Tag: yarn

Hare brained

by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Chatting, Crochet, Sewing

Usual run up to Christmas busyness. Most of the decorations are up, except for those with battery lights. Remembered to get some yesterday so just need to go through them and replace the old ones now. Am thinking of the winter solstice and having a bit of a feast and lights to celebrate the beginning of the new cycle of rebirth, the coming of the longer days.

Cake is marzipanned. Have got most of the Christmas dinner pre-prepared ready to heat up on the day. Am making stuffing balls from scratch today – a Mary Berry Biker Boots recipe (so named after mis-reading something about her) and will freeze them.

Finished my winter hare with her gift bag. She’s in place of a stocking for me. Absolutely loved making her.

Have modded the template slightly and made a smaller version:

Her little wooly jumper is crocheted from sequinned yarn.

Got two more ready to sew plus new clothes. I was lucky with a couple of charity shop trawls that found me some lovely dresses with sparkly sequinned tulles over ‘satin’ linings. The lining is great for making pantaloons and knickerbockers. One had a feather trim used for the feather hat above. Loads left. Of everything.

Also working out a crochet pattern to make a ballet wrap cardi (sadly using the last of my souki gold dust yarn – discontinued and can’t get old stock for love nor money) and a big flouncy tutu to set it all off.

Something I’ve not been able to get hold of are the wooden and hardboard boxes of easy peelers… they lend themselves to becoming a beautiful beds for winter hares with space around for small pretty packages. It’s become a bit of a mission to find then transform one.

Managed to finish off the baby blanket and hat for the local animal shelter charity shop. The pattern was fab. It was full of bobbles, shells and Biba windows (that’s my name for them cos they very loosely remind me of the Biba logo:

(bloody Foxtrot Oscar autocorrect… Biba to Boba twice now!)

When you’re crocheting biggish projects, a little variety in the stitches keeps it interesting and this pattern had that. The shop wants it after Christmas to put on their FB auction.

Even bought a gorgeous gift bag to sell it in; sets it off beautifully:

Who wouldn’t want to welcome a new baby with a ‘Guess How Much I Love You’ gift bag? Perfect.

My biggest happy moment recently was finding the Dr Marten brogues that Amazon cancelled the night before they were due to be delivered. Not from Amazon, obviously, but the DM shop itself. Not only were they in stock but cheaper and arriving on Monday. Marvellous. Really made up about that.

Challenging myself to make gingerbread and decorate with royal icing in time for the last wild and wooly meeting of the year. It’s just making the time to get down to it. I have the ingredients and adore the spicy smells in the kitchen while it’s being cooked. Delicious, warm and aromatic.

So, apart from the gingerbread, the Mary Berry Biker Boots stuffing and wrapping Monday’s brogues (can hardly wait to do that) pretty much everything that can be prepared early is done.

Looking forward to the solstice then Christmas Day.

After all these years…

by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Uncategorized

Been using Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign for over 20 years. Admittedly, I did get cracked copies and was very much a pirate in the early days until I became proficient and loved them. Then I bought the programmes. But, my love affair with the suite finally came to an end and I kissed goodbye to the ever-flakier and capricious software just last week. The Adobe suite licence came up for renewal and I cancelled all but After Effects. Adobe had p*ssed me off once too often a few months ago and that’s when I bought the Affinity suite. Is Affinity awesome? Nearly. It needs a lasso tool and the curve layers… so, so many get generated. Gah.

I’ve been working on a collection of art nouveau spot graphics and other elements using Procreate on an iPad. Trouble is, the graphics need to be vectorised. Inkscape trace works well enough. There’s Adobe Capture (free) but is also a bit of a PITA. Then they need to be taken into Affinity Designer. AD then presents a list of Curve layers a mile long. Grouping elements together takes forever. There has to be a better way. So, awesome? Nah. Is Illustrator? Nah with knobs on. Caught somewhat in the devil’s bargain, but there you go.

I’ve also got myself onto a Blender course and given myself a year to see if I can live without AE as well. Love After Effects. Dear God. It’s like crack cocaine.

So, depending on how it goes, I might go back to Adobe or I might not. A year will give me time to decide.

Meanwhile, scammers are just everywhere. Like herpes! I posted something on Done Deal and within minutes had two messages saying they were interested in the ‘item’ I’d posted and could they talk to me on WA. Apparently, this is a known scam strategy… get you off the DD private messaging… then what they do if they’re successful I have no clue. Both got refused and blocked.

Then listed some crocheted baby things on Moffymakes

Within 5 minutes got a message to say my account had been blocked, please contact the Etsy security team… but , amazingly *ahem* was able to carry on happily listing a few other things…

followed by another message asking me to contact the Etsy support team… apparently, a potential buyer tried to make a payment but their payment couldn’t get through… please contact Etsy to verify my banking information …

Both reported and blocked. Very annoying.

They give me a sore head.

Go stick the boot in, Ted!

Found a fabulous vintage collection of cross stitch alphabets on the Gutenberg site. Pretty crappy state but cleaned them up and can use them fairly easily:

The set above still need cleaning up but have two sets done already and tried out a pattern:

Also very excited to have a book of Art Nouveau cross stitch on its way from a private seller on Amazon so not new, but seeing as the book is out of print, I don’t care. Just loving the potential.

Lots to be busy with. Sketch book group, crochet group (several crochet projects on the go… ), academic work, digital artwork, motion graphics and planning on some Tilda sewing before Christmas as well.

Oh, also trying out Glyphs – font making software. Free trial for 30 days (I think) then decision time. It’s 300 euro so not cheap but have a course on Skill Share on font making with Glyphs so worth taking a deep dive before parting with a substantial chunk of change. Bottom line is no chance of getting bored.

Posted the Call the Midwife blanket (above) on Moffymakes. Not sure if I want to part with it… we’ll see if it or anything gets bought. The traffic on Etsy is immense. Listings are only something like 36c a month (though you have to pay 17 euro to register) so costs are fairly minimal. It’s the online equivalent of stack ’em high, sell ’em cheap. My site will probably never get noticed.

Sounds like I’m full of gloom and despondency but am pretty sanguine. Once it’s listed, it’s put away and forgotten. I’d like to get enough to be able to donate a nice lump to the KWSPCA so fingers crossed.