Month: April 2015

Cunning Hat

~ DMWCarol ~ Leave a comment

I loved the Firefly series and have been thinking about making a Jayne Hat for ages.  Today I finally did

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And since I’ve been asked for instructions here’s how I did it.

You need a ball of red, orange and yellow wool.  I just used cheap basic DK because I am a cheapskate and was just playing around but posh stuff would probably make it nicer.

I used 6.5mm needles.  If you’re so inclined you could use dpns and knit in the round, but I just went with what I had handy.

Start with the basic hat.

  1. Using the orange wool. Cast on 70 stitches using whatever cast on method you like.
  2. Knit 4 rows of K1 P1 rib
  3. Switch to stocking stitch and keep going until you have about 4.5 inches of knitting.
  4. Switch to yellow and continue in stocking stitch for another 3.5 inches
  5. Start the decrease – k5 k2tog, repeat to end. P next row
  6. K4 k2tog, repeat to end. P next row
  7. K3 k2tog, repeat to end. P next row
  8. K2 k2tog, repeat to end. P next row
  9. K1 k2tog, repeat to end. P next row
  10. K2tog, repeat to end.
  11. Cut your wool leaving a fairly long tail, thread through the remaining loops and pull tight – use the tail to sew together the seam as far as the orange, use orange to sew the bottom part.
  12. Now you need to add the ear flaps – The flaps want to be about half the width of the hat (a quarter each) Find a point half way down each side and using the red wool pick up stitches evenly either side of that. You want to pick up 17 stitches so 8 either side of your central point.
  13. Knit about 3 inches
  14. Knit/Pearl together the first and last two stitches of each row until you have just three stitches left. Cast off leaving a long tail.  Thread through an extra piece of red and tie the strings together to leave three dangling strings
  15. Make a pom-pom from all 3 colours and attach to the top of the hat. I find wrapping the wool around the prongs of a large fork easiest but it doesn’t really matter how you do it.
  16. Weave in all the ends.

And that’s it.  Your cunning hat is now ready to wear.

Quick and easy game minis

~ DMWCarol ~ Leave a comment

This is so easy it barely even counts as crafting, but I needed some mini’s for a couple of games I’m running at Contraption on Saturday so I threw these together.IMG_1889[1]

I needed ants and undead so I googled for pics, printed them out on, cut them into circles with a one inch punch and stuck on epoxy domes – simples!

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I might stick them onto magnets so they have a more solid base and I can colour code them with nail varnish around the base, but they only cost a few pennies each so I may just leave them as they are and consider them disposables to keep with the scenario.

Another dice bag

~ DMWCarol ~ Leave a comment

Not sure why I didn’t post this a couple of days ago when I made it

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It’s a chainmail dice bag, made in the same way as I’d start a coif with an increasing hexagon, then there’s a few standard rows and a picot edging so it closes tight (there’s an instructable that explains the coif technique here)

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I like that it opens out flat so you can have a good rummage through the dice.  It holds plenty of dice too

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This one is going to Contraption at the weekend as a donation for the raffle.  The dice are staying with me 🙂

Monsters molished

~ DMWCarol ~ Leave a comment

Huzzah! It worked 🙂

Monster Dice Bag

With a working sewing machine these were actually pretty straightforward.  So much so that I thought I’d have my first attempt at a tutorial 🙂  My methods are kind of vague but that’s okay as all monsters are different.

Start with matching rectangles of fur and lining material (I used red felt). You’ll also want some triangles of white felt and a pair of safety eyes.

First you need to stitch together the different layers at the top edge – fur, lining and teeth – the fur needs to face inwards with the teeth between the fur side and the lining.

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Then once that’s all nicely stitched together

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Open it out flat – and smooth down the seam

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Fold the rectangle down the centre and sew into a tube with one end the lining and the other the fur

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Make sure you leave a gap in the fur for the drawstring – It wants to be close to the top but far enough back that it won’t stop you inserting the eyes.  Two to three inches should do it.

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Flatten out the tube and sew up the fur end.  I put the seam in the middle because I liked it that way but you could leave it to one side just as easily.

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Then you need to add in your eyes – they want to be about an inch or so apart and close to the teeth edge.  I added circles of felt around mine as they looked a bit too small.  I forgot to take a photo of this part, bu you can see the placement on the finished bags.

Then all you need to do is sew up the bottom edge of the lining and sew a couple of channels for the drawstring to go in (lined up with the gap you left in the seam in the fur)

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The rows of stitching should be either side of the gap you left in the fur – just poke a finger through to see where it starts and finishes.  Thread some cord through and if you want to, add knots or toggles to stop it coming back out again.

And that’s it – one monster ready to eat your dice 🙂  I also made a tongue shaped pouch to hold pencils which attaches inside with a piece of stick on velcro but that’s completely optional.

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I’ve ordered some different colours of fur so I can make more of these, they’re such fun!

Let me know if you give it a try.

Week two of the crafts course

~ DMWCarol ~ Leave a comment

This morning was a lot more fun – no paperwork!  Thank the gods!

The glue is now dry on my notebook so I picked that up.  It’s very shiny which means it doesn’t photo very well.

