Owl Mask

Hello friends!
You know what I love? Dressing up in a costume!! Yep, I really do :-)
You may already know this this from my earlier post, but I am going to a fancy dress party soon dressed as an owl :-) Today I made my "mask".
I used an old pair of el cheapo sunglasses & popped the lenses out, some feathers, a piece of cardboard & glue :-)

As you can see, I used the yellow cardboard for the beak. It looks quite humorous on :-)
The rest of my costume is very feathery... I hope there are no animals at the party... as they might decide to make a meal of my outfit!
I hope you have a lovely weekend!!
xo

Lutin Snuggle

 Hello friends!
You might remember the pattern I wrote for the Lutin Hat earlier this year. I have been working on a few variations to make it even more fun :-)
For the hat pictures in this post I used a faux fur yarn for the first several rows, then changed to the regular DK weight wool for the "body" of the hat. The creamy faux fur yarn is SOOOOO soft and buttery, perfect for any little woodland pixie :-)
The brown wool I sued for the main part of the hat is a delicious chocolatey brown 100% wool that I found in the back room of the Bendigo Woollen Mills. It's similar to the DK Luxury :-)
You can find the pattern for this hat in my Etsy store HERE and on Ravelry here ---> 

What have you been making lately? Share in the comments, I love to know what everyone else is up to as well :-)

Owl Wool

Hello friends!
This week I have been trying to figure out what I am going to wear to a costume party on the weekend. I had lots of ideas, some of which were a fox, Wednesday Addams, Where's Wally (or Waldo, depending on where you're from), or an owl :-)
I decided that an owl would be the most fun.... so I have been searching through my extensive collection of crafty bits and pieces and have found some very owly things...
I didn't know how I was going to make the wings. I knew I didn't want anything too cumbersome or anything too structured. I don't know if you've ever worn "wings" to a party before, but it's a pain to have to manoeuvre through a crowd with big, inflexible wings, it's hard to sit down, it's tricky trying to get in and out of a taxi, etc, etc hehehe. They might look fabulous, but they're impractical. So, then I had the idea that I would KNIT some wings.... semi-crazy, but I hope it's going to be a good idea...
So I have dyed some wool, pictured above. It's a semi-solid cool brown colour. The official name of the dye is WOMBAT, and it's pretty accurate as a wombat colour. It's a Landscape Dye that I got from KraftKolour, who have a fabulous range of dyes of all varieties (they also have outstanding customer service and fast shipping :-)
The wool I'm using is Bendigo Woollen Mills Classic 12 ply, which is soft and squishy and chunky :-)
And the pattern I'm using is Temporale Dorato, which is a free pattern on Ravelry. It's gorgeous! I think it sort of looks like feathers...? I am modifying the pattern a  little bit so that it buttons up the front (so I can flap it around like wings :-) I'll write about the modifications when it's done, as a few people have tried to modify it in the same way and appear to have run into a few problems... I also ran into a few problems when I was trying to figure out how to modify it as well.... It took a lot of Maths power to figure it out!
Have you made any fun/crazy/successful/unsuccessful patterns lately? What have you made? Share in the comments!

Smoothie of the day!

Hello friends!
Today I thought I'd share another one of my smoothies with you :-)
You may have read this post HERE about my smoothies. I like to use a variety of fruit and veggies and whatever else I feel like at the time. I've made a few that haven't been all that fabulous, but the large majority of my smoothie experiments have been DELICIOUS! Probably the only one that I couldn't finish was when I accidentally added waaaaaay too much ginger and it was just unpleasant (even though I LOVE ginger).
Todays smoothie was made using strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, carrot, tomato, ginger, mint, cinnamon & a bit of water. It was amazing! Full of flavour & nutrients :-)
You can put pretty much anything you fancy in a smoothie like this. Things that work really well are: orange/mandarin segments (try to remove seeds beforehand), baby spinach, cucumber, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, red currants, blackberries, boysenberries, kiwi fruit, mint, cinnamon, ginger, soy milk, yoghurt, tomato, carrot, coriander, lemon &/or lime juice &/or zest, chilli (just a little bit), banana, stone fruit (with "stones" removed :-), oats, nuts (I sometimes just add a handful of raw nuts, but if you prefer a smoother smoothie you might like to choose almond or hazelnut meal instead), cooked rice or quinoa, celery, raw cacao, raw egg. All the things I've mentioned so far are suitable for most people, especially folks with Fructose Malabsorption, like me (however, please remember that everyone is different and not all foods will be suitable for all people). And if you don't have any dietary restrictions you can add other things such as apple, watermelon, mango, pear & pomegranate :-)
I hope you take the time to give yourself a treat and make a fruit/veggies smoothie one day soon :-) You'll be very pleased with yourself, I promise!
xo

