Thursday, October 29, 2009

Baby soft!

This is a blanket I made for someone who is having a baby using tunisian crochet. It's sort of a mixture between knitting and crochet. You use a looooong crochet hook and pick up all the stitches as you would on a knitting needle and then cast them all off again. I'm sure there are other patterns but this is the only one I know!
It makes a beautifully soft blanket if you use 4 ply wool and quite a thick needle. The crochet flower is just a bit of detail for fun!

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Lavender wreath

There is so much lavender in the garden at the moment that we decided to make a lavender wreath. First we cut some shoots from the honeysuckle creeper and wound them into a circle ( I'm sure you could use wire) Then we picked loads of lavender flowers and, taking bunches of four flowers, laid them across the wreath and secured them with string.
Don't cut the stems, they form the bulk of the wreathKeep going, it is time consuming! As you can see, my son did it for me, I only took the pics!This is what the back looks like.

We have left it to dry and I will show you what it looks like in a couple of weeks time. It smells delicious !

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Trees

While on my visit to Kwa Zulu Natal, I came across some interesting trees. As I love texture I couldn't resist these beauties. This one is a thorn tree (i think) and has bark that looks like layers of paper.
This is a Leopard tree and needs no explaination to the reason for it's name!
I'm not sure what this tree is, other than to say it is magnificent! It can be found in the park at the top of the Howick Falls.






Thursday, October 8, 2009

Pastel Paintings

While trying to tidy up my messy workspace the other day, I came across this old box of pastels and decided to try them out.
They work perfectly for the texture of the animal fur, but you do need to layer the colours and it is quite time consuming. I find it very therapeutic, almost like knitting a stitch at a time, drawing in a hair at a time! This one still needs a lot of work, there's a lot of paper to cover!


Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Midland greens

Well, I'm back from my holiday in the Kwa Zulu Natal midlands. It is still as beautiful as ever with the start of spring and everything turning green . I couldn't resist a pic of these scrumptious looking salad greens. My Mom is an avid gardener so wherever we went we had to stop at the garden centers. This one was at a farm stall called Piggly Wiggly.


There are hundreds of farm stalls, restaurants and craft shops along the Midlands Meander which wanders, or meanders, through the most picturesque countryside. Shops are tucked away down dusty farm roads and it's really quite an adventure following the map, getting lost, and trying to find all the places on your list!

This is the view from a cluster of craft shops across the valley to Piggly Wiggly over on the other side.I must admit I didn't take as many photo's as I wanted to because I wanted to use my camera and not my cell phone. This backfired somewhat because the camera is rather cumbersome and difficult to maneuver in restaurants and shops. Next time I think I will just stick to the cell phone and go for quantity rather than quality!