Show and tell time number 2

Time for another present! This time it's my Mum's pressie I want to show you.

I made her a party clutch bag. The majority of the bag was knitted using moss stitch which is knit one purl one.

The yarn I used was a bit annoying though. It was really thin so I had to double it up. Once I had done that though it knitted up quite well. You can't see it from the pictures but the yarn is actually sparkly.

But after finishing the bag, I thought it needed jazzing up a bit so I lined the bag with this lovely fabric, embellished it with pretty beads to act as the buttons and crocheted a flower brooch. I thought that I would make it as a brooch because then she has the choice of moving it about the bag or taking it off completely to just wear. Anything that takes her fancy!

I also made her a strap that you can wear different ways. She can wear it as a little shoulder strap or clip it on the other side for a wrist strap. And of course, she could have no straps at all!

It's a bag of many options!

Well this is my last post of 2010! I really hope that you have a great night tonight however you choose to celebrate the new year coming in. I'm just going to be having a quiet little night in having fun with my family. I'm cooking them a nice three course meal so that should be nice. We've also got some fireworks! But before that, I've got a new years cake to make! A yummy scrummy chocolate cake.

Here's hoping that 2011 will be a fabtabulous year for you.

Show and tell time number 1

Well the presents have all been opened now so finally, I'm able to show you everything I've been so busy with in the last few months. Rather cool was that my presents were the first ones to be opened! I think to give these presents the best chance to shine, I'll show you them in separate posts. So, without further ado, here is the first installment: This is what I made for my twin, Ellen. A travel pillow. I thought it fitted in quite nicely with our future plans happening next year. I'll tell you more about this in another post! Inside is a fleece cushion which I made and sewed together. The stars I was really pleased with. I crocheted and then blanket stitched them on. The edging is also crocheted. One of first things that Ellen noticed though for some strange reason was the wooden buckles. I found these in Boyes and just had to get them. I think they go really nicely with the moss stitch border don't you think? Anyway, I hope that it will come in handy. If she doesn't use it though, I know I certainly will!

Christmas Eve magic

Well it's the night before Christmas and I'm sat here by the Christmas tree with my family watching a film on the telly with my dog sleeping by my feet. How lovely eh?! Like something out of a novel I know but it's all true! Speaking of the Christmas tree, here are some of the decorations I've made including that Christmas star I said I was going to finish the other day. I decided to give my knitting needles a bit of a break so I crocheted these. I got the pattern for the baubles from a lovely blog called Attic 24.

I can't wait for Christmas tomorrow! I may be considered in the eyes of the law an adult now but I still get very excited nonetheless! I hope that you all have a great day tomorrow whatever you're doing.

I'm off now to fulfill a family Christmas tradition, to watch The Muppet Christmas Carol!

It's a Crafty Christmas

Well first of all let me just apologise for my absence. As I'm sure is the case for most people, I've been very busy with my preparations for Christmas especially considering that I have decided to knit my presents for the family this year. Blinking heck it's been a knitting frenzy trying to get everything completed. There have been quite a few panic stricken moments where I didn't think I would get it done but I have managed to pull it out of the knitting bag! Yes excusing that rather bad pun, I am finally able to lay down the knitting needles and say I am finished on the present front . I'm in the process now of making Christmas tags to go with the wrapping paper.

This is all rather annoying actually. Here I am all excited as I've got all this crafty goodness to show you but because they're presents and thus a surprise for the recipients, I can't divulge any information. So you'll have to wait for show and tell time till after Christmas I'm afraid.

Now that my presents are all taken care of, I think it's time that I pay some attention to my other project; a crocheted tree top star decoration I made a start on a while back. It's perching on top of the Christmas tree quite miserably at the moment begging me to complete it's other points. I'll do that today so it'll sitting proud for Christmas day I think.

Birthday cake surprise

It was my Mum's birthday the other day so I decided to make her a cake as a surprise. We went to a nice restaurant for a meal where the waiter very tentatively gave her the cake being careful not to singe his eyebrows off. The fountain I bought to put on it was very impressive! As you can see in the photo, the flame was so high it went out of shot! The cake was a real labour of love. It took me a couple of hours to bake the cake itself and then all night for the decoration.

Luckily, Mum was out at a party so I didn't have to worry about her walking in. I started decorating at 7pm and just literally didn't stop till just gone midnight! As you can imagine I was very tired. But as much of a cliche as it sounds, it was worth it. I actually had to point out to Mum that I had made it because she thought that it was a restaurant cake! An what does the cake itself taste like...well, as my Dad put it, fabulous! Yay!!!

Bottle cap badges

This is my most recent crafty creation... well one that I can show you. I'm making Christmas presents but obviously I can't show you them until they have gone to the recipients. Don't want to give the surprises away now do I?

I've been wanting some badges for my guitar strap but in my search for them I found it to be very expensive in comparison to just making your own. I pondered into getting a little kiddies badge maker kit but held back on the basis that they might not be that reliable.

Thinking upon his mini conundrum, I suddenly had a brainwave. I know of people who can get hold of lots of bottle caps so why not make badges out of them?! Oh and by the way, these people aren't raging alcoholics, they just work in places that have bars!

Inside the caps are little MOO stickers which were the leftovers from my laptop sticker cover project. I then bought some brooch pins and super glued them on the back. Here they are on my guitar strap. I'll have to order some more stickers as I've run out. These were all the badges I could make to put on my strap so far.

It felt quite strange making something that only took a few minutes to do. I'm so used to things like knitting which take time to achieve the final results. These would be a perfect thing to make and sell. My brain is now whirring with the potential!

Cheeky Monkey

You probably don't want reminding but Christmas is on it's way. I thought that this year instead of buying my family presents, I would knit them all something. That's the plan anyway. I would be able to get on a lot faster if Jenna here didn't think she was a cat and start playing with the balls of wool. The scene in this video here is what met us when we came home one night. This hasn't been a one off event either. She seems to have an obsession with wool and I've caught her many a times. Every time she pulls a ball apart even if she's only had it for a minute, it takes (and I don't joke here) over an hour to unravel it all! This time took even longer as it was multiple balls all tangled together. I've become somewhat of an expert now and actually secretly enjoy the challenge of unraveling! It's like a puzzle. What was lucky about this time was that the knitting on the needles remained intact. Man I would have been cross if she had pulled that apart and I definitely wouldn't have seen the funny side like I have here let me tell you! I decided on this occasion to put it on video because the trail of destruction was vast. Also, you don't really know a huge amount about Jenna and this video really portrays her cheeky personality. Watch her ears twitch back and her eyes blinking innocently when I talk to her! Tut tut!

Chocolate truffles

And now it's time for a mouthwatering post. My twin sister and I made some chocolate truffles this evening. We drove over to Asda to buy some chocolate and ground almonds first though. I real sign of the times there actually. Ellen can drive now so there is no more having to wait till a parent is free to take us; if we want chocolate this evening then I'll be darn it, we will get chocolate! Oh what freedom...that is until we have to pay for the petrol. Speaking of driving, I'm now learning. I've had a few lessons now which are so far going quite well. Although having said that, I did have a lesson today after not being behind the wheel for a couple of weeks so I was a bit...rusty. Lets just say I found it rather amusing when panic crept into the voice of my instructor today! Anyway, back to the truffle making. They were really quick and easy to do and taste GoooD with a capital 'g' and 'd'. Ellen has warned me that when she's a student with no money, this will be what I get for a Christmas present which is fine by me! I love white chocolate so I've requested some of those. They really do make the best presents. If you put them in a pretty little box with packaging, it will look like a high class gift with little effort. What I really loved about truffle making though is that it's messy! Or that might just be because we made it unnecessarily so. I'm still finding choco powder on me even now!

So Amazing by Bekah Funning

I got my song recorded today! And yippee you can listen to it!

I found out a way you can put on audio tracks through my blog so here it is. It was quite simple really. All I had to do was make it into a movie/slideshow thing. I also designed a 'single cover' to go on it so you have something cool to look at whilst you're listening. It's of me recording the song complete with the same outfit I had on and everything.

I would just like to say a huge thank you to the worship leader of my church who put this whole backing track together for me to sing on. Great work!!

My song for church

This is a song that I wrote in mind for my church. I played in the services on Sunday which was pretty amazing! I'm not sure how many people were there exactly but it was in the hundreds. The performance went really well despite feeling naturally quite nervous. I have actually got a recording of it but because it's only an audio so I haven't been able to put it on the blog which is a shame.

I did however record this video in my room a few days before Sunday so at least you can have a listen to this. I haven't put this on until now because I didn't want anyone who goes to the church to hear the song before Sunday and I was then waiting for the audio recording which I thought would work.

I got a lot of really great response from people after Sunday. So much infact that I was the last one to leave the church! The plan now is to get it properly recorded which should be fun!

Laptop skyscrapers and top fours!

Firstly, let me just say a big well done to Bethan Funning who got into the top four of the young songwriters competition! How cool is that eh? The next stage now is that she's off to record her track which will then be available for downloads. The person who sells the most downloads over a period of time will be the eventual winner. Do you know what would be extremely cool?! If she managed to sell so many downloads that she made it to number one!! Lets try and make that happen!

