Post-it heart

My first ever craft love was origamis. So with Valentine's day on our doorstep, I thought I'd teach you one of my favourite little folded wonders: Post-it hearts.

To make a heart, you'll need a 38mm x 51mm Post-it in the colour of your choice. For demonstration purposes only, the tutorial below uses larger Post-its that I cut down the side to get to the right proportions. It's not easier to use larger Post-its, it just photographes better!

So here's how you do it in 10 easy steps:

1. make sure the sticky strip on the Post-it is facing you and is at the bottom

2. Fold the Post-it along the midline then unfold it, use the fold as guidance in the next two steps

3. Fold the bottom corners using the fold line as a marker

4. Snip on the fold in the top making sure you stop where those corners meet up

5. Fold the inner corners in

6. Fold the top edges so they meet the edges of the folded up bottom corners

7. Fold the outer edges in as demonstrated

8. Fold the top corners in and press the fold so it stays in place

9. Fold the bottom corners back out so that the sticky edge shows

10. Turn over your heart and stick, you're done!

The key to successful origamis is precision and making sure you press each and every fold neatly so they stay in place.

Now make a load of those and make sure you let that someone special know how you feel about them!

Oversized knitting

When I went to the Knitting and Stitching show at Ally Pally in October, I picked up two skeins of Gedifra Easywear. I just fell in love with the colour blend and the feel of the yarn.

What I soon found out was that having just two skeins was going to be pretty limiting and with the yarn being discontinued, there was very little chance of finding more. I tried, but even Ebay brought me no joy.

The other thing I'd not quite factored in when buying the yarn was that it's to be knitted on 20mm needles. I had a look on Ravelry and after reading a number of comments that said the yarn really calls for the huge needles, I resigned myself and ordered a pair.

I decided to knit a simple snood, inspired by another snood I bought at a high street outlet at the beginning of the winter which has been keeping me toasty and has been admired by a number of friends.

Manipulating the humongous needles was rather awkward at first. Hubby thought it was hilarious and took the following picture to demonstrate just how oversized those needles are compared to my hands.

The good news is that it took me just an hour to knit a snood and I had just enough yarn for it. I worked it with one row of knitting with a yarn over in between each stitch followed by a purl row where I let the yarn overs slide off the needle. This makes a row of loose stitches followed by a row of tight stitches. It's actually quite nice.

The bad news is that as much as I liked the colour mix on the skein, I'm not feeling it so much now that it's been knitted :-( Ah well, this would make a great gift for someone, in fact,  I may just know who!

Birthday bunting

I learnt a valuable lesson this weekend, don't ever get overly confident with your crafting skills. While most crafting projects are in practice simpler than they look, some seemingly simple projects may not be as straightforward as they appear!

My friend had organised a bake off for her birthday and I'd offered to make bunting. It looks really easy, how much work can it be? I told myself.

Well for one, I'd not factored in the time it takes to cut all the little triangles of fabric, then the time it takes to pin them all to the bias tape! A few hours of cutting and pinning later, I was eventually ready to put the sewing machine to work. Most of the instructions I found online recommend a straight stitch but I just couldn't make it work with my machine so I had to resort to a zigzag stitch. There was some swearing and cursing as flags folded themselves in two and I managed to sew one through both layers before noticing - nothing a seam ripper couldn't fix though.

I finished the bunting well in time (there was a moment where I thought I'd never be ready!) and my friend liked her bunting so all's well in the end. The silly thing is, I completely forgot to take a picture of the finished product!

A not so monstrous sock-monster

After Christmas and all the presents making, I always have this urge to make something for me. So I've embarked on a big(ish) knitting project which will hopefully become a retro jumper. That will take me at least a month to make so to keep myself entertained in between knitting sessions, I need quick and easy craft projects.

I'd never tried my hand at sock monsters so I thought I'd give it a go. First I had to convince hubby that his unwanted Christmas socks would be best recycled as sock monsters. Once I'd accomplished as much, I set out to make my monster but me being me, I turned it into a cat, a not too monstrous one. I guess I just can't do ugly... well, not willingly anyway. 

It was both easier and harder to make than I initially thought but the result isn't so bad. I'm not sure hubby's convinced that that was the best use of his unwanted socks though...

Pretty cushions part II

I haven't done any crafting during the Christmas break, very unlike me, I know! well actually... not really! Not only am I a compulsive crafter, I'm also an insatiable bookworm and this year Santa got me a Kindle. So I have spent the largest part of the holidays playing with my new toy and reading, no, gobbling up, the Millennium trilogy (loved, loved, loved it!) and "We need to talk about Kevin" (very disturbing read!). What can I say? With the move to Bristol and the pre-Christmas madness, I hadn't had a chance to read a novel for over two months, I was a very famished bookworm...

Getting back to work, it's been reporting time all round and I've spent the whole of last week with my nose in spreadsheets and graphs. On Friday I was actually getting nauseous from all those numbers and I knew it was time for some heavy duty detox. Crafting seemed like the perfect antidote.

I still had two cushion covers for my studio to finish and after a healthy walk in the sunshine with some friends, I got to work. I managed to finish sewing it all right before the day was about to turn to dusk, leaving me with just enough daylight to take some pictures and post them on here.

The first cushion was heavily inspired by a Cath Kidston pattern in her sewing book. I like the finished product, it's rather cute and dainty, isn't it?

It took me a rather long time to decide what I was going to make for the last cushion. But then I remembered that I have these iron-on embroidery templates about all things crafty. And since this is for my crafting studio after all, I figured they'd be perfect. So I set out to make a patchwork cushion with empty blocks that could be embroidered with images of crafty objects. Nothing too challenging except I'm no expert embroiderer. But hey, it was a good opportunity to perfect my skills :-)

Unfortunately, the image doesn't show all the embroidery work in its full glory, but I'm sure you'll get the idea.

I wish I could say that's my cushion making adventures finished for a while but earlier this week I came across a pattern for a super cute owl cushion and I just can't resist, I have to make one...