Handmade Cushion Covers

Hi Lovelies,

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

Easy DK Crochet Beanie

I designed this beanie specifically because most of the patterns I was finding were calling for worsted or Aran weight yarn but where I live in Scotland I find that DK is the most readily available weight yarn when I go into shops. So I designed this simple beanie pattern to use DK weight yarn.

Detachable Card Decoration Tutorial

Hello Everyone!

I have a little Valentines Day related tutorial. I do know that this is a bit late for an actual Valentines craft however this technique can be used for many decorations and therefore many cards!

Twisted Keyhole Headband: Free Pattern

Twisted Keyhole Headband

I have finally finished writing up and editing this pattern but it is my first pattern so go easy on me ! 😀

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.

First Etsy Listings

Hello everyone! I am so excited and quite nervous too… because I have just taken the plunge and put up some Etsy Listings for prints of my art! You can find my shop here.

Botanical Illustration of a Eucalyptus leaf I found in South Africa

Pixie Punk

Pink Rose Bud

Skull

All of these are prints of my original watercolour illustrations.
They are giclee prints which means that they are printed with archival quality inks on archival quality paper. If you don’t know what means, basically they should last a long time. However I would still advise that you try to keep them out of direct sunlight.

Thanks for reading and thank you if you go and check them out.
Diella

The Week of the Paintings

Hello Again,

I know I skipped last week so I am just going to pretend that that didn’t happen. 😛

Last Friday Husband and I decided late in the evening that we wanted to buy a puzzle to do. So we landed up on an adventure out to HobbyCraft at Fort Kinnaird at 8pm because they only close at 10pm. We got there around 9. We chose a puzzle called the Carpenter’s Cottage.

Saturday

We just did shopping and we helped a friend look at a flat he was looking at buying. It was a really nice place.

Sunday

Friend E came over and I did some mending of her clothes for her. It was all pretty easy stuff except for a neckline which was made of a fine stretchy mesh folded over by more stretchy mesh, that took a bit of fussing.

Monday

As usual Monday is my cleaning day and so my house got quite a deep clean. It hadn’t be cleaned thoroughly for a while. I mean things like scrubbing the inside of the oven and that sort of thing.
My studio also got an amazing clean. Sigh, it is so nice to be back in my little creative space. I pushed my Laptop backwards so that I could set up my tripod for filming.

Unfinished crochet blanket makes another appearance

Here is my filming set up but I am going to have to play with it a bit more. 1) because I would like to have my tripod set up and also have my monitor on the table. I need my monitor in order to edit my art scans better. Laptops don’t give good colour representation because you can keep changing the angles. and 2) because I keep getting my head in the way!

And for supper I cooked a roast chicken for dinner. Ah, the Roast Chicken story. First of all, all you South African’s take a look at the photo below!

I bet you are thinking what I was thinking when I first unwrapped the chicken. What the heck are those?! I’ll explain. This chicken has shins, or lower leg parts still attached to the drum sticks. The only explanation which I can imagine is as follows: In South Africa there is a market for chicken feet, people buy them and cook them, so in South Africa the lower leg of the chicken is chopped off with the feet and sold that way. Where as, I am guessing here, there is less of a demand for chicken feet in the UK and so their chickens are sold with just the feet removed. My sister told me that she thinks they look like crayfish eyes / eye stalks. I agree.
Anyway so I take this chicken out the fridge and remove the packaging and discover  that these leg things are tucked into the carcass of the chicken to make it neat. I gingerly pull them out and immediately get squeamish. (I was vegetarian for 2 years before I had to stop for health reasons) Getting this up close and personal with uncooked meat really freaks me out apparently. Then when I had to rub the butter over the skin I very nearly vomited. This chicken also seems to have a lot more skin than Z.A. chickens and they also left the neck on. Oh and there were some poor little tufty feathers on it.
This chicken has changed my life people. I am not joking, I am going to see if I can cut us down to one meat meal a week and see if my health can stand up to that. At the moment we are doing about 3 vegetarian meals a week.

