the green gal

What have you been doing with your time?

Well, in between working, digging myself out of the snow, crocheting on a train, watching Glee and My Dream Farm, and making my nephew's apron, I've made a few things and found some marvellous bargains:

I embroidered a birthday card for a dear friend…

…found this gorgeous clock hanging in a charity shop, and they sold it to me for a couple of quid…

 

…then I found this gorgeous bowl in my favourite colour in yet another charity shop and it was even more of a bargain. Can't quite decide whether to use it to store things or to plant some spring bulbs in it…

 
…made some more bunting from old shirts and lovely fabric my mum gave me…

 …found a funny website about making your life greener – Do The Green Thing, plus the easiest recipe in the world to make banana ice cream at Love Food Hate Waste, and tried this tasty recipe for Sausages and Mustard (veggie sausages of course) by Nigel Slater straight after watching him cook it on TV…

…used an old map to make a few envelopes and cover a peg (why a peg? no reason, just fancied using my new pot of decopatch glue and thought I'd pretty up a peg)…

…after spotting a few tulip bulbs shoots emerging from the soil in the garden I've been poring over seed catalogues trying to decide what to plant. Trouble is, even though last year I managed to squeeze two raised beds, two towers of tyres for potato growing, a window box for tomatoes, a hanging basket for strawberries and various pots for garlic and herbs into our little garden, I still want to grow more, and rescue a couple of chickens (hah!)…

… and that was how my first month of 2010 ended, wonder what's in store for us all in the next 11 months…!

Don't forget your pinny

Technically a pinny is more of a sleeveless dress than an apron but it sounds so such more of a homely word than apron, doesn't it? And my mum calls her apron a pinny so it must be right.

So, I've made a pinny! I took a break from making Christmas presents for my nearest and dearest and decided to try making something new. I looked at how the apron I already own was made and copied it. Joining the straps to the main body was a bit tricky as I had seams on top of seams which gets a bit bulky. But otherwise, not as difficult to make as I thought it would be. I recommend you have a go!

The fabric was an remnant from a local shop. Fabric remnant bin diving is rapidly become my favourite pastime. You can find some gorgeous pieces at bargain prices, that's another recommendation from me!

Back to Christmas, I made my first stocking too. Didn't go exactly to plan but you can't tell so I won't point it out. Still, you live and learn and with sewing I'm on a steep learning curve! For the stocking I used fat quarters (fabric measuring a quarter of a metre by a quarter of a metre). There's a fantastic quilting shop near me which sells copious amounts of beautiful fabric, and by buying quarters rather than metres of fabric, it keeps the costs down and means I can have more variety of pattern and weight.

So there, you go, two recommendations and a top tip from me. Not bad for a chilly Sunday afternoon! I'm off to watch It's a Wonderful Life and feel a warm glow inside.

Handmade is heartmade…

…is my new mantra, so, fittingly, this…

… was given to me today by my dear friend Kirsty and sums up a lovely afternoon spent learning how to crochet this…

 

…small and imperfectly formed, but crochet none the less, and followed by…

 
…multi-coloured eggs from local chickens for my dinner!

Hope you all had an equally satisfying day.

Handmaking Christmas

This year, where possible, I'm handmaking Christmas (thanks for the phrase, Julie!). As I believe I have mentioned once or twice already, I'm making most of my Christmas presents and the same goes for the cards. Or not because this year I'm making and posting my friends and family Christmas decorations instead of cards.

To find out how I made this little trinket, check out my tutorial over at daisygreenmagazine.co.uk. Enjoy!

Deck the halls with homemade bunting…

…tra la la la la, la la la la…

Is it a banner or is it bunting? I call it bunting!

So, I've been at it again. Having made a major dent in my Christmas present making I decided to make something purely decorative, for me! I checked the idea with the hubbie first, though, I wasn't going to slave over a hot mac and scalpel only to discover he has a major aversion to bunting being hung in our sitting room!

The inspiration came from the fantastic 12 Days workshop. I know I've banged on about this already but once you sign up you'll see what I mean! If you want to see other 12 Days creations, take a look at their Flickr group.

Anyway, I fancied something a little bit less overtly festive so opted to spell 'deck the halls' in bunting. I had treated myself to a pad of scrapbooking papers (my first) and the colours seemed perfect for this make. I cut out the letters from the paper and then strung them up with leftover blue wool which, again, seems to match perfectly! It all worked out better than I had hoped so I'm wondering if I can get away with keeping this up all year...?

What time do you call this?

It’s nearly the end of October and this is my first blog post of the month. What have I been doing with my life for goodness’ sake?! Well, I…

• Made a lemon drizzle cake. Quite lemony but not too lemony

• Signed up to 12 Days: A Copy and Paste Project, if you’re not signed up yet, chop chop!

• Had a wood-burning stove fitted and now we have little need for central heating of an evening

• Opened a Flickr account

• Learnt what is a crop-a-dile, that it matters what kind of transparency film you put through your printer and that my puppy has an unhealthy obsession with pheasants

• Had a go at stamping with some lovely Banana Frog stamps and discovered I like it!

• Went to the Knitting and Stitching Show with the lovely Kirsty Neale

• Suffered the cold from hell

• Was told by a group of kids and teenagers that they’re jaded by climate change and need to know how doing their small action will lead to a big impact, which led me to…

• … discover that if UK shoppers picked up half as many carrier bags, in a year 90,000 tonnes of oil would be saved and the subsequent reduction in green-house gases is the equivalent of taking 50,000 cars off the road

• Made a lovely bag out of a boring freebie one

• Harvested my maincrop potatoes from their tower of tyres, not a bad crop for a first-time grower

• Created my first piece of ‘art’

• Made leaf bunting and an autumn wreath for DaisyGreenMagazine.co.uk
  

• And, quite significantly, changed from full to part-time employment at children’s newspaper First News so I can spend more time on a lot of the above.

Adding oomph to a cardigan

Having received some lovely comments about my embellished cardie piccie (see the things I've made photo album) I thought I should credit where the beautiful butterfly fabric came from. My mum! A lovely parcel of fabric arrived in the post a little while ago and when I saw that cloth I knew I had to use it first. All the fabric my mum sent are pieces saved from the past, the 70s mostly. Some of it I recognise but I can't quite place where from – bedspread, curtains, clothing? It's quite literally part of the fabric of my life!

So, spurred on by my previous butterfly applique and embroidery attempt, I thought I'd have another go. This time I took my craft guru Kirsty's advice and used Bondaweb (properly rather than guessing) to really fix the butterfly to my cardigan before I started sewing. Damn that stuff is good!

What I need now is to find a new shape and experiment with different stitches and come up with something new! Suggestions welcome...

Adventures in knitting

I've finally finished knitting my tea cosy! I know it's not that rock n roll a statement to open with but I'm very pleased with the end product. I started it months ago so really it's about time.

For those of you yet to discover the joy of knitting, have a go! It's the secretly super cool activity that is no longer the preserve of the blue rinse. I ask you, if knitting was only done by the retired would there be a worldwide knitting community called Stitch n Bitch? Think book club with needles. Check out www.stitchnbitch.co.uk for more info.

I've been a solitary knitter so far but I've spread my little woolly goodies far and wide. Everyone knows that homemade gifts, even slightly ropey ones, are valued for the time and effort that went into making them. I started with a good ol' scarf, not dissimilar to Dr Who's. Following that I knitted 16 (count them) squares, half green and half cream, and sewed them together to make a blanket for my nephew/godson. The thing's big enough to keep him warm till college but better that than too small. I then branched out to make baby bobbly hats for another nephew and niece. Having made a little Innocent smoothie bottle hat, I just sized up their pattern. 

The obvious natural progression is a tea cosy! Well, it isn't, especially as I have a particularly smart-looking teapot, but cold tea is just not tasty.

So, what next for me and my needles...?