And now on smaller scales, here's my skyscraper laptop. I made it on bonfire night so of course I had to stick on some fireworks! Rather handily, it's made using the only two colours of paper that I actually have; yellow and black. The yellow background has been stuck onto the laptop using double sided sticky tape. I then cut lots of squares out of the black paper and glued onto the yellow for the effective looking windows. Overall, not a bad couple of hours work and it's helped make my laptop look that extra bit more unique wouldn't you say?

Bethan Funning: Young songwriters competition finalist!

Regular viewers of my blog may recognise that name. She and I recorded the song Tip of the Tongue which we wrote together and recorded in video format to go on my blog. What has she been up to since then you wonder?! Well Bethan has reached the finals of a big competition where money raised from voting goes to Banardos. I know that she needs all the votes she can get and would so appreciate it if you could maybe vote for her to win.

Here's the link to the website where you can view the songs: http://www.young-songwriters.co.uk/

Her song is number 17 on the list entitled Spaceships and Moonbeams. I'm sure you'll agree when you've listened to the song that she's very talented! As I said, the money from the votes you cast goes to Banardos so it's all good. Think of it as your good deed for the day! You need to be fairly quick if you want to vote though as voting closes on the 6th November which funnily enough is Jenna's 1st birthday!

Good luck Bethan!!!

Look what Jenna picked up on our walk!

Some rather funny pictures to show you here!

Yes you are right in thinking; that is a dummy in Jenna's mouth!

We were just on our ordinary dog walk when I suddenly see a flash of green in Jenna's mouth.

"What has she got now?" I ask to my Dad.

I pull her head torwards me only to be greeted by this silly sight!

I tell no lies. This was how we found the dummy! She must have been walking like this for a few minutes too just holding it like this in her jaws. Can you imagine what that must have looked like to a passerby?!

We quickly snapped up these pictures before she eventually started chewing it up.

So funny! I don't think we could have made her do that if we tried.

Adipose twins!

Here then are my latest woolly creations.

For Doctor Who fans out there you may recognise them as adipose but the pattern I worked off calls them fat babies for the purpose of dodging around the copyright!

I made these adipose as presents for two young girls so I'm not breaking the law or anything as these were'nt made for the intent of making money out of them.

These little blobs of fat are crocheted for a change. I've been doing a lot of knitting recently so it was good to swap needles for a hook!

I gave them to the girls today actually. They loved them! I was a bit worried that they wouldn't know what they were as they don't look hugely like the adipose on tv. But them being avid Dr Who fans, they knew straight away. That was a relief. When I showed them to someone else, they thought they were Tic Tac men!

I made little labels to go on them too as a way of gift wrapping and so they would know which one was who's. One of the girls is totally crazy on pink so of course the pink label just had to go to her!!

I hope that they enjoy them!

Sign language

In the last couple of weeks, I've started going to a sign language course.

The course runs for ten weeks and covers the basics you need for progressing onto level 1 BSL. I'd love to go on to do the levels if I could as I'm really keen to learn the language as much as I can.

I've been fascinated with sign language ever since I was little. I can remember learning the alphabet but never had the opportunity to learn anything more until now.

I'm doing the course with my friends and my twin sister which is great because it means we can practise together. It was actually my friend who pointed out the course a few months ago.

The course so far is good fun and the people there are lovely. It's a small group; just 12 of us all wanting to learn for various reasons.

We've covered a lot already actually. So far we've covered the alphabet, (this was actually really good for me as I was able to learn the proper way for signing it left handed as I do. I'm the only left handed signer there! Always was unique!!) we've learnt questions i.e who, what, where and so on, days of the week, months, holidays and numbers.

It's all very cool!

Brand new title

Hey guys! You may have noticed that I have a new title for my blog. Hoping you like this. I've actually been wanting to change the title for a while now. I just felt that the old one was a bit obscure and didn't really help to depict what my blog was about. This one I think does a better job. It is me surrounded by the things I love to do with my trusty companion Jenna right by me. In actual fact, she is sleeping in that exact position right now by my feet! As always, it would be nice to hear what you think.

My new fingerless gloves!

Here are my new pair of gloves which I just finished knitting yesterday.

I knitted with the excess wool that I had from my doctor who scarf so now I've got a whole winter set safe for the hat which is my next knitting project!

As you can see, it's all done in fair isle which was simple to do. The middle part was a bit difficult though as I was using three strands of yarn at once so it was hard to keep the tension loose.

Sorting out the finger holes were a bit tricky too. The pattern I was using wasn't the clearest so I had to spend a lot of time just deciphering it! Speaking of deciphering, my sisters and I have just been doing exactly that working out how you spell the blinking word!

