I Made a Book!

I think I mentioned a little while ago that I had published an ebook on kindle - well, it is now in actual paperback *seriously big grin*

Look!

It's a children's book about a magical teddy bear who helps kids through tough times - all around the world. I'm so proud of it, and I've had some lovely amazon reviews:

Sensitive, emotional and highly imaginative - a must for all ages.

Skilfully written with a heart warming story.

Thoroughly enjoyed this book. A heart-warming story. Lovely to sit and read with your little ones at bed time over one or two evenings

I have a facebook page for The Adventures of Brown Ben, just in case you might be interested in learning more/keeping up to date with news etc. And that's also the best place to get in touch if you'd like to order a copy. 

Oh, yeah, information that is useful:

The book is £4.95, p&p (according to Royal Mail's calculator) is £1.10 in the UK, and 50% of the profits from the book are being donated to The Children's Trust - an amazing charity. 

Anyway, I just wanted to share, because this is the coolest thing! Ok, so it's time to stop blowing my trumpet, but I'm just seriously excited that I wrote a book, and now it is in my hands *grins*

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*

Creativity - ish

If you happen to follow me on instagram, you might have noticed I have developed a bit of a penchant for experimenting with nail varnish. I never used to wear it at all, finding it too much of a hassle - especially as I seem to manage to chip half of it off within a couple of days *laughs*

But I do like having nails that compliment my outfit, so I started playing again...

Copper houndstooth (to go with a reddy/orange dress)

My (not very good) attempt at yellow/orange/red gradient

I love this one, but somehow only have a really low quality picture :( It's lilac polish with lorem ipsum writing over the top of it.

The yellow with black dots makes me think of racing for some reason...

My first experiment - I had some old varnishes that had gone a bit gungy, so I scribbled them over boring grey varnish for a Jackson Pollock look ;)

I do sometimes go for the more classic look though *laughs*

The writing, dots and houndstooth patterns are all achieved using nail stamping plates - I'm not skilled enough to actually draw that kind of stuff on!

8 Bit Coasters

Do you ever get to a point in your crafting where none of your projects seem to be interesting or inspiring any more? Because I hit that point last week *laughs* I just wasn't feeling it, at all. Usually at that point I cast on something new, but I was so uninspired that I couldn't even decide what to cast on.

It struck me as time to take a little break from knitting, just a few days, to clear my head and find the fun again.

Luckily, I found something else fun to do in the meantime...

Over Easter, we had boyfriend's kids staying with us for a few days, and I suggested doing something that I'd wanted to try for a while. Luckily they were really into the idea *grins*

We made 8 bit coasters from Hama beads (or Perler beads, or if you use the IKEA version like we did, Pyssla beads *laughs*)

It was great fun - I've wanted to make some of these for ages, and doing it with the boys was a perfect afternoon activity.

My favourite (currently, it changes with alarming regularity) is the Mario mushroom - I think because it is so iconic and the shape is perfect for this.

But then I do also love my Sonic - the first coaster I made. I particularly like the multi-green background. I was going for the first level of Sonic, the Green Hills Zone ;)

There are 2 coasters that don't entirely fit the "old school video games" theme - the Iron Man and Hulk ones. But the little sprite-like figures were just too cute, so we had to make them too *laughs*

With this one, you can see I melted it a bit more than the other two, which I think works really well to show pixellation. I might do that to some of the others too - although it does make them a little wonky and less inclined to stay flat, so I need to come up with a way to resolve that - unstable drinks coasters aren't exactly ideal!

The boys had loads of fun making them and have already asked what new designs we're going to try this weekend. Guess I should get some more beads in!

Happy New Year :)

Hey everyone *grins and waves*

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and New Year (or other holiday that you celebrate). I had a lovely time, even if I didn't get round to turning on the computer!

I got some lovely crafty presents, so I thought I would show them off ;)

First up - some books. My lovely brother bought me the Sock Knitting Masterclass, and I am keen to try out some of the new toes and heels that are in there. I bought myself Socktopus to accompany it, with some Christmas money from my Gran. And the Best In Show - Knit Your Own Dog was a silly present from mum *laughs* Although, I do have a couple of patterns in there that I am tempted to make!

