Raised In Rain

Some time ago, I coincidentally stumbled across the song ‘Finders Keepers’ by Miriam Bryant and absolutely LOVED it. What an amazing voice!

 

 

 

Now you can imagine my joy when I noticed this weekend that her debut album was finally out!!! It’s called ‘Raised In Rain’ and it’s just plain gorgeous. Wow. Wow. I just don't have any words left.
Although Finder Keepers is still one of my hot favourites, Last Soul On Earth is serious competition.
If you don't know her already, make sure to check her out! It's amazingly deep, soulful music!

This is set on repeat during my knitting sessions now. Which  basically means (ahem) all day. Don't judge me.

 

What are your current favourite tunes? Anything you just can't seem to get out of your head? I'd love to get some new musical inspiration from you!

See you soon lovelies!

Baby Bunny

Hey there, Hi there, Ho there!

Are you all doing fine? Or great even? I certainly hope so!

Well, it may be just me, but as I think I’ve already mentioned, I just love this time of the year. You can already start thinking of gifts (and not just one, mind you, like you do when it’s someone’s birthday, no: you are officially allowed to get presents for everyone you can possibly think of! Hurrah!), you can snuggle up on your sofa with a big mug of tea and your favourite book or movie – or, in my case, your knitting needles!

After a long summer break for them it was finally time to get them back out, shake off the dust and get these bad boys back to work! They were so eager to finally create something again I just wasn’t able to stop them. Not that I tried. Or wanted.

It’s this time of the year again!

Since I’m a huge fan of stuffed animals and my current  obsession are bunnies, guess what I started with this season? Yaaaay, you got it right – aaaa bunny!

 

Although it looked really weird at first, I think it turned out quite nicely. There were some stages though that created some odd thoughts - like this one for example:

Is it just me or does it look like a Voodoo doll? Anyways, I couldn't resist to try...

Needless to say, Baby Bunny survived. She got her dress, the heart on it and all those other extravagant whishes she had as well – hell, I even made her a face!



 

 

What were your first knitting project(s) this winter? Or were you persistent, knitted through the summer and just ignored all the bewildered looks thrown at you by various onlookers?

Tell me about it! But most importantly: KEEP ON KNITTING!

<3

 



Pop-Art Photo-Painting

Today I want to show you how to create a very personal present that will ALWAYS  be a winner. This is perfect if the person you want to give a present to is very special to you, you want to show them how much you care about them and you’re not afraid to invest time into a self-made gift – but unfortunately you have run out of good ideas.

I find that when in doubt, beautiful (and well, let’s be honest, not really needed) presents are the best to give.

So, I wanted to give my friend something special, preferably using a photograph of us together, but didn’t want to resort to the overused photo-in-frame-solution because

a)      no one ever wants another frame they don’t know where to put

b)      it really has been overused and

c)       I think it’s plain boring.

As it happened, when I went into the city center one day I saw a really nice painting of…  flowers… I think… using only two colours. And I thought why not try and convert a photograph into a kind-of-pop-art-painting?
(I have no idea if that style is really called pop-art, but that’s what I’ve always called it in my head. Ha. Deal with it.)

So I took a picture of me and my friend

 

and turned it into black-and-white. You can easily do that with even the most standard photo-editing software, so no worries.

 I then tried to get it as pixilated as I could, by using the sharpen-tool of my program.

Okaaay... this doesn't look different at all...

 

Quick note: as you may (or may not, in which case I would be delighted and advise you dearly to skip this paragraph) have noticed, I don’t know anything about technique other than the most basic stuff. Yay me. So, I think you could have done this a LOT more professional and this is by no means the only way to do it. It was just the easiest for me.

I then coloured all the black to really dark areas red. This took me quite some time, as I did it in Paint and had to redo it quite a few times because my 5-year-old self couldn’t contain itself and just had to colour over the lines… Now that I think about it, this really seems worrying…

Again: I am positive you could have done this a lot faster. I just didn’t know how.

The next step was to colour the lighter-nuanced greys… grey. Yeah. Just… even it out a bit. I mainly did this so that the grey would be darker than the original tone, so that I would be able to see the difference between white and grey while painting.

 

Now, this is how your photo-painting will (or is supposed to) look like when it’s finished. Looks great, doesn’t it?

But…  how on earth do we get that onto the canvas now? This proved to be quite the tricky question. I ended up beaming it onto the canvas with the beamer I made my mum bring home from work, but if you can/ already have figured out other, easier ways to transfer it from the computer, please please tell me!

Now, paint all the coloured bit in colour, the grey bits grey and just leave out the white areas. Pretty self-explanatory. And there you go! Finished is the gorgeous piece of art!

 

You can just leave it like that, or, which I tried the next time, add a memorable quote, an inside joke or a personal message for your special person. Add anything you want to it to make it more personal.

This is a german quote saying 'Not beauty decides whom we love, love decides whom we find beautiful'

What do you think of this idea? Is it something you would like to try? For Christmas perhaps? What are your ‘special photograph’-ideas?

I’d love to hear some from you, love

Kathybell

 

 

Fabric Inspirations

Despite the incredibly uninviting weather today I decided I finally had to stock up the fabric resources in my new home – I already felt my creativity vanishing because of the lack of material!

So after reading through various recommendations, I went fabric-shopping for the first time in London: straight to Goldhawk Road in the hopes of finding some great bargains (which worked out quite in my favour, I may add).

