mistakes – Julia's Creative Year

Clay dragon

Yesterday in school the students had to make clay dragon figureheads for a viking longship. I discovered that if I drew my own design the student I support began to incorporate some of my ideas into his own design. So I asked if I could have my own clay so I could model how to do things without having to modify his sculpture at all.

I followed his design (at least initially) and this is what I ended up with.

It was fun to sit with the students and work alongside them. I hope I modelled appropriately how to react when our sculpture doesn’t look as we’d hoped (when I put the mouth in and it didn’t go how I expected), and how to respond when a child tells you your model looks like a cow 😂😂. We all ended up encouraging and helping each other, which was really cool. It was also very relaxing and therapeutic to sit smoothing and shaping the clay.

Making project bags and learning to make a top from a pattern

I’ve made two project bags, as I’m considering the idea of opening an etsy shop at some point in the new academic year and would like to build a bit of a stock up before I open it. I thought I’d start with project bags as I think people would want to buy them and I can make them quite easily. But I’ve hit a dilemma with the first one I’ve made as it’s got a wrinkle in it from where I’ve top stitched round. I’m reluctant to unpick it all and start again. So I’m left with the question ‘do I just keep it for myself or list it in the shop as a flawed item? ‘ what do you guys think?

Here’s the wrinkly flaw-it’s more noticeable in real life!

Both the bags used vintage material… The owls one is left over material from curtains I had in my bedroom growing up, and the purply one is left over from material my parents had curtains from.

Then, with my mum’s help I’ve started to try to make myself a top following a pattern. The pattern reckons its easy, but I might question that! It is rather daunting being faced with all the big bits of paper with lots of code on them.

We’ve managed to cut all the pieces out, having learnt that it’s a very slippery fabric that moves whenever there’s a slight touch to it. Pinning the pieces to it usually took some time as several pins would need repositioning.

I also discovered that rather than working on the floor and cutting with scissors I got a much straighter, sharper line when I used my rotor blade on the cutting mat.

So, all the pieces are now cut and at some point I need to tackle the challenge of starting to sew it together. It’ll be a while as I’ve got a busy few days coming up.

Crochet bag

I’ve finally finished making a granny square bag that has been in my head for ages.

I followed the instructions for this octagon granny square, which was really easy to follow with useful photos to show exactly what the instructions meant. I’d definitely use more patterns by this designer.

Once I’d made two squares and discovered they were miraculously the same size, I double crocheted them together and made a long handle so it can go cross body.

Because of the holes in the crochet I needed to line it and here’s where things went pear shaped! I Measured it, and measured it again, and laid the cotton squares (using up the last main bits of the butterfly batik 🙁) against the bag, and it looked OK. I didn’t want them too big as I wanted them to sit inside the bag neatly, but somehow they ended up with about a 2cm gap all round the edge. I was so frustrated and still don’t really know how it happened… I even thought I’d given a bit of a seam allowance.

But I fixed it a bit by crocheting together the gaps at the top either side of the lining so it doesn’t look bad…. It’s just not how I intended it!

Working workout instructions

Today I quickly knocked up a little zippered pouch. I’ve made a couple of zippered bags before and always used instructions (which doesn’t necessarily mean I’ve done them right!). Today it was part laziness (sewing equipment downstairs, phone upstairs) and partly the idea that if I figure things out for myself then I’m more likely to understand and remember how to do them. So here is the pouch I made with no instructions!

It didn’t exactly turned out as I’d planned😂. For a start it was meant to have elephants on the outside and paisley on the inside. But the first attempt to sew the zip on went wonky and didn’t catch all the zip edge, and after one lot of unpicking I really couldn’t face a second lot when I realised the paisley was on the outside and the elephants on the inside. Oh well… Both materials are pretty so maybe I’ll mix them up! Now both are represented on the outside and both on the inside. I quite like it though!

The zip edges are not as neat as they could be… I couldn’t remember how/be bothered to cover the ends with fabric. I finished it off with a bit of hand stitching, so there are no unfinished ends at least.

But overall, for a quick project, I’m really pleased with it… It was about 45 minutes from start to finish (including clearing some space on the table to sew!!). It looks pretty, its sturdy, and the zip works, and I got it finished before the football started (what more could you ask for!!). 😊

Blanket WIP update

Well, I’ve done lots of the blanket, which unfortunately means I’ve made lots of mistakes! The blanket will be fine but I’m not sure how useful my services as pattern tester will be.

This is where it was last time I blogged about it.

