Handmade Cushion Covers

Hi Lovelies,

Today I want to share with you about the cushion covers I have finally gotten around to sewing up!

Knitting Needle Book Project

Dear Readers,

If you have ever purchased circular knittings needles to knit with you may have discovered the conundrum of how to store them! I have been looking for a good way to store my circular knitting needles for about 4 years now!

YOP 2020-2021 Week 3/52

Welcome to week 3 of the Year of Projects! This week I have made a lot of progress in spinning and a little progress in knitting and some unexpected progress in sewing!

2020 – 2021 Year of Projects START

This is my first year of taking part in the Year of Projects. I discovered this group through reading Highland Heffalump‘s blog posts and I decided that it sounded perfect for me as I have a long list of projects to do.

Elemental Doll; Aqua

Hi  All,

Just a warning I am writing one or two posts to be scheduled as I am going on holiday soon but I didn’t want to let that be an excuse for not posting anything.

So today’s post is about my first ever cloth art doll I have made to sell and her name is Aqua. She is part of an elemental series I am doing. Ignis, Ventus and Terra will follow, I have already drawn up their designs.

Lined Crochet Tote Bag

Hello Again Dear Readers,

It has taken me a little while to work up the energy to write this post but I have recently written my first crochet bag pattern! It is still in the process of being tested before I release it for sale. I will definately sell it on Ravelry but I might also sell it on my Etsy Store.

The one I forgot to Title

Hello Again everyone,

Last week had quite a bit of drama for me as my computer was out of action for a long time, until this Tuesday actually!

Last Saturday and Sunday I knit these little socks. They are for my husbands coworker. She is pregnant and we thought that it would be sweet. I think that they look way too tiny but I don’t know what size babies actually are. They also look smaller than they are because of all the ribbing which makes them quite elastic.

A Day in the life of Jack – The Harness

Good morning my adoring fans,

Today I, Jack, am taking over mom’s blog because she just won’t explain things right.

I am going to tell you about mom’s latest form of torture. The Harness. First she bought me a black and white spotty harness. That one is absolutely the worst.

A little bit of sewing and a lot of painting

Hello lovelies,

Thank you for baring with me for such a long time! I am sorry that I had to stop but it really was good for me. I also stopped my knitting podcast. I have been feeling an urge to post here again however I have not had the inclination to start podcasting again.  To be honest I have been feeling more of the art urge while in Z.A. than the knitting urge. I have still been knitting but at my own slow pace. I wonder whether I will go back to knitting more when I go back to the UK or not. I am wondering if  I should make a new youtube as a combined thing, like just update my current art one, or if I should leave the knitting and the art separate. It is quite a lot of work to maintain two separate accounts.

Anyway! You are not here to listen to my internal monologue!!

Sunday the 16th of July

I have been doing a lot of watercolour paintings!

Lady with flowers

I decided that when I paint flowers I always paint roses because I find them quite easy so below you can find my practice with other flowers. and Some cute kitties at the bottom

Flower practice

And it has finally gotten quite chilly here in Cape Town if I do say so myself!

That blanket actually belongs to my mother but I have officially claimed it for while I am here.

Monday 17th

I am considering doing some custom pet portraits so this week I started practicing. Here is a cute little pug puppy.

Pug !

And I also picked up this knit again after about 2 weeks. I have been knitting it out of a cotton and bamboo blend. It is all knit in the round, which means no purling, which mean it is going pretty quickly for me.

Can you spot Salty in the glare?

 

 

Tuesday 18th

The pet I painted today was Zoe! You can see the picture and the reference picture together on my instagram.

I have been wanting to put more effort into selling art on my etsy store but I decided that people find xYOOPx a bit of a mouthful and it may be scaring some people off. So I have changed it to Diella Taylor. At the moment the shop is in holiday mode because I can’t feasibly ship anything out of South Africa. the post is either too expensive or too dodgy. All that to say that I designed a logo for my Shop.

I

Then after all that was done I went back to knitting my Umbria top.

Excuse the dirty mirror. In this picture the top is not finished as it gets a longer part at the back. But the front was finished.  As an aside just after I took this picture my button popped off my jeans. I have 2 pairs of jeans here in Z.A. and the other pair has developed a hole. This will be pertinent shortly.

Wednesday 19th

My mother woke me up early and asked if I wanted to go and visit my gran with her. My mom usually takes her to do her shopping as she no longer drives, and my mom offered to buy me some new jeans! Yay. See told you it was pertinent. We found some jeans, and a surprise top but we also wanted to get some boots. After dropping my gran back at home we went to another mall.