Notebook

We started this season off looking at colour theory and talking about harmonising colours and contrasting colours.  Then we got to play with the fancy papers again to make mini collages that will eventually be turned into magnets.

I made four.  I can’t decide which I like most.  The picture isn’t great as it was taken on my mobile, but it should at least give an idea of what I’ve been doing

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Next time we’re supposed to bring in something we make at home that we’d like to sell so I need to get out the links and put together some chainmail jewellery as I think that’s my most likely ‘product’

Lemony update

~ DMWCarol ~ Leave a comment

The lemon curd was good.  In fact good doesn’t come close to doing it justice, it was sharp and tangy and rich and silky and everything you’d want a lemon curd to be.  It was so good I will have to restrict myself on how often I can make it.

As well as filling and covering Gary’s birthday cake I had enough left to make a lemon curd cheesecake and a sort of Eton mess.

The cheesecake was dead easy – crush up a pack of ginger nut biscuits for the base and hold together with melted butter.  While that’s chilling whip a large tub of double cream until thick.  Take one tub of marscapone and stir in about 5 tablespoons of lemon curd.  Then stir that into the cream.  Taste and add caster sugar until it’s as sweet as you want it (I like it sharp so only a couple of spoonfulls were needed).  Pile the creamy cheesey lemony mix on top of the biscuit base and squish down.  Keep in the fridge until you are ready to eat.  Easy and yummy!  When I make it again I might add vanilla or melted white chocolate to the marscapone instead and use the lemon curd to make a swirl through the cheesecake instead of blending it in.  Couldn’t taste much better but I think it would be pretty.

The Eton mess was also dead simple – crumble up some meringue nests (I bought them cos I was feeling lazy but you can make your own if you are more of a domestic goddess), whip a small tub of cream, stir together – add blueberries and lemon curd towards the end so they are stirred through but not fully mixed in.  Delicious!

Monster Misadventure

~ DMWCarol ~ Leave a comment

Oh dear.  My attempts at making the monster dice bag have so far been disastrous.

It started ok – I worked out my plan of attack, found fur fabric and red and white felt, cut them to the appropriate sizes, got some googly eyes I’d purchased from ebay and was all set to go.  It should be a fairly straight forward make, just sandwich white felt teeth between the fur and the red felt lining. Sew that together then seam the whole lot into a tube, close the fur end and most of the felt end, turn right side out and add in the eyes and a tube for the drawstring – should be done in half an hour.  I’d even worked out plans for a removable tongue that would double as a mini pouch for pencils or special dice.  Looking good.

Gary dug out the sewing machine for me from where it had been stashed when we moved here over a year ago (How can it have been so long?) and that’s where the problems started.

First step should have been to wind a bobbin of appropriately coloured thread – but when I removed the housing there was no bobbin in the machine.  And of course the box of accessories was nowhere to be found.  So we jumped in the car and drove to the nearest haberdashery which had exactly one pack of bobbins on sale.  So I bought those, some velcro, some snap fasteners and some cord and toggles and we came home again – only to find that the bobbins were the wrong size so we hadn’t solved the problem at all.

I then tried plan B which was to try and borrow one.  Dawn had a couple lurking in the depths of her sewing box which turned out to be a reasonable fit so all was looking good – until I’d threaded the damn machine at which point I realised the foot was missing so it wouldn’t work anyway. Gah!

I’ve ordered replacement bobbins and foot from ebay – hopefully they will be here in a day or two and we can try again.  For now though I’m just making chainmail

Lemony

~ DMWCarol ~ Leave a comment

Tomorrow is Gary’s birthday, and since he is a wonderful husband I figured it only fair that he should get cake.  So when he went out to work this evening I got busy and made a gin and lemon cake.  (Just a basic sponge but using gin and lemon juice in place of water).

Then I decided it needed a lemony filling so I had my first ever attempt at making lemon curd.  I didn’t have a recipe so had to improvise based on what I’d seen on TV programmes like masterchef.

I had half a bottle of lemon juice to which I added 2 eggs, a cup of caster sugar and about a third a block of butter.  All very approximate as I didn’t have a recipe.

I whisked everything other than the butter together first then cooked it until it had thickened and then melted in the butter before whisking again.

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It looks ok, but I guess I’ll find out for sure whether it’s worked when it’s cooled down enough to taste 🙂

New project – furry monster dice bags

~ DMWCarol ~ Leave a comment

I am going to have a try at making furry monster dice bags.  Gary wants one and if I make a couple one can be donated to the raffle at Contraption to help the lovely Chris buy Raspberry Pis for the school that Jack goes to.

I don’t have a pattern so will be making it up as I go along.  It should be easy enough though, just a simple drawstring bag, fur on the outside, red on the inside, teeth around the edge.  Maybe with a tongue to loll around inside.

How hard can it be?

Book!

~ DMWCarol ~ Leave a comment

I woke up this morning to find the pdf galley for Mythologically Torqued in my email inbox.  It looks really good.  I’ve read through some of the other stories and thoroughly enjoyed them so I feel my little tale is in good company 🙂

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I’ve had stories published in anthologies before, but it is still a huge thrill to see it all coming together.  It makes me feel like a ‘proper writer’.  I will be grinning like a loon all day.