The Hemlock is quite impressive. I have now passed the 400 stitches. Yes, 400 in the round, me who tends to do two needles, quick projects... To be honest I am hoping to finish it off soon. Ahahah the famous last words! Anyway check out the bed, the flowers are cut out of leather. I like the combination leather and wool... 
I used the Blue Leaf headband pattern available on ravelry for free, my beloved mirasol sulka yarn ( I nearly have none left, argghhh) and 5mm needles. 
As you can see, our current house is very tidy (or not) and we are clearly very minimalist...
Whilst in France, I came across a really good book about FIMO paste. I always looked at it, but just did not know what to do with it... But the book came up with a brilliant idea, to make your own buttons with FIMO. You can choose your colour, form and print on the buttons.
I tried different forms. the biggest one has been made with a stamp, then a square (gone round) and then the round button I used for the headband. This is really quick, 5 mns to do it (should have spent a bit more time to be fair), half an hour in the oven, wait for it to cool down and varnish. I am really impressed with the result, and will definitely used it again. I may need a bit of practice before doing all the fancy thing you can see on youtube, but it is really worth a try. 
Here is the patchwork pattern version (which in fact I prefer to the original picture):
All the interior design magazines I read (and believe me I read many) featured the prints. Can you have too much of a good thing? Well I am ashamed that the novely worn off a bit. It is still great, but it felt that everyone had the print..
However I found out a very cool way to have my unique word cloud. Wordle explains that it is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide.
The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends
Here are some of display on the website
You will see on the picture my best homemade soup (as in the only one I did this year).. pumkin soup. It is really tasty, and very very easy to do (again apologies for bad picture).
The recipe is from the BBC Food website (it is one of the few pumkin soup recipes without curry powder). I used organic vegetable stock cube and it is all worth it, as a lot of the flavour comes from the stock. It is really filling. I added the coutrons the first time, but honestly it was too much (even for M, and we are talking about my 6'2 husband who is constantly hungry!). Do try it!
South African company REcreate specialises in taking old luggage, milk bottles, typewriters and other back-of-the-basement items into unique pieces of furniture.
In order to help his family out they started selling prints of his works as well as a few originals on Etsy. All proceeds will go directly to Aidan’s medical bills.
I have been really moved by this story, and a monster from Aidan should really make it into my home, as a personal reminder that it could happen to everyone. And also hoping that Aidan will get better soon.
In the end I chose the Mirasol Sulka yarn in Thyme (212), and I wanted a pattern/stitch that was both simple but quite effective visually. I tried a couple of stitches and ended with the herringbone stitch. This tutorial is really useful. Once you know it is easy but requires a lot of work for your elbows though. Beware this stitch eats yarn, but the effect is really worth it.
My big issue was to make the cushion reversible. Once I decided that there was too much yarn going into this I decided to go for a geometric pattern at the back. Here is the back (already quilted) on its own. It is my first attempt at this design, so it is not my best effort but you have a good idea of the effect.
And here is the corner of the cushion! it is actually not as bad as other parts of the patchwork. I love the butterflies fabric (I think it is a Michael Miller fabric). The colours are a bit richer than shown on the picture.
I will definitely used that pattern again, I am hoping to make a big wall hanging patchwork for the new house, with a mix of light and dark colours of the same tone.
So many to choose from ... Cannot wait!
Keira first started experimenting with typewriter art, when she was in university. She bought an old typewriter, from a flee market, in the hope that she would soon use it to write something. By the middle of her first year at the university, she hadn’t come up with anything to put down on paper, so she decided to use it as a drawing tool. 
I had to hang it on the curtain pole in the main room... Not exactly the best shot but it gives you a good idea of what it looks like (this is only half of it). What have I learnt?
1. My taste in colours changed, and I am over little flowers print... I am even surprised that my teenage self was into that (clearly showing signs of the countryside girl in me).
2. The purchase of a sewing machine makes my life SO much better. I did everything by hand (all these squares are stitched by hand... that is dedication, and clearly the reason why I gave up). But I finished with the machine within an hour...
3. Buy enough fabric - I need more prep work.. Here is the 'dark' corner. I like it obviously because it accounts for the time that it took to complete, but I can see that it is not ideal if I were to give it to someone (outside my family that is).
All in all, I am impressed with the design I came up all these years ago, and very happy to see it finshed and sitting on my armchair. 
