Month: December 2020

Frosty, Freezy and the B Crew

stitchesoftime7 Comments

When my friend Kerry came over during the summer she commented on the fact that I had all of the Barbie dolls that I had been making clothes for lined up on the coffee table in front of me. She said it looked like I was using them as an audience and I told her that was my B Crew and yes I did occasionally talk to them 🙂 Well when you live on your own you have to be creative sometimes for company.

The B Crew have been disbanded now as they are mostly off to new homes. I spent many happy hours during the first few weeks of the restrictions in April making clothes for them all, (I ended up with 10 dolls at one point with those I bought for work purposes and the ones I found on Ebay).

Once I have finished with the animals that I am making as gifts for friend’s grandchildren, I will probably get back to making gowns for them as the recent declutter led to me finding a whole new stash of beautiful fabric that I can use. I bought some wonderful vintage patterns in PDF from Gail’s Vintage Doll e-Patterns on Etsy and have so many other ones to try. I love these very sixties ones.

For these dresses I made four versions of the dress on the top left of the pattern, View 5. For the white and green dress I adapted the skirt to be flared. The other print dresses were made from two rectangles with the skirt part gathered.

These three dolls are going to the cousins for Christmas and three of the diversity ones have gone to my friend at work. She is using Barbies in awareness raising about diversity in art galleries, so they will join her Art Activist Barbie team. I love what Sarah has been doing with her work, if you are interested here is her Twitter page.

I have kept four of them as models, and this is one of my favourite as I love her hair. I must make her some fab new clothes for next season as the poor thing only has one dress at the moment.

I have also finished my two snowmen, here are Frosty and Freezy. The last photos show them filled with chocolate and ready to go off to my nieces for Christmas. I think they turned out really well and I very much enjoyed knitting them. Details of the pattern is in this post here.

I actually had the whole of this weekend off (eek) as all of my teaching on Saturdays for this term has finished. It was so lovely to have two whole days off, so exciting! I managed to get a lot done, sorting out some more of the things in the craft room and made up this pouch for Ellen’s friend. I have had the applique done for a long time but it was on my pile of things to make up (which includes a large pile of stitcheries that I must get around to doing something with!).

I love the Liberty fabric I used for the bottom of the bag, it is one of my favourite designs and I wish I had more of it but think it looks cute as just the base. There is a good tutorial for this and other types of lace zipper pouch here at Plush Addict. The lace zippers come from Buddly Crafts and come in all sorts of gorgeous colours.

I am not expecting to get too much else done this week as I have a lot of wrapping and general Christmas prep to do and may (only may) be leaving the country on Saturday. All manner of miracles have to happen to make that work so we shall see. If I am blogging again next week it will not have happened but fingers crossed!

Whatever happens I will be happily knitting something somewhere and celebrating getting to the end of a very tough year, both personally and professionally, as it has for many people. Whatever happens next year at least this one will be over, in some cases the worst has already happened and we have survived that. We can only hope that things get easier for us all in 2021.

If I don’t see you again until Jan, hope you have a good a festive season as you can, take care, stay safe and thanks for visiting.

A whole lot of sorting going on

stitchesoftime5 Comments

Well I have had a very busy few weeks, very little crafting but a huge amount of sorting and decluttering. It is less than 3 months until I put the house on the market (eeek!) so there has been a lot to do as I wanted to make the best use of what time I had before Christmas. Starting in January I will be finishing the re-painting, doing the final declutter and then calling the estate agents!

I have been helped by a new Facebook page in our lovely village for people to gift and request items that they need, set up just as the newest restrictions started as all of the charity shops were closed, and some smaller items have gone to new homes. It is such a lovely idea and people have been very generous, there have been some really nice children’s toys and all sorts of things that people have donated to others.

My wonderful Ellen came up last weekend and we did an enormous amount, not that much is visible as it was all things in cupboards, and under beds and in long forgotten boxes and drawers. Some of it went to the local tip, some saleable items on Ebay, but I know it is all gone, and there will be much less to get rid of after the house is sold.

I have even decluttered the craft room, I still have to find homes for some of it as there is a lot of scrap fabric that in previous times would have gone to the local school but they are not accepting anything at the moment. I still do have some time to sort that out though.

It seems weird to be on the final countdown, fingers crossed I only have about 8 months left living here and then it will be a life in Spain, and hopefully on the road for part of the year. I have no idea what will happen, the double whammy of the pandemic and Brexit have meant that planning is not easy but fingers crossed I will get there. I count myself very lucky that I have a house there already and am not trying to do that bit as well.

I have finished a couple of things, I have knitted a basket and some carrots for Ellen and I am doing another set of these for the next bunny as well. I love how the basket has turned out with the basket weave stitch, it was very easy to do and I love it. It is very sturdy and has a lovely i-cord handle. The basket is from Julie at Little Cotton Rabbits and the carrots are a free pattern by Wendy from Flutterby Patch.

Wendy also had some really cute little snowmen that you could use as gifts bags for sweets etc. so I have bought this pattern from her Etsy page and have knitted one already, I have just got to do the face now so I will show you that later. I am going to make two as gifts for my great nieces. These pictures are from her Ravelry page.

I am really tempted to get some of her other patterns as well, I love this group of teddies, and the cute little group of kids.

These dolls are beautiful as well and she has patterns for extra outfits for the larger ones. All pictures are from her Ravelry page.

I shall just spend my retirement knitting endless amounts of little knitted animals and cute dolls 😉 I am sure I can find good homes for them to go to. Most of my relatives are getting a little too old now but I am sure I can give them away to others for gifts, or to charity. I did really enjoy making the fabric dolls I made a couple of years ago for my cousins and would like to make some more of those as well. Details of the pattern for these are in this post.

I have finished all on campus teaching now, we have moved everything else online for this term so that hopefully we can all meet up with people safely for Christmas. I am just doing tutorials and marking for the next two weeks so hopefully will have lots of time for other things as I am not leaving the house at all. It seems strange that I will not be going back into work until the middle of January now but I am quite happy here at home. It has been cold and wet out recently so I am happy not to have to stand at cold bus stops!.

A little Christmas tree is up (I have given away the big one and most of my ornaments, even my hand made ones), I have the house full of pretty lights, some new fluffy slipper boots and so I am cosy and warm inside. I am very blessed to have such a safe and comfortable warm home and extremely grateful for this in these difficult times. I am going to light the candles, carry on with some knitting and watch the second series of the lovely Virgen River on Netflix.

I hope that you are all safe and warm as well and have a happy week ahead. Take care and thanks for visiting.