Almost 10 days - Whoops!

I've been a bit slack here lately.  Probably because I have become a little bit Instagram obsessed...much to Flower Daddies disgust.  But, there is just so.much.to.see there!!!  Have you been on?  Who are your favourite people to follow?

Chloe has also been sick for almost 2 weeks.  Some kind of virus targeting little children - flu-like symptoms with an added bonus of crippling lethargy and exhaustion.  Poor little chicken.

Here are a few IG pics of what has been going on around here lately.

I made Ava 6 pairs of panties from this pattern.  She totally loves them...and her little buns look so cute in them!

We have been attempting to grow veggie seedlings from seed.  This picture shows radishes, spinach and beans.  We have also planted lettuce, tomato, courgette, cucumbers and mielies.  Unfortunately, the spinach seems to be pegging off...

I sent off my fabric swap panels - all 3 panels went west over the seas.

....and have received 1 panel in return so far.  Cute, right?

I made this pouch, which I will soon be selling as a pouch or cross-body bag or shoulder bag - your choice!

I finished this little ripple doll blanket.  Waaaaaay early, for Ava's 4th birthday next month.  I used leftover yarn from the human sized blanket...which is still very much an ongoing project!

I begged found time to print a few panels of white petals, which I am rather smitten with at the moment.  When the light is kind I will take a few photo's and get these panels listed in my shops.

And Today, we made these little rainbow crayons in a mini muffin tin.  Less than 144 crayons made 24 little rainbows of fun.  They are intended to be party favours at Ava's very first birthday party!

Have a fantastic Easter and long weekend.  Eat too much chocolate.  Get up late.  Wear pyjamas until lunch time and enjoy being surrounded by family...!

PS - you can find me on instagram at twolittleflowers :)

Its finally finished....or maybe not

I know that I promised some lovely summery South African holiday photo's....but we took so many while we were away, that we had to download them on to Flower Daddies laptop.  So, I need to get my dirty mitts on to his laptop to repossess my photo's.  All of that will hopefully happen this weekend!

In the meanwhile, I am super pleased that I managed to finish my flowery blanket last night.

* drum roll please *

Ta-dahhhhhhh!

Dinky, but pretty - no?  It is perfectly lap and leg sized.

/

Did I say that I was pleased with the result?  It has been almost 2 years in the making.  

It would have been nice to have had more flowery squares.  There are already 52 of them in there.  {Yup, just counted them.  I thought that there were at least 70?!}  They were pretty time consuming and I was getting desperate to see some amazing progression.  And, it would have been nice for the beige joining colour to have been a paler shade of cream - but Sirdar Calico DK doesn't come in a paler shade of cream, so I had to make do.

This is the first blanket that I have ever crocheted.  Should the rippled edges bother me?  I honestly have no idea.  It is what it is and I rather love it!

***

Actually...I have a confession....

See, this is the back side...........it really isn't finished.  Not by a looooong way!

There are so . many . loose . threads to weave in, I kind of lost the will to live.  So, I shelved the weaving and jumped to the edging.  You can actually see in the photo of the whole back that I have made a good dent in the weaving process.  But, there are still so many to do.

Anyhow, that is a job for another gazillion nights.

My ripple blanket is really no different than the last time I mentioned it.  I should really tackle that one head on, as soon it will be summer again (in like another 4 or 5 months....sigh....) and I really won't want to be anywhere near it.  Now is the time!

Pretty Petal Bucket Tote

Can you see me boogy-ing behind my computer?  I really am doing a little jig...surely you can see??

Seriously, looky what I am so pleased about....

Remember my yabbering about fabric way back here....yipes!  2 months ago!  I hope that you didn't go blue in the face waiting for me.  It is so frustrating how long it sometimes takes me to do things.  There are so many ideas bouncing around between my ears.  Makes it hard sometimes to concentrate on just one thing at a time.  Never mind all the other things that keep me busy.