I couldn't have made the gloves at a better time actually. I've been feeling really cold recently what with the transitions of the season starting.

So what do you think of the modeling then??

Battenburg cake!!

If any of you just happened to be wondering what I've been up to today then here it is! I made a battenburg cake.

Of course, it didn't take me all day. I've been up to other stuff too like guitar lessons and cycling.

Thank you very much to my aunt who gave me the recipe for this. It came out really well as you can see.

I did have a few hiccups though and one rather blonde moment! For some reason the cake just wouldn't cook so I ended up having to whack up the heat. The cake was in for a total of 40 minutes as oppose to the suggested 25-30 mins. Don't know what happened there but eventually it cooked.

I wanted to make my own marzipan too but the ingredients were so expensive for that. I worked out that I would need to buy £5 worth of almonds! 5 quid for a few bags of nuts???!!!! I love almonds but still! For that reason, I opted for the ready made stuff!

My blonde moment in the baking process came at the end when I had to heat up the jam. Ok then, I thought. So on went a saucepan on the hob and I plopped a spoonful of jam in. BIG mistake! The noise and smoke that came from this pan was insane. I'm really surprised it didn't set of the smoke alarm.

I quickly got the jam out and slowly started to pour water in as it was spitting out little bits of boiling sugar everywhere.

Not clever!

If saucepans were to convey emotions, this one would be very angry indeed!

But it all worked out and I've got a big thumbs up from people who have got their chops around a bit.

Isla the snake!

I'd like to introduce you to my most recent creation.

This is isla the fair isle snake. Isla with a silent s which is quite ironic for a snake!

I made her on double pointed needles which I've never done before.

I'm actually quite proud of this knitted make actually as I've successfully managed to do a range of knitting techniques.

For some reason, everyone I've shown has really really loved her. I think it's her colourful body and characterful eyes. Hey! She's like Kaa from the jungle book hypnotising everyone with enchanted eyes!

What effect does she have on you?

My baking extravaganza!

I've been doing lots of baking recently. Allow me to show you around some of my edible creations.

This here is a mosaic chocolate button cheesecake. I made it with my little sister Megan the other week. It was her last day of the summer holidays so I thought that we would have a nice time baking together. She adores giant buttons so I came up with the idea of putting a mosaic design of them on top.

Last week, I got given a bag of apples that were picked from my friends garden so I've spent the week cooking them up into varies recipes.

I made this apple and ginger cake with a hazelnut crumble topping...

And then on your right an apple and raisen crumble.

Gotta make a crumble if you have apples don't you?!!

Then last night we made a coco pops strawberry custard cream flan. We had some coco pop mix left over so I made some sandcastles out of them!

So there we are. Everythinng that I've cooked in the last couple of weeks. Have I made you drool on your computer keyboard yet??

Thou shalt have a knitted fishy!

Here's the knitted fish I made a couple of weeks ago now.

I wanted to knit this little guppy because it involved using a range of knitting techniques. The middle of the body consisted of doing fair isle; something I've never done before. I was a bit apprehensive about trying it but turns out it was pretty easy!

I ended up giving the fish away to my friend who needed a bit of cheering up at the time. With it's funky colours I think it definitely did the trick!

She's named it Willie. A good solid name for a fish I think!

Tip of the Tongue!

This is a song that my cousin Bethan and I wrote together whilst I was down visiting them in Devon. It's called Tip of the tongue.

I had a great few days working with Bethan on this. We seemed to work really well together and managed to combine ideas that really gelled. I really hope that we get another chance to write together soon. What with us living on different sides of the country though, it's going to take a bit of planning. I guess we could do it through skype or something. That would be cool!

The way we're sitting playing our guitars looks really funny doesn't it! It literally is a case of we're mirror image with each other what with me playing left handed and her right. Now if we were identical twins playing then that would look really freaky!

Enough of my ramblings. Enjoy the song and please leave some feedback.

Doctor who scarf...done!!

Yay!!! Finally after months of hard work, I can say that I have now made the doctor who scarf!

I actually finished it last week but things have been so busy that I just hadn't gotten round to telling you until now. I nearly told you about it in my last post but thought I'd leave it so that it could get the full spotlight and attention.

The scarf is now so big that it was a two man job to get the pictures of it done and of course, you need to see a picture of me actually wearing it don't you!!

All of my spare time was spent on this project. Now that it's completed, it really did feel like I found myself at a bit of a loss on what to do instead!

I've since managed to fill this little void in my life now though by doing (yep, you guessed it) more knitting.

The knitting bug has well and truly got it's hold on me.

