Oh my god, it's tomorrow!!!

True to form I have got a cold. I feel really really achey - like I've done a cross-country run or something. And we all know how likely that is. But I struggled in to work today like a good girl and have spent a lot of the day fantacising about ally pally and rediscovering my love of strawberry shortcake. Now I'm talking about old skool, not any of this twee little thing WEARING TROUSERS!!!!!! What the hell! Anyway, calm down Byrne and remeber that opnce upon a time you used to be a feminist. True, you were 14. But still. Remember your roots.
Look at these things though!

The original little miss.

Who nowadays dares hug a duck without fearing the RSPCA?

Not a child protection officer in sight.

Not a true original charactor but so cute I had to include her. There are tonnes of website out there with loads of good stuff on (as I discovered this morning). This is just one and the graphics are rather good.

So has she actually done any knitting then or what - I hear you ask. Well, not much I must admit. I did whip out this rather nifty crocheted string bag though out of the finest mercerised cotton oddball I had to hand at the time.

I'm disproportionately pleased with this and it will be accompanying me this weekend. Inside are the goodies I recently sold on ebay and some more ATCs on their way to be swopped.

And speaking of swaps the 'whats in a purse' swap parcel arrived and it was AWESOME!

My spoiler, from Portugal, included not one but two beautiful handmade objects - a key ring and a pouch - plus sweets, lipgloss, playing cards shaped like an icercream and more. Lucky me!

Finally, I have been quite taken up with the woolly thoughts yahoo group and when I went to the 60 years of british art exhibition at the hayward (very good by the way and only a fiver if you're passing) I couldn't help but think of the bridget riley paitning that has been used on the website and on all the promo material in terms of a cusion. Garter stitch stripes with long strips sewn together. Do you see where I'm going with this? Not that I'll actually do it of course. And then I saw this:

Now look, don't hate me. I know the exhibition said no photos. And I know it reduces the quality of the work to be shown in crappy non-flash light like this rather than in the flesh which was a whole lot better. And I know it's just wrong in so many other ways. Let's leave that for now and I'll flail myself with a circular when I get home. (Not as penance though, just for fun...fnah fnah - all going a bit weird here now so back to the point.) This painting was surely designed to be freestyle crocheted. My hands are suddenly too achey from flailing at the keyboard to carry on typing so I'll just leave you with that thought and we'll see what happens.

Incidentally if anyone is at ally pally tomorrow and would care to say hello I will be at the knit and natter or knit and relax or whatever it is called this year at 11am. You have been warned! I'll be the one with the string bag. Fnah fnah.

A whole lot of crafting going on

I was rather busy at the weekend doing all sorts of crafty little things. Some were experiments for the second edition of 'ProudtobeCrafty' - your favourite crafty zine. Last few copies are still available FREE so email me with your postal address to littlelixieathotmail.com

I saw some scrapbooking letters that were 3-d and made something like this so decided to pull out the fimo and give it a go. The wire I had for the joins isn't perfect but seems to be holding together.

When I wrote before about swaps and how I'd got fed up with them my secretpal8 got upset and annoyed and I haven't heard from her since. I tried to explain by email that it was because SP8 had been so good that I'd got fed up with the paltry-by-comparison swaps at swapbot but it doesn't seem to have worked and I guess I never will receive that final parcel. It's a shame because up til now SP8 was really good for me. Anyway, one of the swaps I did before I got fed up was 'something chocolate' and my swap partner was in australia. She sent me the following really rather amazing goodies:

The cherry ones on the left were *GORGEOUS* and barely lasted the journey home from the sorting office but the koalas win the 'cute' prize. Lookie here...

Aren't they sweet. And very yummy!

The background of that picture brings me nicely on to ProudtobeCrafty project number 2 which involves using packaging. The Japanese and Americans seem to do this quite a lot but we seem to largely use the wrong sort of plastic. So I went shopping for packaging rather than food which, you can imagine, led to me coming out with a rather weird assortment of groceries. One was a pouch of raisins which turned into this.

It's a kind of large needle case/pin cusion. Details will go in the next zine along with more pics.

I haven't mentioned it so far but let us not forget that it is only FOUR FREAKIN DAYS TIL ALLY PALLY or until I get there anyway. I am like a kid on xmas eve - I just can't wait. I finally managed to get it together enough to buy 'Cushy Numbers' - mathematical knitting patterns from WoollyThoughts. Their website is a bit unreliable at the mo but you can see all the books, patterns and final objects here. Email patatwoollythoughtsdotcom to order. I am absolutely definitely going to do a curves of pursuit cushion. They have a Yahoo group too called 'woollythoughts' and there are some fun people in there.