A Sunny Day in London

For this week's Nice Day Out I'd planned to go to a museum or gallery (or maybe both) up in London but actually the weather was so lovely and sunny I just ended up wandering round exploring the city instead. It was great to just stroll around enjoying the sunshine, with occasional breaks for lunch, cups of tea and some yummy icecream. There'll be plenty of times to visit museums etc when it's raining, right?

First up, I paid a visit to the nice folks at Innocent to deliver my batch of little knitted hats for this year's Big Knit.

 

With the recent changes to the size and weight bands for Royal Mail parcels my little stash of hats was going to cost a silly amount to post, so I thought I'd hand-deliver them instead. It was really nice to hand some hats over to the guys at Innocent in person after years of posting them a batch of hats each autumn, and (rather delightfully) they gave me some free smoothies! Yum.

 

Then I walked to nearby Notting Hill and had a long walk around the area. It's a bit of London I'd not been to before, and it was generally pretty lovely, with endless smart rows of houses and lots of gorgeous little shops and cafes.

Later I took a trip to the Charing Cross Road and popped into the flagship branch of Foyles, which is a huge and wonderful shop (apparently they have the widest range of titles of any bookshop in the UK - soooo many books to choose from!). I was delighted to find a copy of my book on the shelves. Can you spot it?

 

It was extra nice to see it shelved next to some copies of Mollie Makes: Feathered Friends which includes a couple of projects I designed :)

 

I bought myself a copy of Pip Lincolne's Make Hey While The Sun Shines (I've been wanting to buy one of her books for years but couldn't decide which one to buy - it was great being able to flick through a couple in a real live bookshop and choose my favourite)....

... and a City Notebook that includes maps of London and lots of sections for making notes on things seen and done, interesting places, tasty eats, etc. I'm planning to use this as a sort of travel diary for my London day trips, but also to make a note of the names & locations of nice shops & cafes etc for return trips because I'm terrible at remembering that sort of thing.

For example, I must remember to go back to the Cafe in the Crypt at St. Martin in the Fields which turned out to be the perfect, relaxing place to have a cuppa and (metaphorically) put my feet up before braving the hot Tube & the jam-packed rush hour trains home... and I need to start making note of which trains home in the evening are sardine-tin-like and which aren't as bad!

Keeping Busy: Knitting, Sewing, Designing, Tidying & Planning

This week is flying by! Wanna see some pics of what I've been up to?

In the evenings I've been doing some wind-down-at-the-end-of-the-day knitting and have finally finished knitting all my leftover yarn into little hats for the Big Knit (and weaving in all the ends, and making little pompoms for all the hats).

 

Here are all the finished hats...

...  It's always quite hard to part with these, they are just so cute. I hope all the folks who find them on their smoothies this autumn will enjoy them :)

My "big project" at the moment is a series of free tutorials I'm planning to share here on my blog to celebrate the launch of my new book. I've been editing lots of photos and scanning lots of template sheets and generally prepping lots of blog posts - as you can see from my To Do list / chart there's still a few things that need doing, but I'm getting there slowly! I'm really excited about the new book coming out (less than a month to go! Yay!) and about sharing these free projects with you guys.

 
I'm also preparing a few other tutorials, including a tutorial for a handmade card that I totally meant to finish and share last week... before I got distracted by my trip to the Festival of Quilts! Oops. In the meantime, here's a snap of the pretty colours I've been using:

I've also been working on finishing some stuff in my WIP box, including lots of owl masks:

 

Here's a pic of the WIP box in its new home...

 

... earlier this year these shelves looked quite different! I've been rearranging the stuff in my studio quite a bit over the past few months, as now I'm no longer selling supplies there's a lot more space for all my other work stuff. I'm especially pleased that now all my craft books are on one bookcase all together (and on nice sturdy shelves that can take the weight of all those chunky books)

Right, I'm off to scan in some more template sheets! 

This Week I have mostly been Knitting.... Little Hats

My "just for fun" craft project of the moment involves using up some leftover yarn in my stash.

