Summer Crafting

My friend asked me to make her a nature table doll with a face. Here is my first attempt. I was worried that she would look a bit hard looking. My friend liked it but I wasn't too fussed with the face. It's actually quite hard to needle felt. I'm sure there is a technique to needle felting faces but I couldn't find any free links.

The tree I needle felted on her dress was inspired by the flowering crabapple tree in my front garden. The flowers, I made with silk.

I found this on my craft table..... My son's kindy teacher had this tree that was in her store room. It is broken - the base is made of clay and wire with wool wraped around it. I was going to reuse the wool and make a needle felted tree for the nature table in her kindy room.

My son made a bird nest for his budgie. He raided my craft box for the thread - I thought it was so cute but he did leave my craft box in a mess (LOL).

"Merry Christmas"

"Merry Christmas"

to everyone out there in Blogland.

I have enjoyed another year looking at all the amazing, creative, inspiring and funny blogs out there all over the world. Thanks for stopping by and visiting my humble little spot in the Blue Mountains in blogland and leaving your kind comments.

I hope you have a wonderful Christmas Day and your tummies are not aching too much from all that Christmas dinner ;)

xxx.

Florabelle's Cardigan

Finally, after all these years of casting yarn onto needles I did it! I KNITTED A CARDIGAN..... and finished it. I also learnt off You-Tube how to make a button hole. I'm no longer just a scarf knitter. I have fulfilled my 2009 knitting resolution which was to knit either a sock, a cardigan or a jumper. YIPPEE! :)

OK, OK..... I know it's only a doll's cardigan. Maybe for 2010

I'll attempt a full size cardigan and finish the sock I've been working on ....

Florabelle's cardigan, designed by Waldorfmama, is a free pattern from Ravelry and is quick and easy to knit.

Our Humble Veggie patch

There's nothing like going out into the backyard and harvesting some fresh vegies for that night's dinner :)... A little while ago, I put in a new veggie patch at our new rental place even though the landlord wanted to come and tell us where to to put it!.... Well, I went ahead and put one in anyway. The yard here is really quite small and an old garden bed was the only logical spot to put it - anyway, he'll be coming to do some repairs next week... I'll find out how he feels about it and you never know, he might be so impressed with the veggie patch I might get my letter box so my mail doesn't get wet (LOL). There was a letter box here once... it has now rotted away and it just a hole in the brick wall of the fence outside the house. My mail mostly falls out and gets wet in the rain.

Little Lou has been doing such a keen job watering the vegie patch (and the fence, the rocks, the sand pit, his brother and even the next door neighbour... oops). We have just been enjoying the butter lettuce and rainbow chard. Soon we'll have tomatoes, cucumbers, chillies, capsicums and herbs. I hope the bower birds and snails don't eat it all before we get to it :)

Look MUMMA, a snail!

"A Gift of Love"

Today I attended the sewing day at my son's Kindy, where other mums and I made little dolls.

Now sewing is not my strongest crafting skill, but I gave it a go. I had to pull my sewing apart and start again because my doll's head was off-centre. I was too busy chatting away and not paying attention to what I was doing (LOL).

"Yabbie, Yabbie, Yabbie - Oi, Oi, Oi"

The weather has been warm again so we've been off to the local water hole for a swim. I love the fact that it's a 15 minute walk from our home. We're so lucky to have this so close to us.

This water hole is right next to the bushwalking track, making it an ideal spot to dangle your toes in the cool water on a hot day. It was a lot shallower last weekend when we went for a bushwalk through here but it has filled up a bit from the rain we had earlier in the week - OK for older kids but a bit tooooo deep for Little Lou.

........ a close up of the waterfall - home to a number of very feisty yabbies!

(Watch your toes!..)

When we got there yesterday, I got talking to a teenage boy who grew up in the area. He was telling us that this water hole used to be so deep that you could dive into it and jump off the rocks into the water. Over the years it has filled up with sand ( a lot of the rock around here is sandstone).

This spot is just right for little people - not too deep. Katie and her brothers are trying to catch yabbies and little fish.

Katie caught 2 yabbies and a fish (which ended up being the yabbie's dinner). She got a first hand lesson about the food chain. Katie felt bad about the fish being eaten. Next time she said she will bring 2 buckets - one for fish, and one for yabbies.

