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This week has been close to a right off….

Jul 28th, 2012 2 Comments

Crafting wise this week has been close to a right off for me.  At the start of the week I basically slept.  I’ve been gradually getting more and more exhausted over the last few months but I needed to keep going.  Finally I could kick back, turn the alarm clock off and just relax.

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By Tuesday I was starting have more energy, deciding to head out to take a few shots around sunset for my photography ‘Ghost Project’ and that’s where things started to go wrong.  I was eaten alive by bugs, covered and I mean covered in bites.  Annoying as this was I just resolved not to scratch and forget about them.  That didn’t work.  Soon I started swelling and before long I had lumps expanding all over my body and a splitting headache.  You know the bites are bad when even the pharmacist sucks air through his teeth and goes eek.

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Now normally this would be a good excuse to settle down on the sofa and knit.  Except my left hand was badly swollen making knitting uncomfortable.  So as a result not a lot of crafting has gone on this week.  Fortunately the swelling is now going down and I’m starting to feel human again thanks to steroids and antihistamines.

So all I have to show you this week is a small amount of crochet.  Yup, crochet!  Remember I blogged that I’d made a little travel pouch for one of my smaller lenses?  We I decided that crocheted pouches might be an interesting alternative.  Here are a couple of snaps of my progress off my mobile phone.

Fibre East … (part 2)

Jul 23rd, 2012 1 Comment

Ok so it’s time to show and tell…… What did I buy at Fibre East?

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Well I simply fell in love with these guys.  I mean how SSSWWEEEEEEEEEETTTTT!!!!!!

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I especially loved this guy.  Look at those horns, just fabulous!  There was a bit of a squee moment when I discovered that you could buy a kit to make them.  They’re from Manfield Crafts and the wonderful ladies on the stall managed to contain their laughter at my reaction to these little fellas.

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Yarn wise my main purchase was some beautiful silk from Copperfield Yarns.  Unfortunately I can’t find a website for this yummy yarn but if anyone knows one then please point me in the right direction.  I was drawn to the copper tones and colours.  At the moment my hair is predominantly black but my natural colour is coppery blonde.  Since I’m planning on going back to my natural colour this seemed the perfect yarn to make myself a shawl.

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I also bought some more dpns for sock production.  I normally use knit pros but the helpful lady at the Crossways Patch / Tall Yarns stand showed me the HiyaHiya ones.  These were of great interest as I have quite a loose tension when knitting and so I’m always on smaller needles than my friends.  The HiyaHiya’s actually go down to less than a millimetre which is much smaller than the smallest knit pros.  In the end I bought 2 packs of 2mm’s (one Knit Pro and one HiyaHiya) and a pack of 3.25 Knit Pros for some DK socks.

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Speaking of DK socks I also picked up a couple of balls of pure wool in a dk weight but without ball bands.  I can’t tell you the stall as I didn’t clock their name.  These aren’t really ‘me’ colours but the socks are destined for my mother and they are very much her colours.  I have to say that I was delighted at how much faster dk socks knit up compared to sock weight yarn socks.  I also had a little bit of yarn left over from these which I’ve used to make a sat nav pouch.

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Then lastly I bought some buttons.

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Yes, I know they will probably just sit in my sewing box but they were so pretty… and cute… and shiny… and I just had to have a few……

Foto Friday : New Free Photography eBook…

Jul 20th, 2012 Leave a comment

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Long time readers of my blog will remember that last year I wrote a series of posts called ‘Foto Friday’ on the basics of photography.  This was before I split my blog into two, moving the photography stuff over here.  The posts were aimed at people who want to do more but aren’t very confident on the technical aspects.

Well I really pleased to tell you that these posts have formed the foundation on an ebook which I’ve written called ‘Photography – A Starting Point’.  As of now it’s available for download and it’s FREE!

