Made by Kate

Learning to Crochet

2011-06-07T12:08:00.000+01:00

Wow, it's been a while. Five months since I last blogged because I have had babies on the brain, as I am very excited to announce the imminent arrival of our first baby due on the 17th June. Now that I am on maternity leave and before our little one arrives is the perfect time catch up. Today it is all about crochet. This time last year I had never even held a crochet hook, but now, I have very nearly finished my first project - a baby blanket of course!

Over Christmas, while visiting my folks in Sussex, I unfortunately came down with a bad case of flu. But my mum and I turned this into a positive and we spent a whole week together practicing and practicing crochet until we got the hang of it. She dug out some old books and I introduced her to the world of YouTube. But to be honest it was one of the books she had (published around the time I was born I think) that was the best resource. The most baffling thing we found as beginners was the written pattern, it was like learning a new language.

I had been to a crochet lesson before at one of The Craft Hub pubs nights, but I think what I found invaluable was the block of time I had with mum just practicing and practicing. OK, yes I was dreaming about crochet stitches for about a week, but the techniques finally stuck.

So, I got better, January came and back to Devon I went, straight into the wool shop to start my baby blanket. I was hoping that my mum would also keep the crochet up, as I knew she found reading the patterns difficult, as did I, and I hoped she wouldn't give up without me there to work them out with her. But I needn't have worried. When she visited us in April, she handed me a little tissue wrapped gift and inside were 2 pairs of the cutest little baby booties. At first I didn't even contemplate she had made them, but when I realised I was very overwhelmed. I was extremely impressed and will treasure them always.

I haven't even attempted anything so complex as a 3D shape as yet. Well, I did have a go at a cherry brooch that I promised my mum for her birthday, but gave up! I still owe her that brooch. I am still finishing off the baby blanket I mentioned earlier. I have a few more squares to do then I might have a go at a border - any suggestions welcome!

I am so pleased I have finally got to grips with crochet and am looking forward to my next project. Below are a fab collection of crochet patterns and ready made items I have found on Folksy.com. Click on the photos to visit the shops.

One more thing, this month on the 19th there is another Craft Hub craft fair in Topsham, details on their website. I won't be attending this time as it's 2 days after my due date, but please go along, there are some fabulous stalls as always.

Twinkling Firs Craft Fair

2010-12-04T14:34:00.000Z

The next Christmas Fair I will be selling my monster wares will be in Topsham Exeter. Make sure you visit us there for all your monster needs.

A menagerie of monsters

2010-10-25T20:17:00.000+01:00

Just a quick note to say thank you to everyone who came along to the 'monster make' on Wednesday. It looked like you had a lot of fun and I certainly enjoyed it too. I was impressed by the variety of designs that we ended up with, each one had it's own little unique addition - whether it be a tail, a hat or a spiky spine. Here are just some of what was produced.

Monster Class

2010-10-16T11:04:00.000+01:00

Just a reminder that this Wednesday 20th October I will be teaching a monster making class in the City Gate Pub in Exeter. 'Cr'after Dark' is run by The Craft Hub and costs £5 to take part. Have a drink while making your very own sock monster. I will provide everything you need to make. Visit The Craft Hub's website to find out more and let them know if you are coming as it looks like it will be busy. We will be making mini monsters! See you there.

Knitted Groto

2010-10-03T16:55:00.000+01:00

Last weekend, Westpoint in Exeter held the Creative Stitches fair. It's a fabulous place to get your craft supplies. The Craft Hub had a great stand which showcased all the members work and they also had a scarf knitathon - they invited everyone that came to the stall to knit a row or 2 to what should be a very interesting and eclectic piece. They twisted my arm into doing one row even though I barely know how to knit. I am waiting to see the finished piece on their blog!

Personally I find these fairs a tad uninspiring and dare I say it a little twee, but I came across a little gem (actually it was a rather large gem) around the corner. It was a knitted grotto called 'Above and Below the Waves'. Undertaken by Alison Murray the project was made possible by knitted donations of 2000 knitters around the world. The project tours the UK raising money for the RNLI "Train one, save many' campaign. It took 2 years for all the knitted elements to come together and a further 5 months for the pieces to be sewn together into an amazing, very detailed beach and under water scene. Every where you looked you saw something different and quirky details. I don't know much about knitting but loved the way different stitches / techniques were used to create different textures like the jelly fish and the sea sponges. Anyway, that enough of my rambling - below are a selection of photos I took. The very last photo is a key ring I couldn't resist buying from their stand.

