There’s been a small knitting finish. This is a very small hat.

Pattern is Swirl. A great free pattern. I’ll be making this again in thicker yarn. The pattern comes in a variety of sizes. This Premmie one is going to a hospital in South Africa.

I recently spent some time cutting more fabric for the Very Hungry Caterpillar quilt that I’m making up as I go along. My foot has been much improved lately and I wasn’t too sore after standing and cutting for several hours. I think an end to the whole ordeal may finally be in sight (as long as I remember to do my Physiotherapy exercises). After cutting I had time to piece a border for one side.

I think I’ll need two pieced borders on either side and one pieced border at each end to make it fit Gorgeous Girl’s bed, but we’ll see how it goes. I have more of this fabric left over, so I have ideas for another (play mat sized) quilt floating around in my head. I’m pleased with how this one is turning out. I’ve also realised I could never write patterns for a living. My brain won’t do the maths. Hence the irregular sized blocks in the border.

What are you working on?

Read Full Post »

Stuck?! Sketch

When I saw the sketch at Stuck?!  I knew I had to play a long. Clean lines and lots of white space are right up my alley.

This is the sketch.

Here is my take on it. I’m still working through my backlog, so this is another photo from Christmas Day, 2011. I haven’t even started to scrap the safari part of that trip yet…

If I’m going to be honest, I should have gone with the ‘less is more’ principle, and left off the horizontal rub-on. However, I do really like this layout overall and the sketch is one that I will most definitely use again. I’m loving my new corner-rounder from Stampin’ Up.

Gorgeous Girl likes it. She saw me photographing it and told asked me to put it on my blog…

Thanks for stopping by my blog and taking a look at my sketch. If you’re a new visitor, or even and old one I’d love to hear from you.

Read Full Post »

Some cards

Before we begin, I have to say that I can’t take much credit for these cards. These are the result of experimenting under the expert guidance of my SIL while we were in Australia over Christmas. She showed me how to layer paints onto canvas and add texture and interest.

The butterfly is stamped onto paper coloured by inks and then fussy cut out.

Card 1.

Detail of Card 2.

I added some doodling. Seems to becoming a bit of a signature of mine lately.

And another gratuitous shot.

I love how these turned out. I think I need to add paints and fancy markers to my shopping list…

I have some birthdays coming up, but Gorgeous Girl has already made two cards and is promising to make more, so these might go in the ‘need a card’ drawer and wait for a while.

I would show you Gorgeous Girl’s cards. They are very lovely, but she has asked that I stop showing her artwork on the blog, so until she changes her mind, you are just going to have to take my word for it.

Read Full Post »

Making

You may have noticed there’s been more scrapbooking happening this year at Ruthsplace. I have changed the area where I scrap and I think that’s what making the difference. My ‘new’ spot is cooler (slightly) and being closer to the supplies means less packing and unpacking of the stash. Hopefully scrapbooking motivation will continue as I have a ton of photos still to do.

Last week Gorgeous Girl came home from school with the assignment of making a sculpture. She chose to do a bird of paradise.

She drew up a paper pattern and then transferred it to some cardboard taken from an old box. She painted it and used her stash of feathers to make the wings.  Gorgeous Man helped with the tail feathers and the feet. Then she did what all craft blogger do and took a picture.

While they were engaged in that project I sewed Gorgeous Girl another pillow case.

Stash fabric purchased before we left South Africa, so it’s been marinating in the stash for a few years.

Read Full Post »

Love is…

I did this scrap page for the Frosted Designs “Love is…” Challenge.

We were required to use the following colour palette. I think I’ve loosely interpreted it.

I love this photo of Gorgeous Girl and her cousin. He was very patient teaching her how to ride his scooter.

Background paper is from DCWV Stack 7. Which I picked up several years ago and am slowly working my way through.

The “Love” is twine. I wrote the word lightly in pencil and then glued the twine down.

Lettering is done by hand.

Flowers are on canvas and were the result of an afternoon’s play with my SIL. Rockmelon Recycled.

