It's ami swap time!!!!!

Hello everyone, sorry I've been slacking off with the blog posts but will try to get back on track now, I have a lot of blogs to catch up on so I'll be stopping by soon to visit :-)

So this has been ami swap week, just got my lovely parcel from the fabulous Steph this morning so I can reveal the fabulous pressies I got and the ami I knitted for Steph today. For those who don't know the ami swap has been going for a long time now and is fabulous, at the start of every month we send each other a parcel with a knitted/crocheted amigurumi, simple and it's so lovely to get a present every month :-) So the goodies for this month, Steph sent me the amazing Wenda Barlow!!

The name was on the pattern so we don't know why she's called that but isn't she fabulous!!! I'm so thrilled with her, thanks so much Steph :-) Inside her cute little ice cream cone purse was all these goodies too!

Also a few extra goodies, Steph had gone for a bit of a summer theme so we have a cute sun, fabulous biscornu, a reel of lovely summer days ribbon, fabulous Hello Kitty fabric and a lovely hologram sea shell bookmark.

 AND if that wasn't enough all these fab buttons, charms and embellishments too! The black cat buttons are just adorable and I love those little kokeshi dolls too.

The summer card below was from Steph and the witch card was from the lovely Laura in another parcel of loveliness I've been meaning to show you but forgot!

 More about that below but first the ami I made for Steph. This is Fizz, I loved her and had to parcel her up very quickly so she didn't end up staying with me! Fizz is a bit of a hippy with her flowers on her jeans and multi coloured bracelets. I felt she needed a crochet flower on her hat too to finish her off. She was a lot of fun to make and I'm pleased to say Steph loves her :-) Another fabulous swap then, thanks Steph I'm looking forward to next month already!

So back to the parcel that I was bad and forgot to post pics of....
Laura sent me this gorgeous fabric, which is so pretty I don't want to cut it, lol! Sad but true I have a lot of fabric that I think that way about! The embroidered black ribbon is stunning and a pretty button one too and some gorgeous beads and buttons. Thanks again Laura for a lovely surprise and sorry for being so slow to show it off too  :-)

So for the makes this week, apart from Fizz of course. I decided to add something new to my stall for the fairs, something that I hadn't seen made by anyone else at them as I sometimes end up competing with other crochet and knitted toy sellers. The mushroom cottages fall into this category but I wanted something new too. After the last fair where my stall was right next to a cake stall with the most enormous chocolate fudge cake I've seen in my life (torture I tell you!) I thought I'd have a play with making cakes from felt. This is chocolate and banana dessert, with a kiwi, wafer and little creme caramel on top!

Yum!!! It's quite large this one and ended up taking absolutely ages to make so I thought I'd go for cupcakes and these appeared......

I have a lovely two tier cake stand which I currently use for brooches on my stall but I want to fill it with cupcakes this week as I think it'll look fabulous :-) They could be used for play food or a pincushion or just a calorie free pretty ornament. I'm going to get some pinking shears today as I think they'd look good with the top of the cake cases cut in a zigzag too. Is this what's called playing with my food!

Also it was a lovely friends birthday this week so I stitched this butterfly card,

and made this piggy needlecase as she has two lovely pigs I thought it was fitting :-) 

So that's me for another week. Hope the sun is shining where you all are as it's come back here, hooray! I'll be catching up on blogs soon to find out what everyone is up to and I'll see you next week.

Another week goes by

Hello everyone!  

Been a busy week for me which is good as it had been very quiet, I guess it's a between time of year with no occasions nearby! I'm getting on with mushroom cottages as I need to replace some and also working on a new one for Halloween which is fun :-)

I had a custom request for a large hanging mushroom with a fairy, birthday cake, bunting, snail and ladybird on it with a lot of pinks and purples. Also hearts for spots and a pink door.  I made this one.....

A close up of the front,

and the back with the snail.

I loved how it turned out and so did the buyer I'm pleased to say :-)

Next I thought I'd plough through my list of August birthday cards, it's such a busy month of birthdays for me! Here's the cards I made, not bad for one day!

I thought I'd get busy making the rug for my kitchen too, I started it a few weeks ago and had left it since then. The idea suggested by a lovely friend was to match it to my spotty kettle! But I have to say after making a plain white rug and lots of coloured spots when I laid it all out I decided it wouldn't work. One of the good things about crochet and knitting can be the way you can rip it out and start again! Love the colours  of the spots on the kettle though, they're bright pink, light pink, blue, orange and bright green, so I'm going to do stripes instead with white stripes between. The cats helped me decide it wouldn't be practical to leave it white with spots as when I laid it out on the floor they immediately started floor surfing, running and jumping on it and skidding across the kitchen, lol! White is not really practical then as it would need washed about twice a day! That was two days of crocheting out the window then!

I've also made another of the Little Ladies, now I want to know if you can tell this is Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. I like her but I wasn't sure if the stitched checks on her dress worked.

What do you think?

Well I'm off to put the kettle on and make a mushroom :-) Have a good week!

Mushrooms everywhere :-)

Hello everyone!

Well I've been lost in the land of the mushrooms this week and had great fun :-) I started out with making cottages, three of them in fact!

Ta-da!

First up is the 4th of July Cottage with the American  flag flying outside the door. The flag has 6 French knot stars as I couldn't fit the whole 50 on an area that's so teeny! 

Next I made a replacement for the Celebration Cottage as it sold at the last fair I did, so this is the new one.

The third one is a new one which I named Marigold Cottage. I got a new hanging basket full of lovely Fuchsia's which hangs outside the window near where I stitch, I guess it inspired this one!

