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Welcome to my blog!

I'm Lori and I love to craft. I cross stitch, knit and crochet and anything else that takes my fancy! I love to make amigurumi and other knitted and crocheted characters.
I live in the north east of England and when I'm not busy with thread or wool I love to read thrillers and watch things on the TV that make me laugh. I have a love of tattoos too and have quite a collection!


Friday 24 August 2012

Hello, sorry I'm late this week!

Hi everyone and welcome to my new followers, lovely to see you :-) I'm a bit late this week posting as been busy painting the hall, I hate painting! Now I'm hoping the smell of the gloss will go away quickly as it's awful! On the plus side it looks fabulous :-)

So this week and a bit has been busy. I got an email last Friday as a local craft fair had some last minute cancellations for their fair on Saturday so did I want a table, I thought why not, I had nothing else on. Not a great day for sales but whatever, you can't win them all! It was at the garden centre Plants R Russ in Sunderland and we were all outside in a polytunnel, WOW was that hot in the sun, sitting in a greenhouse all day! I was certainly wilting don't know about the plants! They have another fair tomorrow, the food and craft one this time as last week was just craft, and I'll be back there again. This one is the one I'm at every month this year. The weather is forecast for rain, obviously, it is a bank holiday weekend so what else would it be :-) Fingers crossed it doesn't put off people coming to a garden centre!

So lets see, what have I made in the last week and a bit....  a Witch's Cottage.


with a spider making lots of webs....


a broomstick and a black cat....

a ghost and a pumpkin.......

and a cauldron with something strange bubbling away inside! I added the bat button to finish it off and I love this one! It seems I wasn't alone as within five minutes of posting the pics on facebook it had sold, yippee! I've since made another one which is now in my Etsy shop and hope this will be a popular one.

Also this week, a couple more Little Ladies for Halloween,


Wendy the witch......


and Debbie the devil :-)

Also Snowball the cat, not very Halloween but I do love cats!


I was also approved to stitch and sell designs made from the fabulous patterns of Sublime Stitching :-) I love these designs so I'm thrilled about this! You have to apply and they check out your shops and send you a contract if your accepted to try to stop copyright theft which is a good idea. I've stitched two designs so far but not sure what to make them into yet, any ideas? I was thinking maybe little cushions or even just frame them but any suggestions are welcome :-) They need a good iron! The first is these cute little kokeshi dolls




and the second is this gorgeous pin-up fairy, I so love this one! I'll be adding some silver metallic stars around her. The pics aren't great as the weather is so dark and miserable here :-( 


Almost finished a new mushroom too, this one is Geranium Cottage and should be done today and on Etsy. So I guess even though I've been busy painting still a lot done this week. Three mushrooms (almost) and three bag tags and two embroideries not bad! 

Better get back to the preparation for tomorrow then, I'm making a batch of quick card bookmarks at the moment. Have a great long weekend everyone, hope the sun shines on some of you too :-)




Tuesday 14 August 2012

Another week goes by

Hello everyone!  

Been a busy week for me which is good as it had been very quiet, I guess it's a between time of year with no occasions nearby! I'm getting on with mushroom cottages as I need to replace some and also working on a new one for Halloween which is fun :-)

I had a custom request for a large hanging mushroom with a fairy, birthday cake, bunting, snail and ladybird on it with a lot of pinks and purples. Also hearts for spots and a pink door.  I made this one.....


A close up of the front,


and the back with the snail.


I loved how it turned out and so did the buyer I'm pleased to say :-)

Next I thought I'd plough through my list of August birthday cards, it's such a busy month of birthdays for me! Here's the cards I made, not bad for one day!








I thought I'd get busy making the rug for my kitchen too, I started it a few weeks ago and had left it since then. The idea suggested by a lovely friend was to match it to my spotty kettle! But I have to say after making a plain white rug and lots of coloured spots when I laid it all out I decided it wouldn't work. One of the good things about crochet and knitting can be the way you can rip it out and start again! Love the colours  of the spots on the kettle though, they're bright pink, light pink, blue, orange and bright green, so I'm going to do stripes instead with white stripes between. The cats helped me decide it wouldn't be practical to leave it white with spots as when I laid it out on the floor they immediately started floor surfing, running and jumping on it and skidding across the kitchen, lol! White is not really practical then as it would need washed about twice a day! That was two days of crocheting out the window then!

I've also made another of the Little Ladies, now I want to know if you can tell this is Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. I like her but I wasn't sure if the stitched checks on her dress worked.


What do you think?

Well I'm off to put the kettle on and make a mushroom :-) Have a good week!

Monday 6 August 2012

Ami swap time, travelling craft box and Little Ladies everywhere!

Hello everyone! Happy Monday to you all :-)

So hope you are all well and having fun! The rain and thunder here has been mad for a couple of days here, I would love some sunshine again but the British weather strikes again.

This week I can show you the ami swap goodies! The monthly swap with the lovely Steph always makes me smile :-) Steph sent mine a week early as she was away last week so I couldn't show them until she got back and received mine. So my parcel from Steph was brilliant as always, she sent me this gorgeous knitted kitty


How gorgeous is she!! I love her little bell and the pretty flowers stitched around her, so cute. Also, Hercule Poirot arrived! This is brilliant, we both love Agatha Christie so he's just perfect :-)


And some lovely kitty ribbons and beads, bells and buttons. Thanks Steph, I love everything!


Oh i nearly forgot, there were also two super cute crochet mice for Poppy and Daisy too :-) Here's Poppy who had pinched them both straight out of the wrapping paper!


I made a ballet dancing bunny for Steph, seen here dancing in the flowers :-)


I also sent a lot of stickers and a stitched card of a fairy,


Also the travelling craft box has been and visited me. Now it's with the next person on the list Kayla, I can reveal what I took from the box......


the fabulous stitched notebook, lovely metal bookmark with the painted wooden hearts and white and pink felt heart are all by Kerry. The lovely big heart and sweet mini mitten and flowers were by the lovely Cucki.

The things I made and added to the box are the felt flower pot and butterfly brooches, a Little Red Riding Hood bag tag.....


and the little knitted Converse boot pincushion and embroidered mermaid  scissor keep. 


I had a lot of fun making these, in fact LRRH gave me the idea to make a series of bag tags on a theme of Little Ladies for my Etsy shop. I have six so far and lots of ideas for more, they have become a bit addictive, lol!



So I have so far Snow White, Alice, mermaid, fairy, a little girl and another Little Red too. Hope you like them as much as I do :-) These will be appearing in my Etsy shop over this week. Finally I made Billy Bunny too, a lovely little sailor bunny from a Debi Birkin pattern, I love how he turned out :-) Isn't he sweet!



Well that's me this week, I have a custom order of a big hanging mushroom I'm busy making, it has a fairy on it which is fun! Have a good week everyone!