Indie Rainbow

This scarf was made from Sirdar Indie (shade Navajo) I love how it changes colour as you knit, Stu has decided to take this scarf off me because I wasn't too keen on these certain colours as I started knitting, although they do kind of remind me of the sweets Skittles. I will be knitting myself one in another shade as there are so many other beautiful colours in the range.

Come Dine With Me Cakes

One member of our knitting group was on the TV program Come Dine With Me and they wanted to film the group for a minute at the beginning of the program, so we made some specially themed cakes for the occasion. I used gummy hamburgers and gummy egg and chips on green butter cream icing for decoration. The program doesn't air until next year and I hope they don't mock us too much if the end up putting us on the show

Owl mittens

These mittens were made from Rico design Essentials Soft Merino, this is my new favourite yarn as it's 100% merino wool and it's not very expensive. It's lovely and soft and a beautiful deep brown colour. I made the owl motif from stitching together some felt and some material I had lying around, I didn't realise how simple it was to stitch this together and will probably start using this technique a lot more often on my knitted designs. On the other mitten is the letter 'A' as it's the initial of the person who I am giving these to. I have some mittens to make for another for another friends birthday in the new year but reckon I'm gonna take a break from mittens for a short while

Christmas Mitens

I have knitted these two pairs of mittens for people as Christmas presents, I have used Debbie Bliss Fez which was the same yarn that I used for my pink mittens. One pair is in blue and the other are in this very beautiful aqua green colour, which didn't look great in the ball but looks great knitted. I am also knitting another pair in brown for my friend. I thought I would have gotten bored with knitting these but the pattern has enough variation to keep it interesting.
I have also written tags with instructions of how to care for their hand knitted mittens, which I've decorated with a few Christmas stickers from Paperchase

Happy Halloween

Here are some photos of our cake and craft stall, we had a great time and sold all the cakes. Sophie had knitted three tea cosies and managed to sell two which was really good work and we also managed to sell a few other bits and pieces too. One of the pictures is a little bit blurry but it was the only one I had of the whole stall so I decided to keep it on here

Creepy Treats

We were lucky enough to have a cake and craft stall representing our knitting group at this years Halloween Party at Islington Mill. Here are some picture of the cakes I made. The bat cakes are chocolate sponge made with Green and Blacks coco powder with orange flavoured butter cream icing on top. The bats are made from icing and they were bought from ebay.
The purple cakes are vanilla sponge with vanilla butter cream icing, with plastic spider rings on top both of the cakes icing are coloured using gel food colouring, which is superior to liquid colouring as it does not effect the consistency of the cakes.

My brother bought me the haunted house tea light holder and the skeleton as Halloween presents because it's one of my favourite times of the year. I love autumn trees, colder weather, dressing up and anything a bit spooky

Pink mittens

When my parents came up the other week I was lucky enough to have them buy me some wool in the lovely John Lewis haberdashery department, among other things I got some Debbie Bliss Fez in this fantastic pink (colour 20512, dye lot 535) it's 85% merino and 15% camel (it reminded me of when I went on a camel ride through the Moroccan desert last year)
It is so soft and it's getting so cold I decided to make some mittens for myself. As I struggle with knitting in the round at the moment I found this great pattern online which is for just two needles and is really easy to follow: http://www.allfreecrafts.com/knitting/two-needle-mitts.shtml
Surprisingly the second one didn't come out as well as the first, perhaps I was getting over confident, but they really comfy and will definitely do the job. I have decided to make a few pairs for people as Christmas presents this year so I better get knitting

Zombies ate my Cupcakes

Me and my knitting group are going to have our own cake and craft stall at the Islington Mill this Halloween so I am going to be posting loads of picture of 'practice' cakes that I have to bake. These ones are to see how the purple coloring turns out in the icing. I also tried out filling a few of them with jam, unfortunately all the jam sank to the bottom so I will have to keep practicing (ho hum). These have some plastic bat picks for cake toppers. I've got loads of ideas for different cakes and loads of people will be helping out so I'm sure it's going to be loads of fun. I bought this book called a Zombie ate My Cupcake which also have loads of great ideas.

Knitmare on Elm Street

Sorry about the terrible pun in the title of this post (I actually stole the name from this amazing fabric that I'm after with the same name) I have been very busy recently moving house, which is amazing but more on that later.
However it is now Autumn, which is my favourite season and I have decided to knit Stu a scarf. This scarf was inspired by one of our favourite baddies Freddy Kruger from the film Nightmare on Elm Street. Which is apt as it will soon be Halloween (loads of Halloween blog posts coming soon) It is an ode to Freddy as this stripy scarf is the same colours as his famous stripy jumper. I kinda wanted this scarf for myself but Stu is a much bigger Freddy fan than I am, he used to have posters from the film on his wall when he was a kid, plus he doesn't have a scarf and it's starting to get cold. I am using very cheap red and dark green acrylic yarn that I picked up on Bolton market (which is one of my favourite places near work) but Stu swears he doesn't mind. It is DK and I am using size 4 needles, because I have knitted tons of scarves for people and I usually use super chunky this seems to be taking forever. I promise that my next knitting projects will be far more interesting than more scarves.