Katie did a sand sculpture of the yabbie and let her yabbie friend go with a full tummy.

Some locals that share the waterhole with us .......

Crimson Rosella

I feel like a bit of a goose. Last night I was editing my blog roll and talking to my 5 year old son at the same time. I clicked on the wrong button and managed to delete my blog roll! Now I'm brain storming, trying to remember who was on my blog roll. So please don't be offended if you've been on my Blog roll and find you are no longer there. It is slowly being reinstated (LOL).

This was a knitting blog once!

As I started this blog as a knitting blog, I suppose I had better post some knitting!......:) LOL

There has been a bit of cool weather in the Mountain's for the last few days, which is nice after those hot days we had. There's been a bit of rain and fog as well.

It's been nice weather for knitting so I finally finished this Edgar scarf (a free pattern off Ravelry). It's for a friend as a thank you/Christmas present from Lou and I as she will no longer be running play group next year. We're going to miss her. I hope she likes it - she is always admiring my Edgar scarf when I've been wearing it at playgroup this winter and she kept asking me for the pattern, which I kept forgetting to bring for her. I knitted the scarf with Katia Scotch Tweed - it's a silk-cotton mix. It's been sitting in my stash for a while now, waiting to be knitted up into something. It's green with blue flecks in the yarn, which doesn't show up in the pictures.

I saw this scarf knitted up on Stacy's Blog "The Barnacle is my Totem" a while ago. I loved the way it looked so I followed the link to the Purl Bee - Summer Shimmer scarf.

I knitted it up with Noro Silk garden. I lost the tag in the move so if any one out there recognises this colour or the number on the Noro tag, I would love to know what it is. :)

Usually I take a pic of the ball of wool to post up but this time I didn't. The yarn looked quite pretty as a ball but as I was knitting up the scarf, I wasn't too fussed with the way the colours were coming out. It might be a bad match of wool to this pattern - this pattern might be better with a single colour yarn, not striping yarn. So off to the frog pond it goes...:(

"Spring Flowers"

Spring Flowers!.....

"Chicken Maiden"

A little while ago I dyed some wool blue. I was after a light blue icy colour to make a King Winter doll. The blue wool that I had dyed came out too warm - it was a beautiful turquoise colour. I wasn't sure what to do with it. I started needle felting the body of the doll, not sure of what sort of maiden she will become.

As I love chickens, I thought.......... Chicken Maiden. At the moment we can't keep any chooks as our yard is too small. Yes, I even thought about a chook tractor with 2 bantams but with 3 kids that love playing outdoors, I don't think there is enough space for the chooks to escape and hide, particularly with an over-enthusiastic 2 year old with lots of cuddles to give. Also, 1/4 of the backyard where I am renting is concrete - not a very happy place for chookies. I know that once I get my own place, I'll have chickens again.

So, here she is..... The chicken maiden collecting the eggs with a little spring chick at the back of her dress, which is very cute...:)

"Festival of Joy"

On Saturday, the Blue Mountains Community Gardens at North Katoomba had their Festival of Joy.

The rain held off for a little while. We got there a bit late. Most of the kids activities were packing up but we did get to see some live music and have a yummy cup of chai.

One of the veggie patches

Herbal Spiral

This sculpture is a work in progress. We were here 2 years ago making our little mark on this huge mosaic. It is nice to see that most of it is still there and has stood the test of time.

A red love heart that I did with my son who was 3 at the time. He stuck most of the red tiles on with a bit of help from his Mummy. If you look hard enough you can work out a heart!..... LOL :)

It was nice to see it again after 2 years.

This is Katie's work from 2 years ago. She made up a story as she was mosaicking about the elephants and the peacock. They were on a journey somewhere - we have both forgotten the story now. But Katie was so excited to see that most of what she did that day has still stuck. She did another part of the mosaic on Saturday but it was starting to rain and I didn't get a picture of it.

Belly Dancing in the rain

Yes, this sword is blunt. One of the belly dancers was performing with this sword but my camera was getting too wet, so I missed the picture. Katie was happy to reenact the performance for you :)

Cuddles for Mumma

Little Lou wandering

This is a hut that a Medieval reenactment group had made.