have any knitting even close to being finished currently!)

I'd like to introduce Diego, the Stag:

Like I said, a bit different *laughs*

Recently I was contacted by Homecrafts, purveyors of many crafty things, and asked if I would be interested in rehoming a deer head, decorating it and showing it off. Always up for a bit of a challenge, I said I would love to ;)

So, this arrived:

My mind immediately went to steampunk... I was envisioning copper wire, goggles, the usual. But I always go for steampunk, so I thought it was time I branched out. I considered all sorts of options and then decided I really wanted to try my hand at a Dios del las Meurtos design (Mexican Day of the Dead).

I painted the whole head with a couple of coats of white acrylic, to give me a base to start from, and then started designing with marker pens.

It was really good fun *grins* A lot of the styles and shapes are the types of design that I like to doodle anyway, but put together in a different way than I have done before.

The Day of the Dead skull, or calavera, is a sugar skull used to adorn the altar during the Day of the Dead.

And Day of the Dead is the annual celebration of those we have loved and lost, celebrated as a national holiday in Mexico (hence the choice of a Mexican name for my stag!)

Diego is currently residing in the guest room, although he may have to make his way into the office, where I keep all my toys and silly, creative stuff *grins*

To Frog or not to Frog

One of my Works in (limited) Progress that has been sat on the needles for a while is a shawl. It's going to be an Ishbel, but there's a small issue... I've made a mistake in the lace, but I have no idea where *sigh* In fact, I have probably made multiple mistakes, so I really don't think I can get away with frogging the lace section.

I felt like I'd done loads and loads of work on it, so I was reluctant to pull it all out, hence why it has sat in my knitting basket in time out for a while. But when I got it out to take a few pictures, it seems I haven't done as much as I thought.

I'm not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing *laughs*

Anyway, the shawl in question:

And a better picture of the colours:

The yarn was originally purchased to be socks for my lovely boyfriend. I knit the toes and showed him, and he could see that I had fallen in love with the yarn - he rolled his eyes and asked if I suddenly wanted the socks to be for me *laughs* I said no, actually I thought it would make a really nice shawl.

This is where he gets lots of brownie points - because he immediately agreed that the yarn would be much nicer as a shawl, the colours will look great with jeans, and insisted I rip out the socks and make myself a shawl *grins*

Update

Hello, poor neglected blog!

Yep, I'm still alive, and still (just about) crafting. I never expected to be too busy to post here, and I find myself missing my blog and all the blogs I love to read. I'm not making any promises about posting more regularly because I know as soon as I plan something it flies right out the window, but I hope to be around a little bit more.

I feel like I should have more to update, having been absent for a month, but nothing is springing immediately to mind. Maybe I should make a list. I like lists *laughs*

• I've just come back from a week's holiday with my mum. Had a fabulous time, read a lot of books and generally did little more than lie on the beach for a week. It was a much needed break. 
• I've been working really hard on my business, having a great time doing all sorts of bits and pieces, and hopefully will have some exciting news to share soon. 
• Knitting has been happening, albeit not much *sigh* I'm nearing the end of my Celestarium though, and I can't wait to finish so I can show it off. I started another shawl, but I've made a mistake and can't figure out where it is, so it's in timeout while I decide between fudging and frogging ;)
• Other crafting - I have been doing some other crafty bits, some painting of unexpected items (like shoes, I must take pictures and share) and a couple of other things I will post about at some point (I'd say "some point soon" but let's not be too optimistic *laughs*). I've met a great lady who does lino and screen printing workshops, so I'm hoping to book myself on one of those soon
• I have an interesting decoupaging project on the go at the moment, and I will be posting about that soon (no, really!)
• My yarn stash continues to grow, because if I can't knit I can at least buy... Yeah, I'm not sure of the logic either *laughs*

Now I'm off to get reacquainted with the blogs I haven't read in too long - I hope I haven't missed too much!  And because I don't like posting without pictures - here's one of my new yarns ;) Pretty, huh?

Ice Cream Bread

Yep, I do mean bread made from ice cream, really *laughs*

It sounds crazy, I know. In fact, it is crazy. But it actually kinda works.

You need 2 ingredients:

250g ice cream and 190g self-raising flour. As you can see, we opted for my favourite flavour - salted caramel *grins*

That's it - just 2 ingredients. I was sceptical, I admit *laughs* But I dutifully mixed them together, to make the weirdest dough I have ever experienced:

It looks like fairly normal dough, but it is freezing cold.

Bake in a 180 degree oven for 45 mins.

Take out the most surprising bread you have ever seen:

I didn't smooth it down before baking, hence the rough-looking crust, but those bumpy bits got extra tasty and crisp, so I'm calling it a win ;)

Slice and serve:

Bizarre, huh? Boyfriend and I made it, and found it almost impossible to decide if we thought it was awesome or awful. So we made another batch *laughs* The second one we made with cherry ice-cream, which was much nicer. You don't seem to get the flavour of the ice-cream particularly strongly, although you can tell the difference between flavours.

Tidying

I thought it might be about time I had a bit of a clearout of my knitting basket:

It seems to be overflowing a bit *laughs* I think it's because everytime I tidy up, anything knitting related just goes into the basket. Very lazy of me, I know ;)

So I cleared everything out of it...

And now it is all neat and tidy, with WIPs in project bags and everything else put away where it should actually live.

I'm taking bets now on how long it stays this neat *laughs* I give it a few days ;)

Oh, and the John Lewis bag and colourful yarn you can see in the top picture will have their own post, because new yarn deserves it *grins*