Friday 29 May 2015

Friday Fun

tunisian crochet

Here are my finished Tunisian Crochet Kitchen Washcloths.
The one above is made with Drops Safran and Drops Muskat held together and crocheted on a 7mm hook.

For this cloth I cast on 30 stitches and then worked back and forth in tunisian simple stitch until I had it kind of square :)

Kitchen Washcloth number 1

This is the first of the kitchen cloths.

Made with Drops Cotton Light and using a 5mm hook.
For this cloth I cast on 40 stitches and worked back and forward in Tunisian Simple Stitch.

tunisian simple stitch

This is the second kitchen cloth I finished. It was made in a thicker 100% cotton yarn from Jakob.
I had my hook issue in the middle of this project and had to hobble to the end of it with my piece of hook and very cramped arms!

I made this one also with a size 5mm (The one that broke :( ) and also cast on 40 stitches and worked back and forth with tunisian simple stitch.

If you are interested in the Tunisian Crochet technique, I learnt all I know from THIS Course :)

What have you managed to finish this week?

I would love to see it, so feel free to add your projects below :)

x



Thursday 28 May 2015

Tutorial Thursdays Month-Long Linky Party

tutorial thursdays

Welcome back to the last week of linking fun for May.

May is the here, the month of Sunny weather (or colder weather) and lots of inspiration to be creative :)

Get creative and share your craft tutorials with us all!

I would love to see them, so share them below :)

This month there will be no feature. 

Feel free to link up all your crafts below.
I look forward to visiting all of the links I find below.

If you want a button for your side bar - here you go:
Marigolds' Loft

See you soon
x



Wednesday 27 May 2015

Tunisian Washcloths

Tunisian Crochet Washcloths

(This post contains affiliate links, thank you for using them :))

The last week I have been terribly bored with my WIPs so I was looking for something new.
On my usual Yarn along web visits,  I visited a lady (I found her again :) - Heather @ Townsend House)  who was busy knitting some washcloths and I thought that this would be a brilliant idea to have a small project to work on that is a bit mindless but useful!

I didn't want to knit mine, so instead I used Tunisian crochet to whip up some gorgeous looking washcloths :)

Whilst making my second cloth my hook snapped!

knit pro

But luckily I could get hold of the wonderful lady who sold it to me and she will be sending me a replacement for it shortly.

I didn't want to wait for the needle so I have continued forward with a bigger hook size.

I am now on cloth 4 and love this one too :)

tunisian crochet cloth

I will share all the finished cloths with you on Friday.

If you are interested in learning Tunisian Crochet I learnt it in this Craftsy Course 

Reading-wise: Crawling forward in the same book from last week, and the week before that :O

What have you been busy with this week?

I will be sharing this post with all my creative weekly friends, so drop on over for some great inspiration :)

See you soon
x

Craftsy

Monday 25 May 2015

Felted Doves - How-To

Make a felted dove

To make this craft you will need:

supplies felted dove


  • a Piece of Felt
  • Some fleece for the wings and to stuff the bird
  • beads for the eyes
  • a felting needle
  • a felting cushion
  • some white cotton
  • a needle for sewing up the dove
  • a needle that will pass through the hole of your bead
  • an outline of a dove (you can also use the one below)

Dove body outline

First cut out two bird body pieces from the felt
Sew the body up leaving a space on the back of the body (roughly about 2cm wide).
Using some of the fleece, stuff the body and then sew it closed.

Dove body, cut and stuff

Sew on the eyes of the bird by inserting your bead needle from the side of the head and coming out where you would like the first eye to be placed.
Then drive your needle trough the bird head and out onto the other-side where you would like to place your other eye.

Sewing on the dove eyes

Thread your other needle with a length of cotton and inserting your needle in the belly of the bird, go through the body and leaving some tail, go back through the body again to create a hanging possibility for your dove. (before finishing this tie, hold the dove up to make sure your bird will "fly" straight :))
Tie the ends of under the belly and cut.

hangties for dove

felted dove

Take a piece of your fleece for your wings.
It should be wide enough that it fits from the head of the bird until the beginning of the tail.
It should be long enough that when folded in half it will give you the height of the wings.

Place the felt on your working surface and place the dove on the top half of it.
Now fold the other half of felt around the belly of the bird and up on the other side.


Felt into place.
Be sure to leave the fleece looking like wings, so felt around the belly and slightly up each side so that the wings sit flat on the body.

felting the wings

finished felted dove

And there you have it, your own felted dove :)
See you next time.
x


Thursday 21 May 2015

Tutorial Thursdays Month-Long Linky Party

tutorial thursdays

Welcome back to another month of linking fun!

