A New Start

I know I've not been blogging for many months and there are several personal reasons for that. Mainly, I was finding being online very time-consuming, time I enjoyed, looking at other people's blogs and commenting now and then, but I felt I couldn't keep up and hadn't much to contribute.

Also, my mother's Altzheimer's got very much worse and my father couldn't look after her. She was in a nursing home in Milton Keynes, and I needed to visit her and my elderly father more often. Sadly, she died in August 2011 and now my father is on his own in his house, with my sister, who lives nearby, keeping an eye on him. He is very frail at 88 and is also losing his memory.

Anyway, paper crafting has suffered immensely over the past year or so. No-one in my family now sends/receives cards from other family members (a money-saving exercise) and it's not worth me making them any more. I've also run out of photos to make scrapbook pages with!

Because I cannot sit and do nothing, and love to make things, I've taken up knitting again and (would you believe it?!) sewing. That's another reason I've not been posting lately, as this blog is meant to be about card-making and scrapbooking.

So, if you still want to see what I've been up to, I have a new Blog (link in the previous post) and I hope to see some of my old friends there occasionally.

Happy crafting!

My New Blog

Here is the link to My New Blog which, I warn you, is not about paper-crafting but instead shows my recent sewing, knitting and crochet projects. I am enjoying a revival of all these crafts. Should you follow the link, I hope you like seeing the things I've made.

Tea Break Layout

Taking inspiration from The Scrappiest Sketch 109 but changing the theme from 'Valentine's Day' I've made a layout this afternoon featuring a very old photograph of me working, or rather, taking a tea break at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Aylesbury. 

It was my first job after qualifying as a Radiographer in 1980 and this photo was taken about a year later.

The shot was taken by a colleague who was a keen photographer and he developed his own photographs in the x-ray darkroom after hours. If you look very carefully you will see my wedding ring on my right hand. He obviously reversed the photo by mistake before developing it.

I've included a tag, attached to the clock face cut-out, which can be pulled upwards to reveal the hidden journaling, highlighting his error.

For the layout I used K&Co and Tim Holtz papers and stamped clock face images over the background. 

As I am determined not to increase my scrap-booking stash this year, I delved through my many boxes and found some items I had forgotten about. My collection of punches hasn't seen the light of day for ages so it was past time that I used them again on a page. 

Can you spot the three I've used from Martha Stewart?

I think it's as much fun rediscovering old techniques as it is in using new things - or am I just trying to convince myself?! 

Simple Knitting And Crochet (Or Not)

Having spent my spare time lately, not paper-crafting, but busily having a personal knitting and crocheting revival, (I've just finished another scarf, the pattern in this month's 'Inside Crochet' ) I thought I'd tell how I first came to learn these crafts and am taking part in From High In The Sky Storytelling Sunday.

I used to watch fascinated as my Grandmother knitted in her armchair, and must have been about 7 when I asked her to teach me how to knit. With the occasional input from my Mother, she willingly tried to teach me the age-old craft that she felt every young girl should know. It wasn’t long before major problems surfaced! Not with my aptitude or keenness to learn you understand. No, the problem was my left-handedness - or cack-handedness as my Mother always called it. 
However hard they tried neither woman could teach me to knit left-handedly. They couldn’t work out how I should hold the needles or which way to wind the yarn around. It was probably quite amusing to watch but I became very frustrated at the lack of teaching going on! Eventually I decided that in order to learn something that I really wanted to do, I would have to learn it their way. And so I held the needles as they did and learned to knit exactly as they did. In no time at all I was knitting and purling happily.

Next came my desire to learn to crochet, but neither my Grandmother nor Mother could face teaching me. I had to wait for my Great Aunt Hilda to pay us a visit from London. Although she had been primed in advance about my left-handedness, she was totally unable to show me how to crochet with the hook in my left hand. Having already learned that compromise was required on my part to learn new things I watched and learned how to crochet ‘her way’.

I remember being told that in my Grandfather’s day it was not permitted to be left-handed and he was forced to sit on his left hand at school. Although we are not so strict these days, the majority of people are right-handed and it’s still difficult to find teaching materials or tools specifically for people like me, although the Internet is a valuable new tool for left-handers. Over the years right-handed tasks have become easier for me and I could probably call myself ambidextrous in some things, but I doubt that even I could teach someone left-handed knitting or crochet if I were asked! This raises some questions for me; are left-handed people more easily able to adapt to this right-handed world than right-handed people are to a left-handed world? Or do we left-handers all give in and use our right hands? 

