Long weekend ... where did that go?

Well I'm afraid the long weekend was a bit of a blur. I think that I must have started feeling sick on Thurs but was trying to convince myself it was hayfever. I sneezed my way through the next few days and by Sunday was no longer able to deny that I had succumbed to the dreaded lurgy. I'm starting to feel better today but urgh, what a shocker! My face feels like someone has punched it.

However, apart from that the weekend was lovely! Had my parents here (*waves to Mum and Dad* - being part of a very small group of loyal fans haha) and we visited the Textiles Art Fair as planned. We dropped of our deposit off owls and I grabbed some wool that was kindly donated by some organisation (I've just unfortunately forgot who that was!) to make another one.  Not sure I liked the end result but everyone else seems pleased enough. It was certainly a much harder pattern than I thought it was going to be, and I had trouble working out how it was all supposed to fit together. In the end I just made my own version.  The feathers are cute though!  So here's mine (front and back)...

To give you an idea on what the original looked like - the link can be found on Nicky Epstein's web site, which you can get from the Give a Hoot facebook page here.

Mine doesn't look quite the same! I blame the flu!

I spent the rest of the weekend dosed up on cold and flu tablets and enjoying the sun when I could. The dogs were also making the most of the sun when it came shining through. They look so cosy, I'm almost jealous.

Give a hoot

In preparation for next weekend's Textile Art Fair, I've spent the day making a Jenny King "Give a Hoot" owl which is basically a donation for kids in hospital, the idea being to give the children a Guardian Owl to watch over them. It's part of the World-Wide Knit in Public Day, which I never knew existed until now. And a tad ironic as the owl is actually crocheted. But any excuse to knit and/or crochet is fine by me! 

Anyway, the pattern is really quite easy, fun to make and can be found here. I thought I'd make a couple and than I can just hand them over at the fair. But I might not get past this one as there is another busy week ahead.

Amigurumi

Well having had myself confirmed - my darling Pingu bought me flowers.  Though 'darling' and Pingu don't seem to go together in a sentence....

Anyway, after that I had a lovely weekend in Lismore and finished the amigurumi cat I was working on. The pattern was from a book, but the colour scheme was cooked up by my niece, who wound up being the owner of this one. It was a bit of a pose though, as you can see from the pics!

And the other success I've had this week is my African Violet, which is flurishing and flowering! Who said I killed every plant I touch (yeah, yeah, I know I didn't have much luck with lemon grass blah blah blah). Anyway, I feel quite domestic when I look at that plant. Good thing I didn't take a pic of the rest of the house!

On a completely different note - I wish I could figure out how to get pics uploaded to this blog by my iPad. That would make life MUCH easier.  And now.. I must crash!

It's official

I'm confirmed. That means that I have been completely accepted into the doctorate zone. Big milestone for me, having dithered with several failed topics over the last 10 or so years. It feels good to be heading in the right direction.

All I have to do now is work out how I can justify the inclusion of craft into my methodology!!

It's Tuesday again...

God save me from Tuesdays!  I would breathe a sigh of relief as there are only 2 more weeks of semester if not for the fact that my lectures for next semester are also on Tuesday evening!  I am cursed.

Slack slack slack...

That's me, the slack blogger! However, in my defence, the fact that I have not been blogging does not necessarily mean I have not been crafting! This month's theme (well April / May) appears to be jumpers and Amigurumi. What's Amigurumi?... Gee I'm soooooooooooo glad you asked. In short, it's a form of Japanese crochet, more precisely the art of crocheting dolls. Very cute! It all started because I was looking for something to make Ben for Easter and found a pattern for an Ewok (as he's a serious Star Wars fan) but I couldn't understand the instructions so he wound up with a bunny instead. Well Ben hasn't actually got custody of the bunny yet, as I still have to sew his nose and tail on. However, here he is so far. I actually think he wound up being the cutest of the easter toys! And he was certainly the easiest of the lot.

But I digress. I was talking about the Amigurumi fettish. So not to be put off by the strange instructions, I decided I first had to get suitable instructions. Thank goodness we have a fabulous library, so that was fairly straightforward.  In fact, much more straightforward than me trying to work out how to get this picture the right way up!! (clearly I've given up on that task).

Then I started working on a project - which is a cat pattern that I don't think the pattern is overly complicated once you get the overall gist of it, and I'm sure it will look cute when it's finished. At this stage it's just a few bits so doesn't look like much.

And the other project this month has been slippers! I've been a bit slipper mad since the cooler weather set in. I haven't taken many pics but I do have the mother-in-law's set. They were dead easy to make, but I had to adjust the pattern a fair bit. Seems to be a popular theme with slipper patterns, as I haven't yet found a pattern that didn't have mistakes in it. Still, that is how we learn!

So anyway, that's a few of the projects for the last 3 or 4 weeks. Now I'm afraid, it's time to return to marking. Urgh.

Final dolls

Well - here are the finalised 'Graham dolls'. 

Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of the bunny... but that's life. So now I'm having a bit of a craft brain freeze, I have too many things to finish and not sure which to tackle first!  Probably tomorrow will be a sewing day though, as I haven't had one of those in a while. And I would like to get my quilt cushions finished.

Course I may just stay in bed with a book!