I've been knitting a few mini moss stitch squares and also making lots of little hats for The Big Knit:

As you can see, I've finished some already...

...but others need sewing together, their ends weaving in & their pompoms added... oh, and I've got a bit more yarn waiting to be knitted, too.

See those cute mini multi-coloured pompoms? My mum made them several years ago (way back in 2006 I think) when I knitted lots and lots of mini hats while I had the flu.

I knitted the hats and she made mini pompoms to match (teamwork!). She made a few too many and they were just too cute to throw away... but then I forgot all about them! Oops. I'm glad I found them while having a clearout earlier this year, so they can finally be put to the use they were made for.

My work to do list has been a bit dull this week - stuff like replying to emails and doing admin. All very important stuff, but not very blog-friendly. I've also been editing lots of photos for the new tutorials I'm working on. Photo editing is such a boring job but I'm really excited about sharing all these projects with you guys over the next few months!

I've also got some more photos to take and edit, as I've got a whole bunch of things that need to be added to my shop. There are a few new things, and lots of bits and pieces I've made for previous tutorials.

If you fancy giving some of that lot a new home, keep an eye on my blog... I'll write a post with photos & shop links when everything's been listed :)

Taking It Easy & Doing Some Decluttering

So, this past week I have done a bit of mending (mending some dresses that had holes in them, sewing some buttons back on a cardigan, sewing up a couple of holes in some blankets)...

... and I started sewing up some Big Knit hats which I think I made last year (?) and then forgot about (oops, lucky it's on again this year, eh?)...

... but mostly things have been quite quiet on the crafting front.

I have been feeling exhausted this week - partly with the sadness/stress of my grandmother's death and funeral (thanks for all the kind messages about this, by the way, they are much appreciated!) but mostly because I've been ill quite a bit this spring/summer and I think it has just worn me out.

Long-time readers may remember that I've had M.E. since I was a kid. It's mostly pretty manageable these days as long as I take care of myself, but my immune system is still a bit rubbish and when I get sick it hits me hard and then it takes me a loooong time to fully recover. So although though there are a gazillion things on my work / crafting To Do list which I'm itching to get on with, my main priority at the moment is to try and take it easy so I can get well as soon as possible.

So last week I didn't do much work but instead went to my grandmother's funeral, spent lots of time watching DVDs with my mum, and continued to have a bit of a tidy up and a clear out, gradually working through loads of old boxes.

I've really been enjoying clearing stuff out recently. It's been nice having a lovely nostalgic look back at stuff like old mix tapes & teen poetry but it also feels great to be tidying and decluttering and generally making my space a bit less busy / messy / full of stuff. And it is wonderful to have a relaxing, not super-demanding task I can get on with slowly when I need to take the afternoon off (or the whole day off) and rest for a bit. Also I think having a clear-out can be quite therapeutic and stress-relieving - I don't know if you feel this way too?

I'm definitely one of those people who tries to have "a place for everything and everything in its place" but I am much better at the first part than the second! I have a pretty detailed filing system, but my "things to file" pile often gets so big that it nearly falls over. And like many (most?) crafters I find it pretty hard to make stuff without making a huge mess in the process... and, well, it's hard to find time to put things away when there's all this exciting new stuff to make! :)

So actually getting round to tidying / filing / sorting things / properly putting stuff away feels great. A mega filing session always makes me feel super-efficient and organised even though the only reason I was able to spend the whole day filing things was because I'd been lazy not filed anything for months, haha.

As well as being a bit lazy with my filing, etc, I also have to admit to having slight hoarding tendencies. Being both "crafty" and thrifty, I am forever keeping things that "might be useful" ... and I'm quite sentimental too. I'm forever keeping stuff like ticket stubs and newspaper clippings and old postcards and birthday cards and so on, which all adds up to a lot of stuff after a while.

I actually had to give up making scrapbooks (which is something I loved to do as a kid and in my early teens) because I'd scrapbook everything and end up with loads of scrapbooks with a ton of really random stuff in it which I'd look back and and think why the heck did I keep that?? Nowadays I have "memory boxes" (this sounds a bit cheesy but I'm not sure what else to call them?) full of all sorts of sentimental paper-y bits and bobs in them, which can be easily edited as time passes and things cease to have that nostalgic appeal and just become "stuff".