Cunning boyfriend bought me the cutest project bag (that was apparently on my amazon wishlist, but as I had completely forgotten about it, it was a lovely surprise *laughs*)

Yay, robots :)

He also bought me some crystal resin that I have really been wanting to try out - because I need another hobby *laughs*

The most surprising gift came inside a parcel from the always fabulous Sarah. I had won her pre-Christmas giveaway of a couple of reindeer/stag blanks to customise...

Aren't they cool? I plan to steampunk them.

Anyway, along with the prize was a card, which mentioned a "little" gift...

Little?! I was so very, very excited. Isn't the yarn beautiful? I have wanted to try Juno Fibre Arts sock yarn for ages and ages, and now I have some of my very own *grins* I love the colour, purple with red and blue speckles. Thank you so, so much Sarah. Also, no one else had bought me yarn for Christmas (not complaining, I got wonderful gifts!).

I have already wound it into 2 balls and am trying to choose the perfect sock pattern for it now. Maybe one from my new sock books...

Anyway, I'm off to try and catch up with all the blogs I missed over the last few weeks!

Sketching

I have no knitting FOs today, I'm at that stage where I work on a bit of everything and nothing seems to go very fast. I know that soon I will hit the point where everything gets finished at pretty much the same time though, so I'm not too worried *laughs*

I have been sketching though. As part of my course, we have to do a painting in the style of the Futurists. They were interested in movement, war, transport and had an almost cubist style at times. Not my style at all, but it has been fun trying to come up with something.

This is the sketch I did:

Waves at the bottom, a propeller and a cubist type representation of a ship.

I started painting it on Wednesday, which is going ok, but having never used acrylic paints before, it's a bit challenging!

Very much not finished, but a bit of a representation anyway. I may decide to scrap this idea completely and come up with something new, I haven't decided yet. I think the sketch looks better in black and white, so maybe I'll change my plans.

Subtlety

A little while ago I bought 4 balls of Rowan Felted Tweed DK on ebay for a ridiculously low price. Felted Tweed seems to be one of those yarns that people absolutely adore, so I was really pleased to get my hands on some.

However, despite the excellent yardage, I knew that 4 balls wouldn't really be enough for a pattern that I wanted to make with it, so I ordered a couple more balls from another shop. And this is where I include a public service announcement - do not assume you know what colour you have, if you do not have it in front of you *laughs*

Original yarn on the bottom, new yarn on top. Hmmm.

So, I ended up with 4 balls of one colour and 2 balls of a similar but definitely not the same colour. Dilemma time *laughs*


After a lot of searching, I settled on a pattern that I thought could work and be something I would like - Daffodil. I was inspired by one of the pictures on the pattern page, with grey and yellow stripes (by nasseknits)

Of course, I will need to employ my standard modification of adding some increases around the hips so that I can have a button band that buttons all the way down ;)

So, I decided to see if this pattern would work. As the yarns I'm using are so similar in colour, I wasn't sure if the contrast would be too subtle...



I quite like the subtlety - what do you think?

Be Prolific*

I have a couple of small FOs to share today - both are Nerd Wars submissions and I have been practicing my crochet *smiles* As I tend to do little projects for Nerd Wars it seems like a good place to test out my crochet skills and see if I can improve them.

First up, I made a set of coasters. Not the most thrilling of projects, I know, but they came out exactly as intended and I'm really pleased with them!

Secondly,

I made a little bag/pouch. I made it up as I went along and it worked perfectly *grins*

So, small projects but definite improvements in my ability to crochet things and actually get the desired result. I'm calling it a win *laughs*

It's Friday, so you know what to do... Visit Tami's, Natural Suburbia and Wisdom Begins in Wonder. Have a great weekend :)    


*“Crochet is an accessible art that comes with a license to be prolific”. – Francine Toukou

Scrapbooking

This weekend I spent quite a lot of time working on a scrapbook. I haven't done any papercraft for ages, so it was good fun to get stuck in *smiles*

I don't do much in the way of scrapbooking, but I have a lot of pictures and memories and trinkets from my trip to Vegas that I wanted to capture, so it seemed like the perfect medium. I took pictures of a few of the pages I did...