The Craft Hub

2010-09-25T17:33:00.000+01:00

Made by Kate has recently become a member of Exeter based club 'The Craft Hub'. Pip and Ellen set up the club to provide a platform to showcase local artists and crafters their work. The next craft fair will on the 30th October at St Matthews Church Hall in Exeter. For more information visit The Craft Hub website. Along side the fairs they also run monthly 'Cr'after Dark' pub nights where you can take your craft of choice along while having a drink or you can take part in the class. Each month there is a different craft to learn. So far there has been crochet, knitting and felting. Next month I will be teaching everyone to make sock monsters. So if you fancy coming along it will be on the 20th October at the City Gate Pub in Exeter from 8pm. It only costs £5 to take part and I will provide everything you need to make your very own sock monster.

Below are my attempt at the felt bangles we made in the last class:

Etsy finds, September

2010-09-04T21:59:00.000+01:00

As well as selling my monsters here you can also find another collection of them on Etsy. In fact I usually end up spending quite a lot of time at Etsy browsing some of the amazing handmade items there. So here I give a few of my favourite items I have come across in the last few weeks. Click on the photos to see more from the sellers.

Vintage at Goodwood

2010-08-27T22:17:00.000+01:00

I am pretty ashamed to say that at 31 years of age, I have never been to a festival before. But when my colleague bought in a magazine cutting about the Vintage Festival at Goodwood, West Sussex, I thought ‘that sounds like the festival for me’, so I booked me self a ticket (plus one for hubby). Advertised as ‘the festival of our lives’ celebrating music, art and fashion across 5 decades (40’s - 80’s) of creative British cool, I couldn’t wait.

Well, my first festival adventure was one of the best weekends I have had in a long time. Even the walk from the campsite to the entrance was an enchanting journey through the trees with strings of lights to mark the way. The festival was only in it’s first year but they had managed to organized so much. There was a pop-up vintage High Street complete with traditional pub and indian restaurant, market stalls selling all sorts of vintage clothes and goodies, a vintage fun fair, music tents for each decade, a Butlins for the kids (including a sock monster workshop of all things), a vintage cinema, vintage vehicles and a lot more. The food stalls were just as varied. You could get hotdogs from a converted Airstream done up as a 50’s diner, or strawberries and cream from a vintage cart, or you could enjoy a glass of Pimms in a vintage London bus.

Music wise, we spent most of our time between the “Leisure Dome’ and the ‘Let it Rock’ tent. In the Leisure Dome we came across an a cappella group called the Swingle Singers. Four women and four men made up the group who sang a variety of covers using only vocals and no instruments. The two guys who did the beat-boxing were so good that I had to keep reminding myself ‘there is no drum kit there’. For me this was the highlight of the weekend.

On the Sunday morning I took part in a Jive lesson in the rock tent on the impressive checkerboard dance floor. I love dancing so it was one of the things had ear marked to do. So, as my husband drank beer and watched from the side lines I attempted to Jive, which is actually quite difficult to do in wellies, (the good old English weather had not disappointed so the wellies came out on the first day).

We love camping and what better place to take our vintage style bell tent with us. When we arrived, it seemed everyone else had the same idea and there were quite a few exactly like ours and there was me thinking we’d easily find our tent in the masses. The festival had also laid on a ‘glamping area’ where tipis and bell tents were ready set up. Glamping was available from £500 for the weekend with room services that you would expect of a posh boutique hotel.

I will definitely be going next year if I can and will make more of an effort to dress up. The amount of people we saw in impressive vintage gear were numerous. But it wasn’t fancy dress, you got the feeling it was their normal attire.

Living in Store

2010-07-26T22:37:00.000+01:00

This week I thought I’d give you another insight into my ‘interior design’ side as one of the projects I have been working on in Marlow, Bucks, has finally finished and we went to the big opening a couple of weeks ago. Living in Store is a new home ware store that “brings together an eclectic range of stylish products covering every part of modern home life”.

