My Busy Craft Life

Today I have destroyed my leaf dress. It was a little emotional as it took me six months to make for the Elf Fantasy Fair in the Netherlands. After wearing it on a few occassions, it got a little dirty and was unwashable with it being based on a wedding dress, and also because I needed the petticoat for the Mombi dress, I decided to destroy it. It only took a few minutes, and it's only slowly kicking in, so this is an ode to my leaf dress - a creation of a lifetime. The creation process, take one wedding dress (chopped in half), make a ton of individual leaves, and start sewing them on, row after row...   After row after row...   Until the whole skirt is done Then finish all accessories and have a friend take pictures of the whole thing                                        ...

The whole week I have been planning my weekend for things to do and everything was prepared. Then I woke up this morning with a throat the size of Australia and havent left the house at all. My entire weekend plans have just fallen apart, and I'm having the worst throat ache I've had in 14 years. I've had something waiting for a while but managed to control it with Ibuprofen and stuff. I think it was the draft from yesterday's craft meet that was the final straw. I wont be blogging for a few days I think, unless I will have some sort of miraculous recovery...

Finally it was time for the Craft Mashup Meetup! I've been looking forward to this for a while now, and finally it was on. I got a little lost along the way (sorry Joanne!) but in the end found the place it was held in. It was an interesting evening where we could learn (or mostly re-learn in my case) crochet, knitting, cookie decorating, and origami. Ok, I skipped the origami. All the precise folding is not for me... So I did the other three :) I started off with knitting. I was still all hyped from work and this was the perfect thing to get my mind off things. I learned this great tip: If you are a left-handed knitter and you need help but no one can help you because they're all right-handed, sit opposite them and let them show you and you simply follow what they're doing. Mirror-image knitting. Super handy! Look at me go! In the end I actually managed to learn two different stitches and knit a few rows :) Then it was off to cookie-decorating. I was a little disappointed ...

As some of you may know, I LOVE pancakes. So roll on pancake day! Every year year the bf tells me that my pancakes are too Dutch or too thick or something. They're not bad, but somehow I can never find the right quantity to put in the pan or something. Anyway, the bf accepted the challenge and made me French pancakes for pancake day :) Sorry, have just been corrected, BRITTANY pancakes called Krampouez. The evening started off a little rough as it was pouring rain outside and I still had to buy some flour. By the time I got home, I was completely soaked, including my feet which I thought were safely dry in my relatively new Wellies. Sadly no pic, but the phrase 'drowned cat' comes to mind LOL In the end though, I got home alright and the baking could commence. The bf made the batter: Checking the pancakes for their readiness... ...while having some yummy white wine in the cool glasses that James gave us while we were in San Francisco :) And FLIP! It actually did land in th...

A usual Monday morning... cloudy and grey outside, which is really not helping me to wake up in the morning. However, today was better than the whole of last week which says a lot. I brought the banana cookies to work which was appreciated by my colleagues, although they did hint that they would have preferred the Valentine cookies. Maybe I'll humour them and bring some tomorrow. Also, I noticed my first follower today! :) I'm new at this whole blogging thing, and sometimes I wonder (just like Julie in 'Julie & Julia') if anyone actually reads this. It's nice to know someone does, especially if I know them ;) Though the main reason is that this is just much better than posting one-liners on FB all the time. Yes, I am pleased :) BUT the best thing today was the dinner I cooked. I found this great recipe online for potato and chorizo gratin. I used a little more potatoes and a little less creme fraiche than the recipe called for but it still came out very yummy :)...

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! Check out the flowers I received from the bf :) Arent they gorgeous? I love purple :) No, they're not roses as we are against roses on V-Day due to the fact that they're especially imported for just this one day and they're usually full of chemicals and stuff. And I just love my bouquet so who needs roses? :) I wanted to make the bf an edible present and spent most of the day in the kitchen actually. So much for our romantic day together... while I was baking I also made more banana cookies as I still have bananas left from last week, and I made enough soup to last me the whole week for lunch :) In the spirit of V-Day I made these yummy heart shaped cookies :) They're plain butter cookies with streaks of milk chocolate and white chocolate made pink with food colouring. I think they came out quite well :) I also made a giant chocolate heart but forgot to take a picture of it and the bf has already dug into that one! I still had these s...