Then a hanging mushroom too in the Jubilee Cottage style,

 After that I moved onto some more needlecases. Two new ones are done so far and one more is ready to embroider and stitch together.

I've had a busy week of mushrooming :-) The cottages and needlecases are now in my Etsy shop.

Oh yes and two Father's Day cards appeared too,

Now I'm onto the sea! I have a craft fair on Sunday at the quayside in north Shields and it's themed Spirit of the Sea and it's International Fairy Day too!  I'm just finishing off a baby octopus and next on the list is a mermaid so that'll be fun.

I have found what looks like a great fair at a garden centre not too far away which will be every month on a Saturday. It looks so promising that I rang up to book for next month and ended up booking in for the rest of the year, lol! I don't do things by halve and the dates were filling up quite quickly so I figured why not. Since the last fair I did every month finished I've been looking for a new home which suits my makes and me to be my regular place and this fits the bill nicely and I admit I have a huge love of garden centres :-) It's a craft and food fair so there'll be cake too!

Well I better get back to my seaside makes. Have a great week everyone!

Hello, hello I'm back again :-)

Now who sung that......it's going to bug me now!

Well I thought it was about time I updated this little blog of mine before people think I've dropped off the face of the earth :-)

Firstly and most importantly thank you all for the lovely comments and support I got last week, it means so much to me that you are all there and are so lovely, so applause and thanks to you all :-) The positive thinking may have done me good or maybe it was just the fibromyalgia went back to sleep but I'm good now. Relatively pain-free which for me is as good as it gets and the stupid amount of tablets I take are back in control of the pain again so YAY!

Right, a buy week or two of makes for me which has kept me pretty busy! First off cards, these I told you about last week but they hadn't all arrived at their destinations so I had to wait. Thank you cards for the wonderful and fabulous birthday pressies I got deluged with!

Now I'm happy with all these but I so love the cat ones, I admit I didn't want to give them away, lol!

I made a new spring bunny as the last one sold and it's just so adorable I had to have a new one for my stall.

I love the pompom tail :-)

I had an custom request on my  facebook page that I admit I had never thought of but what a great idea! A lady asked if I would be able to make her two needle cases with my mushroom cottages on them. Now it was really fun to make these and I think I may be making more to sell, a new line is born!

It was nice to have the extra space on the front to embroider a it of a garden without it having to fit on the cottage itself. On the the backs I added a little bow and handmade charm as I thought it looked too bare!  inside there's four felt pages for parking your needles.

Now I don't know if you all of know of the fabulous blog Annaboo's House which you can find HERE  but it's a gorgeous place and worth following, there's even a free pattern for a crochet mushroom house! :-) Well a few weeks ago a CAL was launched on there for an ami that Sarah had designed. It was a fun one as the same basic figure could become a monkey, cat, bear, rabbit or even a doll depending on what extra bits like ears and tails you added! I started out thinking a cat, really planned to make a cat, even bought the wool for cat............then I made a doll, lol! I realised I make a lot of animals and just thought a doll would be cute :-) Now I didn't quite play ball with the CAL as I had been so busy for a few weeks that I ended up starting her as the last part was published and making her in one go! So here's the pic of her before she was completely decent,

You'll notice I was protecting her dignity! Well I made her a little dress last night so she's not cold and flashing everything any more!

I used the wig method of adding her hair as suggested, I've never tried that way before and it works well. I usually stitch the hair on like a ragdoll and stitch lots and lots of strands on down the parting. Both ways work though so a new method for me :-) Thanks so much to Sarah for a fabulous pattern that I've really enjoyed making.

This week I've realised that it sees ages since I made a mushroom cottage so this is officially mushroom week. I have three cut out waiting for embroidery and have plans for a new theme too which should be fun so I'll be unveiling that on Etsy in a couple of days and I'll show it here next time too.

Well I'll be catching up with blogs in the next couple of days, sorry I don't get round quite so much these days but I do like to catch up on what's going on when I can.

See you all next week my lovely friends :-) Oh heck I've just thought, it's not Gary Glitter who sang that is it, yeuck!

Lots and lots of new things!

Hello again and a big welcome to my new followers :-) Lovely to see you!

Well this has been a very busy week! I had a craft fayre on Sunday and lots to get done in time for it. I'm pleased to say I made it and everything was ready to go. It was at the seaside in a building which is across the road from the beach and Sunday was wonderful, sunny and warm. Made a change from last month when it was snowy and ******* freezing!! The weather seemed to bring people out and they were spending, yippee! I had a great day :-) I have to admit it was busy and I forgot to take a pic of my stall as promised with the new bunting on it, ooops sorry! I will remember next month, promise!

So here's some of the new things I had made for the fayre,

Lots of mushrooms :-) All are embroidered front and back like this.....

Also Easter bunnies with teeny pom-pom tails, I only have one of these left after Sunday and chicks too..

Also two Mother's Day cards ready and delivered to my Mam and MIL already for Sunday :-)

It's my parents golden wedding anniversary on Saturday and I stitched them a sampler a few weeks ago, I gave them the sampler today and they loved it I'm pleased to say, here it is all framed up and the card I made to go with it too. I stitched the centre of the sampler for the card so it matched perfectly, I love how they turned out :-)

Also a card for my nephew's birthday this week,

I have crammed in a lot in a week everything but the sampler was made in a week! I never seem to notice how much I've made until it's actually on here in front of me, lol! There's also a new toadstool cottage which I stitched while at the craft fayre, it's nice to sit and make all day while sitting there :-)

I have some news but as I want to make sure everything is set in stone before I let on you'll just have to wait and see........... Sorry to tease you like that but I'm quite excited about it!