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...

Sew what...

Well every evening this week I've had all sorts of plans to tick stuff off my creative to do list; finish the second sleeve on my jumper, start on the animal alphabet, finish off the first little cross stitch I'm doing, UPDATE MY BLOG... but I get too easily distracted!

I'm nearly finished one of those things though! The little cross stitch I'm doing! HURRAH! So here's some photos...

SOOO close to being done! So tonight I just need to fill in those little lines on the banner and do a little bit more sewing and then it's finished and can be sent to it's new home! 

Once it's been sent on it's merry way I can start on the next cross stitch project... and it's quite a big one....

I'd spotted these Emily Peacock cushions on a programme Phil and Kirsty did on Channel 4, but I didn't know that you could buy the patterns to make them yourself until I stumbled across them on t'interweb a few weeks ago. They were going to be a wedding present but I ended up having to show the bride to be and she wasn't too sure future hubby would approve... and I really should be giving them a present they both like! Not to worry though, they shan't go to waste! Just means I don't have to make a second pair for myself now as I get to keep these ones, and I can blog about my progress...

Not sure which I'll start first, maybe the KISS one as there's more blocks of colour so it'll feel like I'm making more progress with it! But I'm not allowing myself to start that until I've at least finished the sleeves for my jumper and done one image for my animal alphabet :s