Scientists know that the brains in left-handed and right-handed people are different. Perhaps there was a genuine scientific explanation for my female relatives' difficulties teaching me simple knitting and crochet.

First Scrapbook Layout of 2011

Some of you spotted this layout on my WOYWW post this week. I had started with a sketch from Scrap-A-Little and produced my first scrapbook layout of 2011. My first page for months actually.

Having no new photos to play with has really affected my creativity and I need to get out with my camera and take some more. Unfortunately, I do tend to be a 'fair-weather photographer'!

The layout features photos of DD2 at a Halloween party. The photos are taken from Facebook and had already been put through an ageing process before being uploaded there, so they are not the best to use for scrapbooking. But as I've already said, I'm lacking new images to play with so these were better than nothing!

Using Tim Holtz paper, I drew a large cobweb starting from the top right-hand corner. Some black velvet ribbon, buttons and jewelled brads completed the page. Before I actually saw the photos, my daughter informed me she had dressed as a Victorian Vampire (whatever one of those looks like!), hence the words in the poem I made up instead of having hand-written journalling.

I must admit I'm much quicker making pages with a starting point like a sketch. If I'm trying to make my own design from scratch I can take hours to finish one layout! 

But I'm sure I'm not the only one with that particular problem.

WOYWW 2011

Happy New Year WOYWWers!

Thanks to our Great Leader we get to rummage around everyone's workdesk again. Hop over to her blog to leave your link if you want to take part in this madness. We're a friendly crowd, just excessively nosey!

Here's my desk this week. Not too much mess but I notice that the TV remote is visible!

There's nothing new to be seen today. I'm trying not to buy anything new this year (I tried last year and failed) so you can see my purple magnetic mat and large guillotine. There's a plastic box filled with brads and a couple of small drawers with ink pads. And the scrapbook page I made with lots of spare photos that I didn't use. 

Does anyone else always print too many? I have an idea in my head for the layout but it rarely turns out that way, hence the wasted photos. I also print the them out in different sizes too. 

Maybe that should have been my New Year's Resolution - to only print off what I will absolutely, most definitely use!

Matchbook Cards

What have I been up to today? I've made some matchbook-style cards. Nothing new, but if you've never made them before, I thought I'd show the very easy steps to making one. You can make them any size you like but mine start off as an A4 piece of card.

1.Take an A4 piece of base card and score and fold it down the centre to make an A5 card

2. Score 1.5cm in from each of the short edges

3. Cut off one of these edges

4. Fold the card in half along it's centre fold and fold up the remaining scored edge to enclose the front panel of the card

You now have a matchbook card to decorate.
I like to cut the A5 card in half to make two smaller cards like these;

And here's some I've decorated today 

mainly with Paper Adventures papers and stickers.......

standing up (above) and lying flat
with the fold-up bottom edge

Two more...

I hope you give them a try and have fun decorating them! 

2010 New Year Resolutions

Around this time last year I posted this page with a list of Resolutions.....

TEN CRAFTY THINGS FOR 2010

1. Attend a big craft show in London
2. Do not spend any money on stash in 2010
3. Make many more scrapbook pages than in 2009
4. Take many more photos than in 2009 
5. Learn to use Photoshop
6. Post more often on my blog
7. Regularly take part in challenges
8. Set aside more time for crafting
9. Set a Challenge on my own blog
10. Reorganise my Stash so that it takes up less room.

Did I actually achieve any of the goals I set myself? Nah! Although I tried.

This year I aim to do better and will carry the same Resolutions over to 2011. After all, you never know, I might just manage to achieve one of them! I can live in hope.

Now, if I had included knitting and crochet in 2010's New Year's Resolutions I might have done better. In the past few months I have completed my ripple blanket .....

.....and a snowboarder's hat, 

made up my own patterns for leg-warmers and wrist-warmers, 

and knitted this....

....an easy Sirdar pattern with lovely chunky yarn.  

Karen nabbed the waistcoat when she was home for Christmas and Jenni now wants me to knit one for her! I'm quite happy to knit another one, but before I do, I need to finish my third pair of wrist-warmers! 

Papercrafting has taken a back-seat lately but I'm sure I'll be Scrapping in 2011.  I just need some new photos to inspire me. 

