So, my sister in law gave me one perfectly serviceable pair of Lecoste trainers which were so not me i couldn't bear to wear them, they did however fit my wide flipper-like feet perfectly.

I decided to paint them with fabric paints to make them more wearable

but found the paint made the colour look really flat and fake, not like real trainers at all. What makes trainers look real? well you can see the stitching, the shadows, the eyelets, all the details! So i put them all back in with my trusty Faber Castell Pitt permanent markers...the result? Comic book trainers! 
 Looky!








Yes i included copy write protection on my own shoes. I always added it to my drawings as a child too. presumably as i had learned from somewhere to be very careful with my work, and not get ripped off...no idea how that might have occurred. 

I made some!

I had just put a shelf up in an alcove in the bathroom to put all my junk..i mean necessary items on, and i discovered that i had too much crap for one shelf. i was looking on craftster for a solution and this is it! i made five, but then had to put my perfume on the shelf too, so the spare one is now full of my hand spun yarn in the other room. (i haven't spun much yet lol)

i made them each from 2 pieces of fabric 16.5"x 11" and no interfacing. they are kind of floppier than they could be, but they work fine as long as they don't contain really heavy things. Square things work great and add to their solid shape. I used denim from my dh's old baggy skater jeans, and some cotton print stuff i did cushion covers for the living room with.

Thankyou so much for this pattern you are so clever!! look how organised my crap is now!






i love them and want to make huge ones to throw more crap into...no-one need ever know the full horror of my hoarding!

I have been asked to post this by my husband. Normally its me sat in a crafty world of my own, spinning or knitting, or whatever, but this time it was his turn!
he says:

"I received a soldering iron as a slightly random birthday last year and started thinking of ways I could put it to use. Previous to that, I'd seen some stuff online about Minty Amps (http://www.mintyamps.com/) and these batches of components you can buy to build your own small amplifiers. I quite fancied having a go but didn't come up with any design ideas that really grabbed my attention. Then, for Xmas we received a black Ikea Decan alarm clock which one of us (I'm mentioning no names) immediately over wound and broke. It had been sitting there on the shelf for months guiltily until, about a week or so ago I had a brilliant idea..."

This is what it looked like before:

He took all the workings out, and the glass off the front, and mod podged a clock face onto a circle of hardboard. He cut a hole out big enough for the speaker, and glued the speaker in.

He soldered all the electrics together (his first attempt at anything like this it looked really fiddly!) and popped the battery in.

He was particularly proud because the diagram he followed only had an in jack, a speaker and an on/off switch. He made it so there is a volume control, a headphone out jack (in case he doesn't want the whole world to listen to him playing guitar  ) and a switch to toggle between the headphones and the speaker. The only thing he wished he could have done was buy another toggle switch so he could have an on/off too. at the moment he has to disconnect the battery to switch it off completely. The original holes in the back of the clock almost fitted the jacks and switches perfectly he only had to drill them out ever so slightly.

Here's one with the addition of a lovely volume knob (it arrived after he took all his first pictures)

he also adds:
"And this is what it sounds like (excuse my feeble guitar playing) http://s5.photobucket.com/albums/y159/moore_reppion/ikea%20clock%20amp/?action=view&current=clockamp009.flv"

so what do you think guys? is he crafty or what? 

Hello dyeing board!

I had 260yds of Cotswold spun, and wanted to try to make it self striping as it varies between worsted and lace weight. (not intentionally...lol) I have the idea of making arm warmers with it, as socks would get washed and shrink.
I used 2 Acid dyes from ForestFibres Heather and Rust, and red icing dye with viager for the red. came out very nicely although it didn't exhaust completely. i might give it another rinse once its knitted up just so it deosnt run all over me in the rain!

Happy Fibre Friday everyone!
jazzturtle those yarns made me drool all over the keyboard, they are stunning!

I got some carding/combing done while watching Lost Boys the other night on video (yes video and it had all the 80's ads on...hilarious) And i just brushed and spun until all my stash of Cotswold fleece was gone. It was lovely to spin because the fibres are so long it practically drafts itself. I have left it undyed and spun it as thin as i possibly can so I can maybe ply it on itself once its dyed. Hopefully this will make lovely stripy yarn!

I haven't worked out the yardage yet, but it was two full bobbins , so its the biggest single skein I've spun so far. Maybe I can make a whole item out of it at the end!







can't wait to see what everyone has spun!

