Branching out

Apologies blog followers for the hiatus in posts. January always leaves me feeling blue, and I didn't have many crafty things to show for it. 

Now however we are in February and I am excited about bicycle riding, longer days, and hopefully, in the near future, warmer.

To celebrate February, here is squiddly Dudley, he is a cook in the Royal Navy and his speciality is curry. What a cute guy. This pattern is from Nicky Trench's book 'Super Cute Crochet'. Intrigued? Get the book and have a go! I was relieved to find that this pattern was very straight forward.

If anyone would like me to make a squiddly Dudley for them for an occasion, we can talk commissions ;)

Happy Sunday!

Christmas gifts

So this year, I decided I would make a cross stitch for Cormac, after seeing on Etsy a person that does Twin Peaks cross stitch. I thought this was a smashing idea and had a go at doing my own. Here is the finished product. I am rather pleased with it! Note to self: abstract shapes are difficult to do with crosses on aida...


By the way, if anyone wants to commission me to make them a Twin Peaks cross stitch, let me know! It can be a different phrase, colour, etc. from the one here.

Hope everyone had a great Christmas and that 2012 brings you joy and success.

City of Angels

So this isn't really a post about crafty things, it's a post about LA. My boyfriend and I went to spend three weeks with his sister this September, in her lovely place in LA. I had never flown that far before, and it was a long haul! I have learned for future flights, where I will end up travelling in total for 24ish hours, that £6 is not too much to spend on a neck pillow.


LA was great fun. Each area you went to was like its own little village, with its own little quirks. There was so much to see, that we didn't get to see it all. I want to go back again to see more! Some of my favourite parts were seeing the view at the Griffith Observatory and eating picnic food; having lots of American Apparel stores to go into, eating really good vegetarian food, and the sunshine. It was only cloudy two days of the twenty we were there. And it felt weird.


Here are some of my favourite photographs that I took whilst out there.


Oh LA, you're so pretty.

End of Term Time!

It's the end of term!! Happy Christmas everyone!!

Some thoughts

My book on crafting and the business thereof arrived today. I'm looking forward to giving that a read. Beautifully illustrated too. See here:


http://www.amazon.co.uk/Handmade-Marketplace-Crafts-Locally-Globally/dp/1603424776/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323796440&sr=8-1


Teaching is over for the term, so I can go back to my own work exclusively now. Well, after marking these test papers.... Was nice to chat to all my students individually for 5 minutes. They're a nice bunch.


I had a thought yesterday that not many people make things to do with Twin Peaks, craftwise. I'm wondering if this is a route to go down, perhaps. If you don't know what Twin Peaks is, use the internet to educate yourself, right now!

Red nosed reindeer

Here he is: the idea is that it's a sweet little guy in a reindeer costume. Sewing skills need a bit of work, but he was a nice first attempt and appreciated by my house mate as a christmas present.

Coming soon!

The first (semi) original crochet figure that I have made for someone for Christmas. Watch out later this evening for it!