Scrambles the Cat

I found this pattern for an easy garter stitch cat. A long time ago an old friend asked me to knit him a cat so I thought I would send him this one. I've named him Scrambles because he didn't come out as good as I had hoped, I also wanted to make him blue and yellow stripes but got distracted and had to make him all blue. I hope my friend likes him and I'll post Scrambles tomorrow.
The pattern and instructions can be found here: http://geobabe.livejournal.com/195349.html

Space Invaders

I decided to make Stu a new knitted case for his ipod, he loves retro games and stuff so I used a basic Space Invaders design. I drew the motif on graph paper before hand. It took me three attempts to get it right cos I kept messing it up and not too sure how to fix mistakes but he was pretty pleased with it when I had finished.

Green Nugget

Our friend Mark asked me to knit him a scarf so I said I'd knit him one from some balls of Sirdar Big Softie I had in my stash (the shade is called Cherry Pie) He's going to visit his girlfriend Mei who is living in Canada at the moment so I offered to make her a scarf too (in shades Flossie and Muffler) as we haven't seen Mei in such a long time. I was hoping to use up all of the Big Softie from my stash but I love it so much I'm just going to replace it after we have moved.
Mark especially liked Nugget (the blue bird a made) so I said I would make Mei her own bird in green. I think I will make more in future in some different colours.
I crocheted Green Nugget from Sirdar Snuggly (in shade Elf), I'm going to put him in a plastic egg that you get from those capsule machines that I have slight addiction to. I like the idea of him going to live in a different country.

Do it yourself

"Don't buy my clothes. Well if you're rich or can get a stylist, you can get me but if not, do it yourself. My idea is that you can mix charity, vintage, Portobello Road, pieces of fabric; wrap it all around yourself, use a handkerchief as knickers, mix safety pins and jewellery. But above all do something! Be optimistic!"
~ Vivienne Westwood

Siouxsie in a box

We're moving at the end of August (thank god) until our first new home, me and Stu are buying a flat together and we're both really excited. I'm most excited about finally having a spare room, some more windows (some in the kitchen and bathroom which we don't have now) and a balcony so we can grow plants. We've started packing now and Siouxsie the cat is absolutely loving the boxes

Blue booties

I made some more booties for Stu's friend at work who have just a had a boy, but I didn't stop there since then 3 more of our friends had announced they were having kids (there must be something in the water) so I had to knit three more pairs all in white. I was going to take photos of all of these white booties but as you can imagine I was pretty sick of the booties by then. These were made in the blue Sirdar snuggly that I later made Nugget from. I absolutely love this yarn, I went to the LYS and bought some more in pink, green, red and yellow because it's so soft to work with and machine washable too. I haven't got any projects for them yet but they can remain in my stash until I can use them

Pirate Teapot

I had tried to do fair isle knitting before and was never successful as I thought it could be done in the knit stitch (I'm still learning) it wasn't until my friend Sophie told me that it only works in stockinette stitch that I decided to give it another go. I always wanted a teacosy with a skull and cross bones on so I adapted a pattern for skull and crossbones bunting from Simply Knitting magazine. I had to use graph paper for the design but was pretty happy with how easy it was and want to do more of my own designs now that I know how. I made the top of the teacosy by decreasing (k2tog) on the beginning and end of every row until it was the right side. I repeated this process again and then stitched them together

Chirpy chirpy cheep cheep

I wanted to have a desk buddy at work to cheer me on in my writing because it gets really hard, so I made a little blue amigurumi bird, his name is nugget. He was made from some blue sirdar snuggly I had left over and a bit of felt for his beak.

More cupcakes!

This a mix of vanilla and chocolate cupcakes with butter cream icing (yum) Any excuse to get the 'happy cakes' cake stand out. Some have chocolate sprinkles and some have rainbow sprinkles

Booties

My friend is having another baby and she's having another girl. I wanted to make a nice handmade present that really meant something to her, so I found a really easy pattern for baby booties. I had loads of baby pink acrylic wool and after a few attempts and a tweek of the pattern, I finally made her a pair. But the pink that I used wasn't the brightest of shades and I wanted to give her something really bright and colourful so I also made her a pair from this red wool mix I had and I think that the colours go together really well. I hope that her and the new baby likes them

Night Sky Gloves

To go with the scarf I decided to make some matching gloves. I think they are technically called gauntlets. These are the first pair I attempted (although I had to start again a few times) and they came out pretty good. I started with a knit one/purl one to create the ribbed cuffs, I did this for about two and half inches and then carried on with a knit stitch for about 5 inches.

