New Blog...

I have a shiny new blog and portfolio website! hurrah!

Come visit and have a mooch around at www.knotsewinteresting.com

:D

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!