Handmade Monday 106 – All Aflame

Hi and welcome to this week’s Handmade Monday, hosted by the lovely Wendy Massey over at Handmade Harbour. Wendy’s designs and makes can be regularly seen in CraftSeller and are fantastic and explained really well. So pop over and find out more and join all us crafty types!

Travelling and Special Birthdays

I was away for most of last week as it was Dad’s 86th Birthday! He’s still in the care home at the  moment for rehabilitation, but he’s now decided he loves it and would like to stay! So we are now hoping he “fails” his home assessment so that social services will fund his place. To be honest he needs to be there as he is only so well because he’s somewhere being cared for. Hopefully my brother and I can back him too and he’ll be able to stay! The home is beautiful and the staff are amazing, even throwing Dad a little party – although the diabetic birthday cake wasn’t really his cup of tea. I was really worried about him being there as they have a large number of clients with dementia and I thought it would pull him down, but Dad chats to them anyway and is quite unconcerned if he doesn’t get a response. The staff are happy to work to each residents preferences too, so Dad isn’t forced to join in with anything and can spend his time in his room watching the footie etc when he wants to. He’s also become a bit of a daytime TV fiend and is now into such things as Homes Under the Hammer. I took him into the village for a  birthday lunch too and as soon as he got out of the car he disappeared off into the chippy to chat to the staff and the ladies at the cafe (part of the pub pictured) were really pleased to see him out and about again. He’s now realised that with a bit of time he’ll be able to pop out for a cuppa and chat once the weather gets warmer as the home is very near the village centre, on the flat and he’ll only need to cross one road, which is never too busy.

Getting Things Done

I took the cardigan’s I’m working on for a commission with me and have nearly finished another…. this week’s aim to write up a couple of patterns for a child’s hoodie and girls / ladies jumper dress – the maths is a bit confusing at present but I’m hoping to sort out a spreadsheet that can do the hard sums! Along side that I’m starting the Creative Journalling 30Day E Course – was meant to start that on Saturday but being away and still learning to use the allegedly smart phone means me and the emails fell out big time – the lack of wifi and3G didn’t help much either. Though a visit to little brother to use his wifi meant I now have some knitty apps which I’ll blog about when I’ve figured out using them 🙂

Yesterday’s drive back was beautiful and we were really spoilt when we got to the top of “The Hill With it’s Own Weather”, which overlooks Lyme Bay – the sun was coming through the clouds and making pools of gold on the water – a real mermaid paradise! I’ve got lots of ideas for making things that combine golds and sea colours now!

 

Creatively in Flames

I did have a bit of time for my #creativebeings prompt last week – the theme being fire. I’ve created a few works in progress that I’ll add to and finish during the course of the coming week:

The flaming flower  needs an outer layer of yellow I think to complete it. I’m using it to experiment with making a much larger flower that is more freeform in nature that would look good as a piece of wall art or perhaps a star shaped wrap?

But this version will become a brooch or bag charm, perhaps with a mirror tile in the middle!

 

This is a mixed media piece – knitting and crochet built up on each other.I’ve used a combination of embroidery threads and a gold sewing thread, with a combination of lace hooks and 2.5mm circular knitting needles. I started it aiming to make a small candle flame inspired  petal for a flower.

However as I worked it sort developed a feathery shape and an eastern style. I’m not  certain what I want to do with this yet – I’m torn between leaving it as it is (once all the ends are sewn in) and creating a brooch or making more feathers and using them to make a phoenix / peacock hybrid bird for a mixed media collage, using embroidery, more knitting and some applique onto canvas…

This is my latest piece of freeform. I made a series of flame inspired scrumbles, crocheted them together and then added on additional leaps of flame to fill in gaps. I’m now working on the back of the piece to create a notebook cover.

I used a variety of yarns from scraps of yellow and orange pure wools to 4ply acrylics. I also varied hook sizes depending on the piece. The colours haven’t photographed as well as I hoped though. It’ll look much better once blocked, stretched and attached to book.

It has a really good texture. I was surprised though that many of the stitches I used were small and contained – I had to almost force myself to use anything taller than a half treble – does that come from our instinctive fear of fire or was I simply limiting myself to the size I wanted to cover a notebook? But when I started joining the scrumbles and adding to them the “fire” took on a less controlled look with flames going everywhere so perhaps the smaller controlled stitches didn’t win?

As I mentioned early I now have a Smart – or is it unsmart – phone. I decided that it needed a little home, due to the  need for protection from the contents of my handbag – needles, hooks, scissors etc! I got a book from The Works of rippled knitting and crochet stitches as this is something I really feel drawn to at the moment – a bargain at £2 too! I chose one of the patterns after a bit of faffing around, made a phone cover. I’ve added a drawstring top and rose to decorate it.

I’ve also made a beautiful scarf using a granny ripple pattern from the book which I’ll share later this week as part of the series on Hope!