Purple Scarf

Because I loved working with this yarn so much when I was knitting the patches for the night sky blanket I decided I wanted to knit myself scarf with it. The yarn is called Luscious and is made by Sirdar (Escape). It's so beautifully dyed, the colours have a gradient effect as you are working with them, so it knits from a deep indigo blue to a vivid violet. It's far too hot for scarves right now but will be great for when winter comes around

Stripey Scarf

I have knitted quite a few scarves now for people but didn't get the chance to take photos. The best wool to use is Sirdar's Big Softie, it is knitted on size 10 needles so you get to see your progress really quickly and can knock out a scarf in a few evenings. The texture of the wool is extremely soft and would definitely keep you warm. I have knitted some scarves in black, red, blue, purple and green before all using the same wool. Although this one is stripey and the colours I used for this scarf are called Foam (blue) and Meringue (white). I used these colours because the scarf is for a Man City fan

Night Sky Blanket

I finished all the patches of my night sky blanket and sewed them all together, although it isn't completely finished yet I finished this ages ago so wanted to post the photos of the blanket so far. I still want to make padded stars and a moon from this beautiful metallic material I have but it was proving to be tricky by hand and will make these when I have my sewing machine up and running.
I'm really pleased with it as it feels and looks great although I have to keep it hidden because my cat Siouxsie also likes it and pulls at the stitching as she's getting comfortable on it

Super Chocolate Cakes

These cakes were amazing, they were so chocolatey that they stuck your mouth together, they had four tablespoons of Green and Blacks coco powder added to the mix, the icing was pure Nutella spread with a single Malteaser placed on top. They made me so happy

Zombies!

As I'm a fan of the many amazing films about the undead I decided to crochet my very own zombie, I crocheted all of the body parts and sewn them together, I then created detail for his face from felt and used fabric glue for the really fiddly bits. I then cut him a suit from felt and then hand sewed it together and on to his body, his tie was a last minute addition from a piece of stripy material. I took the photo outside because the light is always terrible in my flat and I wanted to get a picture of him in front of the cathedral. His name is Bert.

Hello Kitty Birthday Cake

My beautiful boyfriend surprised me on my birthday with this amazing birthday cake. It's a zombie Hello Kitty rising from the dead. The cake was delicious and was made by the famous bakery Slattery's, which he said in itself was amazing and promised to take me there one day. Anyway the cake was fantastic and a wonderful surprise

Knitted Kittens Craft Club

Finally decided on a date to start the knitting group and the first one is going to be on Tuesday the 11th May at the brilliant Tiger Lounge. Decided that we didn't want to alienate anyone so have decided to make it a general craft group, because I might want to bring some sewing down from time to time too. The venue have been very supportive and we are hopefully going to be gathering on the first Tuesday of every month. My very talented friend Sophie Daniels designed the flyer and she's just done the most amazing job. My other mate Tamsyn has agreed to get involved with the running of it too and she came up with the name. We are going to make some free cake for the night and I just hope lots of people come down now

Birds Nests

These are some cornflake cakes I made. I used Mini Eggs (my favourite) to make them look like birds nests and they were pretty tasty

Starry Sky

I am currently in the middle of making a knitted patchwork blanket inspired by the night sky. So far I have only used deep purples, navy blues and black to achieve the look of the sky at night, I have used different brands and sizes of wool in order to achieve different textures so not only will it hopefully look good it will feel good too.
They all measure approximately 6" x 6" and I still have to knit about another 24. Then I will have to sew each square together and sew on the crescent moon and stars. I plan to make them from metallic silver material and stuff them so they are padded away from the blanket.
It's been a lot of work so far and I still have a long way to go but this is the first project I have been really involved in since I started knitting a few months ago.
Here's a picture of my progress so far:



These are some of the things that have inspired me to make a blanket based on the night sky:


I will post a picture of the blanket when it is completely finished. This project is perfect if I need to put it down for a while and pick it up at later date, but I have been so excited I have been racing through

Melvin

This is Melvin the Sock Monkey I made last night, he's made with genuine Rockford Red Heel Socks to give him a red mouth and a cheeky red bum too

Day of the Tentacle

These were one of the first things I made when I learned to crochet. Based on the game Day of the Tentacle by Tim Schafer.
"To save the world, you have to push a few old ladies down the stairs."

Katamari Damacy

One of my favourite games ever is Katamari Damacy, so I decided to make my own Prince of the Cosmos. He's missing an antenna at the mo but I will put one on him very soon. Incase you haven't played it before here is what the Prince looks like:


The creator of this game Keita Takahashi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keita_Takahashi) is a knitter too and he often knits some of his characters, which makes me like him even more. I was so happy when I found this out.

Russian Dolls

I made these Russian dolls for our tree from sewing together some felt I cut from a basic template I made from cardboard. Unfortunately I didn't have the patience to sew the detail on the faces, so I drew the mouths and eyes on with a pen, simple but effective

Crochet Christmas

These are some Christmas decorations I crocheted for our tree. There's a snow man, a father Christmas, a mini tree and a robin. I wanted to do a Christmas fairy too but couldn't work out how to do the hair, maybe next year

Snow Siouxsie