If you could have seen the building before any works started you wouldn’t recognise the place. The Grade II listed Georgian building was previously used as offices and the space was divided up into several rooms. We knocked down all these partitions over 2 floors to open up the area completely, put in a brand new shop front, turned the outside courtyard into a conservatory, put in new plasterboard ceilings, lighting and flooring. We designed simple shop fitting to complement the product and the client used some of her own furniture to add to the ‘home’ ambience.

Re-Vamp your living room in one weekend

2010-06-30T22:36:00.000+01:00

About this time last year, my idea to get rid of the carpet turned into a complete re-design of our living room. I hated the cream carpet that we had inherited when we moved into our little maisonette 5 years ago. It was stained and just made the whole room look dirty. Between us (my husband and I) we managed to completely re-design the room in one weekend and on a relatively low budget,

The Floor
The first thing to go, obviously was the hideous carpet. I loved the idea of painted floorboards so the next thing we did was hire a floor sander for the weekend. That is never something I would like to do again though. It was very hard graft especially for my husband who did most of it! You have to make sure every nail in the floorboards are hammered in otherwise they will rip the sheet of sandpaper to shreds, and they are not cheap. After the sanding was done it needed a good clean before we could paint it. We primed it first then gave it 2 layers of white floor paint.

The Walls
We wanted to brighten up the whole room so we painted every wall bar one in brilliant white. It gave us, in effect, a blank canvas to work with. The wall that the fire place was on we painted in a bright blue and then we painted the timber fire surround in white which looks fabulous against the strong feature colour.

Furniture & Accessories
The Saturday was mainly taken up with decorating but Sunday was shopping day! We gave the floor one more coat then hit the shops. We already had a brown leather armchair and an Ikea sofa. Although the sofa had seen better days we knew our budget could not stretch to a new one, until we found a gem of a bargain in a second hand shop in Exeter - a green chesterfield sofa. We both looked at it and fell in love knowing it would look amazing in our new ‘white box’. I tentatively turned over the price ticket to find it was only £185! We snapped it up!

In the corner of the room we had one of those tall cheap bookcases that most students have. Because my husband brings home several books a week there was never enough room for them and it always looked messy. So I banished most of the books out of the room and cut down the bookcase so it was only 2 shelves high, painted it white and used the top of it to place a table lamp and to display our red telephone. (It is also a handy height to place a cup of tea and a pack of biscuits while sitting in the armchair). Building a bookcase for the banished books in the hallway became another weekend project.

Other things we bought on our shopping trip was a white bathroom unit which we used as a lamp table, a gorgeous rag rug which was also a bargain at only £50. (We have to fold it into a quarter of the size as it’s so big!). We bought brightly coloured cushions and a bright green lamp. We found that any bright colours worked really well in our white box.

The latest addition to our living which I have only just completed is our photo wall. Over the last year we have been collecting a variety of different photo frames, mainly from TX Maxx of all places. I printed out the photos on our printer and laid all the frames on the floor until I was happy with the layout.

In total we spent less than £500 re-vamping our living room and one weekend of hard graft.

Get The Look: Tips and Tricks:
1. Floor sander can be hired from Brandons.
2. The white floor paint is available from any DIY store, we got ours from B&Q
3. Paint one wall in a strong feature colour. You can change the colour whenever you want if you fancy a change, and there’s only one wall to do!
4. Create a photo wall with an eclectic mix of frames. Look in charity shops and recycling centres to get them cheaply.
5. Why not paint your existing pieces of furniture to give them a new lease of life rather than buy new.
6. Scour your local secondhand furniture shops. You never know what unique bargains you might find.
7. Search handmade websites like Folksy and Etsy for find unique handmade home accessories. Here are a couple of my finds (clicks photos to view other products):

New Website Launch

2010-06-27T22:36:00.000+01:00

Hello and welcome to my brand spanking new website, along with my shiny new blog. I’ve had fun creating it so I hope you enjoy it too. Click on the links above to view my main website where you’ll be able to find out how I make my sock monsters, a gallery of monsters and of course don’t forget to stop by the shop to view sock monsters that are currently for sale.

Jacob the traveling sock monster has taken over part of my website with his very own travel blog so why not read up on his latest journey to Seattle.

But right here, I will not only be talking about sock monster related goodness but I hope you will find this an inspiration for anything from craft to cooking, design to gardening and anything I have a passion for really which I hope you will share with me.