Please note: this post should be read picturing me skipping around the house.  

I have made something.  An actual article of clothing.  Yes indeed.  LOOK!

I knit that.  Isn't it cute?  It's for a little girl who is 12 weeks old this week.  So it's a good job I finished it, because foolishly I chose the smallest size (3-6 months).  So it was now or never really.

It's from this lovely book.

You can also find the pattern free here on Ravelry.

It was pretty straightforward for the beginner knitter that I am.  I only needed help at the very end.  But I found someone at the crafty group I've joined who showed me what to do.  Such a satisfying feeling.

And I think it really can't be beaten for cuteness.

I've already got plans for my next knitting project.

Will keep you posted.  And thanks everyone for your lovely comments on my growing blanket collection.    I wouldn't be doing any of this without you and I'm chuffed to bits that you take the time to comment on what I get up to.

C.x

Only a matter of time

Hello everybody,

Mr. P and I have come to a tacit understanding about my recent flea market purchase, which involves him pretending he doesn't know about my mad woman's basket, and me pretending that I haven't noticed the new golf bag that has appeared in the house.  Besides, I now have my excuses at the ready.  It's a packing case, after all...  And if all else fails, I have "Oh, that old thing...  I've had it for aaaaaages," to fall back on.

Anyway, the House of NKK has moved on from all that.  We are now on Etsy.  Oh, yes.

Ta dah!  My first ever Etsy purchase.  Isn't he fabulous?

At 5"x5", he's petite.  But of course, quite leggy...

I'm thinking a box frame so that all his hairy loveliness doesn't get squashed behind glass.

He came from a very nice lady called Liza at Felted Fuzzies.

So, what was your first Etsy purchase?  Would love to see.

Before I go, please can someone buy these cups from here:

and come back and let me know.  They are absolutely adorable.  I would buy them myself, but as you all know, I have my limits...

C.x

PS - I have no affiliation with the shops.  I just like stuff.

Not quite AWOL

Hello there,

Just to say that I am gadding about and full of news, but it'll be a week or more before I can get my act together and post properly.  For now, I just wanted to say that we have completed on the purchase of the old lady house by the sea.  HURRAY!  There's about 12 weeks of buildings work and dust before I can get to the fun part of decorating etc.  My mind is spinning with choices of everything from carpets to where the radiators will go.  And it's all being done at a mad fast forward speed because I have to go back to work on Monday.  For now we're 'glamping', which basically means living in an empty house with a few sticks of random furniture, a camping stove and the blessings of hot water and a loo.  (It's amazing how little you need when you put your mind to it.)  But I miss being able to share it all with you, so will be full of news when I'm back.

Stay tuned!

C.x

(A bit of a cheat, but...) Ta Dah!

Mr. P is in England at the moment, taking to an architect and builder about the old lady house. I had to stay here and work, which I'm feeling a bit peevish about even though I know we both didn't need to be there, and that gallivanting across the Atlantic every couple of weeks is all very well but we have to watch our pennies at the moment if we are going to have any money to spend once the house is bought.

And it's raining. And will keep raining for the next 5 days if the weather forecast is at all accurate. So to take my mind off my strop and the weather, I decided to do some crafting. (It was either that or endless episodes of Lie to Me...). I tried first to fix the iPad cover I started to make a few weeks back. All I achieved was to understand how to use my seam ripper. If anyone needs lessons in using this nifty little tool, I'm your woman. I can tell you that an empty flat is just the place for this exercise, because I had free reign to swear liberally and loudly all afternoon.

I eventually abandoned my efforts in favour of repeating an earlier success. If in doubt, stick to what you know...


So I made another bag. Smaller this time, because I had less material, and because I wanted it to be useful for my 8 year old niece.




I'd found this lovely fabric at Purl Soho when I made my first bag. It's so Springy and happy and has this lovely pattern on a deliciously slubby thick cotton...





Very Princess and the Pea... I decided to use grey thread which would blend with the darker colour way and provide contrast to the yellow fabric...


