Little things

The other day I was looking for a button. As I was trawling through my collection, I came upon a few old favourites. I got to admiring them all, and then I did this:

Arranging my buttons made me happy. If you look at the peach buttons in the middle it looks like they're smiling too! Isn't it nice to be with all your button friends?

Perhaps one day I'll even sew them on to something...

Passing it on.

My husband's goddaughter and niece's birthday is the day after mine. So naturally I feel the urge to slightly nudge her in the crafty direction every year. I remember when I was a kid I loved crafty presents. Rug hooking, paint-by-numbers, sewing stuff - I just couldn't get enough. One of the best birthdays I had was my fifth, when I was given a huge trunk full of dress up clothes and then for my party, all my friends brought their dress ups and we went to town getting creative and sharing things.

So this year for the little one's seventh, I decided to put together a box of goodies and a book to get her going on her crafty way. The book I chose is a really sweet little book called The Girls' Best Book of Knitting, Sewing and Embroidery by Virginie Desmoulins. It has a little history, a few projects and even a paper doll that pops out of the cover of the book that you can dress up.

I got a lovely tin box from Paperchase and filled it with some felt, yarn, fabric, a notebook, a pie pincushion, stickers, beads and ribbon and then when I wrapped it up I strung a few vintage buttons on some yarn and wrapped a few lengths of the yarn around the present instead of using regular ribbon. I love the Paperchase kitty wrapping paper and card and I thought they looked so cute I had to share them here. Here's hoping the crafting bug will catch her in Australia!

Merry Christmas.

For all your oh-my-god-i-forgot-to-buy-wrapping-paper-wrap-presents-and-it's-christmas-eve needs: A tutorial I found via this very lovely blog.

Happy Christmas :)

Oyster Card Cover

It was the yarn that inspired me. I figured, most Londoners don't particularly enjoy their commutes, so why not brighten it up a little. So I whipped up a little cover for my oyster card, which is now looking a million times more brilliant, not to mention a lot easier to find in the Mary Poppin's Narnia that is my handbag. For those of you interested, here's what I did:

Used: less than 1 skein Katia Galaxia yarn (purchased from All the Fun of the Fair near Oxford St)

1 5mm knitting needle
1 yarn needle

I cast on 40 stitches.
I knit 25 rows.
I cast off.

I then threaded the yarn needle with a length of the yarn approximately 3x the length of my oyster card when opened. I then weaved the yarn through the stitches on the borders of all 4 sides of the piece. I then laid the oyster card, opened out on top of the knitted piece. With another shorter length of yarn, I threaded it through the piece, at the spine, drawing the two longer sides together, and tied with a bow. I then took the two ends of the longer threaded yarn length and pulled them tightly, gathering the border stitches to form a nice cozy for the oyster card, tying again with a bow.

Pretty easy huh? I think it's a good way to personalise something that every Londoner's got, and you can embellish or modify to suit yourself pretty easily.