We stopped at Primi Piati first and had some lunch. We both got a greek salad and we got a board of rosemary and salt foccacia to share.

Then I found some boots!  Yay. They are real leather and they were on sale for R1100 😀

I also found some boots which looked like they would be good for walking in, because in Edinburgh we walk around the city a lot. But they were not in black… and they were a tad too expensive.

A quick picture of me wearing all 3 items 😀 Excuse the messy room.

My parents left for their holiday house in the afternoon which is unusual because they usually don’t leave on a Wednesday.

And in the evening Salty decided to entertain us by trying to sit in boxes that were way too small.

Thursday 20th

My dad has been getting micro-lite flying lessons so my mom sent us some pictures in the morning. My dad is in the front looking very serious.

We had a bit of a scary experience. My sister was having a friend stay with us but that friend starts work early so I gave her a lift down to the train at 5.50am. My sister came with, in fact she drove because she is still learning and there are pretty much no other cars at that time. Then about 3 hours later at 9 my sister opened the front door and discovered a foot print outside out security gate! My sister was wearing shoes with the same tread, but they are very common shoes. It had been very wet and rainy but can a print last 3 hours? Well to be honest people have jumped over our front wall before and our gates and burglar bars are very secure and always locked so I wasn’t that worried but it was a little unnerving. Also the dog had been barking that morning but she ran into the back garden so we guessed it was just the neighbors cat.

This day I painted our kitty Pangaea. The original photo was taken by my sister.

In the evening we went to the Spur to see one of my sister’s friends who is going back to the Northern Cape. We were quite early so I quickly went to have my acrylic overlay soaked off at Sorbet. And that is a whole other story. Long story short, two weeks ago I got an acrylic overlay because I thought it would help protect my usual fragile nails… big mistake. I have been regretting it ever since.

I took a picture of my waffle because my sister’s friends child said the cutest thing. When they arrived she said “Cake!” and we said no it’s not cake. So she said “Pizza!”. Haha that is the best name for it ever. Cake Pizza. Also here’s a little secret I am going to share with you. Spur make THE BEST Waffles. Okay they don’t really have variety. You get classic or you get bar-one sauce. But the bar-one sauce one is R40 for a full and … less for a half. and the waffle is not defrosted, it is made on site. It is not tough and chewy but not too thick. The ice-cream is real creamy ice-cream not icy vegetable fat, and the sauce is real chocolate too not a syrup. I have had waffles at many places in Cape Town, even from fancy waffle shops with only sell waffles and say that they are proper Belgian waffles… Nope. Spur wins hands down!

So when I got home I decided that I had to cut my nails because they were now super duper thin from all the soaking in acetone and then buffing. My nails are usually a little bendy but not this bendy. My pinkie nail felt like paper.

Friday 21st

Today was not a good day. First I did a drawing which I liked. and then I inked it with one of my new pens without checking that it was waterproof. I only checked it after and it’s not. 😦 I didn’t ruin the picture but I can’t paint it now.

I then did another painting which went really well, and then I decided to do the lines after the paint. And I was like hmmm I’ll try doing the lines with a brush and ink instead of a pen. And I messed it up big time. So I wasn’t in a good mood.

I discovered that my one nail has cracked on the top from being so brittle.

AND THEN! as if this all wasn’t enough. I was trying to use the visa website and I discovered that it is completely broken. I was getting display errors on Sunday so I sent in a complaint form. They had not responded to or acknowledged the complaint form. then today I tried to purchase the sms notification and discovered that that does not work any more, leading me to believe that their entire website is not working. This was made worse by the fact that the website is run by a separate company… but there is no way to contact that company other than through their complaint form… which as I said is broken. :< I will admit that I had a good sob.

So in the end my sister and I went out for some good old retail therapy. To be honest that is not usually my kind of thing, but we went to the art store so that I could get a new sketch book in which to practice drawing faces. (I always draw front facing female faces)

Then we went and bought a 1000 piece puzzle! Her boyfriend is also in the UK so we both need distracting.

Saturday 22nd

Saturday was a pretty mellow day. I played some computer games. My parents came home. I helped lift my sister’s friend back to her res which had reopened.
And in the evening my dad and I went out for waffles. (Again I know!) This time I only had a half one but the waiter brought me some extra astros! He said that it was because I am a spur baby. My dad had told him that I had been coming to spur since I was a baby and that when I was four I pointed to s big sign which said “Spur Secret Tribe” and asked why it’s a secret if it’s a giant sign?

