Duck's Disease
8:22 PM Creative Space , Sewing 3 Comments

Once J said to me, as he saw me from behind doing dishes, "You look like you've got Duck's Disease."

"What's Duck's Disease?"

"It's when your legs are too short for your body so your bum's too close to the ground."

Not much of a fair comment coming from him as he's around 6'4" anyway, though sometimes I do tend to agree with him.

Like any time I buy a new pair of jeans. They're all made about 2" too long for me.

I always have to take up the hems. But I hate when people can tell you did (or worse, you make them too short). So I take ages making sure they're the perfect length and look just like shop-bought whenever I do.

It's a job that often gets put off and I usually go around like this:

Yep, rolled up hems instead.

Which looks worse than a badly sewn hem (it's like wearing a sign saying 'I'm short').

So, with my latest pair of jeans I would'nt let myself wear them until I'd shortened the hems. Almost three weeks after buying them I got an unexpected afternoon off work (computer died) and decided that was the day I'd do my jeans!

The perfect length - just touching the ground when not in shoes...

and not touching the ground when wearing shoes.

The only problem is that now we're into Spring and the sun is rather warm on black jeans so I'm thinking a pair of light-coloured jeans would be a better idea!

What sort of necessary alterations do you have to make when buying clothes?

Joining in with other creative types over here.

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A Creative Space, but Not Mine
5:10 PM Creative Space , Crochet , girls , knitting , Nattering 2 Comments

The other day, my girls asked me about putting my knitting 'on the internet' so I showed them my Ravelry project page.

They then proceeded to ask, "Can I put mine on the internet too?"
"Sure, when you have a bit more to show." I replied.

So the knitting and crocheting continued with more gusto!

And here's what they've been working on:

LittleMiss is doing an excellent job with her knitting, so much so that I think it's time I taught her how to purl!

MiddleMiss didn't want to do her knitting anymore (I think because LittleMiss picked up on it quicker and better than she had!) so I showed her how to crochet instead. Just a basic granny-square type stitch, but she's taken to it excellently.

BigMiss did a bit of knitting a while ago, but acrylic yarn on plastic needles was not much fun! So she picked up her French Knitting and has been having fun trying to make stripes with that. I did try to teach her crochet but that just ended in tears, so I think we'll go back to knitting - this time with real wool and metal needles!

What crafty-ness do your kids get up to?

A bit late, but joining in with the crafty fun over here.

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How was Your Weekend?
10:43 PM family , Nattering 0 Comments

Mine was pretty busy!

It started with a squishy package in the post:

A bit of knitting on a new design:

While watching J and his team win this:

Having fun with cousins:

While letting the three-year-old take photos:

Cheesy grins from the cute niece & nephew:

A little bit of embellishing:

And finally, two finished knits drying and almost ready for the pattern photo shoot:

What did you get up to this weekend?

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All Wound Up
10:58 PM knitting 10 Comments

Gorgeous red yarn ready to be made into a new design.

What's your crafty plans for the weekend?

Please ignore the fact that my photo-manipulation skills leave a lot to be desired. The colour is so much deeper in real life - it's Max in Valentine by Vintage Purls.

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Love It!
9:28 PM knitting 0 Comments

Look what I got in the post:

Gorgeous buttons from Buttons by Benji

Custom-made by the very talented Nicci to match MiddleMiss' Sweet As...Cardy

MiddleMiss is quite excited!

And if you want to nab your own Buttons by Benji, head on over to her website. She just did a stocking last night of a whole lot of Ready Right Now buttons and some Custom Slots if you want something specific. But be quick, they always disappear so fast!

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A Bit of Bag Making
6:00 PM Creative Space , Sewing , Teaching 22 Comments

It's amazing how easily life gets busy and next thing you know it's five weeks into the school term and we're half way out to the next school holidays!

Friday just gone was my last sewing lesson for this term. Maybe you remember the bag I talked about making with the girls in class? It was a fantastic pattern to use with them and there was great satisfaction in having a cool bag they'd made themselves. Thanks, Meg! (The pattern was kindly donated to me by Meg McElwee of Sew Liberated for use in class. Make sure you ckeck out her website for more great patterns!)

This is my bag in it's current everyday-use state (you might notice I changed it a bit from when I first made it - I swapped the front and back around and shortened the body so it wasn't as deep.)

I decided to give the girls a bit of a challenge (and save the parents money on fabric) and told them to find old clothing and sheets to use for the bag. I wanted to encourage the idea of re-using materials for projects.

This bag was made from an old denim skirt (dark fabric), a pair of jeans (light fabric), and two shirts (red and patterned fabrics). We used the back of the skirt as the back outer panel of the bag, leaving the patch pockets as they were so she has two funky pockets on the outside!

This bag was made from an old denim skirt and a couple of shirts. The button sewing was an extra skill they got to learn. For some of the girls, when I had them last time it was the first time they'd ever sewn before!

I could see that some of the girls would finish with time to spare so had asked them to bring along some extra fabric to whip up a quick and simple bag using the basic concepts they'd learnt with the first bag. It was encouraging to see how much they'd taken in and that I only needed to point them in the right direction or ask "What do you think you do next?"

Looking forward to next term when I get to do it all again with the other four girls in the class! (I only have half the class at a time while the other half does cooking and they get the option of sewing or woodwork so I didn't have any boys!)

I don't have any photos of the other two girls' bags - one finished the week previous and the other hadn't finished by the end of the lesson as she'd had two lessons off sick.

Check out the other creative folk over here.

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I Was Interviewed!
5:17 AM 0 Comments

The lovely Jill from Creating My Way to Success hosts the Australasian leg of a worldwide blog hop tour every Wednesday on her blog and guess who was featured this week?

Me!

I've never been interviewed before about my crafting and it was a lot of fun answering the questions. If you want to know a bit more about me and my crafting, make sure you pop over and read the interview here.

Blog following is such a great way to "meet" new people! Have you made friends through blog reading/writing?

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And Knit Some More
5:03 AM knitting , My Designs 0 Comments

Plain stocking stitch, though very boring, is rather satisfying. In that it's really quick.

I'm halfway through one sleeve on the jersey I showed in my last post (and I did have to re-do a bit of it because of the pocket needing to be bigger than I'd first done) and already thinking about the next one.

But first I have to finish my Sweet As...Cardigan for MiddleMiss as today in the post I got this:

Photo borrowed from Red Riding Hood Yarns' facebook

I'd run out of yarn to do the long sleeves as there'd been a mix-up between the 10ply and 8ply yarn so I'd asked Hannah to dye me up some matching trim to do contrast sleeves. I wasn't sure if I wanted to go lighter or darker so asked for both and the one I don't use can always turn into a matching hat or scarf.

But, of course, now that I'm going to finally get the desperately-needed-warm-cardigan finished, the weather is beautifully warm and Spring-like! Not that I'm complaining - I love Spring!

Now all I need is some free computer time to type up the pattern ready for testing!

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