Lariath- Live a Little.

What is now called the Road of Remembrance was originally called Slope Road. This was the route millions of soldiers marched down on their way to Folkestone harbour, on to the trenches in France and Belgium in WW1. The community around the Church that I grew up in is joining many others in making hand knitted poppies to line the Road of Remembrance. As well as sending poppies to the Road of Remembrance St Gabriel's Church in Blackburn will be making a big poppy out of many small poppies to place outside the church on Remembrance Sunday. Here's the lady who started it all on the  BBC News . As I have never actually knitted anything, I had completely no idea how to knit, this was a big challenge for me. It took me a very very long time to get the hang of knitting. I found casting on rather easy but after that everything just went wrong. After trying again and again and getting very fed up of casting on I managed to get my knitting to actually look like knitting (I think)....

Here's a quick and cheap toy I make for Tim quite regularly. Equipment: Toilet roll tube/kitchen roll tube Natural String (important see 'Safety' below)   Scissors Hamster food/treats I save all my toilet roll tubes and kitchen roll tubes etc to make toys for Tim. This is the best toilet roll tube toy I have made so far they seem to keep Tim entertained for a while and only takes me 5 minutes to make. All I do it grab a tube fold in one end of the tube and place some food/treats in the tube.   Then I fold the other end of the tube so that the treats cannot fall out.   I then use the scissors to make two small holes as the top of the tube, thread the string through the holes and tie to the top of the cage.    Voilà! The first time I made this toy Tim ignored it completely because he couldn't smell the food that was in there. To make him more interested I pulled open one of the ends a little so that he could smell t...

I finished the Solomon's knot shawl which I think looks nice as it is but I wanted to see what it looked like with a bit of a fringe or tassels or whatever you wish to call them. The fringe was easy and quick to complete. I'm not going to try to write down how I did them just watch this Youtube Video  it will give you the right idea. I only wanted thin tassels so I used two strands of yarn for each tassel which makes 4 strand tassels. This was enough for the look I wanted. Click  Here  for shawl without the tassels and a link to the shawl pattern.  Feel free to let me know if you think the shawl looks better with or without tassels.  Enjoy this post?

Not blogged in over a month! Busy busy busy. Haven't had time to craft but I've been trying to squeeze bits in here and there.  The second piece of clothing I have made, if you can call Slippers  clothing, is a shawl. I wanted a thin breezy shawl for spring/summer wear so nothing very warm. After looking at many crochet stitches I decided to give Solomon's knot a go. I'd heard this wasn't an easy stitch to complete but I wanted to give it a try. The good thing about this stitch is that the knot can be as big or as small as you want.  Here is the beginning of the shawl:  At the beginning I  found it quite difficult to keep track of where in the pattern I was, especially as this was a new stitch for me. To help with this I tied a piece of contrasting yarn to the point of the shawl (as seen in the picture). This was especially useful if I stopped crocheting and went back to it later on. However as the shawl got bigger I found it easier to pick up fro...

My 5 month old hamster Tim has time out of his cage every night depending on my working hours. If I'm on earlies (6am starts) I struggle to get him out as he doesn't wake up till after 9:30pm and I'm normally asleep myself...  Anyway I get him out for at least an hour. 15minutes running around on me and the sofa, then into the playpen for food and water and then in the ball for 15minutes. He goes back in the play pen for a while if time allows. Here he is eating his veg in the DIY playpen: This playpen is really easy to make and pretty much free if you can get hold of cardboard boxes. I used boxes from post deliveries, recycling! The cardboard boxes have to be tall enough so that the hamster cannot climb out. To make this playpen I cut down the corner of the box: With the box was completely flat I cut the flaps off one edge of the box (I used these later):   I cut the other box exactly the same. I positioned the two boxes so that all the flaps wer...

I love the look of aged paper but who has time to wait for paper to start looking old? Here's how I made paper look old, in about an hour, using instant coffee. What I used Plain white paper Instant coffee A tray - must fit size of paper  A kettle or saucepan - to boil water Somewhere to dry the paper that wont stain Paper I used normal plain white printer paper for this, although more absorbent paper would work better, printer paper worked fine for what I need. I ripped my paper in half as this is the size that I wanted and the ripping added to the aged effect. Staining The tray I used was a tin food tray, recycling! I placed a piece of paper in the tray then sprinkled some coffee on top, I then placed the next piece of paper on top and sprinkled some coffee on that and continued this using 5 pieces of paper in total (and a few extra bits). The colour of the paper will darken the more coffee used. I boiled some water, waited for this to cool a little so no...

In the mood for making bracelets again, it's been a while. I wanted to make one that was like a heartbeat. This took me ages to make as the pattern is quite complicated compared to what I've done before. The pattern I used for this can be found  Here The buckle I used for this was simple. For the loop I twisted the threads together and tied a knot. The tails were just braided and then knotted.  Wrap Bracelet I wanted to have a go at a wrapped bracelet, I've never tried this before so thought I'd give it a try. It's exactly the same as hair wrapping, you know those coloured hair wraps that young girls get on holiday.... yeah that, I had a few.  Bracelet wraps are really easy and quite quick to make; a lot quicker than the friendship bracelets like the one above anyway. It is what it says on the tin, wrapping. I watched this Tutorial  to learn the basic wrap bracelet and this Tutorial  to make the crosses in the centre of the bracelet....