May is the here, the month of Sunny weather (or colder weather) and lots of inspiration to be creative :)

Get creative and share your craft tutorials with us all!

I would love to see them, so share them below :)

This month there will be no feature. 

Feel free to link up all your crafts below.
I look forward to visiting all of the links I find below.

If you want a button for your side bar - here you go:
Marigolds' Loft

See you soon
x



Wednesday 20 May 2015

Plodding Along!

WIP

I must honestly say that I don't think I have ever been this slow at any project before.
With spring in the air on most days, I find myself busy in the kitchen making preserves or out in the garden, planting, watering and the likes.

If you want to read all about it you can do so HERE

Well, as you can see in the top image, not much has changed.

You may even think that nothing has changed but you would be wrong :)

I have had to rip my cardie back.
I didn't necessarily have to, but I decided I did not like the patterning on the back and wanted to have the back plain.

So nothing for it but to pull it all out and start again.
I have managed to knit about 6cm so far on my second attempt.

Besides that I have been 0% Creative!

I haven't touched my socks, and I look at my WIP bag with a certain degree of boredom :O

Could it be all the blue?

I hope I will feel inspired in the near future!

Do you ever feel like this?

Reading-wise: Still the same as last week, the book seems to be incredibly long, but still it has my attention which is okay.

I have also started to fill in my 5-year Weather Calender. I bought this journal yonks ago with the plan to use it as part of our homeschool curriculum when the girls were still in first grade!

It fell into my hands again the other day and I thought it would be fun to track the weather for as long as I can to see how it changes over a couple of years.

Have you been creative this week?

See you soon.
x

Craftsy

Tuesday 19 May 2015

New Lifestyle Choices

lifestyle choices

Since the beginning of last week we have started a couple of new things :)

 I have started a 30 day Yoga challenge with hubby and Kay (with breaks in between as some days are just too full with other things).
So far so good, today we are onto Day 7.

Getting back into yoga has made me aware of how much I have missed it!
I used to do a minimum of 15 hours of yoga a week back in S.A., but since we have been back in Switzerland I haven't ventured even to do a simple sun salutation!


gluten free bread

With our new resolution to do something good for our body, minds and souls, I decided now would be the perfect time to attempt to be wheat-free.

I read "Wheat-Belly" a while back and since I finished the book I wondered how much effort and how much "Cold-Turkey" I would go through if I stopped the wheat.

Now you must know I LOVE bread!

I love it in all its variations, and living in Europe it is all over the place.

For me there is nothing nicer than a Sunday brunch with croissants, plaited bread and all the accompaniments!

And I adore baking bread too, and pizza, and bread rolls, and scones and.......

I think as a teenager I could eat a whole loaf on my own as an after dinner snack :O

I am getting sidetracked......

Anyway, I decided to stop, just like that!

And I feel amazing!

I thought to begin with I would look for alternatives to bread in the form of "Good" Gluten-free products. 

In my local store they have a selection of "Breads" made with rice flour and Tapioca flour. They look like bread and taste quite good too. (The image above is my Gluten Free bread which I will be having for supper)

Honestly, I haven't missed it.

I am a firm believer though, that by cutting something completely out of your diet can have quite a backlash and can bring with it some nasty reactions should you try and introduce it into your diet again at a much later date. So with this in mind I am not following a rigorous wheat free diet.
I follow a "no gluten" diet during the week and then still enjoy our usual Sunday breakfast or dinner with all the trimmings.

Strangely enough though, one week in and my scrumptious bread over the weekend tasted weird!

Once I become sure footed I plan on starting to work on some of the "Wheat-Belly" Recipes as some of them sound amazing and I really would like to try them. 

Have any of you out there tried these recipes?
Which are your favourites?


milk

And the last lifestyle choice for the moment is fresh, organic milk!
Up until now we have always purchased our milk in bulk, and naturally because we don't chug it down, we need a milk that lasts a bit longer, so the choice has always been UHT. 

We have an organic cattle farmer in our vicinity who has a milk machine :)
You drop your coins into the machine and it dispenses that much Organic Raw Milk, fresh from the cows!

So we thought why not?!

At the end of last week, Kay and I went to fetch 2 litres of milk to try it out.

It tastes really good!

I think the girls will take a while to get used to the taste and Kay remarked on the strange aftertaste whilst eating her cereal.