And for that I really need much warmer weather to get out and about with my camera!

Post-Christmas Tradition

Happy New Year Everyone! 

I haven't posted in absolutely ages I know, but as the Christmas Tree was put away today, along with the lights, baubles and tinsel, it seemed time a good time to join my friends in Blogland again.
We are always the last house to put up and the first to take down the Christmas decorations. Hubby's OCD prevents him having too much 'mess' around without him getting anxious to clear it away. But one task I always sit down to after the decorations have been cleared, boxed and hidden away, is cutting up the seasonal cards and turning them into tags for next year's presents. A post-Christmas tradition that the children used to enjoy but now I do on my own.

From this...

........to this......

...in front of a warm fire 

with a mug of hot tea ....

Shame it's not a real fire!

Knots And Flowers

I get very irritable when I am partway through a knitting (or crochet) project and one ball of yarn seems to have knots every few yards. I hate knots. I understand why the manufacturers repair broken yarn this way. They want to sell the yarn after all. BUT why do we as consumers accept this practice? Can they not (no pun intended) put these balls to one side and sell them at a reduced rate? 

It's like buying a stack of scrap-booking paper and finding ink stains over a third of the pages.

Anyway, to change the subject slightly, today I have made a snowboarder's hat for a Christmas present. Happily the yarn I used was one and a half balls of Sirdar Crofter (Fair Isle Effect) Chunky and there was not one knot anywhere to be found!

I used a very easy pattern on CocoKnits 

I also wanted to share with you a couple of items I bought from an online company called Bloom. They are a UK company making very realistic-looking silk flowers and flower arrangements.

Firstly, two Hanging Hearts made with ranunculus flowers.....

.......... hanging on my wardrobe door

... and a close-up view.

Secondly, a cute arrangement in a glass bowl:

I am very pleased with these purchases. 

Much more so than with my knotty yarn buys!

WOYWW - Troy And The New Cushion Covers

It's Wednesday again and time for WOYWW .  Join in and post a link at Never-To-Have-A-Website Julia showing your work desk for others to rummage around. We are a nice bunch of Nosey-Parkers, I promise, and we love finding new friends and hidden talent in Blogland.

Here's my WOYWW offering for this week......cushion covers.

Despite not being that old, just a matter of months actually, they are looking tatty and tired. Buy cheap, buy twice as they say. So instead of sewing on the button that had fallen off, I decided to set about making new covers.  At best, I am a reluctant machine-sewer who mutters and grumbles to herself until the job's finished. I'd much rather be knitting or crocheting, or better still, paper-crafting!

Anyway, here is my work desk in action, a fold-up table that gives me the space I need to be creative.

My sewing machine, 30 year old Troy, has recently had an (expensive) service so I needed to prove to Hubby that it had been money well spent. I have a few fabric offcuts from a shop in Brighton from which I chose a brown silky material and an abstract flower pattern for the job. A couple of hours later, Troy had proven he was in tip-top condition, sewing beautifully. No more tension troubles! And I had two new cushion covers with a pattern on one side and plain silk on the other, plus an envelope-style one, again silk on the reverse and patterned on the front.
Hubby seemed marginally impressed, and when pushed, agreed they were an improvement upon the old ones.

As I've said before, sewing machines and I do not get along. I am very happy to have completed this simple project without any tantrums. And if you were wondering, Troy has been put to the back of the garage again..... probably for another year or so.

I just hope that my cushion covers last longer than the shop-bought ones!
I'm looking forward to poking around as many work-desks as I can manage later this evening, when I've finished work.

Rainy Afternoon Project

My knitting needles have been stored in a plastic bag under the bed for years. So long in fact that the needles have made big holes in the sides of the bag. 

I've been ignoring this sad situation for ages... out of sight, out of mind .... but decided I finally had to do something when they all fell out over the floor this weekend when I was rummaging under the bed for some fabric stored there.

I decided to make a knitting needle wrap and cut up an old blue cushion cover so that I had just the front, co-incidentally the right width for the longest of the knitting needles. Then I formed an off-cut of blue fleece fabric into pockets for the pairs of needles and pinned between them (I've yet to tell my daughter I've used it as it was her material).

I sewed where the pins were to form the pockets and stitched the two pieces of fabric together, leaving a long piece of fleece trailing (it's hidden under the cushion front on the photo above) so that it could become a tie for the wrap when it was folded up.