Here's a quick snap of some of the paper-y stuff that I cleared out last week (plus some old headphones that sadly will cost more to mend than it will to just buy a new pair, boo).

I still need to sort all that lot into piles to chuck, shred and recycle. That second pass through is very helpful, I find, as it stops you accidentally throwing away anything you didn't mean to (or, at the very least, it stops you worrying that you might have next time you can't find something important!).

As well as sorting through old boxes and files, re-organising things and clearing out small bits and pieces, I've also been doing some "proper" decluttering, clearing out things like books and clothes and jewellery and Christmas ornaments and CDs and bits of vintage china.

I did quite a lot of decluttering a few years ago, trying to make space in my old flat for my expanding crafty business and to help the flat look tidier & generally nicer. I am not (and will never be) a minimalist but I cleared out a lot of junk and old / unwanted stuff to make room to better display and store the stuff I needed, used and loved. Then I cleared out even more stuff when I moved out of my old flat and back into my parents house, and packed up all the "household" things from my flat into crates ready for when I (eventually) move out again.

I'm really lucky to have a large studio/office space in my parents house (I've rearranged things a lot since I first moved in, but you can see some old pics of the space HERE if you're feeling nosy) so I don't have any real space issues at the moment, but after looking at some flats online I've realised that when I do move out it will likely be into somewhere pretty tiny, so I need to try and downsize my stuff down quite a bit more. Chances of me having a studio space in my new place? Slim to none.

And what better time to make a start on this when I'm pottering about my parents house with not much to do because I'm having to rest & take a bit of time off work? So, I'll be continuing to have little clear-outs for a while and I've also decided to do another Less 365 project, getting rid of one thing a day for a whole year (from now until this time next summer).

I really enjoyed the challenge of my last Less 365, it made me properly think about my stuff - what I really loved, what I actually needed, what I was using and what I wasn't, and so on. I also found it made me much more mindful about buying new things, which was great for my bank balance! (I'd really recommend trying it if you fancy doing a bit of decluttering yourself).

Hmm, this has turned into a bit of a ramble, hasn't it? Anyway, I hope you'll wish me luck with my decluttering! I'm not 100% sure I'll manage the full 365 things, but I'm going to give it a jolly good try and - fingers crossed - hopefully get most of my stuff a lot more organised along the way.

Knitting in Public

Today is World Wide Knit in Public Day! Hurrah!


WWKiP Day is actually being celebrated from 11th-19th June this year (bit odd, but the more knitting the merrier, I guess!), so even if you miss the chance to knit in public today you've still got lots of time to get outside and get knitting! Click here to search for events in your area.


Innocent are also launching their Big Knit 2011 campaign this weekend. They "want to raise £160k this year for Age UK by knitting 650,000 little hats which will go on our smoothie bottles and be sold in stores in November. For every little hat knitted, we'll give 25p to Age UK to help them make winter a little warmer for older people across the UK." The knitting patterns will go up on their site next week, but you can also find them on Ravelry by searching for the Big Knit.


I always have fun knitting a few hats for this campaign (I knitted those hats a couple of years ago, and the ladies at my knitting club managed many many more last year!), it's a useful way to use up all those teeny odds and ends of leftover yarn from other projects and it's delightful seeing hat-wearing-smoothies appear in stores in the autumn. The deadline for this year's hats is 14th October, so you've got plenty of time to get knitting.

A Mountain of Hats

Last week our knitting club parcelled up all the little hats we've been knitting for The Big Knit, but we had to count them first...


Amazingly our little group has managed to knit 300 little hats from our leftover bits of yarn. I was a bit lazy this year and only knitted about 10 hats but one of our members knitted at least 150 all by herself!

It was lovely seeing them all together, all the colour combinations and cute patterns.


The youngest members of the knitting club definitely approved.


We're currently looking for more charity knitting projects we can get involved with... if you know of any (especially ones based in the UK) please do leave a comment.