If you’d like a copy then either click on the image above or click here to go to the download page.  Let me know what you think won’t you Smile

Fibre East… (Part 1)

Jul 18th, 2012 Leave a comment

 

This last weekend I went with friends to Fibre East. Due to other commitments we had decided upon the Sunday in advance and given the weather this seemed to be a good move.

So we duly met up and headed west, in fact we seemed to go a long way west for something with east in the title, but we had money in our pockets and a list of things we were hoping to find. We knew from Ravelry that it was likely to be muddy but hey what’s a little mud between friends when yarn is involved. This year we hoped would be bigger and better than the first event last year, we weren’t disappointed.

I had decided to take to try and take some shots of all the yumminess on offer. As is my custom I always tried to ask permission before snapping away and this was where I got my biggest surprise of the day. At places like Ally Pally I can pretty much guarantee that most stall holders will be very definitely against photography. Grumpily so. But here every single person I asked smiled and say yes. How wonderful. I’ve never understood the attitude you get at the big shows about this. I mean what exactly do these people think I’m going to do with the images?

Anyway here are some shots from the wonderful stall holders who were happy for me to use my camera. Oh and what did I buy? I’ll take some photos and blog about that later in the week. ;)

Sewing a new lens pouch

Jul 11th, 2012 Leave a comment

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Earlier this year I bought myself a ‘nifty fifty’ lens for my camera.  This is a 50mm prime lens, meaning there is no zoom on it.  That’s it in the photo at the top.  As my lenses go this is by far the cheapest, (despite being a Canon), but it didn’t come with a nice padded pouch for storage or transport. 

So of course this means I need to make one.  Last night I simply ‘had’ to start on this pouch.  You know the sort of ‘had’ I’m talking about.  All the stuff from the study makeover was complete (or as complete as it’s going to be) and my sewing machine is now in position on it’s table behind the sofa.  This means I can sew and also have the TV on in the background which I quite like.

So I dug out some batik, wadding and a cream fabric to form the lining.  It was getting a bit late in the evening by this point when I remembered I needed some shots if I was going to blog about it.  So out came the mobile for a quick snap – but that was long enough for Salem the cat to get his bum in shot.

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So far I’ve quilted the batik and cream fabric together ready to be sewn into the pouch.  Unfortunately if I run my sewing machine at anything other than the slowest speed bad things happen which end with unpicking and swearing.  As a result this part took quite a long time.  I’m not bothered though as I’m saving up for a sparkly new machine later this year and I was simply enjoying sewing again.

With luck I’ll get some more done on it tonight Smile

Foto Friday : It’s back! (well sort of)

Jul 5th, 2012 Leave a comment

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Last year I wrote a series of blog posts about the basic techniques of photography and was over whelmed by how well they were received.  I loved writing them and eventually made the decision to split my blog keeping this for crafting, while starting a new photography blog.

Those posts, however seemed to linger and have now evolved into an eBook.  The book itself is finished and we’re just waiting for a download issue to be resolved.  Once that is done it will be available to download in a couple of clicks.  It’s also going to be completely FREE!  Yes you read that correctly, free, at no cost, gratis.

That brings us back to Foto Friday.  During the creation of the book I asked some people to read it from a beginners view point.  What surprised me was that often as not, they would ask what the next one was going to be about.  Errrr – next one?  Hmmmm……

So it looks like Foto Friday has some new topics.  There will be some changes though such as I’m thinking of fortnightly rather than weekly.  Also when I asked about topics to cover people mentioned composition a lot.  So a look at some of the ideas in composition it will be.

Along side those posts I’m toying with the idea of mobile phones.  My good friend Heidi, who loves her new Nikon DSLR, has sheepishly confessed she still uses her Canon point and shoot more.  She’s familiar with it and it’s much easier to carry around.  Most of us will have a mobile with a camera on it.  So perhaps this would be something people would be interested in?  What do you think?  I will leave you with that question and as soon as the book is ready for download I’ll let you know.