Salaric

Last year not that many months after starting to knit I decided to try and knit a witch for Halloween. However I was still knitting it two weeks after Halloween so I popped all the bits in a box and this October I got them out and stitched it altogether and stuffed it.

My little girl has called her Anna and is now inseperable – it did have a hat but that is already missing!

She now wants me to knit an entire witch family to go with Anna! I mean while am attempting a pumpkin for her younger sister! I got the pattern from an old how to knit toys book – I will attempt to dig it out and review it/amazon link it at some point.

I am also thinking I might have to write some stories to go with this toy 🙂

I had my second and final week of running Centre Arts in Cheltenham – and boy did we pack alot of stuff in! We had crotchet, knitting, weaving in the circle, mini pompom making, a fantastic turn out for my story tree, weaving paper to make bags and baskets, creating cards, bookmarks and hanging plant pots. We learnt two different types of stitch in bead work and my cake baking improved drastically with feedback on what worked and what didn’t 🙂

These ones even got mistaken for being an art display!

Recipes and decoration how to for the cakes is here.

Here are some pics of what we got up to 🙂

And of course more cake pics.

My little girls loved it all too and proved time and again that kids really can make a noise with anything!

I spent the last week doing craft and writing with people at Centre Arts. And boy have we crammed it in!

We made cards, Olympic torches and medals, decorated volcanos, made leaf garlands, sock puppets, upcycled skirts out of old t-shirts, beaded rings, made hair bands, pom poms, created cardboard looms and wove, knitted and crotcheted, plaited/braided, worked on story ideas and comic book sketches, we made pencil pots, templates and phones.

Here are the photos 🙂

And of course we had CAKE! The who to of which is on my cooking blog.

Jeany has really enjoyed this week and has even been looking after the plant! The baby too has been tiring herself out 🙂 The kids and adults who have come along have all enjoyed themselves 🙂 I shall be running it again next week starting on Tuesday!

The next two weeks from Tuesday will see me running Centre Arts in Cheltenham. Apart from the wonderful art work which deserves a visit in it’s own right! There is information about the excellent courses they run during term time and drop in craft workshops run by me 🙂

Tuesdays I will be doing paper craft and beading

Wednesdays I will be doing Fun with Fabrics

Thursdays is Story Time for the little ones at 1 and creative writing for adults 3-5 kids are welcome as I have lots of stuff to keep them occupied

Fridays is yarn craft and the knitting doctor

Saturdays is Upcycling and Junk Art

There will also be cake and drinks 🙂

I want to continue knitting scarfs in the different stitches in The Knitter’s Handbook.

I want to continue knitting toys for the baby and Jean – I have a How To Knit Toys Book I shall be working my way through – I want to do a knitted alphabet but need to be able to do a lot more than I can currently!

I want to learn to knit all the creatures (that are knits) in 75 Birds, Butterflies and Beautiful Beasties to Knit and Crochet.

Carry on with Berry Bear Blanket maybe even start knitting the bears.

Be able to knit my muse monsters either as stand alone toys or on items of clothing.

I would love to be knitting all our socks by the end of the year!

Harry Potter knits of various sorts.

Go through and sort all the knitting coolness I got for Christmas and my birthday.

Only one of my art and craft challenges but a large one that needed a post all of it’s own. I am going to be knitting socks!

Yep you heard me 🙂 I have a large list of books on my amazon wish list – I am cueing patterns on ravelry, I am turning all my husbands existing socks, plus our odd sock pile into sock monsters and pets and glove puppets. He wants knitted socks – he will have knitted socks – my little girl wants knitted socks too but she want lace knitting for her socks so she will have to wait! (I haven’t just spent the last few months trying not to knit wholes only to go and put wholes in on purpose!) And as for friends who want to pay me :/ Well they will have to wait until I’m good at sock knitting!

Specific socks for hubby so far are ones with QR codes (those black and white squares – he has one of his personal url and also I want to turn his Haikus into QR codes too!) and then there are of course chunky hiking type socks which will involve cables (gulp – as if the knitting with two colours for the QR ones isn’t bad enough).

I would also like to knit a bunch of ‘house elf’ socks with Hogwarts/wizard themes on them.

If I manage all that I may then look at lace knitting etc… as a) Jeany wants some and b) I want some funky knee highs.

Wish me luck!

This is my last check in I think until six months other than writing up specific projects!

I have joined a community forum thingy called ravelry it is a knitting, crotchet, weaving and spinning community and I found it by trying to find Harry Potter knitting patterns! And then it got suggested by several friends. I’m Saffy on there but spelt with a 5 instead of an S at the beginning – so 5affy.

In joining I discovered just how many things I have knitted and how many things I want to knit!

I have knitted in the last month – a rainbow snake which still needs to be sewn together and have eyes etc… added, a pastel variagated scarf which is in the unraviel pile as the baby pulled it off the needles and I muffed putting it back on etc… a red rose and LEAF! yes I managed a leaf 🙂 And more importantly I sewed the thing together. I also managed a moss stitch coral and off course worked endlessly on the Berry Bear Blanket. I also have two petals of a christmas rose knitted.

Equipement added: I now have a crotchet hook to help with dropped stitches and like a giant safety pin to put knitting on whilst you knit the piece it needs to be attached too. My mother unfortunatly took back her double ended needles :/

I made a giant papier mache coral for the Exhibition in Braille – here are the creatures, plants, fungus and life forms in general that occupy it. (It was a take on the tree of life concept!)

Knitted coral, mushroom (not by me but by the lady who run the singing groups at Centre Arts), and rose.

Pompom pals made of pompoms, pipe cleaners and crepe paper – a ladybird, butterfly, spider and carrot.

Wooden carvings out of pine (done by my Leonard Pym – my dad), an egg, fish and hedgehog.

A gypsum sphere I found – it is an evaporite deposite found in desert environments.

Fimo/polymer clay models of a shrimp and penguin.

Sugru (this is funky new stuff which air dries to a rubbery plastic)

I have a shoe box of wool off cuts to use for flowers

I have knitted another scarf in garter stitch this time in varigated reds, yellows, browns and oranges for my mother in laws birthday!

I have knitted several flowers and due to a piece of art work I am working on have bought another book which I can barely understand at the moment:

75 Birds, Butterflies and Beautiful Beasties to Knit and Crochet by Lesley Stanfield.

I have also started a blanket for my baby for when she is about three and going into a proper bed – it is multicoloured and strippy and known as the Berry Bear Blanket – it will probably take me all the intermediate time to knit the thing!

For the flowers I had to manage rib, and this involved me discovering that moss stitch is the result when you get it wrong! And stocking stitch. So I can now do three stitches – yay! go me!

It took me two and a half weeks to knit but I have managed one fluffy black scarf in garter stitch. There are wholes in it and I found I was accidently increasing by one each row for a while due to pulling the last stitch round on the end so that two threads are there instead on one!

It took four balls of wool and this was only just enough to make it scarf length!

My little girl is now demanding a rainbow scarf and though it is mid summer my husband will not take this one off!