princessdeia

February 6th 2012
Filed under Finished Projects 2012, General, Making Monday

Jason is still in contact with a lot of friends he went to school with, even after leaving their home town for university or work, they still would make the effort to meet up several times a year (and always on Christmas Eve) in the Old Town area of their home town. As a result they lovingly refer to themselves as The OTB (Old Town Boys).

As they entered their twenties, several of them moved down to London, they started having serious relationships, and as a result a a group of WAGs joined the OTB, and we would still meet up semi-regularly in London and always on Christmas Eve in the Old Town. As they entered their thirties and some of them moved overseas, they started to getting married and having children. That’s where the strange thing happened all the children where girls.

Two summers ago, I thought it would be nice to knit something for the newest OTB girls, after seeing Ysolda’s Poppy doll at Knit Nation I thought that was the perfect pattern. I had a practice run making a doll which eventually ended up with my sister and then started the mass production. Making three that summer for the two newest babies and ones older sister. Then that Christmas I made three more, this time for older girls so I made a few extra pieces of clothing.

Last of October another OTBg was born, with my lack of knitting mojo I never got around to knitting her a Poppy. However this past weekend it was her Dad’s birthday and attended his surprise 40th party, so it was the perfect opportunity for me to make another Poppy, this one to live in Leicester.

January 24th 2012
Filed under 101 Things, General, Making Monday

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to try and blog more, it is even part of my 101 things list to blog at least twice a week for six months. However, I sometimes find it hard to know exactly what to write.

I have been toying with the idea of adding some structure to this blog… I did this a little last year with Making Mondays which I did enjoy but it seems to have died down this year, I would love to resurrected it maybe in another form – like W.I.P. Wednesday or F.O. Friday. Having the structure will hopefully help me blog more.

In a belated Making Monday, here is yet another Poppy (she is the eighth one I have made). It became obvious to me that I would not be able to knit Laar in a month (seriously who can knit a cardigan in a month) for my FOAM, so I quickly cast on this project over the weekend to make sure I had one finished project this month.

November 8th 2011
Filed under General, Making Monday

This is a little late, mainly as last night when I would have been blogging I was busy painting. Over the last few weeks things have been pretty slow in the decorating front, as we had to wait for the plaster to dry before painting the walls.

Originally, we were just going to paint all the walls blue, but whilst looking for paint I came across the Dulux Feature Wallpaper range, patterned wallpaper which coordinates with their paint. They even did one in the right shade of blue! We choose the Meadowsweet, in Soft Teal, which they suggest teaming with white and mocha, we are opting to have the furniture all in white and soft furnishings in mocha.

The biggest problem we have had with this renovation is the irregular walls, no walls are straight. The other problem was the size of the alcoves, it makes sense for us to put the wardrobes in the recesses, however we could not find decent wardrobes that were small enough (one was under 90 cm).

Over my birthday weekend, my father in law, spent a few days building us two fabulous wardrobes, and added a radiator cover to hide the ugly central heating. They just need to be primed and painted (what we were doing last night).

October 10th 2011
Filed under General, Making Monday

I’ve been AWOL over the last few weeks, mainly due to hurting my shoulder and being unable to knit. Also we have had the builders into Chez Princessdeia, so it has been a bit of a mess! Remember at the beginning of the year I started crafting for my new bedroom? Well over the last few weeks we have been actually moving forward on getting that dream room. It took almost two days to clear out the room, remove the old furniture, dismantling the wardrobes, ripping up the old carpets. Under the flooring we found old newspapers dating back to Valentine’s Day 1971 (my parents brought this house that year), and a magazine for the 1966 Motor Show. Behind the wardrobes, we found a vintage ball band (from some acrylic yarn) and some amazing wallpaper, my mum remembers the yellow one begin in the room when they brought the house.

I know I haven’t “made” this room myself, but I feel my job as forewoman and the visionary behind the design has given me poetic licence to claim this as my Making Monday for the week

September 5th 2011
Filed under General, Making Monday, Sewing

I mentioned before my mum had some old cushions on her bed that needed new covers to match her newly decorated bedroom, well she decided 4 cushions were a little too excessive for her bed. So one of them was past on to my sister (she’s been using it to prop her up in bed after her operation), but the cover was boring and again didn’t match her room. So yet again I jumped on my sewing machine and whipped up a quick cover… But how to decorate it.

A few weeks ago on Pinterest I saw this button cushion, and loved the idea, sure it would be uncomfortable to lean on but it looks so pretty! Hunting through mine and my mum’s button collection I found a few white buttons (mainly tiny shirt buttons), but ended up buying a 50g bundle from eBay.

So over the weekend, I sat down with over 100 buttons, the cover and started sewing! I quickly realized using an embroidery ring would make the whole think a lot easier and then I discovered I didn’t have enough buttons. Luckily the seller from eBay had more of the same buttons which I managed to order and hopefully I can finish the cushion cover this week.

August 29th 2011
Filed under Making Monday

I brought some Freedom Organic Cotton and was planning on making another Bamboozelle baskets, but having looked at the yarn more closer at home, I decided it wasn’t at all suited to the pattern (it is loosely twisted 6 ply yarn), plus the pattern was pretty hard on the hands and I didn’t think that my hands needed that amount of tormenting again. So instead I opted for a simple crochet square basket, adapting a pattern that was meant for Peaches and Creme Cotton.

Unlike the Bamboozelle baskets this one didn’t need to have a cardboard base as it is sturdy, but I did want to line it so they “matched” the other baskets. Seeing as the pattern originally asked for PnC I also decided to make another mini basket with some remaining PnC, so now I have a nest of pretty baskets.

EDIT I’ve just looked at the photos I have taken for this post and they are awful so I will add some photos in the morning. I just wanted to make sure the post was ready for Making Monday.