Crafty Brooch

I wanted to make a gift from items I had around the house and discovered this cute brooch design.

I used a small amount of fabric, some cotton and needle, pins, ribbon, safety pin and a button. 

Using some vintage fabric I had left over from some curtains, I drew out two circles, one the size of a cereal bowl, the other a mug.

I cut out the two rounds and Delia stepped in to help!

 

One at a time, I folded over and pinned the edge of the circle and tack-stitched making big stitches. 

Once right round, I pulled the thread tight and knotted.

 Then I flattened it down...

to make the first rosette...

I did the same with the smaller circle, although this time I did it without pins, tack-stitched an edge...

and pulled it tight....

I flattened the second rosette and stitched the two together, along with a button in the centre. 

I needed some ribbon for the leaves, but all I had was elastic, so I folded into two and stitched...

along with stitching a safety pin to fit onto a jumper.

Here is the end result, and I made a special card too. I hope she'll like her personalised items. 

When I got home from a day out, I decided to have another go, this time using smaller circles, now I understand how it comes together...

A simple, quick and elegant gift!

Stained Glass

Mum tells me that the stained glass piece to go in the bow is complete! I am so excited and can't wait to see it. I have a vague idea of the design; a windmill on a hill, one of my favourite things, the rest will be a wonderful surprise! Mum has been studying the craft of stained glass for a while now and has branched out to make a variety of gifts for people; crosses, hearts and figures as well as commissioned pieces of a butterfly scene and now the windmill. I hear she is looking into producing a circular piece for her home.

Below is a heart that Mum gave to me as a gift, notice the water effect of the glass, pretty!

Christmas Day Cruise

Merry Christmas! We started this morning with a good breakfast, some wonderful gifts and the joy of a move ahead.

We left our mooring point...

from here...

and took the 90degree turn...

into the first lock of the day.

At this point we are now on the Trent and Mersey Canal.

We were very luck with the weather and had high spirits throughout the day...

What a lovely scarf...

We passed some christmas swans on our journey today...

and went through 5 locks over a few miles. It was really lovely, not like hard work at all. Our final lock of the day took us onto the river section of the Trent and Mersey.

We decided to look into mooring up in the lovely, historic village of Alrewas. Every time we've passed through in the high seasons there hasn't been one single space to moor. However, we were in luck today, the whole stretch was free except for one other boat.

It has been a lovely day and now I'm recovering from a festive feast. I think that winter cruising is a new favorite past-time of mine!

Christmas and Light!

Blackbird sitting on the christmas tree
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise...


Our first christmas onboard has been well, different! It started with a hot drink, delightful presents and watching the birds. After a fried egg and bacon sarnie it had got to 3pm somehow. So we set off to collect 20 litres of water and have a wash from running taps at Leigh's mums. What a joy. After a bit of family time we set off back to the boat. It was late and the chicken hadn't even left it's plastic tray so we opted for Christmas Indian Takeaway. Leigh told me how he was as shocked as the serving staff that they were open and he was ordering on Christmas day. It sure was delicious though! And so back home, we lit the candles, threw a log on the burner and snuggled down for the late night. That reminds me, the lights!


With the ignition on the blink we couldn't run the engine at all over christmas to charge our battery system and so we were reliant on the generator. This is not as rosy as it seems. We would run the generator for two hours and charge up phones, laptops, vacuum etc and by 4.30 as the day would draw into night we would light candles around the boat (trying to conserve them as much as possible as we only had a few and the shops were now shut) and by 10pm all charged items were often starting to die off. Each day we would try to start the engine with no hope.

That was until the day before yesterday! We had done the ritual of jobs - putting away the bedding, standing up the mattress to dry out, filled up the coal, brought in the wood, collected water from the tap at the next lock, tidied up, fed the animals, brought the porta-potti through as our toilet is now ripe for emptying... then I thought I would look over the ignition.

It was a mild day, the rain overnight had washed away the snow, but there was still alot of ice and the canal was hard as stone. The electrical guys who looked over the engine had said that the cold could effect the electrical system and as our ignition is housed in an old wooden box outside I guess it had. So I inserted the key, but nothing, no volts, nowt. I unscrewed the panel but all the leads appeared to be in place, the wires all in tact. So I did a bit of wriggling, straightening out and alleviating some pressure on wires that were quite taught. I put the panel back in place and Voila! the voltage dial hit 12V. Ho-bloody-rah!

When I shouted through to Leigh who was inside the boat to 'come here quick' he was preparing to jump into the canal after me... and after the initial heart attack moment he was elated that I'd got the bloody thing working. We fired up the engine and had an entire evening of all the lights on!

If the foul weather continues we are going to have to consider some good insulation and maybe replacing the panel. That is when the money tree does actually start growing tenners. And so there we have it, as unusual as life is these days it is beautiful in every way.

Birthday delights

An absolute corker of a cake made by the creative duo Tim and Natasha. This modular synth cake made Leigh's night!


And a birthday gift of antique barometer to monitor the weather and atmospheric pressure.

Big Muff Pi

What is this?


A present?


For Oi!?


Leigh you are so dear to this woman.



Electro-harmonics Big Muff Pi is one 'beast' of a distortion fx pedal, with tone control allowing you to sweep between low and high frequencies and sustain for drawing out harmonic noise this can sound beautiful and edgy. This appears to work wonderfully with guitar input over voice as it deadens the vocal notes yet rings out the guitar signal. This must be something to do with frequency (I did do a test using a bass guitar through the Muff but it didn't respond well) as well as being a 'hot' signal (as I have read before regarding pedals and signals). We can all look forward to Bitumen's musical adventures using the Big Muff Pi.

Badge day

To start the day came an envelope enclosing a kitty card from Amy, Hayden and Mr Susan and these two lovely badges; bike and watering can. What a lovely lady that Yma is! Beam, beam.

Transceiver from her love!

From the best love there could possibly be I received this in celebration of passing the Foundation course:


So, there it is, I am beaming from cheek to cheek. With my callsign down, M6DOE, the female deer has a new found hobby. The Yaseu Vx-170 is still charging it's heart out, though I couldn't resist and scanned around and listened in on a Morse lesson between Mary and John earlier today, great stuff, she even picked up a thing or two! Hours of fun!

This is Mike Six Delta Oscar Echo over.

Booties

I received news from a fellow artist now residing in Norway of a bump appearing. Liz was feeling the excitement of pitter-patters and so I set about knitting a set of booties to keep the pitter-pats warm in the cold nights of her ex-trainstation home by the coast. Since this project last year, I have made another set in the same wool, lovely Debbie Bliss Aran. The pattern came from a beginners knit book (highly recommended for anyone starting out). This time the booty set was for Viva's bumpetybum. I also transformed a little speaker box into the packaging using some inky stamps for decoration.