A simple project for a rainy afternoon. No pattern needed. And no needles all over the floor in the future!

Incidentally, I found some really old needles in my collection which must have been my Mother's or Grandmother's. I had forgotten I had them, and they are labelled sizes 10 and 12, from a previous UK sizing method I think.

Christmas Is Coming.....

It may be a wet, dreary Sunday outside but I can tell that Christmas is coming soon. 

Many of the summer birds have flown away.

The colourful autumn leaves are all on the ground and slippery underfoot. 

And the evenings are dark once more. 

But the big clue in my house is that my cacti are blooming. 

All three of them.

It's a very small sign, but I look forward to these flowers every year....and suddenly....here they are. 

Time to start thinking about buying Christmas presents I think.

What makes you think that Christmas is coming?? 

Home-made Granola, Vase Jackets, Cushions etc

I started making EasiYo probiotic yoghurt a few years ago as I liked the idea of the 'good bugs' and it being freshly made rather than sitting on the supermarket shelf for days. I used to eat if with fresh fruit each morning until I was introduced to Granola by my daughters. Now I also make my own granola and as it disappears very quickly ( Hubby has also started eating it) I usually need to make it alternate weekends.
Here's today's effort.

I don't follow the recipe too strictly and this week I discovered a snack packet of mixed fruit, seeds and almonds in my local Co-op, so I added that in for a change. So long as it all clumps together it's fine!

If anyone is interested in the basic recipe here it is:

GRANOLA

300g rolled oats

100g flaked almonds

100g pumpkin and sunflower seeds

100g dried fruit or berries

2 tbspns pine nuts

50 dessicated coconut

2 tbspns vegetable oil

 2 tbspns runny honey

1 tspn vanilla essence

120ml maple syrup

Add all the dry ingredients (except the coconut) to the wet ingredients

 and mix thoroughly. Spread out about quarter inch thick onto lined baking 

sheets and cook in a hot oven (160 degrees C) for approx 10-15 minutes 

until just browned. Remove and stir in the coconut. 

Return trays to the oven and bake for 10 more minutes or until crunchy.

My tip: keep an eye on the trays in the oven as they can quickly get 

burned. I do like my granola to be crispy -  but not scorched!

Allow to cool before storing in an air-tight container.

I think the shape of maple syrup jars can be quite unusual. 

I had one with it's own glass handle and regret throwing it away. 

So to do my little bit of recycling today, I washed out my 

empty jar and used it as a vase.

But I'm still deciding exactly where it should go!

I quite like this idea too of covering glass jars with

pretty knit or crochet jackets.....

....I found these on Ravelry

I might just give that a go one day.

I also love these free patterns from Rowan

There's not enough hours in the day for what I would like to do!

One In Two Million

Just reading a magazine, a new one to me today which I have not seen before, an edition of Coast I spotted the following statistic;

2 Million people in the UK

can see the sea

from an upstairs window

Amazing! And I am one of the lucky ones. When we moved to Brighton sixteen years ago now, there were few houses we could afford. We had a choice of one really, so we bought it. It's a town house within walking distance of a cobble beach, and it was only after we moved in and the grey skies changed to summer blue ones, that we realised we could see the sparkling sea and yachts from our bedroom windows, and hear the motor boats go past with the windows open. We were thrilled with our house, and still are, although the number of stairs is trying for my arthritic knees.

I've been hunting through my old photos and came up with these from when we first moved into the house, but you'll have to forgive the image quality as they are not digital ......

the house itself

the distant sea from the front of the close

....and the view of the sea from one of the rear bedrooms.

Do you consider yourself lucky with the location of your home? Are you one of the two million too?

Modification

Today I spent time modifying the Baktus Scarf I knitted a few weeks ago. I felt it needed to be less plain and decided I would add a crocheted border. I must admit I do like the look of crochet and knitting together.

Somehow the crocheted border makes the whole scarf look bigger than it is, but it is certainly keeping my neck warm indoors at the moment! Yes, indoors! Our gas fire in the Lounge has finally died (it is 16 years old) and I refuse to put the central heating on until it gets much, much colder.

Today's been a day for wool-crafts as I also started knitting Jenni's scarf with the same simple pattern I used for mine. 

She chose purple of course, and a 4 ply yarn rather than double knitting but, hey, it's a challenge and I enjoy a challenge. It will just take me longer to knit up.

I think hers will get the crochet-border-treatment too!