The Big Knit 2011

Just a quick one; here's a link to the video from Innocent about the Big Knit 2011 - it's what I was knittin' hats for innit...

Big Knit 2011

Well the bad news is I didn't manage to reach my goal of 40 hats for Innocent Smoothies - and I lost a week as I was on holiday during the deadline so had to post them a week earlier - but I did manage to knit 16 hats and make 16 pompoms which I guess was pretty good going. 

I pretty much stuck to one colour hats after the few stripy ones I did, that way I could churn more out and saved time on sewing in all the ends. I tried to vary them a little though with different patterns like moss stitch and ribbing.

So here's a photo of the little pile I sent off to innocent. I'm tempted to carry on knitting them for next years Big Knit!

Charity begins at home... on the sofa, in front of the TV, with a cuppa...

Recently I've been looking at a lot of charity knitting and I'm finding it's a great way to keep my fingers busy without ending up with a houseful of stuff I don't really need!
I've found a bunch of knitting projects, for all for very different causes -

Preemies UK - knitting clothes, blankets and all sorts of useful/comforting things for premature babies
Knitted Knockers - knitted prosthetics for mastectomy patients: sounds a little bizzare but they really do help and it's nice that the subject is being approached with humour
Battersea Dogs & Cats Home - knitting Catnip mice for homeless cats
Innocence Smoothie Big Knit - knitting wee hats for smoothies (you've most likely seen them in stores) to raise money for Age UK

I decided to start off small so as not to be too disheartened (making small things means I can churn out a lot of them too) and knit a bunch of Catnip mice for Battersea - I used 4 contrasting colours of wool and knit the ears in the same colours but switching them round so each mouse had contrasting ears. I brought some more wool back with me last time I visited home (I have a monster stash that I'm bringing down to London a bag at a time) so I think I'll be a little more adventurous with the next lot...

Last week and friend of mine tweeted about the Innocence Smoothie Big Knit. This year they're looking to collect 650,000 knitted hats (those who can't knit can send back last years hats - they count too!) and for each bottle of smoothie wearing a hat that is sold they'll donate 25p of it to Age UK.
I had set myself the goal of knitting 10 hats by the deadline of October 14th, but after knitting 4 this weekend I think I can probably set myself a higher goal, and so I'm going to aim for 40 hats - which would help them raise £10 (25p per hat)

So here are the first few - The pom-poms are pretty big, I know, but I'm using a plastic pom pom template I had, rather than cutting out a whole load of them from card, and this is the smallest it allows me to make them, but I still think they're kinda cute. I stuck with the intermediate pattern for now, but I think this week I'll give the advanced pattern a go (It involves ears flaps, but is still pretty basic)...

It's worth checking out the website, they have a hat of the week too - people do some pretty amazing stuff!

Once the deadline has passed for the Innocence Hats, and I've knitted a small army of Mice, I'm going to buy some baby wool to knit some pieces for Preemies UK - starting with hats then moving on to *drum roll* cardigans! - need to learn how to knit a buttonhole :s

In other news I finally finished sewing the bzillion ends into my jumper and knitted the neck!... and now I'm putting off sewing all the seams together and avoiding the inevitable - that it probably won't fit! ha!

Crikey...

I'm not doing too well these days with updating the blog, mainly because I hadn't had a lot of time to do stuff, there's been a lot of wedding business going on in July, and they were one weekend after the other, and neither were in London so that meant being away for the weekend! Twice!

 It's all been lovely though, and seems I have a year to prepare for the next one!

In the meantime here are a few things I did for the two weddings I went to last month... First up my housemate Jo and her newly acquired husband Tom... Jo wanted a flyer to put in with her invites that contained all the info guests might need for the wedding - places to stay, dress code, whether confetti was allowed at the church etc - all the little questions people ask each other before the big day, answered on one piece of paper! She wanted it to look like a page out of a wedding magazine...

Next up was Marie and Chris' wedding. I've been friends with Marie since we've been about 4 so I was lucky enough to be asked to be a bridesmaid (for the first time!) and do lots of other bits for the wedding.

The first thing on the list was the wedding invites - both daytime/ceremony and evening - unfortunately I didn't get any photos of the evening ones and the only daytime ones I have were taken on my phone.
They wanted something really simple which tied in with the colour scheme. Marie bought pre-made cards then I added a strip of ribbon in blue (there was also a thinner white ribbon on top of this but the spray mount wouldn't hold them so I had to take them off annoyingly) and then their initials on the front with some diamantes - not usually a fan of diamantes but they just finished it off a little...