Striped Summer Socks

Hello friends!
Guess what...? It's still Socktober over here at the SLD HQ :-)
These socks have been made using Noro Taiyo Sock yarn which is a blend of cotton, silk, wool & nylon. To create the stripes I have divided the skein into two, and knit 4 rows per stripe with each ball. The colours sort of met up in the middle of the foot and blended in so it looks like there isn't quite a stripe there, but never mind... I still like the way they have turned out :-)
I made these socks on much small needles than I have worked all my other socks on so far, so it took quite a bit longer to knit these socks.
The yarn is beautiful to work with, and feels a lot softer once it's knitted up as opposed to when it's still in the skein. The only thing to keep in mind with this yarn is that it does tend to "stick" when using wooden needles, which can be a bit annoying and makes work slow. I have found this with other yarns that contain silk when using my KnitPro Symfonie needles as well. So I used my Addi Turbo 20cm circular needle for the majority of the sock and just finished off the last few rows of the toe with the Symfonies :-)
I'm hoping these socks might be a bit more suitable for summer wear, because of the silk and cotton content :-) I'll let you know how they go :-)
What have you been working on lately? Share in the comments!

Sunshine Shawl

Hello friends!
Here is one of my recent "finished objects", the Sunshine Shawl :-)
I used the Elise Shawl pattern, which is one of my favourite shawl patterns :-) It's easy, and works up very quickly and gives a great result :-)
The yarn I used is Bendigo Woollen Mills Luxury 4 ply, which I have hand dyed using food dye and following the tutorial I wrote about in THIS post :-)
I like to wear this shawl more like a scarf, backwards, with the point at the front. I believe it's called "Highway Man" style when you where a pointed shawl in this way :-)
What have you finished making lately? Share in the comments! :-)
xo

Finders Keeps Market - Melbourne

Hello friends!

Oh, I was doing so well with Blogtoberfest, managing to post something new EVERYDAY... except yesterday :-( As it turns out, I can't actually post to my blog from my phone (and I didn't have access to my desk top computer). I don't know whether it's an issue with blogger, or an issue with my phone, or an issue with blogger and android phones working in conjunction with each other...or if it was just me :-) Whatever the issue was, it meant I didn't publish a blog post yesterday :-( So I will be publishing two posts today to make up for it :-)

I also had one more issue with this post... I took all the photographs I was planning to use in this post on my phone (as I was planning on posting from my phone) and now that I've uploaded all the images to my desktop computer I don't seem to be able to save the changes to the orientation of the images... they will only upload to the blog in "landscape" view... And the only photograph I took in "landscape" is the one above, and it's a rubbish photo! LOL.

All the other photographs look like the one below.... Oh......

Anyway, enough about all the technical issues I am experiencing....
Yesterday I went to Finders Keepers Market in Melbourne! It was held in the glorious Royal Exhibition Buildings in Carlton (one of my favourite building in Melbourne :-)
Not only was it fabulous to see so many glorious things made by clever people, but it was extra special because I knew so many of the stall holders so I got to have a little catch up with some lovely friends at the same time as seeing all their latest clever & spectacular creations :-)
I decided to go early to try and avoid the crowds, as last time I went to Finders Keepers in Melbourne it was SO crowded that it was hard to enjoy all the wonderful wares or to actually see anything for the sea of people. Going early this time was a good idea :-)
I went along yesterday with the intention of finding myself some groovy earrings... I came away with many things... but no earrings.... hehehe.
Some of the fabulous things I got were:
An AMAZING black & white dress from MADE590
A fabulous pink resin bangle and ring from KeepResin
A very cool Dinosaur brooch from Orange Sherbet (this is for my nephew's 5th Birthday)
A super porcelain CROCHET brooch from Sandra Bowkett - Potter 

I hope you've been having a fabulous weekend too!
Do you know why I couldn't publish a post, with pictures, from my phone? I have a feeling there is probably a way to do it...and i just couldn't figure it out :-)

xo