Happy Birthday Avocado Tree

I started sprouting an avocado pit this time last year. It was a very slow process to begin with, but our little tree has come on in leaps and bounds since then. I have cut off the larger leaves at the top a couple of times because it became top heavy and the stem is still rather spindly. It gives us much joy to have it growing on the kitchen windowsill.

The 31st of May this year brings my parents 60th wedding anniversary. They are having two parties. One on the day for local friends and neighbours, and a second much larger at the end of June for family and old friends. Claire and I have made cakes to help feed the multitude, that will in time be appropriately decorated. 

When we first moved into the house I had a plan in my head to make a screen for the scruffy board that covers the front room fireplace. It was to be a felted image of a fire. It is amazing that the finished piece that Tish and I worked on for a couple of weeks looks exactly as I envisioned it. You can't see well in the photo but it is also embellished with a scattering of seed beads that glitter slightly like sparks. 

My recycled stripy jumper is coming along well. I am improvising on the pattern to make the raglan sleeves rather than sewing the pieces together. I am pleased with the lovely random stripes, and looking forward to making more use of it than the cardigan got.

Long time no felt

I made the mistake of mowing the lawn on the bank holiday last week and the bad karma broke the mower when it was only half done, so I started today cutting the rest of the grass with shears. It's really tiring so I gave up. Then I cleaned the deep fat fryer and made doughnut dough. 

Having made a present for mum this week I decided to do a house warming gift for my niece Natalie who moved into her own place a few weeks ago. I made a set of place mats for Claire a few years ago so decided to do some more.

The hottest day of the year does lend itself very nicely to outdoor crafting:

And Dunk leaned out of the window and captured the process:

I made the large piece then cut it into quarters to achieve more even sized mats than last time.

We decided that owning a set of table mats in the mark of being proper grown up ... so here you are Nat, welcome to the adult world x

A whole lotta knitting for Fibre Arts Friday

I haven't joined in with Fibre Arts Friday for months and months. It has been very slow going on the knitting front, though I have done quite a lot of hexipuffs. But here is a roundup of crafty stuff going on recently. 

When I went to London to see Monkey's plays I took with me the last one of the Hesfes Bunnies and planted it on the Piscator sculpture by Eduardo Paolozzi outside Euston station. I am hoping that it has found a new home by now:

Wiki Commons

Monkey has been working on a knitted backpack since last summer. It was supposed to be finished for her leaving home in September ... but better late than never. It is knitted to the Autumn Woods Bag pattern from Yarnspirations.

 Here it is being churned up in the washing machine last week:

 And here is the final effect after drawstring, toggle and straps have been added:

 I have been working on a pair of Jacquard Cushions, very slow going because the pattern is very tiny and very complicated and I am beginning to regret choosing it, but there you go. The second one will be gold with blue design. I may or may not felt them, depending on how large it is when complete:

 And, over a year after I purchased the yarn, my Bute sweater is finally done, and I have been enjoying wearing it pretty much constantly since. It is adapted from a cardigan pattern from the Rowan Magazine 52.  I am glad I tackled something a bit challenging but have sworn off fair isle knitting, it was so slow ... and the sewing in all the ends afterwards was tedious.

Linking back to Wisdom Begins in Wonder for Fibre Arts Friday, visit some of the other fibrous projects.

Making things in September

All summer we have been watching the neighbour over the fence get gradually plumper. When we heard that the baby had finally arrived I whipped up a little something for him. This is done to the 'bananahead baby beanie' pattern which I have used once before back in 2009. I bought this yarn to make Hesfes Bunnies but it is even more cute as a baby hat.

I made three batches of preserves with blackberries this year; four jars of blackberry and apple jelly, four jars of blackberry and pear jelly and ten jars of jam. Not bad considering the crop was very early this year and I was a bit late to go picking.

Monkey and I made felt to cover her special monkey notebook, but I only took one photo for some reason. I was going to make a cover that went around the spine but she wanted to be able to fold it back and thought it would get in the way so we made separate pieces and just glued them to the card covers.

And this is 'Toerag the Tubemouse' (pattern here for free at Whodunnknit) that I knit and secreted in the pocket of the Monkey Quilt.

Now back to the reading, I have 'The Goldfinch' which has to go back to the library on the 20th.

HESFES 2013

We are off on Thursday to HESFES 2013. The multi-talented Ridley Birks Boy will be performing this year (pictured here caught in a rare moment without a musical instrument in his hands) and it was a bit of a last minute decision to go. We had such a brilliant time last year but things had seemed to be conspiring against a return visit to Suffolk. Creature is busy volunteering at the 24/7 Festival so will be joining us a few days late, so I won't even have her to worry about. I hope to find a moment this week to review Angela Carter's 'Wise Children' but to get myself in holiday mode I spent the day creating a banner for our campsite; it is made with felted letters appliquéd onto a piece of muslin fabric. I hope everyone in blogland is enjoying wherever and however you spend your holiday time that you are all making the most of the brilliant weather.
postscript: as I re-read last year's 'we are going to Hesfes' post I found that I mentioned reaching 40,000 blog views, and that gave me cause to feel very smug, because this year I have just passed 80,000 ...woo hoo!

A Week of Making Stuff at Home

It's very easy to fritter a week away, and in fact I have frittered large chunks of this last week, but in order to end each day feeling as if I have achieved something I set myself the challenge of making something every day, in the broadest sense of the word 'make'. 