Because I never throw anything away the tag at the top is recycled from a clothing tag. Mesh was in the bag of goodies my friend Kerin sent me.

 

Read Full Post »

Some Spinning

Recently I finished this yarn. It’s taken a few months to do. Snatched minutes here and there. It’s a three ply. Two thicker plies of merino/silk blend and one thinner ply of pure silk onto which the beads were threaded.

Fibre was a gift from Gorgeous Man.

In cake form.

Close-up.

Now to decide what to make with it. There’s 212 metres and it’s gloriously soft.

Read Full Post »

Gorgeous Girl Designs

One of our neighbours is turning one next week. (I promise this next bit is related) Yesterday Gorgeous Man and Gorgeous Girl and her new carpooling friend set off for school. Traffic was so bad that they moved 100 metres in an hour. At 8.45 am (an hour and a half after they had set off) Gorgeous Man made the executive decision to turn the car around and bring them home for the day.

In the morning Gorgeous Girl and her friend did some maths and English worksheets and books I had in the house. They also did some painting and played outside. After her friend went home at lunch time. We decided to use the rest of our school free day sewing. (I also have to stop studying if Gorgeous Girl is home for the day, so it was ‘school free’ for both of us).  Gorgeous Girl asked if she could make a birthday present for the neighbour.

She raided her stash and drew a design on a piece of paper. (She traced one of our wooden figurines from South Africa). I helped by pinning the two bits of fabric together, cutting out, and sewing around the curves.

Presenting “Hornbill”

Side B

I also stuffed and sewed the eyes. I think it’s a great design. She’s very clear on her design vision, shape and fabric wise, just needs a little bit of help in the execution of it.

Hopefully her little friend will like his Gorgeous Girl Original.

Read Full Post »

Hand-piecing

Work on my hexagon quilt continues slowly.

I’ve started the process of squaring up the big hexagon. Once that’s done I’ll be adding top and side roads until it reaches queen-sized.

I figure I’ve got a few more years work on it to go.

Read Full Post »

A craft mishmash

While we were in Australia I made the front of this card. I’m pleased with how this turned out. Really must get some inks of my own next time I’m back there.

It’s more purple and less blue in real life, also more green than yellow… could not get this to photograph correctly.

I finally got around to sewing in the ends on a couple of hats for charity. I’m planning on knitting a few more and then sending them off to a lady in one of my South African groups on Ravelry for delivery to a hospital in Cape Town.

I would need to double check the stash, but I think this is the last of the orange striped yarn. I still have a ton of the blue yarn left, unfortunately it is one of my ‘what was I thinking?’ yarns. I might do some crocheting with it next…

After a long absence my sewing machine has been run through it’s paces. I’ve added the borders to Gorgeous Girl’s Very Hungry Caterpillar quilt. (Yes, I’m aware that she has no need of a quilt here. Occasionally she gets her quilts out puts them on the floor to play on).

I need to lay it on her bed to check the length. I’m making this up as I go along, so the next step is to add some more coloured squares on the sides to make it wider.

 

Read Full Post »

An online scrapbook challenge

After making the other two pages I felt inspired to enter another online challenge. It’s been a while since I entered one of these. Often the challenges specify items that aren’t in my stash and living in a country with no scrapbooking stores makes entering those sorts of challenges difficult.

Anyway, this week I saw a challenge at Stuck?!Sketches.

I really liked the sketch.

This is my take on it.

Materials used: Background paper is DCVW Neutrals cardstock stack. Flowers are fussy cut from Kaiser Craft Hippy Girl collection.  Circle is free-hand and the photo layer and banner were done with spray inks.

Some closeups of the page.

I adore this paper and wanted to stretch it as far as I could, so I fussy cut out the embellishments.

I spent a little time during the holidays experimenting with doodling. This is a zentangle pattern.

Yes, I’m still scrapbooking photos from 3 years ago. To be honest I’m not sure I’ll ever get “caught up”. But I’m having fun and I guess that’s the main thing.

Read Full Post »