I'm learning a lot of techniques I've never tried before so I've found it great fun and a bit of a personal challenge to teach myself. So far I've managed the art of Intarsia, fair isle and the double pointed needles. Cicular needle-ing has also been done but I've not been able to do anything on them because I think I've got the wrong length for what I had in mind.

So with all this knitting I've been doing, it's meant that I have/am going to have, lots of thing to show you!

Knit one, crochet one!

Boy it's been a busy few weeks!

I've just come back from a Christian camp called Soul Survivor and on top of that, managed to do lots of crafty projects.

The two little soft toys above I made actually just before Soul Survivor but this has been the first proper chance I've had to tell you about them. The hedgehog (which I name Harriet) was crocheted and the purple penguin knitted. I must be a lot faster at crocheting as the hedgehog only took a few hours but the penguin on the other hand took about a day in total.

It seems quite funny that I should be faster at crocheting as I haven't been doing it that long compared to my knitting. Maybe I just find it easier because you only use one tool to crochet so you're more hands in there.

Anyway, on that little rambling side thought, where was I?

Harriet the hedgehog has gone to her new owner already. I went to visit my aunt who lives in Wales the other day so I made Harriet as a gift to her.

The penguin still has it's residence here with me at the moment but will hopefully go to my other aunt who is, as you may have guessed, is crazy about purple! I'm not sure when I'll see her next so the penguin will have to take a trip in a jiffy bag I think.

I'm hoping that all you lot are having a good summer. I know the weather is a bit of a wash out most of the time here but hopefully you've had some good times anyway and even mangaged to get away to somewhere nice!

Back!

I had a great time in Ireland with my family last week. We stayed in a place called Swords which was just on the outskirts of Dublin.

It's been years since we had a proper family holiday abroad and what with Ellen and I being 18, it's probably going to be one of the last all together so it was pretty special.

I had a lot of fun taking photos! We were out and about in some really beautiful places so I took quite a lot. I'm hoping to be able to get them all printed out and maybe make a collage out of them or something. I have the idea of cutting them out in a way so that they make up the shape of Ireland. The pictures I've chosen are just a few of the photos which sum up the fun we had! I got the little rubber duck underneath to remember that. I call him Paddy!!

Having never been to Ireland before, I was actually quite surprised at how different everything felt. Even though we weren't that far away from where we live, everything felt really european especially the town in which we stayed. That was nice though because it made us feel that we were truely away. As lovely as Cumbria is, it's always nice to look at different scenery.

Most of the time the weather was great which was a bonus. I even got rid of my vampire look by getting a tan!!

Jenna also had a good holiday. She went back to the breeders to stay and when I came to pick her up, she looked like she had put on a fair bit of holiday fat! But she had needed to be wormed so when they kindly did that for me, she put on weight really quickly. But she had a blast there. She looked so happy when I saw her again and that made me feel better about leaving her.

So everyone has had a great week!

It's only just beginning

Whoa! Had a very very busy week this week. As I said, it's only just the beginning because tomorrow me and the family are off to Ireland.

But before I go on about what's going to happen, lets talk about what has been. On the Tuesday to Wednesday, we had a house full of guests. My Granny was up to go to the Open with my Dad and my cousin was up too with four other people as they are doing the cycle challenge of John O Groats to Lands End.

They are cycling in the aid of charity to raise funds for their local children's hospice. I think it is truely brilliant what they are doing as it's not an easy challenge especially on a triden!! (A three man bike!) So when they set off again on the Wednesday, I cycled a little bit with them which was pretty cool.

I ended up doing a lot more then I originally thought which my Dad was not happy about. He wanted me to do no more than 8 miles but I sorta ended up doing double that! Opps! But I was fine and didn't collapse on the doorstep of our house or anything. I even had the energy to take a dog walk but have to run all the way home again as we got soaked in a thunder storm.

Then yesterday, I went to Manchester for most of the day shopping with my twin. I had never been in Primark until yesterday and so was introduced to it. It was insane how long we were in there for. It was just such a big shop that even though we were in there for over two hours, we still didn't see everything.

As my wardrobe hasn't been updated since I was thirteen, I took this opportunity to get some new clothes. As you can guess from the fact that I still wear clothes from being age 13, I needed a lot of help on what to pick. So Ellen was my personal shop assistant and just bunged stuff into my basket all over the place.

I had the best time with Ellen. We haven't had the chance do something like this together for years so I'm glad that we finally did it.

So yes! A very busy, exciting week but a lot more of it to come. I'm away in Ireland for a whole week so probably won't be able to put any posts up in that time but when I get back I'm sure I'll lots of stories and pictures to show you all. TTFN!