and we will put the lonesome on the shelf

I meant to post these pho­tos much ear­li­er but haven’t got­ten around to it. Mike and I went to a wed­ding two weeks ago, and it was so sweet! One of my favourite part was some­one play­ing Ingrid Michael­son’s You and I on a tin can ban­jo (hence the title of this post! :D).

Now I real­ly want to learn to make and play a tin can ban­jo (for­get about the fact that I’ve kind of giv­en up on learn­ing the ukulele. So sad that I missed the tuna can ban­jo work­shop in the city last week­end :( hop­ing they’ll have anoth­er one in the future… any­way, I digress.)

These were hang­ing on the wed­ding arch.

 

The wed­ding took place on the bor­der of Cana­da by the St. Clair Riv­er — Hel­lo to my friends liv­ing in the Unit­ed States! :D

 

The wed­ding was an excel­lent oppor­tu­ni­ty to put the hand­made dress to good use :D 

 

Feel­ing the love in every detail :D

 

Have a love­ly week­end, everyone! 

 

 

new sky project! :D

Need­ing a project that I can work on for a very short time each day, was con­tem­plat­ing doing anoth­er sky project (I made a scarf for my sis­ter last fall — fol­low the link for the orig­i­nal pat­tern if you’re inter­est­ed in mak­ing some­thing sim­i­lar! :D) because the idea is tru­ly bril­liant. And I was already think­ing about cro­chet­ing a square-top kind of sweater with a large hook (for a soft drape). Thus begins the sky sweater project! :D

 

The first row! (the pho­to is kind of mis­lead­ing… the sky was more grey than it was blue, and the yarn was of a lighter grey, as pic­tured below.)

With a 10mm hook, 2 rows a day accord­ing to the colour of the sky until I have enough length to make a sweater. It would just be a long rec­tan­gle with an neck open­ing in the cen­tre, then fold­ing in half along the shoul­ders and sewing the sides togeth­er to make a sweater. Here are the colours I’m using.

The yarn got tan­gled a lot last time I made the sky project and I spent more time untan­gling than cro­chet­ing. So this time I’m kind of lim­it­ing the colours I’m using, and cro­chet­ing with only one strand at a time. 

I won­der how long this is going to take… but image wear­ing the colours of the sky! :D Very excited.

Will keep you post­ed! Have an awe­some day! :D

 

 

 

late night felting

Was inves­ti­gat­ing the idea of wet felt­ing as a pos­si­ble group activ­i­ty last night. The tuto­ri­als I read said that a felt­ed bead takes about 30 sec­onds to a minute to make, so I thought, I’ll just give it a try now! I have a bunch of rov­ing and there’s plen­ty of dish soap. 

But after an hour of rolling felt between my palms noth­ing real­ly came togeth­er. Just clumps of shape­less fuzz that aren’t stick­ing togeth­er (they will be put into good use as stuff­ing for plush­es). Pos­si­bly because I was try­ing to see if it would work with luke­warm water, because it won’t be pos­si­ble to use boil­ing hot water in group.

Then I read a cou­ple of tuto­ri­als of mak­ing felt bracelet with kids, and it involves warm water, so I thought I’d give it a try. 

It was indeed a lot eas­i­er. Here I am rolling the ends togeth­er on my own wrist. It was quite fun.

 

It turned out a bit big so I thread (or more like force, with the aid of a piece of wire) a red wood­en bead onto it.

 

It feels very soft.

Have a great week­end, everyone! 

 

 

 

 

 

hmm.

Not much to report late­ly. Still try­ing to get a rhythm of all the dif­fer­ent (and some new) projects and time­lines this fall. 

But at the end of the sum­mer I did man­age to fin­ish a new set of mag­nets. The idea of it has been lin­ger­ing in my head for a while. Tea time! :D

 

For­got to take a pho­to before I pack­aged it up for the shop, the shape of the teapot is a bit obscured by the plas­tic, and you can’t see the tea in the teacup (it’s made with yarn the same colour as the cook­ie)… will have a take bet­ter pho­tos if I make anoth­er set. Quite proud of the teapot, I must say!

And last week I saw this squir­rel eat­ing a pret­ty siz­able chest­nut. Â 

He was so focused and still that I was able to take a pic­ture of him (maybe it’s a she…?). And here he is, hav­ing peeled off all the shells and enjoy­ing the chestnut.

I love chest­nuts too.

Yes­ter­day, I tast­ed ground cher­ries for the first time! :D

(found this nice pic­ture here, with recipe! :D)

 

Intense flavour for such a small fruit!

New dis­cov­er­ies everyday.

Think­ing maybe I need to come up with a dai­ly art prac­tice in the midst of this busy­ness (which means it would have to be very short, so the square-a-day project would­n’t work very well — but I think it’s impor­tant for me to take the time to pause and make some­thing). Will keep you post­ed! :D

Have a great week­end, everyone!

 

 

 

hello september

 

And good­bye summer.

Strange. Look­ing at this pho­to (from Mike’s cam­era on our recent trip) I have this feel­ing that my old self is car­ry­ing all the lazy, fun days of sum­mer and run­ning away from me :S

Can’t help but feel a bit sad about the lat­er sun­rise and ear­li­er sun­set and decreas­ing day­light. And every­body’s in a rush again. Sched­ules get filled up. Less time to craft. 

