Made Marian: Oozing Crafty Goodness

Remember this?

Well I can finally reveal what it is.

The blanket is now in the possession of baby Frida Browne (or Newbrowne 2.0 as I like to call her).  Frida is half Finnish so I wanted to do the blanket in the colours of the Finnish flag, blue and white.   I was kind of hoping that the baby would be a girl so that nobody could accuse me of doing “blue for a boy” and luckily she obliged me

As well as trying to add value to bargain bin tops I’ve also been attempting to make jewelery.  I love jewelery and I especially love handmade jewelery so after buying some basic jewelery making tools online ages ago I decided that it was finally time for me to try making some myself.  Here are my attempts so far.

This first one is a pretty conventional necklace, nothing special going on here just threading some beads through some silver wire and attaching some fasteners.

This second one is a little bit more unusual as I crocheted it (after being inspired by something that Craftyrainbowhead suggested    ) It is fastened at the back with a regular necklace clasp which I’ve just tied the yarn onto.  This is a very fine crochet yarn and I used a 2mm hook.  The pattern was a border suggestion from the squares book that I keep banging on about.

Next on my crafty list is card making - I’m way behind on this so I should have some pictures soon of my endeavors.

As I sheepishly return to the blogosphere I can’t help wonder if I have any readers left.  I’d love to say that I’ve been off doing something exciting but alas I’ve just been a little uninspired lately due to nasty factors beyond my control.  Anywho, I’m tired of complaining (aren’t you lucky I haven’t been complaining here) about the cards I’ve been dealt and I’d better just get back playing the game, if ya know what I mean.  Last thing I wrote here was that I’d be back with some crafting so true to my word, here is an update of what I’ve been up to.

I made these very pink brooches.

And inspired by Ruth at Nice Day Designs I decided to revamp some bargain bin tops.

This one had plain white buttons when I picked it up for €3, I changed the buttons and then did some plain backstitch embroidery to add some colour.

To this one I just added some crochet flowers.

What do you think?  If there’s anyone out there that is

Well, I’m off home to visit my folks tomorrow and then we’re heading down to Ballyferriter outside Dingle for the rest of the May Bank Holiday weekend.  Hope everyone has a good one

Posting has been sporadic here for the last while but that doesn’t mean that crafting has been sporadic.  There has been a good few birthdays over the last month so I’ve been kept busy making cards, I’ve also been working on a top-secret project (more to follow).  And as well as all that I need to get cracking on the raffle prizes that I’ve promised Damien for the Blog Awards.

My cards are taking on a distinctively Spring like quality at the moment, but I think we could all do with some Spring in our lives after the dark Winter months.  Here’s a typical example of my cards at the moment.

I’m planning on bringing two raffle prizes to the Blog Awards, one for the boys and one for the girls.

And here’s a sneak preview of my top-secret project due for completion in April

Well I hope everyone is settling into 2009 nicely.  I’m super busy in the “real world” at the moment so blogging is a little bit down the priority list.  Crafting however is still up there around the top and I have two projects in mind for this book which I bought recently.  I cannot wait to get started.

I’ve also been busy making the wedding invitations for Margaret and JD’s Big Day Out, only the evening invites to go now.  All supplies were bought from Daintree, and the ones I made were similar to the (a) in the picture but the colours are different.  They were nice and simple to make but they look very elegant.

I was delighted to find this pattern on the Internet a while back and couldn’t wait to try it out.  I used some leftover acrylic yarn and decorated with buttons.  This is a very simple tree ornament, if you’ve any experience of crochet at all, give it a go. One of the commenters on the pattern itself mentioned that they made them as pins for their friends.  The ones I’ve made have been a little bit too big for that, but if you had some finer yarn and smaller hooks that would work nicely.

This is the simplest of scarves, just cast on 25 stitches and knit away til it’s long enough. I bought three balls of Tivoli Flair Tones and that will be just enough for a cozy scarf for my better half’s Grandmother.  She more often than not wears pink sweaters so I picked out a yarn that has a few different shades of pink.  The result is a self striping scarf.

This is the last of my handmade gifts, so once I have this done I can concentrate on some more fun crafts for the festive season.

Despite a few “what have I gotten myself into” moments I have to say that handmaking my gifts has been a generally positive experience.  I reduced our joint Christmas budget considerably from previous years but a lot more effort has gone into our gifts this year.  There was only one voucher on my shopping list this year but that was specifically requested so that the recipient could be kitted out for Christmas nights out in the student haunts of UCC. So I think we can be forgiven for that

This One Skein Scarf is an old favourite of mine at this stage but I said I’d give it one last outing as a Christmas gift this year.  I made this one a little bit wider than previous ones and I attached a crochet pin for a little bit of extra decoration.

Another two of these hats, slightly different look this time.  The first one is done in Debbie Bliss Pure cotton in various colours.  The second one uses some of the same yarn but I’ve also used some other types of yarn including Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran and Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece.  Hats like this are a great way to make the best use of any small balls of yarn you might have left over from other projects, the different textures of yarn worked really well together so don’t be afraid to try mixing them for small things like this.

I promise that after Christmas I’ll try to do a pattern that’s not from The Bible, but in the meantime here’s another one.  This is the Self Fringing scarf and it’s so simple to do (pretty much just all single crochets).  The best thing about it is that there is no tidying up to do at the end, I hate weaving in the ends of the yarn so this is the perfect scarf if you’re like me. I’ve actually done three of these so they’ll be appearing under a number of trees in the extended Made Marian family this year.

The only problem with the Debbie Stoller book is that much of the yarn is not widely available in Ireland, luckily I have always had excellent advice on substitutes from Lisa at This is Knit. But on this occasion, I loved the look of the scarf in the pattern so much that I sourced the yarn from Paradise Fibres in the States.  It turned out lovely if I may say so myself.