Tag Archives: Gifts

The knitting needles are out

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What happened to Spring? All the glorious sunshine and balmy 18oC has been swapped for snow and -1oC! I’ve had to put the heating back on (not for long) and I’ve retreated to blanket crochet again, just to stay warm!

Gloves work-in-progress

This cold snap has made me think back to the last couple of winters and my chance meeting with a friend I hadn’t seen in ages. She had recently bought a shop in Ramsbottom, not long before lockdown, and selling lovely ladies clothing. Over a chat about Easter chick knitting (more of that in a future post), she asked if I fancied making some hats and gloves to sell in her shop when Autumn came around. So we decided on a trial of a dozen or so items, just to see how they went. Lots of knitting (and the inevitable unpicking) ensued, choosing different yarns, colours and patterns. She wasn’t concerned about them all being the same, if anything she was happier for lots of different designs to add to the uniqueness of the products. A great opportunity to practice some long forgotten and new techniques and to improve my cabling and sizing.

Ribbed beanies

With my first collection complete they went on sale in October 2021 just to coincide with a warm late Autumn! But in the run up to Christmas, the weather did turn colder and they started to sell well. So-much-so that I was asked to make as many more items, particularly hats, as I could. What a confidence boost for me. I’ve had a few knock-backs with job applications and interviews over this last year – it seems being a peri-menopausal fifty-year-old returner to work is not who people want to employ these days, in spite of plenty of work experience and qualifications!

Bobble hats

Anyway, suffice it to say I think the hat/glove trial was a success and I have been knitting away frantically in the evenings to make more for Autumn/Winter 2022. I have been working on my cabling and making some headbands as well, with my now teenage daughter’s help in colour choices!

Finished gloves and wrist-warmers

The knitting was something I enjoyed doing even if it was a bit of a production line, but I had completely forgotten about having to make labels for all the items. So there was a frantic couple of days wondering what I could do, investigating sew in versus stick/iron on labels and having them all printed. But I settled on making my own and adding in all the care instructions for the yarn from each yarn band. I’m quite pleased with the end result, I think they add to the handmade feel of the items too. What do you think?

Time to warm up again with a brew now. Have a lovely week.

Happy crafting.

K x

End of Term

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This year has absolutely flown by and I can’t believe that my little one is finishing Year 3 already. (No longer a little one)  It only seems like moments that she was starting school at all!

Anyway with the end of term comes all the regular craziness, mostly around the school fair, which was a little different this year as it was arranged by the parent group instead of the school staff.  As such it was mainly lots of games for the children to play and a barbecue.  I didn’t have a craft stall of goodies this year, but I did manage to bake some biscuits (my third bake of the weekend) for the cake stall.  Unfortunately the weather wasn’t too favourable, so most things had to be brought inside.

I was roped in to run the craft table and spent a good couple of hours with a steady stream of under 7s making bee deely boppers, flip-flop keyrings and decorating pencil cases (all from Baker Ross).  I’d recommend the bees, very cute and the kits include everything you need.  They are great for little ones, although they will need adult help in attaching the springs to the headband.  I also struggled removing the papers from the back of the googly eyes, but the kids didn’t seem to have any problem at all!

We also had the obligatory ‘pot goody’ stall and Alice made her’s this year filled with homemade paper windmills and decorated with paper grass, bees and butterflies.  She didn’t win her class prize, the winner made a sandcastle out of hers!

The school fair always signals the end of term, so after we had helped pack everything away, it was time for getting end of term cards and presents sorted out for the class teacher and teaching assistants.  This year we’ve had two teachers and two teaching assistants as they had swimming lessons and one of the TAs is a trained swimming instructor.  I’ve tried to stick to the same sort of thing each year for the teachers , so I made some new apple thank you cards, this time using a new die set I bought a few weeks ago.  It’s an apple from the Market Fresh collection by Spellbinders.  It’s certainly taken the hard work out of cutting out individual apples!  I think I will have some fun with these over the summer.

I also made four little knitted apple keyrings.  These are so cute and pretty simple to make too, just a ball with embroidered details, a crochet chain stem and a small knitted leaf.  

My daughter then made a little tag for each one with her teacher’s name and a personal message from her.  Very cute.

Well, it’s another year over and six weeks now to fill up with lots of activities, and I’m hoping for a lie-in or two!

Happy Summer crafting
x

My daughter’s Birthday!

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With Alice’s birthday being so close to Christmas and New Year, it’s always difficult to organise anything. In the past we’ve had a family meal out and then taken her and a couple of friends to a local soft play centre to let off some steam before going back to school. She’s growing up though now and soft play centres are staring to look a bit young for her, so we decided to have a proper party for her and few friends a couple of weeks after her birthday, so that we could arrange invitations.

We decided on a ten pin bowling party and the bowling alley provided all of the invitations, so there was no need for me to make any. I was a bit disappointed, but I threw myself into making the party bags instead. I must have been feeling a bit mental to take on this task as I was thinking about making the bags, decorating them and then sourcing everything to go inside them as well. It doesn’t sound like much when you say it quickly, but it was taking ages! I had a couple of practices at making the bags / boxes, but nothing was quite right, so I ended up on a shopping trip for gifts and found a selection of gift bags in blue and red that I thought would do the trick.

I set about making rosettes for each child and a personalised gift tag for each bag. My daughter chose the papers she wanted me to use – Papermania cupcakes! The rosettes are made using a template from Papermania and uses very little glue, but a lot of cutting. I enjoy making them, but making ten did take a while. I might have to keep my eyes open for a die to cut them out in future. I don’t mind all the folding and sticking together though, it’s quite therapeutic. Fortunately I do have a gift tag die which worked well with the papers and for the size of the bags.

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I really wanted to make them a bit different to what we normally get in a party bag, so instead of loads of sweets, cheap plastic toys and other such tat, I had a great afternoon browsing the sales. Each bag had a piece of cake and a couple of sweets in, but the girls bags included hair chalk, lip balm and hair bands, while the boys had shower gel, a flannel and a snake. Alice was quite upset that I hadn’t made one for her, but she did enjoy putting all the things in the bags and tying on the tags.

I’m pleased to say they all seemed to go down well with the parents as well as the children.

The party was a success too and Alice ended up with plenty of presents. So we thought it would be a nice touch to make some thank you notes too. I used up some scrap bits of papers for each little ‘envelope’ and used a scalloped circle die to make the flap. I printed out the notelet from the computer and we stuck each one inside each little envelope. Alice signed each note and wrote the name on the front.

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I think they look quite cute and she loved giving them out. All in all I think it was a success.

Happy crafting
x