But hey, what­ev­er I can squeeze in, every small project counts!

Ta-da! :D

 

Found out (by acci­dent) that the local dol­lar store sells glit­ter in tiny glass bot­tles!! Comes in a pack of 6. I used the one with white glit­ter in it. Emp­tied the bot­tle but a few glit­ters still stuck to the glass (you can kind of see it in the pho­to), which I think looks rather sweet. Fol­lowed this tuto­r­i­al to make a pen­dant. Tried a vari­ety of beads and feath­ers to hang inside the bot­tle but did­n’t end up with any­thing I liked, until I remem­bered that I have a col­lec­tion of tiny maple keys in the phone book! I knew when I picked them up from the pave­ment that they will be per­fect for a project one day! :D

I applied a thin lay­er of PVA glue to both sides of the maple key. Prob­a­bly bet­ter to use acrylic medi­um for that, but I don’t have any at the moment.

It’s hung onto the wire loop with sewing thread. I love the slight pink edge on it.

Made my day :D

I have five oth­er bot­tles to play with. Still think­ing about mak­ing the tiny ter­rar­i­um with moss. Mike remind­ed me that the art sup­plies store by the art col­lege prob­a­bly sells them for stu­dents who make archi­tec­tur­al mod­els. Will have to check that out. 

And look! My book order just arrived! :D

 

Bought it with the last of the Christ­mas gift card mon­ey :D I’m a huge fan of Jes­si­ca Pol­ka’s fas­ci­nat­ing cro­chet sculp­tures. I don’t buy cro­chet pat­terns very often, but I did buy her mus­tache pat­tern to make a Christ­mas present one year — they were so much fun to make and well received :D

Many projects in this book are knit­ted, so I’m going to have to fig­ure them out some­how (I have very lim­it­ed skills in knit­ting). But the cro­chet angler fish is beyond awe­some! (The pat­tern is actu­al­ly free on Lion Brand Yarn, if you reg­is­ter on the site)

Maybe I’ll start with the barnacles…

Have a won­der­ful start to the week, everyone! 

 

 

 

there and back again…

We went on a trip to the Bruce Penin­su­la over the Labour Day long week­end. I would love to show you the hun­dreds of pic­tures I took but that might be a bit bor­ing… so I brought back for you high­lights of the trip, which deserves a haiku (or three :D)!

 

Sun­ny, mossy trails

 

with mush­rooms along the way

 

and tales of stone caves.

 

Wise words to ponder

 

as the creek led us to find

 

where the water falls.

 

Water clear as glass

 

beneath it, the past stood still

as the riv­er flows.

 

 

 

 :D

I like writ­ing haiku’s, even though I’m not very good at it. It’s like peo­ple break­ing into songs when they’re excit­ed. I break into haiku’s!

And I real­ly want­ed to bring back for you the sound of the creek, which we fol­lowed to find Indi­an Falls. Felt like I could sit on a rock in the mid­dle of the creek and lis­tened to it for hours and not be tired of it. 

If you mouse over the pho­tos and click on the hyper­linked words you can read more about the places where the pho­tos were taken.

It was over­all a real­ly cool trip! I did­n’t expect to hike the Bruce Trail (I’m not a very active per­son), but I end­ed up doing a bit of that while get­ting to the caves. 

I would love to vis­it again, maybe in a year or so, because we did­n’t have time to vis­it the Grot­to and the Flow­er­pot Island, which has a small muse­um, light sta­tion, and more caves!

Have a great week­end, every­one! :D

 

 

 

 

this week’s awesome finds

Back from a long week­end vaca­tion! Lots of awe­some finds to post :D

 

Print­able tem­plates for bird pock­ets on Coun­try Liv­ing.

 

Egg car­ton lights! Post is in Nor­we­gian, so I’m not quite sure how it’s made… but it’s pret­ty! :D

 

A fine twine belt, from Say Yes to Hobo­ken.

 

Mad Hat­ter’s tea par­ty! Adorable. From Dis­ney.

 

These would make gor­geous brooches! Pat­terns for sale at CARO­cre­at­ed Esty shop.

 

A very nice­ly done cro­cheted lla­ma! Pat­tern on crochet_goods.

 

Too awe­some for words. How to make a cloud at The Farm Chicks.

 

Sweet pothold­ers! I espe­cial­ly love the cher­ry (or grapes?) fab­ric under­neath the pie crust weav­ing. From Art Threads.

 

Great rea­son to eat pis­ta­chios. From Addict­ed 2 Dec­o­rat­ing.

 

Sim­ple dress to make! Not a fan of long dress myself, but instruc­tion is clear and can be eas­i­ly adapt­ed to knee-length :D From C&C. 

 

Won­der­ful nar­whal! From the won­der­ful Wun­derkam­mer! If you haven’t vis­it­ed Wun­derkam­mer before, be sure to check out oth­er fas­ci­nat­ing cro­chet projects and pat­terns on the blog!

 

Have a great week, everyone!

 

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