Tuesday

I continued filming and managed to finish my architectural piece which I was painting.

My mom sent me this cute picture of Salty cuddling her.

Then, having decided that I was going to bake, I went in search of some nice baking trays. We currently only have one really small one that came with the flat. While I was going from shop to shop I saw these pretty pink velvety chairs! But husband pointed out that I already have a studio chair.

And I did find some really nice trays that are the perfect size for our oven! Our Oven is about 36cm squared and these are 34cm squared.

And then the baking bee stung and I baked over 100 cookies. I don’t know why I always do this. I don’t bake for ages and then all of a sudden I bake loads.

In the evening husband and I met friend R out at a restaurant for Taco Tuesday! They ordered something super spicy but I was a sane person and ordered something cheesy 😛

Wednesday

Wednesday was kind of a busy day but I didn’t plan it to be. First of all my prints which I had ordered came in the mail. If I have forgotten to tell you, I am in the process of setting up my Etsy Shop. At the moment there is nothing there because I am still ironing out some kinks.

The print job was perfect. Where you can see colour variation that is where I scanned the picture and then edited it on my laptop instead of on a fixed screen monitor.

The Original is on the Right

The Original is on the Right

The Original is on the Right

The Original is on the Left

The Original is on the Right

Then I decided that I need to do more exercise so I did 45min of Tribal Fusion Belly Dance on my own, which considering I haven’t done it in over a year it was probably a bit much. We are desperately saving for our own place and so I am not that keen to go out and pay for lessons at the moment so I was just practicing what I remember and also doing some drills off Youtube. It is easier for me because I used to do a lot of it so I know how the moves are supposed to go. It’s just building up those muscles again.

After I was done with my dance practice I decided so do a painting of a flower my sister had photographed. It went way quicker than I had expected. It is a peach blossom.

After supper my husband and I went for a nice long walk. He took me on a route he had discovered while I was in South Africa. We took some photos along the way because it was so pretty.

Then at home something horrifying happened. Husband and I were chilling on the couch drinking coffee and chatting about our walk when suddenly I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Picture me pulling my legs up onto the couch quickly and yelling ” *insert husbands name here* ITS A GIANT FUDGING SPIDER!” Except I didn’t say Fudging I said a bad word. Husband is momentarily freaked out until he looks over and sees the actual size of it. And then he proceeds to calmly catch it and remove it for me. He doesn’t like killing spiders so he threw it out the window.
We did out best to identify it and we are pretty sure it’s the Giant House Spider. This one isn’t that big but apparently they can grow really huge and also what makes us even more sure that that is what this is is that it once held the Guinness world record for fastest spider…. and boy was this thing fast! Even husband was a bit unnerved by it’s speed. But thankfully their venom is not fatal to humans or pets and they prefer to escape than to bite.

It took me a really really long time to fall asleep that night. 😦 I am convinced I have a mild form of arachnophobia.

Thursday

On Thursday I did a quick expressive painting. I quite enjoyed it as I have not worked in this style for a while.

Then I did a little sketch of an Accounticorn for a friend. I might paint this one up and give it to her.

And then I spent the rest of the day editing and uploading the art video which I filmed earlier in the week. You can see it here.

 

Friday

On Friday I did a quick little drawing inspired by the lyrics from a song by a band called Cake. “Sheep go to heaven, Goats go to hell”

My mom sent me more cute photos of Salty invading her art supplies.

And I also started a crochet stuffy / amigurumi for friend E. Friend E and I are pretty much obsessed with unicorns.

Halfway through the first leg I discovered that you stuff it while you make it not all at the end. So I had to leave my cozy home and go in search of stuffing. In the end it turned out cheaper to buy a microfiber pillow for M&S and open it than to buy actual craft microfiber at a craft store!

Saturday

We had a lazy slow start to the day. Husband was immensely helpful with my Etsy and helped me with the money side of things.
We went for a walk up Corstorphine hill and saw another monument to Scott.