The inside was lined with blue card to match the front and then the invite printed onto tracing paper, inexpensive but looks a bit more interesting than plain white paper. This was then attached with eyelets - the evening cards were similar to this but in the form of an A6 postcards with some thin ribbon tied through the eyelets with a bow...

These took a lot of time as all the blue card, printed elements and ribbon had to be cut out and arranged and then the eyelets for each invite had to be attached, and there were a lot of invites. 

Chris and Marie were really pleased with them. It was a hard task as they wanted something very plain and simple so I couldn't get too carried away with any mad ideas but they were happy with them and that's all that matters!

The next job for Chris and Marie's wedding - and just as time consuming as the invites - was the cake topper. For this job I didn't really have to refer back to the bride and groom much as I wanted it to be a surprise for them, the only input they had was mostly from Chris; requesting that he be wearing a Hawaiian shirt (which Marie knew about) and that Marie be stood on a yellow pages (which she didn't know about). So neither were allowed to see the topper before the wedding; Marie wasn't allowed to know about the yellow pages and Chris couldn't see what the dress was going to look like, so it meant they had to just leave me to get on with it!
There were a lot of late nights spent on it after work so I didn't waste much time taking photos of the process and stupidly only took a finished photo on my phone, hopefully the photographer got a decent one...

So all this wedding malarkey hasn't left much time for other crafty stuff, but since the weddings I've been catching up on knitting and as a result have finished all the pieces for my jumper! I'm now 3/4 of the way through the tedious task of sewing in all the loose ends - and there are a LOT - 2 for every time the colour changes, but once they're done it just needs sewn together and then the neck can be knitted! HURRAH! Not convinced that once finished it will fit though :s

A ridiculous amount of loose ends to sew in... zzzzzzzzzz...

Now that I have a bit of time I have a few little projects ready to start, as well as ongoing ones! but I want to do a separate post on those in the hope it'll force me to complete them... and make it look like i'm getting better at updating...

Just a quickie...

I created a few quick bird sketches for something I was doing this week, this was super fast but it kinda forced me to move away from the way I had been doing digital painting for the portraits and use a much rougher painting style, which as it turns out still kinda works, I left on the sketchy outline too, and overall I quite like it! It took about 20-30 mins max to do the bird, then I just dropped it onto a background and added a texture using a doily image I found...

I'm still here...

honestly! Just been a busy bee recently!
Still lot's of things on the go at the moment, and in the next few weeks I have 2 weddings to go to so will post all the stuff I'd been working on for those soon (invites and a cake topper!)

Right now I'm working on another digital painting. It's been a while since I did this one and this one, so I thought it was about time to give it another go.

The drawing itself isn't great, it doesn't look exactly like the photo I used, but it's still good to practice the techniques. So to keep you entertained until I have something more interesting to post here's some progress shots...

Sketching out the image and then adding block colour on a separate layer...

Defining the contours and other coloured areas like the lips and hair with rough colour...

Breaking down the shades on the nose...

And blending those colours...

There's still loads to do and who knows when I'll get round to finishing it, but I'm enjoying giving it another go!

Quick catch-up...

Even though I've been MIA for a good few months the crafting has continued, although there was a little while where I just didn't have time to sit down and crack on with anything, but here are a few things I've been working on/ continuing with...

I started knitting a small chunky knit snood/face warmer for when I'm on the scooter so that I don't have to keep wearing a scarf. I used a full ball of wool but I'm yet to buy a second ball to finish it. I shouldn't take long though as it's just simple seed stitch and I just need to keep knitting it until I can fit it around my head then just sew the ends together...

I've still been working on my jumper! I finished the two sleeves and then started on the front piece which has a striped pattern. The pattern I'm following is pink and uses 4 different colours to create the stripes, but I decided to go for Navy and have used 3 colours instead...

I managed to finish the front piece about 2 weeks ago and so I've started on the back piece now, which is exactly the same as the front, then I need to attach them all, knit the neck on some circular needles and then sew all the seams! yey!

I've also been working on my Emily Peacock 'Hug' cushion, not as much as I'd have liked though...

Another little project which was quite fun was a wedding present I put together back in February. The bride and groom weren't having a honeymoon so we decided to make them a honeymoon in a box. We managed to find the cutest suitcase from Liberty. I decorated the lid with Hawaii themed images and flowers, then we filled it with all sorts of fun things (chocolates, some beautiful Alessi champagne glasses, Champagne, vouchers, a wedding photo album, postcards, some flower garlands and of course some confetti!)

