It's Sew Easy!

Hello Everybody,


Yesterday morning, I made some quick "Thank You" cards to say thanks to my relatives for my Christmas gifts. 

They were easy to make and took about 10-15 minutes to make each one. As you can see, they are embroidered with cute little hearts. How did I make the cute little hearts? Well, I purchased a new and highly unnecessary device to add to my mounting collection of non-essential crafting kit.

It's a stitch piercer, made by Sew Easy. Basically you buy the handle, which comes with a basic running stitch piercer, and then you can buy lots of different heads depending on which pattern you want to create. You just run it along whatever you're piercing (in my case, a piece of normal card) and it makes the holes. You have to sit the card on top of a piece of foam matting (I just used a sheet of fun foam), otherwise it doesn't work. Then you simply use thread (I used standard embroidery floss) to complete your pattern. Simple!

As you can tell, I haven't quite worked out where the pattern correlates with the spikes (to start and finish neatly), but I'm working on it.

Does anyone else have one of these nifty devices? Please share your work, I'd love to see it!

Thistle Girl x

Gnome Sweet Gnome

Hello Everybody,


This is a short but somewhat overdue post about our local craft group's (Cannock Crafties!) Christmas "Secret Santa". All the excitement happened on December 14th and we planned it to coincide with our Christmas Meal at our usual meeting place. Thanks to Claire and her Elf-helper, we'd all been allocated swap partners a few weeks beforehand. Definitely an improved method on last year, where we pulled names out of a hat several times as we kept on drawing ourselves! 


Anyway, we soon began swapping our presents and the "Secret" Santas became less secret. I was lucky enough to get some lovely presents from my "Secret" Santa (Claire!) and I'd like to share them with you. The presents all came in a little brown paper bag, printed with gnomes.

The first pressie was this awesome gnome badge. I love gnomes (yes, really)! I have been wearing the badge on my coat ever since and get some strange looks at work.

Continuing with the theme, the next pressie was an amazing project bag made out of this fantastic gnome fabric. It's a little cylindrical bag and she made it all herself! I'm very impressed, think it will be a while before I'm creating something like that, but I can dream. I just love the fabric, there's so much detail.

Inside, the bag is beautifully lined by pretty spotty fabric. 

And, there are buttonholes! Aren't they fab?

The next pressie was this wonderful skein of Araucania Ranco Solid in a delightful purple-pink colour. She certainly got my colour scheme spot-on. This yarn is similar to the yarn I used to make my Baktus, except that was the 'Multy' variegated type. I'm very excited to make something with it, but haven't had any ideas yet.

In the meanwhile, I will stroke and fondle it.

There was one other gift, which I'm sorry to say I cannot share with you as it has gone! It was a packet of vegetarian chewy meerkats. Nom, nom!

Anyway, hope you all have Gnome-Envy! Any ideas for the perfect project for my new yarn will be much appreciated.

Thistle Girl x

All the Pretty Things

Hello Everybody,

Today I thought I'd quickly show you some of the pretty things seen around my house this Christmas. Some are gifts (from me for me and from others!) and some are just Christmas decorations. The decorations are all coming down later today, which is a little sad but I think it is time. Balthasar, my rooted Christmas tree, came down on Saturday as he had a bit of a bug infestation. I realised that I haven't even taken a photo of him this year (his 3rd year), which is a little sad. 

1. A little canvas bag, a gift from my Auntie, it's the perfect size for carrying lunch or a few bits and bobs (from Seasalt)


2. Another bag, a shopping bag, which has lots of pretty cupcakes on and was a gift from my cousins (from Paperchase)


3. A little angel candle, I think this was a gift from my cousins a couple of years ago (no idea where it's from)


4. A little wicker heart decoration from my Mum


5. Heart photo holder from my cousins (from New Look)


6. Super cute Russian Doll measuring cups from a friend (from Fred and Friends)


7. Herdy garlic pot, also very cute, from friends (from Herdy)


8. Snowflake window gel stickers, from the local garden centre


9. Heart glass jar, for holding a tea light or something, from my Mum (also from a local garden centre)


10. My new rug!!! It's red (I don't really do red, so this is a shock). It is a present to my lounge from me and I got it in the sale (£100 off!!!) (from Dunelm)


11. Welcome to the Beach House sign, another present to myself for my coastal room (don't ask, I live probably as far inland as you can get in England) (from Matalan)


Thistle Girl x

I sewed something!!!

Hello Everybody!


I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas and New Year. Happy 2012! This is just a quick post to say that I made something, with my sewing machine. Yep, you heard correctly, I sewed something. Sunday (New Year's Day) was dull, wet and grey so I decided to get Sally out (yes, that's her new name!) and create. As I'm not particularly familiar (to say the least) with sewing, I thought I'd better start out with something simple. I found this pretty plastic bag tote on the Martha Stewart website, via Pinterest, and thought it looked fairly foolproof. Instead of using a tea towel, like she suggests, I used some pretty stripey (?stripy) fabric that I bought from Ikea a few months back.

I thought the stripes might make it easier to sew but, as you'll see, I used the fabric so that the stripes were horizontal, slightly defeating the object of helping me to sew in a straight line.

Anyway, it's not rocket-science. You just have to make a tube with a hem at the top and bottom, thread some elastic through the bottom bit and sew in a ribbon at the top for hanging.

It's by no means perfect, but was very simple and quick to make and would make a good gift. This one is all mine though!

Well, at least 2012 has got off to a good start in the world of crafting. I need to find another simple project for my next mission, any ideas?


Better get the bins in,


Thistle Girl x

December Works In Progress

Hello Everybody,


I thought I'd fill you in a little on my December Works-in-Progress. 