 

As I didn’t have any specific project in mind (yet), this was the perfect place for me. If you already have envisioned a complete project in your head, or even have some fabric and just need something to match them, then I’d probably suggest going somewhere else, although there’s always the chance you could get lucky here!

I could have bought the entire shops today, but luckily I had set myself some rules:

Christmas-present-convertible it had to be, primarily for children of the ages 3-7.

Okay, I know, that's only one rule, but... still. I had some principles.

So I heavy-heartedly said goodbye to all the beautiful abstract prints and ‘boring’ plain colours (not before promising them a return visit of course, duh) and turned my full attention to all the cute colourful patterns and colours I know will come upon approval by my little girls – and boy(s).

Which was not, I may accentuate, an easy feat to accomplish, just look at all these amazing fabrics!

Don't you worry, I'll come back for you!

Don't you worry, I'll come back for you!

Aren't those big african prints amazing? But the one I had to pull myself together over was this gorgeous Tweed (is that the correct name? I'd be happy if anyone corrected me :) )

 

WOW! I just... I just.... I can't! I would even have made an exception for this one, but unfortunately it was 16£/ m and since I didn't have aparticular pattern in mind I deemed that a bit much. Sigh. I'll get over it. Some day...

Although my shopping spree started out quite random and directionless, in the end I managed to get at least one matching fabric for every spontaneous capricious purchase I had made.

 

And now I have all these ideas swirling in my head that just can’t wait to be put in action!



I like this combination the best, those little strawberries are just so sweet...

I hope that this was some kind of an Iispiration to you guys and I would love to hear what you have planned for Christmas! Are you a self-proclaimed Do-It-Yourselfer as well or do you buy your presents? Where do you get your ideas?

 

Have a nice wintery weekend, hopefully safely tucked away at home with a big mug of tea!

<3

 

 

 

Sheepy Hat Collection

Howdy, my fellow creative minds!

How have y’all been feeling lately? I’ve been a bit under the weather the last few days because I managed to catch myself a cold… Yay. I hate having to deal with a sore throat, headaches and the obligatory running nose, but the worst thing is that you just feel like crap and can’t muster up motivation for anything. Sad life, really.

Anyway, the project I wanted to show you today is a hat I knitted a while back for the little sister of a friend of mine. I had created kind of a collection of similar  ones for my closest friends, and she wanted one for her birthday – and as I had currently been projectless, I figured ‘why not?

This hat was made out of leftover scraps of wool, so I couldn’t exactly tell you what the colours were called, and I used size 7 knitting needles, which equals to 4.5mm in metric size. For the bottom brim I alternated between two garter stitches and two purl stitches, as I wanted the ribbing to be quite stretchy. The top part is knitted slightly different: I quadrupled the amount of stitches per column and purled 8 stitches, then knitted 8 stitches for the cable and crossed them in every fifth row.

The bobble is the easiest part to make as I’m sure most of you will know from experience, so this would be a great way to let your kids participate in the making of their hat. Or just as a singled-out project, there are soooo many gorgeous things you can do with bobbles!

I hope you liked the looks of this hat, I’ll make sure to knit my way through winter (again) and share all my projects with you!

What are your favourite knitting patterns, projects and wools? Or do you prefer crocheting? I would love to hear about your ideas in the comments, lots of love,
Kathybell

Leaf Alphabet

As autumn is drawing to its end, I find myself very grateful for having ventured outside just in time to collect a few of these stunningly coloured fall leaves.

Now, today we finally started with THE project - converting our pile of neatly pressed (+ and finally dried) leaves into our own illustrated alphabet.

 

Drum roll, please, here they come!

 

What do you think? Personally, I think we did a pretty good job - and, no, I'm not in any way unfamiliar with the order of the letters in the alphabet -  the reason for our lovely giraffe to appear directly behind the dainty dolphin is even more embarrassing actually: Somehow, the Picture of a Giraffe came up when I googled 'animals with d' (so I'll blame it all on Google now), and this was actually the first poster we created for 'd'. Before I realised my mistake of course and quickly erased all evidence of crime. So shhh.

This is an amazing project if you (like me) have some smaller children at home that are yearning for any kind of entertainment but left on their own would spent their day in front of the TV. I especially liked the way this particular idea managed to let nature slip in as well - I'll definitely be on the lookout for more nature DIY-projects!

What did you do with your collected stash of autumn colours?

I just love this season, as it slowly gets colder and colder you finally  have an excuse for curling up on the sofa, wrapped up in blankets and sipping on your tea whilst reading a book. And the air outside is just so crisp and fresh and... autumnal!

I'd love to discuss nature crafts, season loving or kids projects with you, so make sure to leave a comment!Hope to hear from you soon,

Kathybell

<3

Christmas Is Nearing...

...and you have been able to find christmas-y clothes, decorations and accessoires in the shops for a while now. Although every year I'm astounded by how early the city turns into one huge Christmas advertisement, I seriously LOVE all those reindeer-, Father Christmas- and snowman-jumpers! But the one thing I just couldn't leave at Primark on my last stroll through was this collection of earrings:

Aren't they just the cutest? Unfortunately I think it's still a bit early to be wearing them, but I can't wait till the 1st of December, when (at least for me) it'll be officially socially acceptable to wear all things Christmas-related.

Have you had any naughty Christmas purchases yet? What's the thing you're most looking forward to?
Toodles,

Kathybell