Sunday

I managed to finish the unicorn!

The card above was my welcome home card from friend E.

I love it’s fabulous hair!

Then we took a quick walk through some suburbs that we might consider looking for our own place in. Husband has looked at a lot of the areas before but I was in South Africa and I haven’t seen them yet. It was really nice walking around and discussing the pros and cons of the area. Then at the end of the walk we went to friend E’s house where friend R was meeting us and we made a curry box. Friend R regularly gets these curry boxes. It was a lot of fun, and friend E loved the unicorn!

Well thank you for sticking with me again through another busy week! I hope that you are having a good week and I hope that anyone in the Florida area is busy keeping warm and safe!

Love Diella xoxo

The week of deliveries

Hello Again dear reader,

Last Sunday was pretty chilled as T had to go back to London for 3 days of training. So we just chilled together and he packed all his bags.

On Monday I started with my usual house cleaning day so that took quite a while.

I had to email woolwarehouse.co.uk because I had placed an order with them on the Saturday but my account with them didn’t say that I had any orders and T’s bank statement didn’t reflect the pending transaction. So I wanted to find out what was happening. Thankfully what had happened is that my account session had timed out before T had finished purchasing because he stopped halfway through. So the order had been logged as a “guest” purchase rather than linked to my account. And their system is having a problem with emailing the receipts to the guest purchases, but my order had gone through and had actually been sent out that morning by royal mail!

Then I worked on digitizing my mug designs for Redbubble. I managed to get 2 of the 3 done.

On Tuesday I took a pretty picture of my Daffodils. I don’t know how long they flower for but I am really enjoying them.

Unfortunately I blacked out in the shower that morning. I didn’t think much of it though, I just assumed I was still sleepy and maybe the shower was a bit hot.

Photo from Friday

I then finished my last redbubble mug design but I also used a screen capture program to video the process so that I could use it for my Thursday art videos.

While I was filming… my yarn order arrived! I was so impressed with how quickly it came! And it came in this lovely bag! (there was other packaging over it.

This is 100% acrylic yarn for a scarf for my sister who is allergic to wool.

This is 100% wool (it was on sale for 1 pound 10!) for a jersey which I am knitting myself.

This and the black one below are for a shawl I want to make.

This is a surprise for someone. As I have said earlier I am making lots of presents for people when i go back in April

I also balled up the yarn for T’s socks. This is a West Yorkshire Spinners yarn in the Blue Lagoon colourway. They have a range which are all named after cocktails.

After I was done with my yarn and my Redbubble I still  had half a day left so I decided to go and check out one of the fabric shops. It is called Edinburgh Fabrics. I walked there, it was about 5 km walk there and back. I also discovered during this walk that I seem to be adjusting to the weather here quite quickly. It was 3 degrees and so got all dressed up only to find that I was over heating. I didn’t need my scarf or gloves. But I do walk quite briskly so maybe that was why I was finding it so hot.

On the way I discovered this little building which reminds me of the Stuart Little house. So tiny wedged in-between the other big buildings.

These fabric designs would make lovely project bags!

Unfortunately I still found a lot of the fabric quite pricey so i didn’t buy anything. Maybe once I have adjusted to earning in pounds and spending in pounds I’ll change my mind about whether or not I think that it is expensive. But I have seen cheaper fabric online to order.

 

When I got back home I started knitting T’s socks.

Now we get to the part that makes it relevant that I blacked out in the shower. After I went to bed I then woke up in the early hours of the morning. I didn’t actually look at the time so I dont know for sure. But then lots of horrible things happened which I wont go into the details but it landed up with me very feverish and passing out on the bathroom floor and sleeping there for a few hours.

The next morning I googled all my symptoms and the closest thing I could figure it out to be was a vitamin B deficiency. Thankfully we had bought some on the weekend because T needs vitamin B complex to help him concentrate at work, so I have just started taking that and I haven’t had a repeat episode.