Our hotel - which was all gold and shiny and posh *laughs*

I took loads of pictures as I walked down the strip, so I did a little spread with a map in the middle to show the scale of the place. I love this layout, I'm really pleased with how it came out.

Watching the fountains at the Bellagio was a real highlight, so I did a page just for that:

And Food... Indulgent, yes, but we had some fantastic meals and I wanted to remember where we'd eaten. Obviously this doesn't cover everything, I did also get addicted to Auntie Annie's pretzels while I was there *laughs*

It was lots of fun going through the photos from the trip, and working out what I wanted to put in the book. I've done quite a few pages already, covering things like some of the Casinos we went to, the helicopter flight we took and the show we saw. Now I just have to work out how to show off the Grand Canyon to the level it deserves :)

Balance

One of the topics during blog week was crafting balance, and I don't think I ever completed it. But last night it was something I was thinking about, so I thought I'd write about it today...

I am terrible at balance *laughs*

When I first started knitting, it was a struggle to balance it with reading (my other favourite activity). I tended to read an entire book/series of books instead of knitting, then I'd knit and not pick up a book for weeks.

Since then I have also taken up spinning and, more recently, crochet...

This has thrown my balance even further out *laughs*

Well, last night I was thinking about balance and decided that I don't have to have any. If I spend an entire week spinning and not picking up my needles, because that's what I feel like doing that week, then great. If I knit or read or crochet exclusively, also great. So it means my other projects wait longer... So what?!

I needed to remind myself of this. I think it comes from knitting being my primary craft - I seem to expect the most progress to occur on knitting projects and the others should fit in around that. Well, no one but me is responsible for my progress, and no one but me really worries about when something gets finished.

I know people reading are often keen to see a project in its full glory, as much as I am keen to post it, but I also know that there's no way you want it finished in a certain timescale or at the expense of anything else *laughs* Having a blog does not make me more pressured to finish things - but sometimes I need to remind myself of that!

So, I'm officially giving myself a break. So much so that last night I didn't craft at all.

Also, I did a google image search for balance, to get a few pictures for this post. I was particularly amused by this one *laughs*

Make like a monkey and jump from thing to thing - that shall be my new philosophy *laughs*

I'm linking up at Frontier Dreams for Keep Calm Crafting On.

Random Words

I was looking at random word generators this morning (as my default approach to having no blogging inspiration is often to look up random words and either post a list of them or find that my creativity has been triggered)...

Anyway, I found a site that creates made-up words. It sounds easier than it is, because making up pronounceable words, that look like they could be real, is surprisingly hard to do. So I've been having fun generating random words, and trying to come up with meanings for them *laughs*

All of the meanings below are completely made up, from my head.

Terbumaut - a species of insect related to the termite, with an enlarged rear end
Ceercom - A dotcom millionaire who made their money by seeing trends that others didn't anticipate
Ufleralla - sounds like a disease to me! Probably affecting the lungs.
Toness - a female singer with perfect tone and pitch, the opposite of someone who is tone deaf
Natagre - a combination of Natalie and Ogre - describing me when I haven't had enough sleep *laughs*
Ipol - a fake ipod
Tylylan - no idea what I think this could mean, I just like saying it!

Please do chime in with any fake explanations you come up with, this has been kinda fun *grins*

And here is an image that I think covers Natagre ;)

Charming as Books*

I mentioned yesterday that I had one more big present for Christmas that I wanted to tell you about... And, here it is (warning - this is a picture heavy post):

Well, this is what I opened - 2 apple crates. I was pretty excited, but not as excited as I was when boyfriend told me there were 13 more crates waiting for me at his dad's workshop *grins*

I realise that a present of 15 apple crates might sound a little bizarre! But ages ago I saw some furniture made out of stacked crates on a design blog, and I have loved the idea ever since. I nearly bought some vintage crates some time ago but they weren't quite right, and I'd given up on the idea.

