Knitted Pretties - Knitted Cacti

A friend of mine was recently given one of these gorgeous knitted cacti as a house warming gift and I want one. The Arizona Knitted Cactus (above) and a gorgeous range of other succulents are hand made in Melbourne by Odds&Ends and available to purchase on Etsy. I'm also loving Odds&Ends creator Andrea Daniel's blog. 

Christmas Craft Part 1: Potato Printed Wrapping Paper

Every year at Christmas time I feel the urge to get crafty and I dream up a long and unachievable list of handmade and DIY projects. Having kids makes the urge even greater as I attempt to relive happy kids craft memories with my daughter, who is not always as cooperative as I might like.

Last Christmas was memorable for its handmade failures. There was the gingerbread house that collapsed within 12 hours due to the humidity, the gingerbread men that suffered a similar fate and started shedding limbs, and salt dough decorations that took forever to dry out and then went soggy and fell from the tree (leaving their ribbons behind). The most memorable disaster occurred when we were gathered at the dinner table and started pulling the handmade crackers. We were expecting to find a candy cane and hand written joke in each so it was quite a surprise when a small army of sugar ants came flying out!

This year I had grand delusions of making all gifts handmade, but luckily remembered just in time that a mother of three kids under four might not have a load of time on her hands. So instead I'm going to try and keep it simple, tasteful, and ant-free!

Potato Printed Wrapping Paper
Equipment: potatoes, cookie cutters, sharp knife, roll of craft paper or brown paper (we used a roll of craft paper from Ikea), kid's acrylic paints, plastic lids.

Press potato haves down onto cookie cutter until the cutter is about 1cm deep, or as far as you can go before it cuts through the other side of the potato. With the cookie cutter still in the potato, use a sharp knife to cut away the centimentre outside the cutter.

We chose just two colors, warm yellow and red, and used plastic lids from baby formula tins (of which we have hundreds) as paint dishes.

Red stars. I was happy with how these turned out, and with the streaky effect I got as a result of doing it on the timber outdoor table.

I think the squirrels are my favourite even though it is not very Christmassy, especially here in the southern hemisphere.

The last time I tried potato printing was 2 years ago...Nina was 20 months old and more interested in covering her body with paint. I thought she would be better suited for the task this time around, but she preferred mixing all the paints together and using a paint brush to create a giant splodge on the paper. She lost interest in about 5 minutes, and I was left wondering why I bother. She is so creative and loves craft but I just can't get her to follow my instructions on tasks like this. Maybe I am expecting too much from a 3 year old, or maybe the designer in me is containing the artist in her? Anyone have any good tips for engaging toddlers in these kind of activities?

Stay tuned for Christmas Craft Part 2: Cotton Braid for Wrapping Gifts.

A Mitten Reincarnated

Here's another craft project from last week.



When I started knitting last year it was the middle of winter and I was working in a freezing cold office here in the mountains. I decided that I needed a pair of fingerless mitts for working at the computer. Instead of using a pattern I decided to improvise with a lace stitch square that would be sewn up the side leaving a hole for my thumb. As you can probably predict, this project went wrong in so many ways. For a start I was using a wool/soy blend yarn which was quite horrible to knit with, especially in lace. As it was my first attempt at lace knitting I had to cast on and knit the ribbing 3 times before I got the pattern right, I kept mysteriously losing and gaining stitches in all the wrong places (later I found out about threading a piece of yarn through the stitches at the end of the ribbed section - if only I'd known then!). And to top it all off they looked terrible when I finally finished them. I didn't even bother to sew up the second one.


One of the "mittens" before reincarnation

On the positive side, what I did learn was how to draw up a lace pattern on a graph chart and how to read and knit from a chart, which I find much easier than reading the pattern.

So after being stashed away in a drawer for almost a year, I came across these again in last week's tidy up. I also came across 2 empty tea tins that I had stashed away at Christmas time. I try not to collect junk as we don't have the room for it in our little cottage, but I thought these tins could be useful for something. And so, two lost souls have come together in a new form. I painted the tins black and stitched up the misused mitts to form a pretty little tin cozy. One of which is now an ideal container for storing my collection of old straight needles and the other will be a gift for someone in my family.


T2 tea tins getting overhauled: Monk Pear and Girlie Grey (my favourite)

Babushka Dolls

Over a year ago I was given a lovely gift by my talented and crafty friend Caroline; a handprinted craft fabric panel by Kristen Doran. Half of the fabric is printed with 8 adorable dolls and the other half with pretty coordinating fabric.

I finally got my act together and decided to sew these little treasures up as a birthday gift for Nina. Some of them are a little wobbly but she doesn't seem to mind. As is her way, she loves the tiniest dolls the best.

I love Kristen Doran's products and think they make lovely gifts for crafty ladies.


Fabric panel image courtesy of Kristen Doran Design