Against my mother and T’s advice I still decided to go to a craft shop at Fort Kinnaird. (I was fine in the end) So I set off and took the bus on my own for the first time. It was about a 30 min trip there and I had to walk a little because I missed my stop and got off at one further.

I am still in love with the beautiful buildings.

I didn’t really find any cheaper fabrics or yarn at the Hobby Craft shop but I am glad that I went there anyway. It is a huge place with two floors of just craft stuff, painting, paper, beading, flower stuff, sewing, pottery, lots of stuff.
On the way back I stopped off on the road that I had been on the day before. I wanted to go to the charity shops because I know that they sometimes get donations of yarn or fabric that they then sell quite cheaply. But I suddenly got this irrational fear that the charity shops were meant for people in need to go and shop at and not that they were intended to raise money for people in need. So I was too afraid to go in. In the end I just landed up going to one which was called “Pets in need of Vets” because I reasoned that it was unlikely that some pet was going to come trotting in and buy itself a jumper. 😛 Unfortunately there was no yarn or fabric to be found.

At home I worked up a swatch for my new jersey, pictured below. I washed and blocked it because I have heard that that is the correct thing to do.

And then I made good progress on T’s socks. I actually worked them both all the way to the heel point.

Then I decided that I didn’t want to do my heel flap and gusset heel but rather a German Short row heel. The difference is that the heel flap is “L” shaped and the German Short row heel looks more like a pizza slice. But in order to do this I needed a pattern and after doing a lot of research I decided that I wanted to use a paid pattern. At first I thought I’d have to wait for T to come home and help me buy it because I don’t have his credit card details… but then I realised that I had more than enough money in my PayPal account from all my Redbubble sales and so I could just purchase it with PayPal.  I was very elated and it was a very empowering feeling to pay for a craft pattern with money made from my crafting.

On Thursday I was still feeling the high from buying something with my Redbubble sales and so I was inspired to come up with some more designs. I made 6 in total but I have 3 pictured below. I haven’t digitized them all yet.

Random picture of our fridge decorations that I took to show my sister. She took the one picture of me, and she is in the other picture with T and I. I don’t know why but having pretty things on my fridge just makes me so happy.

I also received a delivery for T early in the morning. He ordered himself a drill off Amazon. It is a really cool drill it is pretty  powerful but it is also small and very light.

Friday… oh Friday. I must preface this by telling you two things. One is that on Thursday evening my parents told me that they had ordered some amazon vouchers for T as his Birthday present and that they would likely arrive on Friday. The other thing is that I didn’t sleep well on Thursday night. So  I figured that the vouchers were probably envelope sized and could fit through our envelope slot and so I would sleep in.

Well I was having a very merry sleep in indeed when all of a sudden I was woken by pounding on the door. That’s when I realised that someone must be trying to make a delivery. But then I realised in a panic that I was not appropriately dressed to answer the door but I didn’t know how long this person had been knocking!! So i jumped out of bed and grabbed the first thing I could find which was a cardigan. I didn’t bother buttoning it up, I just kind of held it shut with one hand and opened the door with the other. And there was a man standing with a pretty big box. He looked at me expectantly like I was going to take the box from him… but I did not want to let go of my top… so I swung the door open pointed at the floor  next to me in the passage and said put it there please. I also then still had to sign for it. When he left I looked in the mirror and from my hair it was very evident that I had been sleeping. 😛 Oh well, I guess there have probably been equally strange deliveries. I was seriously confused though because this was a giant box for vouchers. I didn’t want to open it because if it was the vouchers they were supposed to be for T and he should open it.

The box on the right was the package. The one on the left was the drill from the day before.

Then about 5 min later suddenly my mail slot clanged and I saw amongst all the mail was another large envelope marked from Amazon. So The box was something else. I checked with T and he said that he had not ordered anything. I knew that my parents had ordered me a scanner for my birthday but my dad had said that it was only due for delivery between the 14th and the 17th. So I got my sister and parents on skype and proceeded to open my mystery package. Which did turn out to be my scanner.

