Autumn Leaves

Isn't it funny how things come about, and often how one thing leads to another ?

I'd finished Littke Tomboy's Creeper Face Hallowe'en mitts that she'd put in an order for, and wanted some leafy embellishments for the photo - the leaves I had left from my last photo-shoot were a bit shrunken and starting to look somewhat insignificant.

Little Tomboy and I ventured forth onto the field to search for more leaves. She's being an aeroplane. Well, why not I suppose.

We gathered lots of leaves ... beautiful earthy tones of red, brown, yellow, orange, and fabulous mixtures of colour in individual leaves going on as well. And of course there were lots of stones, feathers, and snail-shells to be collected. And to her delight we discovered pine-cones ... "I didn't know we had a pine-cone-tree!!" :D She is so sweet :) And I can't wait to bling up the pine cones with glitter for Christmas  ....

Still plenty of colour to be found, and we even shared a blackberry. "It's a bit soury Mummy" ....

After a brief stop at the park to play on the slide, we headed for home, and laid out our autumnal treasures on the table, in order to re-shoot the creeper mitts. 

There. That's more interesting now :)

Not wishing to be left out, Little Miss appeared and asked if we could do some leaf-rubbing. Great idea! First job - rip the paper-covering off some crayons and leave it strewn about the place for your parent to clean up later :-| Then select a nice veiny leaf, lay a sheet of paper over, and gently rub crayon (on its side) over the paper.

What to do with all these lovely leaves ? Why, make bunting of course! I'd seen this on another blog, and it really wanted to link to it here. But, try as I might, I can't find it anywhere. Don't you hate that ? So to whomever thought of this before, I thank you.

We cut the leaves out, used a hole punch to make a small hole in the top (bottom?) of each leaf, and stranded them into a piece of string, arranged so they were pointing downwards. And then we hung the finished bunting across our bookshelves in the playroom.

And we love the end result :) So pretty and such an easy (and relatively un-messy) craft activity.

I love how the photographing-requirements of one craft project - the creeper mitts - led to another really enjoyable and totally unplanned craft session with my girls :) But let's just have another look at the mitts shall we .... I can't get enough of that crazy colour :)

Hallowe'en Hands

Christmas is coming and the goose is getting fat,

Please put a penny in the old man's hat.

If you haven't got a penny then a ha'penny will do,

And if you haven't got a ha'penny, God bless you!

That's the rhyme we used to chant at Hallowe'en when I was a lass, we didn't have trick or treating back then, and the braver children (of which I was not one) would go round the doors chanting the rhyme, essentially asking for money! The cheek!

In fact we had trick or treaters call at our door here LAST WEEK!!!! 2 whole weeks early, and I'm pretty sure they were chancing their arm for some cash, not just for chocolate or sweets. I gave them short shrift, I can tell you. To be fair though I had just bought pumpkins and had them on display in the porch, so perhaps they thought it was worth a try. It wasn't. 

I usually buy 3 pumpkins - one for each Little Person - at the last minute, carve them hastily, shove them in the window on the 31st, then take them away the next day, and chuck them out. All that effort for one evening. This year I decided to buy them well in advance so I can really enjoy their vibrant colour on the front porch. A Good Move - I'm loving the cheery welcome every time I arrive home. My pyracanthas and cotoneaster are in full berry-bloom too, gorgeous autumnal reds, oranges, and golds.

Anyway, back to Hallowe'en.....  in preparation for next week's (correct day of) trick-or-treating there has been much discussion about costume choices. I have mixed feelings about the whole trick-or-treating thing but that's a subject for another day. Mummy's thoughts on the matter aside, the Little People all LOVE the dressing up that is required for the occasion. There do seem to be a lot of suggestions on the table at present. But Little Miss has decided For Definite that she is going to be "Draculaura" - a cartoon character who is basically a pink-clothed girl vampire. To go with her costume I made her some long fingerless bright pink gloves.

I worked out my own pattern - which I'll share when I've written it up properly - and embroidered the spider-webs on once the gloves were complete. The diagonal ridge you can see on the left hand one is because I crochet in the round with an invisible seam - ok so it's not invisible but it isnt't loose and hole-y which is what I find happens if I don't do it this way. It's a technique I learned for making hats, but I'm not sure it translates as well to gloves. But hey-ho, I still love how they turned out:)

Little Tomboy got in on the act and asked for orange ones with spiders .... I was happy to oblige ....

They were really quick and easy to do, and a real crowd-pleaser. Also a great way to use up some rather gaudy yarn that a friend had donated to my stash a while ago. I'm definitely going to make some for myself as well, to coordinate with my many scarves :)

There has also been a request for a green pair with creeper faces on (you mine-crafter-peeps-or-parents will know what that is!), so guess what I'm doing in front of the telly tonight :) 

Journey Scarf

Now that I write the title for the post about this project - the Journey Scarf - I can't tell you how much I wish I could tell you how I started and finished it on a train, or spent hours working on it whilst flying over the Atlantic, or, at the very least, how I have come so far on my personal journey whilst creating it.

But I can't tell you any of those because in actual fact I just worked on it over various evenings slobbed out in front of the telly, it didn't even leave the house to be hooked on waiting for the Little People to come out of school or ANYTHING. Nope, just plain old living-room crochet-ness. 

Crochet really is magical isn't it ? It never fails to amaze me how creating little loops and pulling more loops through can create such an intricate design. Out of basically a ball of string comes a thing of beauty - if I may say so myself :) It's wizardry :) 

I'm really chuffed with this scarf, I love the colour, the pattern, the texture. For a lacy scarf it's got a lovely weightiness and solidity about it. No getting wafted about in the wind for this one.

I found the pattern on ravelry, you can find it here.

My Journey Scarf measures 150cm long, by 20cm wide, after steam blocking. It's made up of 28 motifs joined using the join-as-you-go method, and has a border round the edge. I used nearly one full  skein (170g) of Caron Simply Soft in Plum Wine. I bought this yarn in the US (oh Florida! How I miss you!), and according to the label it is yarn weight 4: in UK terms I'd call it a slightly heavy DK although one site I looked at classes it as Aran. So I guess it's sort of in between. And joyously, since buying it, I've discovered it for sale online in the UK, yippee!! (Or should that be oh dear ...)

I'm fortunate enough to have a very beautiful and willing model to hand to help display the scarf .... here she is .... gorgeous don't you think ? Scarf and model of course :) ♥♥♥♥♥

Little Miss was more than happy to help out, not least because after school today there was a Book Fair which we all - except her - dropped into. She couldn't join us as she has Sewing Club (envious? Moi? Hell yes! Never had Sewing Club when I was at school) so anyway I said I'd get her a book, "Anything in particular" I asked ? "Surprise me" she said, so I did - bought her a new loom band book. She was Very Happy with that :) And scampered off to make me a new loom band bracelet .... with embellishments .... whaddya think ?

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