Well, hello!

2011 is the year of craft and so I return to this blog to inform anyone who might be interested in my progress.

My friends on facebook got a bit of a giggle when I shared this photo of my early attempts at knitting:



No, despite appearances, I am not knitting a vase.

Allow me to share a few other bits and crafty pieces from these early days of 2011. Most of these craft projects are intended to aid me in applying the ole "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" adage to my existence. I am also attempting to be a bit more careful with money.

Hence, instead of purchasing several very beautiful diaries from several very beautiful shops and magazines that were offering them, I chose to spend $2.75 on a fixer-upper!





Unfortunately, I never took a before photo but you can imagine one of those VERY dull slimline black diaries. So, I took a bit of recycled Clarice Bean wrapping paper, the plastic cut out of one of those clear bags with poppers that things like baby shoes come in and some red thread out of a huge bag of cotton and braces elastic I still have left-over from some high school or maybe beach mission hair-wrapping venture and ta-da! I'm quite proud of it.

Another bit of fixing with craft nearly led me down a pretty old school path as my friend Mike pointed out to me:





Thankfully, I think I stopped just in time.

I did a sewing course on Wednesday which, unfortunately, turned out to be a bit more like whatever the sewing equivalent of a Tupperware party might have been except that I paid $65 for the privilege and didn't feel particularly inspired to pay another $43 for the bits and bobs that they were demonstrating. Even more unfortunately, I signed up for two courses at once so I'm back for part two in early March. I'm hoping that it will somehow be miraculously great and not at all like Part 1.

Anyway, I've got a few sewing projects in the pipeline so hopefully it won't be a whole year and a bit before I share my progress here. Right, must knit a few rows before bed. I obviously need to practise!