I have a few of these in stock, once they are gone, I will be making them to order - which I will endeavour to have in the post within 2 weeks.  I also have a plan for at least one other colour way - maybe a teal-ish sort of colour...the petals could also be leaves, don't you agree?

If you need to get your mitts on one of these lovely bucket totes...looky no further than here.

....I think that I need to make myself one - specifically for keeping my crochet together next to the couch...plenty of generous hooky storage!

Pin Cushion Swap {What I made}

I recently joined in with the fun Pin Cushion Swap over at Sew Far Sew Good and House of Pinheiro.  My partner was Rachel from At the Butterfly Ball.  Well, Rachel received her pin cushion from me this week, so I can now do my big Ta-dah and reveal what I made and sent her.

It is a little house pin cushion...

With a cute little birdie and windows...

...and a sweet little flowery vine (honeysuckle, I think)...those little stitches took ages...

With a little storage pouch on the back...with the opening on the bottom rather than the top.  Another boo boo on my part (am pretty good at boo boo's!).  The pouch will work just fine until Rachel tries to hang it up, then anything heavy will come a slip-sliding oooot.

Before you go thinking that I am just so smart and clever and talented (ja, like you were thinking that...I have to polish my own halo sometimes...), I used this tutorial as my basis, but stretched the height to something like 19cm, as I wanted some storage element to it...for scissors and marker pens and a little ruler maybe.

It was really hard for me to part with this little house.  I wanted to keep it all to myself and display it on a little hook or door knob somewhere.  I had so much fun choosing fabrics and deciding how it was all going to come together.  Will have to make at least one more...make that maybe a whole bunch more - one for each door knob in our house...

As a little something extra for Rachel - she has a whole handful of children - I also sent her one of my tea towels.  What with summer holidays here, I thought it might be nice as a quiet and not too messy activity for her kid-lettes to colour in and for her to get to use and enjoy her childrens art work.

Now...the suspense just kills me!  Rachel posted my pin cushion a few days ago.  It's going to take forever to get here.  Like, a whole week!

Ava's Memory Coins - Ta-Dah!

If you remember, I promised a 'big reveal' of these memory coins once I had finished them...well.  They.  Are.  Finished.  A month later.  Yay!!

I used my new 12 colour pack of Posca PC-1M 0.7mm markers to colour them in.  I already had a black one that I drew the outlines with.

If you know what you are going to draw, before you start, I would highly recommend laying your colour down first.  I coloured around and over my outlines, then had to redraw the outlines because the colour kind of blocked the black out.  So, some of the outlines are now a bit messy from double drawing.  Also, try and be as clean as you can when you put colour on.  Our coins looked pretty neat before polishing, but the polish really does show any stray dots of colour up quite a lot.

I used home made beeswax and olive oil polish to seal the wood...protecting it from dirty little fingers.  It was super easy to make and it goes a l-o-o-o-ng way.  There is enough polish left over to seal our dining room table and chairs!  Which are unsealed/polished solid oak...  It was easy-peasy to apply just using my fingers and then polished with an old dish towel.

This is all the polish that I used!  The jar holds 1 1/4 cups of polish.  I really should have made a lot less.

The polish recipe has tips about choosing your oil...well, I used the olive oil that we have in the house, which is Napolina Light & Mild.  It has a very pale colour and is more yellow than green.  The beeswax that I used is left over from some soap that I made and was white pellets.  The ingredients contribute to the final colour.

There are 12 flowery designs, so 24 coins in total.  As I bought something like 200 coins, there are plenty left over to to increase the difficulty.

Ava was given a birthday gift wrapped in the little fabric bag...but it was plain and didn't have any draw strings.  So, we used some Versacraft stamp pads and wine bottle cork stamps to decorate it.  Ava did the front side more-or-less by herself...so is a bit messy.  I stamped her name on the front.  {I should really finish that off with "memory game", shouldn't I?}

I did the otherside, let it dry and then ironed it.  The draw string is purple, unwaxed, shamballa cord which I threaded through the little casing with a needle.

One unfinished project finished - beeeeg tick!