I realise this was a bit risky since my days of sewing in straight lines are obviously yet before me, but still... It has all the same feature as the first bag, with a magnetic snap for the outer pocket and two smaller pockets on the inside...






And, of course, it's reversible and washable.

Having made it once already, this came together pretty quickly and I'm chuffed to bits with it. I only hope my niece likes it too. Do you?

C.x
P.S. I realise I've been completely crap lately, not really crafting much, and not commenting on all your lovely blogs. But I am reading them all and planning lots of future projects, so please bear with me. There's just lots going on right now.

P.P.S. The quality of photos is appalling because Mr. P. went off to England with the cable that connects my SLR to the computer, so these were transferred using the Blogger App on my iPad, which clearly doesn't do photos.  Humph.

Home sweet home

LOOK!

I have clearly gone into nesting overdrive since we found our house.    And today I made this.  I had these lovely buttons among the treats I bought in Sydney at All Buttons Great and Small which I wrote about here.

And a lovely old jumper that I'd bought two winters ago for $5 in a charity shop.

It's cashmere and was always a little two small for me, but I wore it anyway until the elbows gave out.  So I decided to try my hand at felting.  (I know, boiling cashmere is more than a little decadent, but I reckoned it had probably had enough life as a jumper and might like to be something different now....)

It took three boil washes to get it to a point that I was confident enough to cut into it.  But today I'd had enough of having a doll sized jumper in my wardrobe so I snipped a sleeve off just to see what would happen.  And miraculously, the line held and nothing unravelled.

I already had the photo frame and was a bit bored with the flower photo that had lived in it for years.  And the creamy white backing is a section of course weave cotton from a much bigger piece with red blotches on it (more of which another time).

If I'm honest I wanted the pictures on the buttons to line up nicely with the holes for the thread.  But they wouldn't.  So I've made do with roughly aligning the washing line instead.

But all in all, I have to say I'm chuffed to bits with it.  It'll definitely be coming to the little old lady house.

Cue drum roll...

Ta- Dah!

I'm so bursting with excitement and general pleased-with-myself glee that I'm not sure where to start.  Or what to say.  I made a bag.  Not just any old pillowcase with a drawstring bag.  A sturdy bag that stands up all by itself.  One that I can throw in the mashing machine when it gets grubby.

THIS bag....

...with inside AND outside pockets, with a magnetic snap....

... a fully reversible bag..

I made that.  From scratch.  Me.

Maybe this will say it better than I can...

C.x

Hooked

Warning: shameless bragging below

Ta-Dah!

I've cracked it.  I am a super star crochet genius.  LOOK!

And it's square.  See.

Okay, so it's not a whole blanket or anything.  I am learning that Ta dah! moments are reserved for fabulous creations like Lucy's at Attic 24, but it's a start.  And at least this is clearly recognisable as the first step. And an improvement on the earlier effort.

In the end my sister came to the rescue.  She sent me an email yesterday giving me the link to a series of videos on YouTube which starts with this one and takes you all the way through each step while the nice lady talks to you.  While I love the videos at Meet Me At Mikes, in the end I needed the words as well to get the rhythm of it.  (I told you I trust words...)  And now I feel like I know what I'm doing enough to attempt another one without the video.

But I LOVE this one.  Okay it may not be perfect.  But I had an idea about the cream inside and outer edge of every square, with variations of the other blue/grey colours in the middle.

And I can imagine now how this might work for a whole cushion cover or even a blanket.  Hurray!

AND (cue look of smug self-satisfaction) I have sewn in the ends so it's all neat and tidy.  We'll see how long that lasts...

Before today, I was hedging my bets a bit.  I bought the five skeins, but I had only wound two of them into a ball.  Just in case I couldn't master it and had to bring them back.  But now, I'm in.   All the way.  I'm a crochet queen.  Tomorrow I will wind the rest of my wool.  I discovered Annie and Laura's blog at Nimble Fingers and Steady Eyebrows (what a great name) the other day and they have a wool winding contraption like the one they have in the shop at Purl Soho which looks like this.  Maybe I'll get one one day.  For now, I am happy with my own low tech version.

Granny would be very proud.

Claire