stuff i made

Just putting up little photos, most of which are pretty dodgy and quickly edited but better than no picture at all. You can click on them to see them bigger.

OK, first up my new address book. 4x6" index cards that I designed and printed. Easy to update/replace when people's details change and plenty of space to make extra notes or whatever. I'm keeping them in a perfectly-sized mini file folder thing that I found.


This quilt block was made as my contribution to a project organised by an online community I belong to. One of the members lost a lot when her home was broken into shortly after they'd experienced a fire. So we made her a quilt. Well, a bunch of us made squares and one of the really talented quilters collected it all and assembled it into a quilt.
I painted the land masses onto some blue cotton, stitched the planet onto the black (by hand - I was impressed at my own skills) then embellished with embroidery floss.

A needle holder. After over 2 years of living in this country, I am still getting used to the space restrictions and the importance of well-organised storage. My biggest problem is with the 'well-organised' bit at the moment and I found myself knowing I had things I needed for projects, but unable to find them. Like various sized needles. So I got some felt (didn't even choose the colours - they're the ones that were in the little pack I found), stitched a few pieces together with some embroidery floss, attached a button and voila - no more lost needles.

Calorimetry is one of those projects that everyone in internet-land seems to have knitted. And here's mine. I'm not sure how happy I am with it - I think it's too fat, as in it covers too much of the top of my head - but since I managed to finish it right as the weather got too warm to wear anything like it, I'm going to call it finished and re-visit when it gets cool again after Summer.
This is the point where I should tell you what yarn and needles I used and any adjustments I made, but I can't actually remember much and don't know where I'd have put that information. When I get around to updating ravelry (one step at a time) I'll put the details there.

And, saving the best for last, some clothes for the baby.

That there is a 0-3 months sized onesie (because I refuse to buy anything smaller, anticipating a big baby) that I embroidered. I googled jellyfish to find an image as a basis, added the text then printed, transferred and stitched. I had grand plans to make a bunch of cute little personalised onesies, but so far, this is it. So baby will be wearing lots of plain white to start with.


Tank top/Vest (it seems to have been published under both names) by Debbie Bliss from Essential Baby, one of the many knitting books I have borrowed from the library in the last few months. Knitted in the recommended yarn, which is Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino - one advantage to living in the UK is when stuff like this is easily available (and much cheaper than you'd pay back home). The actual top only used just over one ball, so I made a matching basic hat with the rest - I kinda winged it, based on something I found about baby head sizes, so I have no idea when exactly it will be the right size for Squishy's head, but that's cool. Especially since even though I knit the 0-3 months size in the top, my tension/gauge was off (I knit loosely) and I ran with it, so I don't know exactly when that will fit either. Besides, who really knows how big a baby will be before it's born...?
Anyway, I'm really happy with the top. It's my first ever actual garment - I had to sew seams and attach a button and everything. I successfully matched my decreases front and back, picked up stitches for the neck and arm bands and I even did a neat job of weaving in all the ends. And, I really like the stitch pattern, simple but effective, and think it will look totally cute on little Squishy.

I have a couple other projects I want to work on, but the energy is not there at the moment. And I'm a bit worried about pulling out my sewing machine, which most of the projects I have in mind require, because I don't do well on the sewing machine when my brain is not fully functioning - I get frustrated easily enough at the moment, without adding in a piece of heavy machinery. Oh well, I'll just let my body keep working on the biggest project of all and get back into it when I feel up to it.