Well i took the plunge and washed some sheepy smelling fleece i had, and carded it (for the first time) and then dyed the carded fiber (very scary...i thought i'd felted it at one point) and then spun from the dyed stuff and some lovely roving i bought on Etsy.
It was weird to see the difference between the hairy scary wool i'd prepared and the smooth silky merino tops roving. The results were interesting, and they gave me the confidence to try plying for the first time. i plied them all with the weird neon thread all cheap thread selections have in them.
 This one i call Pretty in Punk, the green is hand dyed Cotswold fleece and the pink is Merino tops roving from Shunklies on Etsy. 73.8 yards (i got my niddy noddy this morning! )



This one is called school tie, the colours didnt go together as well as i'd hoped, and the result was more Grange Hill than anything else. (UK TV nostalgia alert...google it...and be afraid!  ) same fibers, Cotswold and Merino top plied with thread. 34 yards



This one is called School disco, because the colours are still very school uniform tie-like but the green bits and neon thread made me think of neon socks and shoelaces...very 80's...same fiber mix as before, and only 23 yards.


anyway hope you enjoy. i was gutted i didnt get them plied and skeined in time for fiber friday... 

does anyone have ideas for what to make out of these monsters?

Edit: photobucket has made these images all pixellated. try if you can to mentally smooth the image out into something resembling yarn...

Hi mullerslanefarm,yes, its single drive.

I love it so much i ordered more fiber yesterday, despite already having a bag with some washed fleece.
I need to wash the fleece again as its greasy and smelly still (it did say washed on the label but only once i'm guessing!)and i have a horrible fear of felting it if i wash it, so its less worrying to spend more money on roving 

I found it really hard not to let my feet run away with the spinning, they just seemed to speed up all the time and then my hands couldnt keep up. it must have been comical to watch...



another atmospheric shot...i will have to take some shots in daylight....

heres all the pieces drying


heres the only half decent shot i got of it before i started using it

Here's the yarn after dyeing...i didnt take any of it on the bobbin for some reason.

here is a curly bit...sorry about the crappy quality, my camera was on the wrong settting but i was too gleefull to notice...

heres the pretty stuff all dry and wound into a ball. (how do you do skeins without a niddy noddy?)

here it is knitted up...


sorry for cross posting with fiber friday btw...i thought you should see all the gory details!

Hello all, this is my first Fiber Friday!

I got my wheel on Feb 4th, didn't get it finished and assembled till about the 13th, and then i started spinning.
DH got me some Merino roving to go with the wheel, and to begin with i had no idea how to make the big sausage of fiber thinner, so my first attempts were very chunky. i did another bobbin's worth, and that was chunky and super skinny, and then the third bobbin it was mainly skinny with occasional fat blobs. I crudely tied the three bobbins worth together to dye them (if its good enough for Noro...) and used the acid dyes my DH also got me. I don't think i used enough of the four colours, because they are very washed out but i love the result. i think its very ice creamy!
I believe i may have felted it slightly when i was dyeing it...too much prodding=agitation...
I have no idea how to make it into a skein (i lack a niddy noddy) so i just wound it into a center pull ball.

As you can see i couldn't wait to get into it, so i have started a 2x2 rib scarf



I'm so pleased that i get to join in on all the fiber fun! I am so inspired by all the amazing yarn you guys post every week!

Okay, so i haven't sewn the blocks together yet, but i've layed them out some different ways and I'm still not sure if i love it or not.

I used all the weird fabrics in my stash, where i just have no idea what to do with them otherwise. I tried to group them into hot and cold or dark and light, but some of the hot colurs are light and some of the dark colours are warm, so its not as nice and clean cut as the many wonderful quilts i see on here all the time.

 
this is the block. at the start i was doing them one at a time and making them all slightly different, because i thought thats how you do it. I now do them ten at a time, and all the same, so I'm left with some oddments, but i think it'll blend in okay see what you think.



this one has one of the first few in it. its easy to spot when they're layed out like this but not so much the other ways.


This is my favorite so far i think, but i still have twelve yet to make so I'm open to suggestions still!

i have just realized that several are a bit smaller than the others. hopefully I'll be able to put them all in a row so they don't send the whole thing wonky.

what do you think guys? are the fabrics too weird together? I won't cry i promise, its my first one and thats when you're allowed to make all your mistakes isn't it?

if any kind quilters have any advice for this quilt, or the next one I'm all ears!

thanks for looking.