Odds and ends

Crafting time has been thin on the ground lately, but I’ve been sneaking a few minutes here and there.

I pulled out and blocked a few hand knits in preparation for our upcoming trip to the USA.

This shawl had it’s first blocking to open up the ‘lace’. The last time I was somewhere cold enough to wear it I had finished it on that trip and had nowhere to block so just wore it as it was.

Love the nice straight edge my new blocking wires provide. Can’t wait to wear this. The yarn was handspun by me. The dyer has branched into other things and no longer stocks fibre in her etsy store which is a real loss.

Unfortunately a lot of my favourite shawls are staying behind. It would seem that I have knitted a lot of shawls (and there are plenty more in my ravelry queue), but I have to admit that space dictates I only take a select few.

This one is newly  off the needles, but is staying behind. It turned out rather small and I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it yet.

This is a handspun single from superfine South African merino dyed by me.

Finally, I did a little bit on my travel journal. Gorgeous Girl really enjoyed keeping a travel journal while we were in Fiji earlier this year, so I want to make sure that she does that again, and the best way to encourage behaviour is to model it yourself.

I’m planning on picking up some USA themed stickers or paper for the cover page, but I had some lovely October Afternoon paper I bought several years ago when we were living in South Africa (and have been hoarding). This seemed like the perfect project for it.

This page opens out and will be used to describe our accommodation.

I fussy cut some paper

All ready for journalling to happen.

Tomorrow we are flying to Australia. We get to spend time with family and celebrate some milestones which will be lovely. My mum is going to come over and join us in Brisbane for a week. We don’t get to see her as much as we’d like because while Brisbane is only a three hour flight, the trip to Perth is much longer (and much more expensive).

I’m hoping to blog more regularly now that I am on holidays. Hopefully there’ll be a finished mitten to show before too long.

 

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A travel journal

I kept a dedicated travel journal on our trip to Fiji. I still need to print the photos that I want to put in there, but all the journalling is done.

Gorgeous Girl also kept a journal as well which was lovely to see. I’m going to make up another one for her at the end of the year and I think I’ll set aside a large journal for myself to track our trips in the future into one place.

The title page was plain with a water colour border.

I free hand drew the border.

Here’s the border on another page.

Don’t you love the sugar packets? I also did some watercolouring of the pineapple at breakfast. I am well aware that my watercolour skills are nowhere near the league of others like Zoya, but I’m enjoying playing around.

A view from the verandah.

Yeah, I know it looks like a kid did it, but it holds a memory for me and it’s a start in exploring my creativity.

I cut up the magazine that came on the plane to get a map of Fiji.

I did some journalling as well.

I’m really pleased with the title on this page.

We treated Gorgeous Girl to her first massage. She is a convert 😀

I really enjoyed the process of journalling during the holiday itself rather than waiting several years to put the photos in an album. I’d like to do more journalling on a regular basis. Must try and carve out the time.

My crafting mojo took a vacation of its own, but seems to have returned in the last few days (its return coincided with the mid-semester break, so there may be a correlation there lol).

On a side note, I’m not sure why the photos have turned out so small in this post. Something to do with the new camera I’m sure, but my technical advisor (Gorgeous Man) is currently in Sydney for work…

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