The first item on the agenda are my hand warmers. They're being made using another Fibre Flurry purchase from Artist's Palette Yarns. It's called Merino Cashmere DK and is 80% super wash merino, 10% cashmere and 10% nylon. It's really soft and I love the colour. The pattern is called Midnight - with a Twist! and again, I stole the idea of making these from a friend at Cannock Crafties craft group. They are relatively simple (as long as you're not nattering too much at craft group unlike me!) and have some pretty cables on the front. I haven't finished them yet, but I have done the left hand at least! I aim to have them finished pretty soon, so watch this space.

The next project I'm currently working on is a shawl called Multnomah. It's named after Multnomah county in Oregon, USA. You learn something new every day. I think the inspiration behind the name was to do with the colour way - it was originally in a variegated green, representing the vegetation of Multnomah county! Well, my Multnomah is not in green, more of a turquoisey-blue, so maybe I should think of another name. Maybe I should go for a British county, not sure many are turquoisey-blue though. The yarn was one of the main reasons that I wanted to go to Fibre Flurry, as I knew Easyknits would be there and I was desperate to get my hands on some glittery yarn. It's all about the glitter these days, don't you know, and we even drink it at craft group! I think it's for the best not to question where the glitter ends up. Anyway, there was lots of glittery yarn as it happens but my favourite was still the Easyknits Twinkle. I bought a skein in the Frozen Lake colour way (4-ply) (currently on sale!) and a lace weight one in another colour way. I hope it turns out ok, I haven't got very far with it yet. I thought it would be a good train project because (the first part, at least) requires little thought.

I just love how it sparkles in the light!

Thistle Girl x

Owl Hat

Hello Everybody,


Two posts in one day- wow it must be a Christmas miracle. Just wanted to tell you about a project that I'm actually quite happy with - a hat. Now, normally I have a bit of trouble with hats - getting the size and shape correct. I have had a few successes but a few failures also. One most noticeably last year when, inspired by a friend who was also making one, I decided to make a Phannie. Yes, you heard that correctly. I'll say it again, because it amuses me slightly. Phannie. Now, on Ravelry it states that over 900 people have made this so it's pretty popular. Some have turned out fab, others are er... interesting. Mine was in the 'interesting' category. I made it with some nice yarn, Freedom Spirit, in a purple/pink colour way but when I had finished it, it looked like well goodness knows what. I tried it on, and it looked even worse. I threw it across the room and then hid it. I haven't even been able to get it out to frog it. Unusually for me, I didn't even take a photo. I may traumatise you with one at some point though. Anyway, this is a very long winded way of saying that I wanted to make a hat. I wanted one that was the right size and shape and that (hopefully) no-one else on my train would be wearing. It seems everyone is wearing bear/panda/cat hats from high street chain stores, which are very cute but I wanted something different. 


So, after a bit of searching and hunting around Ravelry, I eventually settled on a hat design called Who?, which incorporates some cute cabled owls. The Ravelry page for the pattern is here (it's free!) and my Owl Hat project page is here.

I used yarn that I bought at Fibre Flurry 2011 but I can't really remember who I bought it from or what it is as it was in a bargain bin and unlabelled. I think it's an alpaca mix and approximately 4-ply, it's a hot pink vibrant colour. I use a 3.25 mm circular and after a few rows it was looking a little loose. As I was worried about going down a needle size (the pattern actually called for worsted weight and 4mm needles) as I thought the hat would be too small, I just held the yarn double which seemed to work quite well. 


The hat knitted up really quickly and only took me a couple of days. The cabled owls were really easy and stand out fairly well, although they would be more prominent in a bulkier yarn I should imagine. Although others had only put buttoned eyes on one or two owls, I thought this was the cutest bit so put them on all my owls. I also added a pompom for goo measure, although it was properly more trouble than it was worth!


Here is the finished result:

It's a slightly strange shape as it's stretched around a light! The first few rows of the ribbing are a bit looser as I didn't want to frog and start again so left them as single held yarn.

I think the buttons are pretty cute. They're quite tiny and in various shades of purple and pink with some polka dots. They're the Papermania capsules Mini Buttons and I think I mixed up a couple of packet colours. I bought them from Hobbycraft a while ago but you can get them from various places online - think they might be these ones.

So, what do you think? Has anyone else made one of these owl hats? If so, please show me. Also, I'd be interested to hear about other cute but fairly foolproof hats so I can build a collection and have a warm head all winter long. Apparently, there's also some matching hand warmers or mittens on Ravelry but I'm going to finish the pair of hand warmers that I've started first!

Thistle Girl x

Show and Tell Part One

Hello Everybody,

Well, it's certainly been a while since I last blogged hasn't it? Naughty. Winter is definitely settling in at Thistle House and we had a very frost this morning and even a few flakes of snow earlier in the week. My non-hardy plants such as my olive trees are all cluttering up my windowsills and other surfaces in the house. I'll be glad when it's warmer so they can go back outside, won't be for quite a while yet though. 

I've got a fair few things to show you, and I'll try and write as many posts as I can this week. I felt it was only right to show you the my completed (yes, you heard correctly) Baktus, as I've been working on it for nearly a year but kept on forgetting about it. As I said in a previous post, it's made with Araucania Ranco Multy, which is a little scratchy but I'm hoping it will soften up with use. It's a little tricky to photograph, as it's quite big, but I'm sure you get the gist. You can see it on my Ravelry page here. 

Anyway, that's it for now, I'm off to make my overdue Christmas Cards. Will post more later (hopefully).


Thistle Girl x