Spiderville Balloons

"Spiderville" is what I once called the loft space in my old house and in our family, it's now used to denote any spider-inhabited domain. And here's a helium filled one, which gives me the shivers just looking at it:



If you must make such horrible items for your Halloween party (and even I'll admit they'd look extremely cool), you can find the tutorial over on Crafty Crafty.

Flower Power

In order to improve my fledgling crochet skills I started making flowers, from 201 Crochet Motifs, Blocks, Patterns and Ideas by Melody Giffiths. At first I thought this book might be a bit too traditional for my tastes (I lean towards the quirky, punky and alternative), but I enjoyed making these and I'm pleased with the results.

I made the larger flowers into brooches and mounted them on a card for my Nan, to wish her Happy Easter. I sewed the simpler flowers to another card, for my Dad and his wife. Sent them both off to Spain today, but no doubt too late to make it there for Easter.

So, I now know how to do the magic ring thing when crocheting in the round, which means I can start making Amigurumi. Just stumbled across this cute octopus, which I think I might start today...

Mini Christmas Tree with Origami Cranes

A bit late, but here it is - our origami Christmas tree. I started out with grand ideas of a proper sized tree with hundreds of traditional origami cranes, but scaled down to this cute tree in a pot in the end. And that had a lot to do with mis-ordering of origami paper (always pay attention to the sizes!).

I'm pretty pleased with it and my fingers now know how to make cranes without my brain being involved. Quite a long way off before I hit the magical 1,000 mark (the maker of 1,000 cranes is bestowed with good luck, apparently).

Funny thing - left it so long the tree itself is totally dead. One touch and it crumbles to dust. I suppose Christmas truly is over...

New Year Tins

Some craft from H this time, but first some background information. Every New Year's Eve in Finland, people melt tin uudenvuoden onnenkenkä (literally 'New Year lucky shoes'). Once they are liquid the melter throws them into a bucket of water while making a wish for the year ahead. Then everyone analyses the shape of the cooled tin. "Ah yes, a boat, that means travel," spake the wise H the first time I took part in the tradition, "Or not...".

This year H decided to melt some of the tin shoes inside a cast iron pancake pan and then used his Dremel (it's first proper use, hoorah) to engrave them. He scored the backs too, so that they can be broken into smaller parts that will fit in the metal spoon they are melted in.

He thinks they are too girly to give out now that he's made some for his friends, but I think they are great. Ours has our names on and a "+1" for our yet-to-be-born baby.

Christmas Shortbread

Not the best photos in the world, but you can at least make out what they are (I hope). Found a recipe in a magazine and after a lengthy debate over what semolina is in Finnish (mannasuurimoita apparently), we made a batch for ourselves to munch over Christmas. Pretty successful, although H (husband) helped me with those ones (read: he did nearly everything).

Then we remembered that we were going over to H's sister's house for the evening and we had nothing to take with us. So I whipped up another batch and these are the result. Used a bit too much butter this time, but they were still edible. And this time I did most of it, with H doing the rolling out and cutting (we were running out of time at that point).

Tried to make a nice giftbox as well - used a tomato box (knew it would come in handy when I did the pack rat thing) - but not so pleased with the results. Seems I need some guidance on how to make tissue look right.