So there were some old favourites, like pancakes for breakfast:

and lemon meringue pie:

One afternoon we had a batch of Honey Oaty Cookies but they were eaten before I thought to take a photo to prove it.

There have been a few experiments like fresh cream meringues (I have got a bit of a thing for meringue), made, against all the advice, without the assistance of an electric mixer. I am no longer sure which instructions I followed as they all had different advice on the subject of beating in the sugar and cooking times, but they came out very satisfactorily:

and Peanut Butter Oreo Blondies to this recipe, which were even more wonderful the following morning:

Creature joined in and made chocolate brownies (who ate all the brownies!):

and wonderful honey cake:

Dunk didn't want to be left out so I took a photo of this delicious Veggie Shepherds Pie that he made for us on Saturday night. It was National Vegetarian Week so we ate veggie all week:

All week I have been knitting stripy hexipuffs, it being over a year since we started the project and the rate of production has dropped off considerably in recent months (total now standing at 238 out of an estimated 400 needed):

Saturday I decided on some felting and made an iPod cover for Dunk:

and a Kindle cover for my sister Claire (Hi Claire, will get it in the post on Tuesday) which was supposed to be done for her birthday but I didn't get around to it. I hope it fits as I had to make a cardboard pattern to check the size as it shrank down.

Then Sunday morning I made a new peg bag (tutorial here)

and experimented with making a felt flower following a tutorial on Felters Journey, only partially successful:

I have recently removed several bloggers listed in the sidebar who were no longer blogging so in the afternoon I decided to make a new 'blog list' that is just a general list of people I visit on a regular basis, it encompasses everything that I find interesting about the interweb.

Functional felting

The last time I visited my sister she was thinking about buying some new table mats and I jumped in enthusiastically and offered to felt some for her. This was a few months ago now and I started them with good intentions but then ran out of steam. She is arriving this evening to stay for a few days so I promised to get them finished, and this is the project I have been working on today. I used undyed merino roving for the background with a variety of designs created in reds and purples. There are six for place settings and a larger one (in the middle) for a serving dish. One of them did come out a slightly different shape ... but that's the joy of the unpredictable nature of shrinking wool fibres. 
We might just do some coasters to match while she is here, if we can drag ourselves in from sitting in the garden in the sunshine.

have not felted in a long time

I haven't done any felting in months but when my dad e-mailed to say that mum needed a cover for her birthday Kindle I offered to make her one. I was surprised to discover how small they are, smaller than a book, a mere 19cm by 12. Felting something down to a precise size is no mean feat. I allowed nearly 50% shrinkage and then made a cardboard cutout to judge when it reached the right size. I hope it fits.

Echoes

Sitting at home today feeling a bit sorry for myself after a minor op, but I have something nice to keep me company. I stopped over at the International Feltmakers Association the other day and bought some copies of their magazine, it used to be called 'Echoes' but is now somewhat unimaginatively titled 'Felt Matters'. For a mere £10 you can get a bundle of six back issues, considering it cost them over £3 to send this was quite a bargain. And they are just full of lovely inspiring photographs and stories about how people work. So in between sewing up one knitting project and working on Jacob's socks I have these to browse through.

Felted Tunic

More catch-up posting. This project has been mulled over for quite some time. I bought this large flimsy shawl on ebay about two year ago with the plan to make some nuno felt. It has this lovely crochet edging with tiny beads. It was over 2 metres long by about a metre wide so even allowing for shrinkage there would be lots of scope to create a garment. I gathered a few bits to experiment with embellishment.
The laying out process was very long winded and it took up the entire space of the 'dining room'. I used Louisa Harding Sari Ribbon yarn, some fine mohair sock yarn, lilac silk fibres with indigo coloured merino roving.
I laid it out last sunday evening and then carried on in the morning. Here is the layout completed and wetted down. I rolled it for a couple of hours on and off (it is pretty tiring and tough on the knees doing it on the floor.)
It has not turned out at all as I planned mainly because I put far too much roving on so it is much thicker and stiffer than I intended. I put a thin layer on the under side of the fabric and I was worried about the sari ribbon felting on well enough so there are two thin layers on the top. It shrank quite a lot widthwise, by about 50%, but for some reason hardly at all in the length. The silk fibres were laid very thin but they show up really well. I trimmed bits of roving where the edging had got caught in and am going to use a lacing up the sides through the edging. It is not 'floaty' enough to wear as a summer dress but it will be nice with leggings in cooler weather.

Spinning and Felted 'pod'

Just doing a bit of 'catch-up' posting, I have had a busy time over the recent bank holiday days.

Some home dyed roving I have had in the stash for quite some time:

here it is spun up:

One of the many, many felt blogs that I follow is Angela Barrow, not an amateur craft felter but a professional felt artist, and she makes amazing creations like this felt pod:
She very kindly created this very helpful tutorial so I decided to have a go at making a 'pod'. The first side laid out:
I made some thin dreads and decided to put them inside the pod (to protect them during the felting process I made the resist double thickness and put them between the two layers):
I decorated the outside with bits of contrasting grey and some red silk fibres (which don't really show up very well):
Here it is mid-felt, I decided to make several small openings:
I think it ended up looking a bit like a pixie house: