Grow your Blog and a Giveaway

Hello! I'm excited to once again be a part of the wonderful Grow Your Blog Party, ably hosted by Vicki from 2 Bags Full. The party is a chance to explore strange new blogs, (seek out new life and new civilisation, and boldly go where no blogger has gone before)
Yes. I'm a geek - you'll get used to that if you hang around here for long.
My name is Christine and I'm lucky enough to live close to the sea in Cornwall, England, where we run our own photography business

If you become a regular visitor here (and I hope you do), you'll find this blog is a bit of a mish mash of family, Cornish life, and random geekery, but mostly focuses on my arty and crafty projects. They tend to be mostly stitching and knitting related, and I love to upcycle and re-purpose everyday and vintage objects.
Here for example is a pinny I made myself earlier this week, from a pair of old jeans. (I'm linking this up to Think Pink Sundays at Flamingo Toes too)

Actually it was pretty easy to do. If you want to make one you'll need:-

1 pair of jeans (not skinny ones or you'll end up with a really narrow apron)
5 metres of 30mm bias binding
General sewing supplies
A mug of tea

I slit one leg up the centre back and opened it out, then used an existing pinny as a pattern, lining the bottom edge up with the hem edge of the jeans.
For the pocket I cut a section from the front of the jeans, from just to one side of the fly, cutting away the zip, to a little past the side seam, incorporating the waistband and front pocket (being careful not to cut through the pocket lining, so that I have a "pocket in my pocket", which sounds as if it ought to be a range of toys). I curved off the corners by drawing around my tea mug, (told you you needed a mug of tea!). I bound the raw edges of the piece with red gingham bias binding (don't you just love all the funky kinds of bias you can buy now, when I first started sewing it was such boring stuff!), then stitched the whole thing in place on the front of the pinny.
I bound the top and side edges with more of the bias, then used one long continuous piece to make the side tie, bind the armhole, make the neck strap, back round the other armhole and then the second tie. The piece of bias was nearly as long as that sentence!
If you'd read this far you're probably getting fed up by now and asking yourself "Where be this giveaway of which she speaks, me hearties?" - Yes, you are a pirate in my head. Come to terms with it.
Well, I've got a few scraps of denim left from the pinny project, so I'm going to make a decorative heart, similar to these ones I made before Christmas, as a giveaway prize.

I haven't made it yet because I want to personalise it a bit for the winner. If you want a chance to win then just put a comment on this post and tell me your favourite colour. I'll randomly pick a winner on 15th Feb. I'll send it anywhere in the world. You don't have to follow in order to enter, though it would be nice.
Go on
You know you want to.
I hope I'll see you back here soon

Gifted Gorgeousness SAL - January

The Gifted Gorgeousness SAL is organised by Jo of Serendipitous Stitching. On the 15th of each month we share some stitching that is in some way related to the idea of a gift. We made it as a gift, we received it as a gift, we made it using supplies that were a gift... you get the idea...

Anyway, here is my January GG piece. I received a coaster blank as a gift from Polly as part of the Needlecraft Haven Advent Exchange, so that definitely counts right? 

And what would a good little Trekker like me want on a coaster but this?

The chart for the com badge is by Starrley, I found it on Deviant Art here, and added the text myself.

Also fitting nicely into the theme, here is the progress so far on the scarf I'm knitting from the lovey hand-dyed sock wool Eloise gave me for Christmas

The pattern is called Knit Night. It's by Louise Zass-Bangham and can be found on Ravelry. It doesn't show very well being bunched up on circular needles but it will eventually be a long narrow picot-edged triangular shape. I decided not to do the beaded edge version because I didn't have any suitable beads to hand, and I was impatient to get started. Maybe another time.

 Be sure and check out all the other blogs in the SAL, there is a linky list on Jo's blog

Dinosaurs!

Among the things I bought for the girls at Christmas were a pair of awesome upcycled toy dinosaur planters from Ding a Ding Terrariums.
Toy dinosaurs, sprayed gold and turned into planters. What's not to love?
Naturally we felt compelled to re-enact our favourite dinosaur related movie moment

Ha ha ha! Mine is an evil laugh!

Rounding Up Last Year

The final tally for last year turned out to be (drum roll please)

58 books read, 75 crafty finishes and 15 pairs of shoes.

No one got any of them spot on, but if you total all three items together you get 148, and via a slightly different combination of individual figures Wendy who blogs at The Crafter's Apprentice, also arrived at a total of 148, so I'm declaring her the winner. Wendy, if you send me your snail mail I'll pop a small prize in the post.
I've reset the counters so if anyone wants to make a guess for 2015 and win a mystery prize, just add a comment to this post (I'll accept entries up until the end of the month).

I'm shamefully late posting my Christmas thank yous (hangs head) but I did get some wonderful presents from on-line friends, including:-

A pretty notebook from Karan (matches the pen she sent for my birthday)

A diary, bath petals and chocolate from Clare

Cosy socks and a pair of  beautiful twinkly glass snowflakes (made by her DH) from Barb

A French style motif sampler and fabric in the Advent Exchange, which turned out to be from Polly

This gorgeous folded fabric tree decoration from Julie

Thank you all so much.

The other crafty gift I got was this hank of beautiful hand dyed sock wool from Eloise. 

The company is rather brilliantly named "Yorkshire's to Dye for" and can be found on Facebook here. It is already well on it's way to being a scarf. 

I don't DO socks. 

I knitted a sock once, 

One sock. 

Once. 

Enough said.