Finally it was Saturday, the day of the Stitch & Craft Show! I got up early, got ready, managed to take all the right tubes and replacement buses as of course the TFL wasnt working properly again during the weekend, and arrived with time to spare at the venue. It wasnt as crowded as last year but that quickly changed the closer it got to 12pm. Sadly I didnt see anyone from my craft group who were supposed to be here, but I did meet up with Nada whom I hadnt seen in about a year. It was so nice to catch up again! A whole day of talking only about sewing and no one who complained :) I took some pics of the fair and also of the things I bought: The entrance: Some pictures of various stalls: (more about this woman in the funny outfit later) This stall had the cutest little witch hanging in their stall and I just had to photograph it! Isnt is the cutest? I just had to :) Of course some shopping was also done. Here is Nada shopping for beads... And we tried to get a picture of me with a...

Thursday evening, nearly weekend at last! I'm surprised that I'm actually blogging even though my day was extremely uneventful. Oh how I would like to have another run like Christmas where I had 11 days all to myself with nothing to do but sewing and watch movies :) Yes, I love sewing while movies are running in the background. That way I can make noise through all the boring parts ;) And I would get so much stuff done! But hey, one thing at a time. I have now decided that I would make only one more tube card holder for a friend and whoever else wants one, I'm going to charge them. Mean you think? Possibly... but all my friends now have them so any more would be for others I barely know or friends of friends and I need to get started on the Mombi dress and not make these things all the time which totally eats into my planning. Speaking of planning and projects, has anyone ever heard of Day Zero - 101 Projects in 1001 Days? It's a really cool website where you enter 101 ...

I know it's late but I just had to share this! Part of the lovely dinner tonight were chipolatas as the bf really likes those. I usually hate making them (even though I like them too) as they ruin my baking trays when I cook them in the oven. Yes, I know I dont have to use a baking tray but for the time being this is definitely the more hygienic option. Anyway, tonight I had an idea. Well, I used an idea from this website http:// www.bakingsodabook.co.uk/ which is simply fantastic, but nonetheless I USED the idea. I have some baking soda which is out of date and I really wanted to be frugal and not just waste stuff. So after I made and served the chipolatas, I put the baking tray on the counter and added water and baking soda. Now normally we soak the trays for the whole night and still have to scrub like mad to get all the stuff off. Not tonight. I soaked it for maybe three hours and even when I poured out the water half the stuff was already gone! After that some minimal scrubbi...

Have you ever had one of those days where pretty much everything seems to be going wrong? OMG... today was totally like that. The working day just wouldnt end and THEN: as I walked out of my offce building, I walked towards the main gate as usual, passing the front door of the next building where a guy was slowly walking towards the door. I moved aside to make some space so that he could turn the corner as I passed. The guy COMPLETELY DIDNT SEE ME, walked into me and tripped me over! I of course went fying, everything I was carrying landing everywhere around me. At this point I was really quite annoyed and in pain. So instead of doing the English thing and saying 'it's alright, dont worry about it, I'll go home and suffer in private', I really had quite a go at the guy telling him to watch where he's going and that it is very possible that someone is walking on the side walk on a busy road. I even told him I knows where he works so if I'm in pain tomorrow I woul...

Hello world, This is going to sound so cheesy but this will be my first ever blog. I always thought I would never have time but as I am not forced to watch Galactica (sorry, not entirely convinced by this show at this point in time) and facebook is getting more boring by the second with all their new layouts, I thought I'd send some thoughts out into the space of the world wide web. Wow, I really do sound like a bad movie ;) I did get the idea from the movie 'Julie and Julia' which I recently saw on the plane while flying back to London from San Francisco. Yes, I live in London. Normally people would think I am so busy going out every night as everyone knows London has many events and there is always something to do. Yes... after nearly 5 years I've kinda seen it. My passion in life: sewing! I have read many interesting sewing blogs online and I can only hope that mine will be half as interesting as they are. :) Last year, 2009, was a bad year for sewing. Accept for a H...