Over the Easter holiday I also managed to catch up with my zombie calendar (though I now have May to do!) so here's March...

 ...and April...

So that's about it I think! There's more stuff I'm working on at the moment but I'll blog it as I go, and I'll leave you with a sketch of me drawn by Jon Burgerman! 

One of the best things I found in Berlin...

PHOTOAUTOMAT...

To be fair, we didn't simply discover it, I'd heard about them last time I was in Berlin and found a website listing all their locations so that I could hunt them out this time, but we just happened to pass this one one morning and it was right round the corner from the Pictoplasma venue so we were able to make a few trips each day!

...and so about 11 attempts later (1 or 2 failed to materialise) and a mere 22euro spent (2euro a go! bargain!) we had a whole bunch of ridiculous photos, all we need now is a frame to put them in...

Pictoplasma 2011...

Once again I've failed at keeping this updated. Work was pretty crazy for a little while so I didn't have the time/energy on an evening to do much in the way of creative work. 

I've had some time off recently so have started to catch up a little so will update on various projects soon, but for now here's an incredibly brief and rushed post about Pictoplasma which I attended in Berlin at the beginning of April, I haven't included everything I saw because I saw SO MUCH, so here's a few highlights...

Day one of the festival we showed up at 111, one of the 24 galleries that made up the character walk, and registered to pick up our wristbands for the festival. After pottering about for a bit and catching up with some folk from home who were also at the festival, a bunch of us set off to visit a further 21 galleries that same day! Luckily everything was pretty close together, and they were all close to the main venue so I was even able to nip back to a few of my favourites over the following days...

Jeremyville wasn't one of my favourites, though I enjoyed his talk, I kinda like this photo though so I thought I'd throw it in...

One of the absolute highlights of the whole character walk (for me anyway) was Rilla Alexander and her character Sozi. Rilla has written a children's book based around Sozi and it's one of the cutest things I've ever seen. Her images are beautiful, (I'm still pining after the letterpress print I saw) the story is so sweet and the work is timeless. Rilla also did a talk at Pictoplasma and I found it very inspiring, she talked about how coming up with a character, a story and building on either of these takes time and not to expect to sit down and for the first idea to work... or for your best idea to work first time... "If you have doubt, keep working."


Rilla's work was on display at BOLD gallery and I went back a handful of times to admire the work. There were a number of prints from the book, and a whole bunch of one off, hand-painted images that Rilla creates as part of Sozi's blog of what she's been up to. They weren't too expensive but, unsurprisingly, they were all snapped up pretty sharpish. However I did manage to nab myself two Ideas (one for me and one for a friend) and one of these which I fell in love with on first sight. The box is wrapped in a screen print of the same colour so I'm hoping to get framed...


I really wish I could have stolen the life size Sozi that was sat on top of scrumpled up ideas reading through her ideas book...

Another favourite was the trip to the Dudes Factory where mcbess was sat with a bunch of posca markers drawing on a huge canvas on the wall (WIP photo below). I bought myself a pretty nifty tote with a mcbess design on it, but might have to purchase some of the tshirts online methinks...

At BERLIN-WEEKLY.COM 3753% TORDAL had an exhibition of what appeared to be cardboard boxes, some of which had been customised. We soon discovered though that one of the boxes was moving, and every now and then what looked like the handles of the box flipped open and a little robot, Papp, peeked out. Further exploration of the tiniest gallery I have ever been in led to a workshop out back where you could assemble your own "Papp" box and decorate it...

Here are just a few other bits I particularly enjoyed...

Anna Hrachovec's knitted creations which were hung from the ceiling of a small gallery. They were covered in so much detail, but as they were rotating I struggled to get any good photos...

One of my favourites, Felt Mistress, had created a felt totem for the Inky Goodness exhibition at the Neurotitan Gallery...

Also featured at the Neurotitan Gallery was the work of Ryan Quincy. The exhibition was interesting and I liked his paintings, but I wasn't one of my highlights from the character walk...

...however, his talk was possibly one of the highlights of the whole festival. While waiting for the talk to start a guy in a character suit was on stage entertaining the crowd... this turned out to be Quincy who proceeded to do most of his talk in the suit!... it was pretty warm in there so eventually he had to remove the head. His talk was so interesting and the work he showed contained a lot of humour (much like himself). He showed us an episode of a series he'd created called "Out There" starring the character he was dressed as, which was awesome, unfortunately I can't find it to share as I think it's still a work in progess...