 

Then I carried on working on my Redbubble desgins and started digitizing some of them. It was a funny day weather wise with about as much variation as a Cape Town day. It started off sunny. Then while I was working away at my laptop T messaged me and said” It’s snowing!” So I ran to the window with much delight and took lots of little video clips of the snow and I video called my sister to show her.
Then I went back to work. The next time I looked up it was Sunny again! ….. and then after a while I started hearing a weird noise so I looked up… and it was hailing!

 

So much hail it almost looks like there is snow on that car

While I was working T messaged and asked if Mz. E could come for supper. Which I obviously said yes to, but then it got me thinking and I decided that I really felt like going out and dancing. I love going to clubs even though I don’t really drink, because I love dancing. Also I am not fussy I will pretty much dance to anything. I also really love getting all dressed up for going out.
So you can see my potential outfits which I picked out. It was kind of hard because I didn’t really know what girls wear out when it’s cold, because obviously when you are inside and dancing you’re going to be hot, and I also didn’t know what kind of club we were going to go to. Luckily Mz. E had been on a Pub Crawl a few weeks before so she knew some of the nice places to go.

I landed up going with the second one from the right. The black dress with the while collar. It is actually a dress given to me by my mother.

We landed up going to a club called Stramash. And I LOVED it. I think I have found my new club hang out. It kind of reminded me of a club called Gandalf’s in Cape Town with is kind of a metal / rock club. There were some live bands and also a DJ playing in between. They played some songs which they had written but they also did covers of some older songs like Sweet home Alabama, and Fleetwood Mac etc. I really loved it. Oh and did I mention it is in an old church? Oh and did I mention that at the top at the back there are leather couches and some bookshelves with books?!

Photo by Mz. E

Drinking our beverages on the leather couches

This is the upstairs bar. Photo by Mz. E

Dancing on the dance floor ❤

After we left I was so hot from dancing, and probably the cider I had helped… but I walked home carrying my coat instead of wearing it! Also wearing heels was the worst idea ever. My feet were killing me. It was a 24min walk from the club back home. To be honest if I knew that we were going to that kind of club I would not have worn heels at all and I probably would have worn a different dress anyway. But I loved it and we will definitely be going back.

On Saturday morning I sorely regretted my shoe choice of the night before. Heels pictured below. My toes were blistered and the balls of my feet were bruised. Also remember a lot of the streets here are cobbled so that adds to the walking hazzards of heels.

We don’t have a bath tub here, as I mentioned in my last post, so after my shower I filled our washing basin with hot water and salt and soaked my poor footsies in there.

On Saturday afternoon I made my slow and painful walk to my knitting group. This time there were only two of us but it was a new person who I had not met before so we had a great time chatting and getting to know eachother. He is from Denmark and he is engaged to a woman from France and they have both moved to Edinburgh. So it was really nice to chat to someone else who has also moved here and to chat about our experiences of adjusting and learning new things.

While I was out our IKEA order was delivered and T got to work right away on assembling our stuff. Unfortunately this kind of blockaded up the kitchen so we popped downstairs to the Thai restaurant below us and ordered some take away food. It was really yummy. We also had to eat sitting on the floor because there was no space for the chairs. 😛

It really amazes me how flat they can pack the furniture. I know that that is pretty much the point of IKEA but still.

I haven’t included that many pictures because it is now Sunday and T is still building furniture. But I am sure that I will include loads of before and after pictures in next weeks post.

Now before I go I am going to share with you all the cute cat pictures my family keep sending me of my babies whom I miss terribly.

Salty sitting on my mom while she tries to get stuff done.

Salty playing in a shopping packet.

Salty chilling n the couch which is right next to the open plan kitchen while my sister did some baking.

Salty sitting ON TOP of my mom’s artwork.

Pangaea does not approve of interruptions

Salty sleeping on my sister ❤

Salty’s muddy face after she’s been up to no good

Well that’s it from me for this week. It looks like these posts are ending up being a lot longer than I had initially imagined them to be.

Lots of Love,

Diella