Crafty Mermaid

I spent a rather relaxing special night in the white swan in grey town in the wairarapa last night. Christ on a bike, was it ever needed. The last few weeks have been intense.  The white swan is a boutique hotel where the main rooms are themed. We stayed in the George suite (thank you grab one voucher - which also included a yummy dinner for two). A rather grand three room suite (I'm sure you're not supposed to count the bathroom but I am!) Very luxurious ;) Greytown is a cute town. We wandered around the various gift, antiques and clothes shops.  Such lovely things :) Cute, no? I loved the 3d effect of these doodles. The art shop there is just lovely. There's usually great books and supplies. I was rather hard pressed to leave without a new set of markers I don't need!  I rather adore these light fittings. They'd look great in our kitchen over the island (yup, the one we don't have but it's planned - so I regretfully left these behind too!) This was a stunn

Gotta love new wool. Just out of the wool shop on my way to taupo. Yummy colors. Unfortunately some of the obesity wanted are out of print (?) run. Ah well. Got some lovely other options instead. In Tim Gunns infamous words. Make it work! 

I am so so pleased by this make.  Its a cover for my Toyota (piece of crap) sewing machine.  But at least this way it looks pretty when I'm not using it. Its a quilting cotton (that I love but can't remember where its from) and reinforced with stiff interfacing.  Its also lined and has a side pocket for the pedal. Such a major improvement over the tattered plastic crappy cover that came with the machine (which most definitely did NOT have a pedal pocket). I even like how the handle hole in the top turned out (I cut it out with flaps and then folded them back on the outside and the interfacing and sewed it up in a rather odd manner - as it the rest of the cover was already done - so I was sewing in the bottom of the cover!). I love how it has some stiffness to it even minus sewing machine.  I used the original plastic cover as a pattern (and ripped it up in the process) - but unfortunately the handle hole should have been a bit more to the left.

This lovely pattern was made with the most beautiful soft merino wool (Patons Merino Baby 8ply in fact).  But due to the fact that I worked in far too tight a tension, it felt like burlap.  Dammit!  So I finally frogged it today.  - I think I've lost the natural bounce of the yarn, as it stayed crocheted up for quite some time and it now wound into balls.  Will have to get my thinking cap on.

Whitcoulis had a sale this week and I just couldn't help myself (yes, I'm seriously trying to stash bust across all my crafty endeavours, but I'm weak...) Love the different 'charms' in Make Clay Charms I'm not so great at reading the instructions but I've been having a really fun play. Look at all the bright beautiful (if somewhat gaudy) colours.

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