Crafty Little Rat

  I’m about 100% certain I published this Saturday but seeing as it’s not showing up you get it today instead. Improving Your Skillset How far down the road to learning your craft do you believe yourself to be? Are you comfortable with what you know or are you always striving to learn new skills and add to your knowledge base? Take a look at a few knitting or crochet books and have a look at some of the skills mentioned in the patterns. Can you start your amigurumi pieces with a magic circle, have you ever tried double knitting, how's your intarsia? If you are feeling brave, make a list of some of the skills which you have not yet tried but would like to have a go at, and perhaps even set yourself a deadline of when you'd like to have tried them by. Today will be a short one. I went to Wonderwool! It was AMAZING and I spent all my pennies and know that next year I need to save even more. I missed out on some stuff I would have loved but to be honest would have needed lots t...

  Today is all about something different.   So instead of knitting I cleaned my bathroom and my oven.   The actual energy expended in doing both of these things meant that I slept most of the afternoon. It’s 7pm and the only food I’ve eaten today was a few strawberry lace sweets. Healthy! Thanks M.E; I love you too. So today, along with the feeling of F.O Friday I’m going to show you something I whipped up this week which was a first for me. It’s a radish! My first radish admittedly, but also my first Ami. It’s a commission for a shop customer who’s friend requested one. The idea is that the finished item is made into a broach, hung from the leaves. I didn’t have a broach pin, so the customer can sort that themselves. The leaves are made from Snuggly DK, the main bit of the raddish is some cotton and the bottom is scrap DK. Well looks like I’m late again. Tonights post will be late though and seeing as I’m sneaking this in before most people are awake (Saturday ...

 This post WAS written on Weds 25th but Windows Live Writer descided not to publish it until today (Thursday!) Ooops Your Knitting Or Crochet Hero   Blog about someone in the fibre crafts who truly inspires you. There are not too many guidelines for this, it's really about introducing your readers to someone who they might not know who is an inspiration to you. It might be a family member or friend, a specific designer or writer, indie dyer or another blogger. If you are writing about a knitting designer and you have knitted some of their designs, don't forget to show them off. Remember to get permission from the owner if you wish to use another person's pictures. I’m going to do this differently today. My knitting and Crochet hero’s are other bloggers. Famous ones, like Franklin , Yarn Harlot and Ysolda as well as a lot less known ones. Googling the keyword for KCBW has opened up a whole host of other blogs for me to read. What I’m going to address here is how to org...

I apologise because todays post will *not* be my best work. I had an interview this morning, I think it went okay- I’ll hear back next week. Keep your fingers crossed for me. Today is all about photography. I must admit I’m a big Instagram fan, and LOVE that they’ve recently brought out an Android app so I can actually create photo’s rather than drool over my friends who have iOS’s photos. I do however have a real camera and I love it. (Photo from Amazon) It’s a Panasonic Lumix TZ10; and yes I do have the red version. I’ve been a Lumix fan since Christmas 2008 when I bought a TZ5. These cameras are not cheap, and even though I was very rough with my first one it’s still working well (he has a home with my sister). The secret to the TZ series is that hidden in the small shell is a very long zoom. I can fit the camera in my jeans pocket with ease, but there’s a 12x Optical zoom in the TZ10. I took some amazing shots with the TZ5, but upgraded to the TZ10 because of the manual funct...

  It’s 3KCBWDAY1 ! This is my first year participating and I’m so excited! “Colour Lovers Colour is one of our greatest expressions of ourselves when we choose to knit or crochet, so how do you choose what colours you buy and crochet or knit with. Have a look through your stash and see if there is a predominance of one colour. Do the same with your finished projects - do they match? Do you love a rainbow of bright hues, or more subdued tones. How much attention do you pay to the original colour that a garment is knit in when you see a pattern? Tell readers about your love or confusion over colour.” I must admit, I do have a tendency to stray towards the same colours in my knitting and crochet; heck I tend to stick to the same colours in life! Teal and other shades of blue play a very predominant role. I’d say potentially 3/4 of my T-Shirts have a blue hue in them somewhere, my living room has lots of various shades of blue. I love my living room curtains. The fawn seems ...

It feels strange doing a WIP Wednesday when I actually haven’t knitted or crocheted much this last week. The last 3 days, since Monday have been spent sewing. I knitted 20 petals and that’s it! However those of you that are familiar with Sylvi will know that this is the signal of the end. Sewing up the side seams (2 hours), setting in the sleeves (2 hours) Weaving in the ends (1.5 hours) and knitting 20 petals (3 hours) and then sewing them on (at least an hour per flower) is the long tedious part of finishing cardigans. I have 2 petals left to sew on and then buttons to attach and it is DONE. So I guess that means I’ll have an F.O for Finished Friday right? I actually have a few FO posts, but FO Friday should be in the spirit of something finished that week right? So onto 2 of the 3 current WIP’s Rams and Yowes (Ravelry Link) 60 sheep done! Only 48 rams and 60 more sheep to go! Then the soul crushing picking up stitches for the massive garter stitch in the round border. Please ...

  So last night Ebay got the better of me. I’ve promised my other half that I’d knit him Durrow for a while; I wanted to use a nice fibre and to make him something that will last but options have been too expensive for us and I didn’t want to make it out of acrylic. Rough prices have been between around £40- £60; just not in the budget right now. Last night on Ebay I found a seller, lamb’s wool and Silk, 200 meters a ball- £2. Given that my fella is a skinny guy that works out at around £18 for the jumper with spare left over. Durrow starts at a 40 inch chest; my guy is a 35 inch, I calculated yarn for the 40 inch because I will always find something else to do with the wool. Only downside being the yarn won’t be here until the middle of next week. Lets review that last sentence for a second shall we; I was kinda sad that it won’t be here until next week, for no reason. I have a ton of projects on the needles/hook that I need to finish up before I can even *think about casting o...