But 15 crates were waiting for me *grins*

Looks like quite a lot, huh?!

Once we'd unpacked the crates, we needed to sand them down, so I got to use the electric sander, which was fun, and a dust mask that covered most of my face, which wasn't.

After letting them dry out overnight, I decided that I didn't want to put a finish on the wood as I want it to have chance to age for a little while and I want to live with them for a bit before I make a decision. Not at all that I was impatient and wanted to get them home, no *laughs*

We spent a while playing with different configurations of the crates before deciding on the final look. And then I got to refill the shelves and furnish them with the books and other stuff that turns them from something you might expect to see in a barn, into fabulous furniture...

I realise this isn't to everyone's taste, but I absolutely love it. I think they look amazing and I am still excited when I walk through the front door and see them.

It's hard to get a picture of the craft area crates, I don't have the flexibility! The bottom crates have regular books and the horizontal one of top is for my knitting/craft books *grins*

And one final shot, showing the whole look (along with the new picture boyfriend discovered in the sales that I think sets everything off perfectly):

*"No furniture is so charming as books" - Sydney Smith - apart from mine that is!

Good Morning Blogosphere

I've missed you *smiles* But it has been nice to be away for a little while.Of course, this does mean I have a blog reader groaning at the seams that'll take me weeks to catch up with, plus a whole bunch of stuff to tell you about.

First, I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas (or other holiday) and New Year.

I got some lovely crafty presents from my mum, brother and boyfriend *grins* My best present deserves a post of its own, so more on that tomorrow perhaps...

The very first present I opened in my stocking (yep, mum still does stockings even though we're grown ups - this is because she is awesome) is actually one of my favourite presents overall, a doodling/colouring book. It's so cool, I love doodling and I love colouring, so of course I have made a start ;)

My lovely brother bought me this book I have been lusting after for some time:

There are some great projects in here, one of which is a Morse Code Quilt. I've never tried quilting but I am tempted to, just for this one project *laughs*

Mum bought me some Knit Pro Cubics needles - square needles... I'd put them on my wishlist because I was intrigued and mum thought they sounded interesting...

I did actually get 2 sets, but one is already in use ;) Well, I had to cast something on to test them out of course *grins*

Boyfriend very wonderfully bought me some yarn. He was apparently quite relieved to discover that I had put something specific on my wishlist (but, bless him, he was planning to go onto Ravelry to do some research on what to get - I almost wish I hadn't put anything on my wishlist now - I wonder what he'd have come up with!)

Knit Picks Imagination sock yarn, in Unicorn. I'd put this on my list after discovering that my sock yarn selection is sadly lacking in anything containing alpaca. Obviously this had to be rectified *laughs*

Well, as this already quite a long catch-up post, I shall leave it there. But I have more to tell you about- I haven't even started on the reveals of the Christmas gift knitting projects yet ;)

Pinterest

You may have noticed along the top right hand side of my blog, the social media buttons... One of which is for Pinterest. [For anyone who hasn't seen it before, Pinterest is like an online pin board, where you can pin ideas/tutorials/inspiration/things you found online and liked]

I've found, and pinned, some really cool stuff through it, and thought I'd share a few that I particularly liked. Click on the pictures to go to the Pinterest site, where you can click through to the website where the pictures originated...

First one (as this is a knitting blog after all) - how pretty is this gift wrapping idea?! Colourful yarn instead of ribbons, I love it *grins*

One of my pin boards is entitled "colour", I love colour and find it very inspiring and cheering. I'm also a big fan of children's films. How are they related, you ask? Well, check out rainbow Mike Wasowski below *laughs*

This next picture works either in colour or "for the home"... I've mentioned before about having one bookcase where the books are all backwards, well I also love this version - arranging books by colour:

I also am incredibly jealous of the size of that bookcase *laughs*

Anyway, that's just a few of the things I've pinned (or re-pinned), but there's so much cool stuff on there, from fashion to DIY to craft to food to home styles to... well you get the picture ;)