Apologies... I've been rubbish

I haven't been here for a while - that dreadful short attention span and my procrastination skills means I've been busying myself with other things (and often with nothing).

So, let's see, what have I been up to?

I've knitted a very complex pair of Alice in Wonderland mittens and a lovely baby blanket... And this, the world's biggest knitted Christmas stocking (yes, I've been away a while).

I've finally painted those damn dining chairs (but still haven't covered the seats since I need a more powerful staple gun):

I've started two more blankets I haven't finished:

But most importantly, I've discovered a new craft. Yes, another one. A few months ago, I was fed up with looking at paper cuts and saying I would never be able to do that.... So for some reason I decided to order a kit.

At first I was pretty rubbish. Given that I  can't draw, this wasn't surprising. Then something clicked. Since February I've partly conquered my fear of drawing, partly learned to use Illustrator and gone from this kind of thing...

To this...

To this:

You can see and buy lots more of my work at the following places:

www.facebook.com/laceandpurls 

craftersboutique.co.uk/sellers/lace-Purls

@laceandpurls on Twitter & Instagram

Will be listing on places like Etsy etc soon, and I promise I'll update more.. Honest!

Old habits die hard...

I often see vintage items or other bits of treasure (see: trash) and think "I could do something brilliant with that". Then I don't, and it sits in my flat, staring at me and reminding me of my laziness.

Take,  for example, the pair of ugly dining chairs I bought on Gumtree for £10. I planned to paint and distress them, and to recover the seats in something pretty. I even ordered some Annie Sloan paint and wax. 

Then I did nothing. Eventually I moved them to a corner of my lounge, where they've sat for about a year. 

Or this set of cardboard drawers that a toiletries gift set came in, which I planned to make over to store bits and bobs... which has sat on my (unused) desk and become horribly faded by the sun.

Or the boring wooden mirror I planned to decoupage with fabric... Or the other, gilded mirror which I planned to paint with the aforementioned fancy paint, then realised a bit at the bottom had broken off and been nailed back on. I pulled the nail out - and now I've lost the bit.

You get the idea. Recently I seem to have a new interest daily. Millinery (hat blocks too expensive). Upholstery (found a lovely chair, don't have a bloody clue). Recycling glass bottles into special things (too dangerous).

But today something happened. I woke up and thought "I'm going to actually start these projects". I don't know why (maybe its the fact that I did a proper clean and tidy of the flat last week and now it's nice to be in), but I decided to start with the dining chairs...

The seats came off easily - hooray! I picked out a lovely fabric to go with the lovely grey paint - result! I started to attack the staples holding the plastic leather on the seats...

Bugger.

After faffing round with a butter knife, I located a screwdriver that was ideal for the job. Sadly the staples were so rusted that, when I did manage to get under them, they left a sharp spike on one side and a straightened rusty spear on the other.

I considered painting the frames, then realised the paints were at my friend's house and she is in America.

I got out the fancy staple gun I ordered but can't figure out how to get the staples into it. My husband can't either, which makes me feel a bit less thick.

I wasn't going to be defeated though - I grabbed the Mod Podge, fabrics, a wallpaper sample book and those cardboard drawers.

It's been a mixed success so far - the red floral fabric is a great match for the drawer unit, but I forgot to press it first and now it's bubbled up in places, no matter how much I smoothed out the air bubbles. I excitedly hacked into the wallpaper samples without a real plan - take my advice: make templates for the pieces first on scrap paper, it saves lots of unusable scraps of lovely, expensive wallpaper.

So I've covered the outer unit in fabric (still a few more coats of Mod Podge to go) and the insides of the drawers with wallpaper. Just need to decide what to put on the outsides of the drawers - don't want to use more wallpaper, it's too thick. Might track down some nice wrapping paper.

(this is an unfinished pic I took so I can explain to you later how I did it)

Once these things are completed (which will happen) I will post photos and tutorial type things, so stay tuned for that. Hopefully having this blog will encourage me to finish things properly.

Oh, and I just bought an old rocking chair on Gumtree, and have asked if I can have two little stools someone is giving away. Old habits die hard, I guess...

Creativity is something you learn...

I never used to have any creative ideas. I had an intense career and I didn't think of myself as a creative person until I started to learn cake decorating. This flipped some kind of switch and I started trying every craft I could - some stuck (sugarcraft, knitting and crochet) while some fell by the wayside (hello, scrapbooking).

Even though I was being more creative, I felt like a fraud because I never had my own ideas. However, once I quit my job and started to run my own business, that changed - recently I started getting floods of ideas, so many I don't know where to start. It's proved to me that creativity isn't something you have or you don't - you just need to be in the right mindset.