Sunday 23rd

And last but not least on Sunday I fixed a dress that I had sewn previously. This dress is about 2 years old now but I always found that when I wore it, it dug under my armpits. I have since found that when ever I sew a dress from a pattern I need to make the arm holes bigger. I have really big shoulders! Anyway fortunately I still had some scraps of the material floating around so I scooped out the arm holes and then added a bias binding around the raw edges.

I am a little out of practice at this so I hope that it is still okay.
I hope that you have all been well during my extended absence.

Lots of love Diella ❤

Catch up : Week of the bags

Hello all 🙂
I am sort of getting back into things. I have taken all the pictures but I can’t always remember what I did that week but I will do my best.

So on Sunday the 23rd of April I decided that look better with a top / dress that has a little sleeve because i have quite big shoulders.  In hind sight I can say that I still agree with past Diella and I have been keeping this in mind when dressing and when sewing new dresses.

I also decided that I wanted to try painting a portrait of my sister from life. In hind sight I can say that this has been abandoned as it is quite hard to orchestrate. I have to be in the mood to paint and she also has to be free.

Monday the 24th of April I sewed myself 3 zipper bags for using as project bags to keep my knitting in. I used the Open wide zippered pouch pattern.

I also knit some more on my aunts socks.

Pangaea was still enjoying sleeping at the end of my bed.  This evening was also the last time that we saw Salty for a while. She went missing.

Tuesday 25th of April I took a drive to Paarl to go to my favourite bead shop. It was my first time driving so far out, I usually just drive around the city, and I found it quite tiring and I had to use my phone to navigate where I was going. I also felt quite vulnerable because I was driving a little Hyundai Getz which is fine when you’re driving 60km/hr but at 120km/hr it is not so great!

I can’t remember when in the week I made the following things.

Wednesday 26th of April I had to go and have my TB scan. This is an xray scan of your chest to see if you have active tuberculosis in your lungs. And I don’t, yay! I didn’t think that I did but I need the certificate in order to apply for my visa.

While I was waiting for my results to be printed I knitted at a coffee shop and enjoyed my little project bag.

My mom and I drove around looking for Salty and calling for her and asking people in the neighbourhood if they had seen her.

When we got home Pangaea was enjoying being an only cat again and she was being silly and playing with the doormat.

Thursday 27th of April my parents left to go to their holiday house in Yzerfontein and my sister and I stayed in Cape Town.

I started knitting a baby jersey for one of my sister’s pregnant friends since I had finished my socks the day before.

And that evening Salty came home! She was missing for 3 days. I had been devistated and I couldn’t sleep at all during the week. Every time I heard any little noise I thought that it was Salty trying to come home and I would wake up and look out the window.

Salty came home and wolfed down all the food in her bowl. We always keep the cat’s two food bowls full so they usually just eat a little every now and again when they are hungry but Salty was eating and not chewing. Then she moved onto the water bowl and almost drank it dry. Then when she was all done she went into my bedroom and fell asleep on my bed.

I was so happy to have her back that I felt too bad to move her so I slept curled up on the end of my bed.

Friday 28th of April I took my sister into university to go and write a test. I sat outside on a bench and knitted and admired her pretty campus.

Then I took my sister to the hospital to see the specialist about her knee. He said that after all the MRI’s and the injection he now says that it is just inflammation and there is nothing that she can do about it but just wait for it to go. So the good news is that it is not permanent but the bad news is there is nothing she can do. At the hospital I saw this lift…. Schindler’s Lift… made me think of Schindler’s List. I am silly.

Then we fetched some of her friends and they came over for lunch and I made headway on the baby jersey.

Unfortunately that afternoon our internet connection died! They said it would only be fixed on the following Tuesday!

Saturday the 29th of April  I started cutting out bags to sew up.

I took a break to go to Canal Walk and try and buy a simcard to put into the router to fix our internet and then Sio and I got coffee at Mug and Bean.

At home I did some more cutting out and Salty helped me.

In the evening we went for Sushi at Hongs, our favourite sushi place. I am enjoying sushi so much because it is too expensive to eat in Edinburgh.

I am a weirdo I know, I love Veg sushi even though I am not vegetarian

After supper we watched Fight Club, since Sio hadn’t seen it, and I finished cutting out all my bags.

Sunday 30th

My parents came back to Cape Town. And Salty helped me sew up one of the bags.

My mom and I decided that Salty would be under house arrest until further notice. If she keeps running away she can’t be trusted.

Good grief it has been a long time since I have written one of these posts! I hope that you are all still doing well.

Love Diella xoxoxo