My workshop

 Yesterday Dad decided to give me and my workshop an opportunity to show that I'm on my way, by giving me a  "new" 30 year-old cupboard for my stuff :) This was a cupboard my parents had when they got married 33 yrs ago. Its not pretty at all, and I dont have time nor money to renew it buuuut it makes wonders to my piles and piles of boxes of fabric, yarn, paints ....all over the room.  Other nice thing is that I'm allowed to use a small cabinet from an old Oma's bookcase, I've always loooved this cabinet :) Its now the place for my notebook materials and craftbooks

Im happy

Now everything's gonna be handy and ordered....or so I hope...I'll take some pics later..


it's exciting

new books and yarn :D

Last friday mom and I found  this magnifiscent crochet book from leisure arts at our local yarn store.....°_°  It was a must so we bought it.

It wasn't really expensive (round 260MXN), and is worth every single cent of it. InsideI found a treasure of new posibilities for my bags and stuff in general.  There's a small chapter about the history of crochet, all the techniques, how to's of main stiches aaaand....

 Look! There's even a stitch pattern gallery along with pictures, steno and explanations :D makes me sooo happy :D

The real objective of our visit was to get some yarn for a nice baggy mom's been wanting to crochet for some time now. We chose cotton ease from Lion Brand. As if the book wasn't enough, there were some italian yarns on sale, 50% sale!!! linen-cotton-silk blend yarn....Yummy!! It was a must... jejeje Ya know Im an addict and so is mom....as mother as daughter I guess.

Here, I took some pics of the yarns:

I managed to get 300g of this beautiful beige silky cotton

Got 150g of both orange and red

and  my color choice for the baggy...I have just the right fabric for the lining

On other crafty news, my parents gave a really nice present: a brand  new sewing book called "Coser en casa" (sewing at home)....it's a sewing bible that lingers from basics to home decor and such :D missa happy....

Everything comes clearly illustrated step by step. I've already learnt a couple of new tricks for my bag linings :)

sweet!!

Pincushion

long time no see....buuut I just finished my new pincushion. Felt, little bit o' embroidery. Didnt want to take too long on this proyect as I have tons ( by tons I mean a hell lot) of bags to finish up....So came up with this.

I think I might be a bit addicted to paisleys, jajaja. I may use the extra felt to make a nice pencil or cosmetics baggy, what ya think?

love this color combination.

coconut button.

a closer look XD

Crafts Fair....

Today my parents and I visited the Crafts and stationery Fair at the WTC in Mexico city.

OMG!!

Soooooooooooo many people..tooooo crowded....to much pushing, heat, hunger, tacky crafts, lack of oxygen...but also many pretty fabrics, yarns and such to pick from! ...

Here in Mexico is hard to get pretty cotton fabrics, so the quilting stands were my target.  Dunno if it's cause quilting is "in" now or what, but there were like 6 or 8 different fabrics stands, and believe me, that´s a looot here..jejeje.
Some time ago, I discovered this mexican yarn company that has really really nice yarn at quite affordable prices, so Filati was my other target. Oh yeah 600MXN in yarn. That'll make some nice bags: one  brownish-pinkish cotton-wool one, a blue cotton with fancy tape...nice pink-orange tape maybe with leather or fabric and a nice light scarf with a very fancy metallic blue w/ black tape.

Another treat for me was Olfa's stand.  I've longed a cutting compas for ages now and at laaast I was able to buy it along with a pkg of blades, a bit cheaper than in regular stores.   Ah! and I got a cutting board too Yipee!

I was going mental, had to restrain myself soo much, I already owe a big deal to my dad... but hey! It's an investment right? let's see how many things can come out from all these :D

Now I'm into planning so I can get the right number and color of zippers, brooches, snaps, etc, needed.





These are yummy colors!  I'm missing more blues, though.

I bought some felt and beads  some time ago but I still wanted to show them, hehehe. The aqua and the wine ones are specially nice. The beads were on discount, very good one indead: 10 beads for less than a dollar and they're somewhat big, more or less 2cm wide.

Mom's pillows

Till last week this was one more element in my UFO bag. I finished the embroidery some years ago (sic), and as I was going through my stash..well i just decided to finish 'em up. Why not?
So here are mom's new bed pillows.

St James cross belt pouch

I know this lovely minstrel who looves medieval stuff and above all Santiago de Compostela, (Santiafo-St James, same person) so last year (OMG time flies....) I decided to make a special belt pouch for him. Fave yarn shop, some nice woolen yarn, leather, red woollen cloth and off-white linen and off I went...jejeje

It's a simple bag a bit wider at the bottom and rounded on the corners...simple but pretty :) The effect I wanted on the bottom couldn't be achieve by crocheting in circles, well I couldnt't, sooo I had to do a front and back parts. After putting it all together, felting came along so the bag can endure the hard use a mistrel could give to it. When felting crochet, I always try to remeber that it'll shrink more horizontally than vertically...or ...how was it?

While the washing machine did her work, I marked and cut out the St James cross ( Cruz de Santiago) from beautiful red woollen cloth (dunno why but M'm head over heels for the texture in it)

I'd never done this before, so..well..my stitching didn't look as pretty as I thought it would, actually it's quite dreadful, soooo.....

I used those uneven horrible looking stitches to embroider a more even endging..better looking doesnt it?

The lining was something that took me a while. For some reason (dunno why????), I coudn't get it to be the right size...at the end it turned just fine buuut the first atempt ended up being a lavender sachet jejeje.

For the leather straps I got some help from the above mentioned mistrel. He lendt me waxwed cotton and the tools needed for making the holes (dunno how those are called), he even explained how to do it...hehehe of course he had no idea of what I was doing...or so I think ¬_¬

My fave is the little leather button, my mom's idea. She has a bag from morocco with that type of closure, so when I told here I hated how my store-bought button looked with the leather strap, she suggested I make this other instead....and It worked! ^_^

So, here's the finished pouch. It's has no synthetic materials in it.

my special proyect

I've been wanting a special wallet for myself for I dont know how long now. A wallet with enough room for all my credit cards, id, license etc. As a special treat for myself, I decidede to sew one.
Everything started with a: I want it felted. Bought some black wool and knitted a large enough rectangle to do the trick. The first idea was to make this pretty simple wallet with some ladybug buttons I love and some simple embroidery work, afterall I'm just a rookie. Keep it simple I thought.

As my mind worked on the idea..paisleys began to appear and ladybugs were sent into the button tin until further notice. grabbed some embroidery cotton...then some seed beads...metallic thread...till...well, I'm up to here: