How does your garden Flo

We went to my Mum and Dad’s yesterday and spent the afternoon with Florence in their pretty back garden. All the bees were buzzing about, butterflies fluttering by and the flowers were blooming marvellously. Florence enjoyed it very much, watching the apple trees move about in the breeze and eventually she fell asleep under the cherry tree with Mr Dangly.

We got good news from the hospital on Wednesday that Florence’s heart has made good improvement and so she has been able to come off of a couple of her drugs and can reduce the doses of a couple of the others. She is clearly enjoying being home and we’re so happy to hear that the doctors are so pleased with her. Yay!

Totally Knit Nation

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, or alternatively don’t have any links to the knitting world, then you’ll know that it’s Knit Nation this weekend. This is the latest knitting show on the block and promises to be a good one with a general air of excitement built around it for what feels like the past year; I’m sure I saw adverts about it last summer!

There are lots of cool classes that you can still sign up for and there is now even branded merchandise on the website. Knit Nation temporary tattoo, anyone?

I shall be dragging my mum around the stalls on Saturday. Are you coming?

Things that excite me most about Knit Nation are the knitting celebs that are going to be there: the amazing Ysolda, who I have previously spotted at I Knit Weekender and gone all star struck over, co-organiser of Knit Nation and sock diva Cookie A and of course Ravelry Founders Jess and Casey who have really become the equivalent of the royal family in the knitting world; revered and respected.

I’m also excited to see other knitting friends and show regulars there such as the Knitting Magazine crew who are also one of the sponsors of the show, Jenny from Fyberspates, the lovely lady from Knitwitches Yarns who I’ve sadly forgotten the name of, the fabulous Dixie from Nichols Buttons and hopefully a few other familiar faces from my Stitch and Bitch London past.

Please do come over and say hello on Saturday if you have a spare minute between salivating over gorgeous yarns.

Peggy Sue

Since we’ve been home Flo has been in cloth nappies and so we’ve been doing a lot more washing than we used to. With all the good weather we’ve been putting the clothes-horse outside for the washing to dry but when a few pairs of socks and some pants ended up in our neighbour’s garden I decided to buy some clothes pegs. I grew up with my mum hanging the washing out on the line in the garden and I used to help her take it in by pulling the pegs off and putting them in a homemade peg bag, so I wanted one of my own.

I didn’t think I’d have enough time to do the project but I gathered the materials together in hope that I might find a bit of time here or there to do it in. I couldn’t believe it when I managed to finish this really cute peg bag in under an hour! Check out my handy work!

I used this tutorial as a general guide, but I made my own paper pattern, making the bag smaller, I used a wooden baby clothes hanger and I lined the back panel to make it look pretty. The colour and pattern combo is a little crazy, so perhaps ‘pretty’ isn’t the best description, but for a peg bag I think it’s acceptable to go a little nuts on clashing colours and prints.

I bought the outer material from a Christmas fair I went to last year and the red and white gingham fabric came out of a cake tin that we were given at work. The green bias binding was bought at a car boot sale. I think the binding was the least successful part of the make as I wasn’t sure how to make the join look seamless, so that’s why it’s a bit out of line. However, that’s the nature of handmade items, so I’m not too bothered by it.

More pictures and a brief ‘how to’ can be found here.

Now off to hang some more nappies out.

Simply Craftacular

Yesterday I managed to escape the house, leaving the lovely Flo with the Mr and I made my way to the Bust Craftacula in Bethnal Green. At their Christmas fair I narrowly missed out on the goodybags given to the first 100 customers. I was really annoyed about this and even collared someone at the tea stand, who had managed to get one, just to find out what was inside. I possibly came across a little scary. So this time I was determined not to lose out and so I arrived a whole hour before the doors opened with two of my non crafty, but fabulous friends. It turned out to be a good idea as about 30 people were already queuing up and by the time the doors opened the queue snaked round the corner and down the road.

So this time I got the goodybag. Yes! So was it worth it? I think so.
Let me give you a rundown of what was inside, just in case you’re interested:
· A bag of sweeties
· Three too-cool-for-school magazines: Lady Craft, Oh Comely and Fat Quarter. These are all rather good so I urge you to check out the links and get a copy if you can.
· An Etsy Union Jack badge and very useful card for your wallet with measurement and size conversions, time zones and the meanings of Etsy website abbreviations on it. Very helpful indeed.
· A badge and discount voucher for Love From Hetty & Dave
· Two fabric squares and a bag of matching buttons from Beyond Fabrics. My friends weren’t so interested in this so they gave me theirs too – score!
· And all of this came inside a cool printed bag from Wingate.

Inside the hall vintage music complimented the shopping experience perfectly. We worked the aisles once and then went back to make purchases. I bought some blue buttons possibly from Miso Funky, I can’t remember. And some cute fabric from Beyond Fabric: one meter of a Cath Kidson style flower print and one fat quarter of a gorgeous print with thread bobbins all over it. LOVE IT.

It was lovely to get out in the sunshine, see some old friends and do some retail therapy. You can see all my pictures from the day here.

All in all a fabulous day and I’ll certainly be attempting to get the goodybag again at the next Craftacula event.

Mr Dangly Davis

So I got more than a bit bored with my skirt. Apart from it being too hot to knit such a large, warm thing, I think that my post natal shape means that I probably should have bought the large rather than the medium kit.

To distract me from this misfortune I decided a quick knit for Florence was what was needed. Consulting my Ravelry queue I found Mr Dangly and quickly he was knit over a couple of hot evenings.

A very cute monkey type creature, Mr Dangly gave Florence a big cuddle as soon as he was finished and she hugged him back.

My last article seems to be out now as I’ve had lots of nice messages from people about it. Thanks for all your support and kind thoughts; they mean a lot to us. Florence will never fully recover from her heart condition but is getting stronger each day for which we are eternally thankful. I won’t lie, the last 4 months have been extremely difficult and emotional but to see Flo’s lovely face each day we know it’s all been worth it.

Busty

For the past couple of years I’ve been attending Bust magazine’s Craftacular events and next weekend they are holding their summer fair in Bethnal Green, which means I am SO there.

It is well worth a visit for all of the fabulous stalls of unique handmade goods that will be on sale, crafty workshops, music, dancing, as well as some kick ass tea and cake. You can colour and make your own jewellery with the super trendy Tatty Davine, join a fascinator making workshop with The Make Lounge (book ahead for this) or bounce along to the Swing Patrol Lindy hop dance troupe.

I’ll be there – how about you?

SATURDAY JULY 10 2010
12pm – 7pm
York Hall, 5-15 Old Ford Road London E2 9PJ
1 minute from Bethnal Green Tube Station
Admission: £2.

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