I like the creamy texture of the milk, and the container lasted us about 4 days and was still good (we left it raw as it is organic)

I think our days using UHT are definitely numbered!

Do you use raw milk?

I look forward to hearing from you.
x

Friday 15 May 2015

Fridays

Ben lomond

What a week this has been - full of action - I will fill you in about it all next week :)

It has been so full that I totally missed out on the Knitting and Crochet Blog Week :(, I didn't even get a chance to follow along by reading some of the awesome blogs out there! I will catch that up later today though.

Lets get on to my FOs that I have to share:

Hubby Fingerless gloves above are finished but have been wrapped for Father's Day!

handwoven scarf

handwoven scarf tussah silk

These are my finished silk scarves.

The blue one above is a mix of Tussah silk and Merino wool. It turned out really nicely and would make a great autumn/winter scarf.

The red scarf is 100% Tussah silk and has an amazingly luxurious feel to it.

What have you managed to finish this week?

Feel free to share your projects with us all below.

See you next week.
x




Thursday 14 May 2015

Tutorial Thursdays Month-Long Linky Party

tutorial thursdays

Welcome back to another month of linking fun!

May is the here, the month of Sunny weather (or colder weather) and lots of inspiration to be creative :)

Get creative and share your craft tutorials with us all!

I would love to see them, so share them below :)

This month there will be no feature. 

Feel free to link up all your crafts below.
I look forward to visiting all of the links I find below.

If you want a button for your side bar - here you go:
Marigolds' Loft

See you soon
x



Friday 8 May 2015

Friday Fun

FO Friday Fun

If you have been following me this week, you will have already seen these cuties.
They are my Finished object for this week :)
If you would like to make your self a bunch of these coin purses, you can find out more in my Coin Purse Post!

What have you managed to finish this week?

Feel free to share all of your finished objects for the week with us by linking below :)

See you again soon
x


Thursday 7 May 2015

Tutorial Thursdays Month-Long Linky Party

tutorial thursdays

Welcome back to another month of linking fun!

May is the here, the month of Sunny weather (or colder weather) and lots of inspiration to be creative :)

Get creative and share your craft tutorials with us all!

I would love to see them, so share them below :)

This month there will be no feature. 

Feel free to link up all your crafts below.
I look forward to visiting all of the links I find below.

If you want a button for your side bar - here you go:
Marigolds' Loft

See you soon
x



Wednesday 6 May 2015

Thumbs Up!

Ben Lomond Mitts

Just a quick post today as not much has changed on the WIP side of things.
As you may have seen in yesterday's post, I have been busy preparing for a market on the weekend and as such have not had much time to do much else :(

Hubby's Fingerless gloves are growing though and I have just finished the thumb gusset. All other projects aside, I am hoping to get these off the needles by Friday so that I can share them with you.

Besides that I haven't touched anything else though, and hope to remedy that next week!

Reading Wise: Nothing has changed from last week, I am enjoying this title quite a bit and look forward to having a little more reading time soon.

How are your WIPs of the week going?

I will be sharing this post with all my creative weekly friends, so drop by for some super inspiration :)

See you soon
x

640x100_d

Tuesday 5 May 2015

Cute Coin Purse Making

Easy Coin Pattern Purse

This weekend coming I will be attending a small market to display some of our weaving work from the studio. I have quite a bit of left over woven materials and I was wondering what small objects I could make in the amount of time I have left, using the materials I have at my disposal.

I came across this cute, free pattern on Craftsy made by Deby from So-Sew-Easy:

How to sew a coin Purse

I was thrilled and thought that this would be the perfect project for all of those rests.

Luckily my purse frames arrived just before the weekend and so I spent the weekend making these babies:

coin purse how to

coin purse handmade

coin purse

Deby provides a really neat tutorial to go with her pattern and she guides you step-by-step through the process.

easy purse making by hand

For this project, you only need a few pieces of material to get you going, some interfacing and of course some purse frames.

My biggest "Problem" area of the project:

The frames I found readily available to me were 8.5cm and not as pretty as the ones Deby uses.
To get them onto the finished sewn purses needed a lot of coercing and my fingers are feeling pretty sensitive this morning (that is why the yellow one is not quite finished yet :))

Besides that, the project was really fun and I enjoyed making the purses. I love how you can combine any fabric to create astounding results!

cute coin purse

I just love the contrast of the outer fabric and the lining, it gives the purse such a "Wow" effect!

So, if you are looking for a small project to uses up those little scraps of fabric, why not give this project a try? 
They will make amazing little gifts!

See you soon.
x

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