All posts by Jackie

Leg warmers for chilly days.

knitting, Uncategorized

Happy New Year to you all.

I have finally finished knitting my long leg warmers and I can’t say it was a labour of love but just necessity. I was so very annoyed at having lost my one and only fabulous pair of Calvin Klein, long black leg warmers, and have been unable to find anything similar, so I just had to bite the bullet and make some. I did try to knit in the round with the 4 short needles, but, with my arthritic hands, I just kept losing my grip on the needles and the stitches all fell off. So they are just a long rectangle with a small cuff at the bottom and and top, then cast off using Lori’s stretchy bind off.   Then I stitched up the seam. I am not a big fan of that yarn either as it kept breaking leaving a thread with a bit of wool missing. Now I can put my knitting away and get out my next crochet project. I much prefer crochet as it is a lot easier to see and sort out mistakes than knitting is.

 

Lapghan and Moorland blanket.

Crochet

I have been trying to use up some of my old stash of yarn from previous blankets, and wanted a small blanket for my lap to use on chilly days while I am in  my craft room, so here is my lapghan.  I have used some of my stash from my Cosy stripe blanket and followed Sarah-Jayne’s video on how to crochet a rectangle.  Then I just used tr clusters for the rest of the lapghan and added a small border.

The Moorland blanket (neat wave) is from Lucy’s crochet-a-long (CAL) tutorial last year but I forgot to take pictures and add it to my blog so here it is.  Now hubby can have the Moorland blanket, and I can have my Cosy stripe blanket while watching TV, and I have my lapghan for my craft room.  I have a small Granny blanket upstairs and my auntie’s old lap blanket for the car.

I do have another crochet project that I want to crack on with, in front of the fire, once the weather gets chillier.

Pen and wash practice

art, watercolour, watercolour painting

I have been having a go at a tutorial in Paint magazine by Sue Williams of a pen and wash scene.  The camera hasn’t picked up the colour all that well, but having said that I could have added a bit more colour in the grassy areas.  I am not sure whether I should keep going with it and add more colour to the foreground or just leave it be?  I think I will leave it for now and I can always go back to it if I want to later.

Teasel watercolour

art, art journal, watercolour

My goodness how did it get to 2018 so quickly!  My mojo went for a wander so I just had a wee break from anything arty/crafty for a while but I am back now to have another go.  So I am starting the year off by doing small sketches or other in my sketch books or art journals rather than trying to paint ‘proper’ pictures so that I don’t mind too much if I muck up.  I did this the other day having watched Alison C Board’s video on you tube painting teasel on wood.  My version is not on wood and doesn’t use the same colours but it gave me inspiration to have a go.  Watercolour and Brusho but with a bit of Stabilo pen to darken a few lines.

Alcohol ink doodles on yupo

alcohol ink, card

yupoDoodleSml

I have been getting exasperated with my yupo paper and alcohol inks last week.  Sometimes the ink would drop into circular blobs and spread really well but other times I would just get a blob that didn’t spread at all.  I see I will have to experiment a bit more.  Sometimes I would get a blob that spread in the centre of the paper but if I used the same ink towards the edge then it wouldn’t spread.  I was very careful not to touch the edges with my fingers as I know that can prevent the ink spreading.  I tried using the reverse side of the yupo but that wasn’t great.  This photo isn’t great – the birthday card is much brighter in real life.  It was good fun though.