So that's a little of what I saw, like I said, I saw FAR too much to blog it all! I also picked up a ridiculous amount of postcards, business cards, flyers and stickers, so I have all those to work my way through when I'm looking for some inspiration...

1 down, 25 more to go...

This week I finally managed to do one of the animals from the animal A-Z I'm attempting to do. It's a Toucan!
I drew it roughly into Photoshop first and then using paths drew out the different areas and filled them with block colour. I don't really like using gradients on my images but the only other way to add the shading to the beak would be to use a lot of different layers of colour and I didn't want the image to be too detailed, so I felt the gradient worked well...

I had originally planned to create all the animals in different media but I think now I might continue to create them all in Photoshop in the same style so that when they are all completed I can tile them all in one image.

This morning I made pancakes for breakfast! with the help of my assistant of course! I think we've finally managed to crack it; light fluffy pancakes which aren't burned on the outside and stodgy in the middle... we added a generous amount of cinnamon too so they were DE-LIC-IOUS!

Pancake Perfection...

Whoops...

When I posted the other day I forgot to post the photo of the February papercraft zombie from my calendar! I didn't manage to make it on the first of the month, I actually did it on the 6th, but ho hum...

Cross stitch progress is going rather slowly! and tonight I haven't managed to pick it up at all! One of the girls at work brought in her crafty-scrap book today and was nice enough to let me borrow it to bring home and take photos of some of the awesome clippings in it, so I've been busy doing that! Makes me want to buy a house and decorate it with awesome stuff though! 

I recently decided that it's going to be my mission to scope out markets for small vintage deer figurines, the super cute kitsch type! Don't ask me why, I just like them...

Also at work today the lovely Meg bought me a little blind packaged toy from Forbidden Planet! She's been named Mini-Meg and sat on my desk all day over-seeing my work...

Not the greatest photo because I took it on my phone...

Have been thinking about the 365 project some more too and thought it might be nice to start on my birthday (which is in March) as a way of documenting the year! 

Whoops...

Ok, ok, ok! So I haven't managed to stick to my "two posts a week" rule this last fortnight, but work has been CRAZY busy! Honestly! So I haven't had the time or energy to finish things off/ start new things so I haven't had anything upload! So, shame on me *slaps on wrist*

I finally had a weekend off this weekend so I decided to have a lazy weekend and try and get a few bits and pieces done... though I maybe did a quarter of the things off my "to do" list!

I finally started my new cross stitch pattern!...

I'm doing the 'Hug' cushion first, just cause there's less letters, although the 'Kiss' cushion works out pretty much the same size anyway. I'm going to do it a letter at a time rather than working all in one colour/doing all the line work then filling in etc. I thought completing small sections might make me feel like I'm making more progress!

Oh and here is a photo of the Swallow cross stitch I was doing now that it's completely finished...

I quite enjoyed doing this little one as it didn't take long. 

Hopefully I'll manage to catch up on the animal alphabet I'm doing this week and make one or two using cross stitch and my own patterns. I now have 4 animals to do this month! eeek! BUT, I got my sewing machine this weekend! (HURRAH) so I might have to make a plushie animal or something using it so that I can figure out how it works!

This weekend I also managed to FINALLY sew the eyes onto the alligator mittens I made months ago! I'm still tempted to make another pair as (despite following the pattern) the inner mouth piece (red) was a lot wider than the green part so they look a bit weird 'cause it sticks out a bit. They could do with some teeth, this might make them look a bit better, but I have white wool back at home in Newcastle so I'm reluctant to go buy a ball when I only need to use such a small amount. For now they'll just have to look like snakes with massive gums...

So hopefully this week I'll manage to cross a few things off the "To Do" list! I want to get at least 2 animals from the alphabet done (I've said this every week, I know), one of which will probably just be a drawing to make it a little easier, and I'm still yet to start on the next piece of my jumper!

I'm also toying with the idea of that 365 thing folk are doing on flickr. I thought I'd missed the boat what with it being February already, but after mentioning it to The Crafty Currant who also started it in February I figure why not. It might force me to use my camera a bit more. Though I'm wondering when I'll ever find time to take photos through the day or how I'll find something interesting to take, particularly on a weekday as by the time I leave work it's dark and there's not much at work that I can take photos of... We'll see...

Ok so now that I've managed to update on a Monday I should be able to keep up better and get back on track! If I want to make up for the lack of posts and catch up properly then I'll need to update 4 more times this week... hmmmm... I'd best get creating...