Last year I took a course in fascinator making - although it was with a great milliner, the course itself wasn't brilliant... Too many people, not enough help, that kind of thing (as I teach my own cupcake classes, I'm a bit picky I guess!).

Still, we made one sinamay fascinator and one felt one - and I especially loved the felt one.

For ages I've been wanting to make more, then I found this picture via Google (sorry, I can't find where it came from - if this is your photo please contact me so I can credit you):

It's made me desperate to make some cloches. I've been having a very detailed discussion with the knowledgeable Owen at Guy Morse-Brown who make the most amazing hat blocks (www.hatblocks.co.uk). He's been super helpful and now I think I've decided on what items I need - it will probably cost around £200 to get all the bits but I'm really excited about it!

It's also got me thinking about fascinators again and I have some ideas to get started on - but I need to buy sinamay bases, velvet, elastic, a glue gun, a zip... Lots of stuff, basically.

Between the hat blocks and the amazing products I found last week for making printed fabric and furniture etc, it's going to be an expensive pursuit trying to action all the things I want to do. I still need to get my sewing machine fixed but fortunately it's still under warranty.

Tomorrow when I've finished my border, I'm going to carry on with my big summer clean (I'm enforcing a rule that I can't start any other big projects until I've sorted out the kitchen, lounge and bathroom!), then I can get on with all the creative ideas stewing in my brain. I'll keep you posted.

So close...

I'm so close to finishing my blanket - I cracked open a new ball of mocha to do the fan row and ran out just 15 fans before the end (half of one side)...

Here's a sneak peak:

The border takes a surprising amount of yarn - the balls of white and plum were partial balls when I started the border but I think I used a full ball of white, 0.8 balls of plum approximately, and it will be around 1.1 balls of mocha by the time I finish. That means that, at normal prices, the border has added an extra £10 to the cost of an already fairly pricey baby blanket. Still, it is pure merino - you could make it in acrylic for much less, or use something like King Cole Comfort which is half acrylic and half nylon and very soft and is about £3.50 per 100g I think, whereas this merino is usually £3.10 for 50g (which is still cheap for merino). This is another baby blanket I knitted last year using King Cole Comfort Chunky (I decided to go with crochet on this one, but I suspect knitting is more economical in these patterns, as this one took less than 700g):

As you can see, I'm a bit crazy about chevrons...

When I've finished the border and weaving in my ends / washing, I'll do a full post on the new baby blanket, with costs, quantities etc. I think it's going to grow a fair bit when wet so it may be the biggest baby blanket ever!

Crochet border for ripple blanket

I finished my ripple baby blanket last night and have been agonising over what type of border to add. It's the first crochet border I've done and there are so many options.

I'll run you through what I've done in case you're making the same kind of blanket...

First I did a round in off white - I did two DC for every row (one where the rows tough and one into the side of the stitch) on the sides, and on the ends I filled in the peaks and troughs to give a flat edge. To do this, work 2tr together into each decrease stitch, then 1 tr, 2 HTR, 2DC and finally two slip stitches into the two peak stitches. 

I took this pic of my first attempt which wasn't quite right - I wasn't doing the 2TR together into the same stitch with a treble before and after the 2 x 2TR together. Still, it gives you the approximate idea...

After that I did one round of DC in plum, followed by a fan pattern in mocha.

The pattern for the fan is...

Join with a slip stitch wherever you like, then do a DC into the same stitch. Skip one stitch then work 5TR into the next stitch, skip one stitch then slip stitch into the next stitch. Repeat around - at the corners, fudge it so you're working the fan into the corner stitch, but do 7TR into the corner.

Once I've finished, I'll post a full summary of the project :)

Lovely ripples

Last year I started a ripple crochet blanket based on the fabulous pattern from Lucy at Attic24. It was supposed to be for my bed, so I made it huge. Sadly, because it was for my bed, it has been overtaken and is currently languishing in a state of shameful incompletion in a box.

I decided to make a smaller version as a gift - and because it's a gift, I've almost finished it inside of a week. Just a few more rows to go, a border and then I will be the proud temporary owner of my first crochet blanket.

That's not to say it hasn't been tricky at times... When it's ready, I'll show you some photos and fill you in on the issues.

My crafty blog...

I recently started a Facebook page for my handmade items, and to catalogue the various crafty things that inspire me, so I decided to start a blog too. It's yet another thing to distract me, and I love a good bit of procrastination!

A bit about me - I'm 30, and live on the south coast with my husband and two children (cats). I run a business teaching cake decorating classes, but I'm also an addict of knitting, crochet and cross stitch. I have a fabric obsession, even though I'm not great at sewing and my machine is on the fritz. I'm also addicted to vintage china, and all things vintage.

I'll be sharing my work, and photos of the wonderful things I find online. I hope to get to know lots of you along the way!