Then I had a lovely evening crocheting with my friend lizzy while she knitted a hot water bottle cover. It got this far then

Then I did the odd few rows, and then went to a crochet morning at our church. I did a couple of rows and realised I’d missed something out so frogged. But then I realised I hadn’t frogged far enough, and to get it right I’d have to frog back past my new ball of wool join and lose about 2 inches of work. Well, that would just be too disheartening, so i keep going and decided i’d have a pair of leaves missing and a bigger gap between the flowers.

So tonight I’ve kept going and have appreciated they loan of a spindly spool thing that I put the wool onto so it unravels without going everywhere. Thank you to lovely Ann from church for lending it to me. I normally take wool from the centre of the ball, but i felt the colours would match better if I started from the outside of this second ball.

Here’s where I’ve got to now after an evening of sitting listening to my sister reading a loud from little town on the prairie to my niecephews as I crocheted… I felt like I’d gone back in time!

Just need to make the final flower and then make the blanket the right length and do the border.

Here’s a close up of tonight’s flowers which look different to each other when they’re supposed to be the same, and which have big gapey holes in the bottom edges. Other than those two issues I’m quite pleased with them!

I’m getting better at living with and adapting as a result of my mistakes in crochet, but I’ve realised that I overestimated my ability as a pattern tester, and I’ve also learnt a very important lesson that it helps to tick off the tows on the pattern as you crochet them. On my defence I didn’t do that because I thought I would want to use the pattern more than once, but I’ve now realised that problem can be overcome with different coloured pens!!

Loads of different things!

Hey there everyone. Hope you all had a good weekend. My husband and I had kept this weekend free, after having a few busy weeks, and it was lush to have time to catch up with each other, and have time to focus on crafts.

On Saturday we went to a gorgeous cafe next to the canal, called the stables café. I took my crochet and sat in the sun with this beautiful view!

The blanket is coming along though I still seem to be making lots of mistakes. I know they won’t really notice too much, but it’s bugging me that I keep ending up with too many stitches in the row and I don’t know why I’m getting them. Plus I obviously got a bit cocky with one set of leaves and managed to add an unnecessary loop in front of the stalk! But… At least it is growing!

I also spent time making collage cards for a giveaway on kelleysdiy which I am really excited to be part of. Do go and check it out… She’s had loads of sponsors donating things for the giveaway so there will be loads of chances to win something lovely.

I love the idea of giveaways, and can give you a heads up that I plan to do my own to celebrate when I have 50 WordPress followers… Don’t think it’ll be too long now! 🤣

I got really excited when I discovered a blog written in french and English, and found that Charlotte makes beautiful wooden items. She wanted to do a craft swap for a gorgeous unicorn necklace, so I’m going to make her a crochet shawl in exchange. It might take a while though as I really need to finish pattern testing this blanket too.

My final area of creativity was making a photo book online for one of my nephews who I’d taken on a zookeeper day. It was so much fun going through the photos again and adding comments about what he’d been doing. They’re coming to stay soon, so i hope it arrives before then so I can give it to him and see his reaction.

Ooh, and finally… How could I forget?? I had the most gorgeous parcel from wool warehouse, with my book and the wools to make Sophie’s universe. I love the bag it came in too!

The project will have to go on hold for a while as I have too many things on the go at the moment, but maybe it will make a lovely winter project.

It grew!

This evening while babysitting for our nephews I thought I’d do a couple of rows on my spring fields baby blanket, and then I got caught up in it and suddenly it had grown loads!

I like reflecting on the growth of the blanket and the growth of the baby I’m crocheting it for, and have a much stronger sense of that with this blanket than with others because while crocheting I am making the flowers grow taller and sprout leaves.

I feel quite proud of myself as I’m doing stitches and techniques I’ve never done before, while following a pattern written in American terms. Mainly its ok as there are really useful descriptions of what to do for each stitch, but i realise I did one row wrong as I forgot to translate double crochet up to treble crochet. It made my row a bit wobbly (see the picture above of where I’d got to yesterday) but I sorted it with some stitches with less tension on the next row! I realise things also went rather wrong somewhere in the first couple of rows, making the stalk a bit wonky and the edge very uneven, but I think I’ve sorted that now, and have the right number of stitches between each flower stalk, so i hope it will be ok from now on. By the time I realised I’d made these mistakes I’d gone too far to consider frogging. Crochet is helping me to learn to live with and accept my mistakes instead of trying to make them disappear. I’m beginning to accept that things that are less than perfect are still acceptable and often even still really good. Hopefully I can begin to transfer this acceptance from crochet into my life a bit more.

Who knew that crochet could have such an influence on personal and spiritual development?!