Soap, Trons and a work in progress

Crafting has been plodding along recently, exams and studying have got in the way sadly. Still, I got my oral and spot exam out of the way yesterday (oral = good, spot = bad) and have my last written paper tomorrow so hopefully things will pick up again over christmas.

In the meantime though, here's some handmade lavendar soap Andrew and I made a while back. It came out really nicely and soaps up with lots of creamy rich bubbles. It goes a bit gooey if you leave it in water though, but then what soap doesn't? The flatmates are suitably impressed, more than for the last piece of soap which was my failed chocolate and oatmeal attempt from the summer. I don't know what happened but it flakes into bits when you use it and looks like someone threw up in the sink.

How do you like the teacup as well? I bought a box of blue and white china from a car boot sale for 50p over the summer and I'm in love with it all. I'm currently using 3 teacups as soap dishes (2 at Andrew's, 1 at mine) and 2 teacups as plant pots (holding my mint plants). I plan to make some teacup pin cushions out of them at some point as well but I guess I should really drink out of them in the meantime!



Pictures to follow of the other teacups...

The work in progress, another t-shirt bath mat. I'll post photos of the first (rather wonky) bath mat once I've finished this one, it's coming out much more square which is nice. Although the photo is really dark, apologies for that.



Last but not least, the Trons in their respective carry cases. At £10 each from Pets at Home these things aren't cheap, but they are sturdy and make me feel safe carrying the tiny creatures around. They sit in them whilst they're being cleaned out and having their bedding washed, the pink frisbee thing is Viola's heat pad (which doesn't fit prooperly in the carry case sadly).

Oh christmas tree, oh christmas tree...

We finally put up our christmas 'tree'! There's been a bit of a saga to this so I'll start at the beginning.

Andrew's flatmates Michelle and Chris announced a few weeks back that they were going to Asda to get a real tree in a pot, the kind you can use year after year. I'd been planning on buying one like that for ages but hadn't got round to it, so I was fully supportive of this idea and we all decided to split the cost 4 ways (including Andrew of course). Michelle and Chris returned with the cutest little tree imaginable and set about trying to find somewhere in the flat to put it up. Here lies the problems. The flat has a long but narrow hallway, meaning the tree wouldn't fit in the hallway. It would fit in the alcove where we keep the Trons but obviously they're in there so that doesn't work. There's no space in the kitchen/lounge area and so the only place left was Michelle's bedroom. Michelle is the unofficial flat matriarch, it's her name on the lease and she's the one who sorts all the bills. She also has the largest room, so it makes sense that the tree goes in there, it's just gutting because Andrew and I can't really enjoy it. You can see it as you pass the door, but that's about it. I was quite upset about this, I'd been really looking forward to getting a tree and had got mum to post up all my christmas decorations but it was all in vain.

So, I moped about this for a while, then went over to my grandparents' for dinner on Monday and to help them dress their tree. They'd had to cut some branches off the bottom to make it fit in the stand and so I pounced on these in delight and proudly bore them home to Andrew. But, problem upon problem, we couldn't find anything to stand them in. Cue: CHARITY SHOPS! A quick trip to Hope of Romania (and my first foray into there, I found a vintage Jaeger wool suit for £20! Sadly I looked a frump in it, but huzzah all the same) and I returned triumphant with the glass vase seen in the photos, all for the princely sum of £1.50. Next year we'll have a proper tree when we're living together, but for the moment this one will do nicely.

Teapots

For a while now I've been looking for the perfect teapot. Everytime I go into a charity shop I have a search but to no avail. So, since I've got no time to take photos of my own crafts at the moment (plus I'm embarressed to take photos in front of Andrew's flatmates, I don't think they understand the concept of a craft blog) I had a quick search on Etsy to see what I could see-see-see.

I really like the blue and white design on this one from Ric Rac and Buttons, it seems to shout 'Sweden!' at me.



I love the colours of this teapot from Jolly Polly Pickins.



I love how antiquainted this teapot looks from Vintage Foster Care, an old copper teapot just conjures up Dickensian times!



I'll have to keep searching, my perfect teapot is out there somewhere...

Nordic Craft

So, the studying continues, I feel like my head might explode and I'm walking around with a giant rubber band round my chest, squeezing my breath out of me. Still, first 2 on Wednesday and last 1 on Friday, then it's off to St Andrews with the boy for a weekend of relaxation. I can't wait!

In the meantime though, here's my latest craft blog find, Nordic Craft, from the very talented Karin. I especially love this quilted collage she's done, definately taking inspiration from that when I move in with Andrew next year.



Along the lines of little quilted things (I love quilting and little = awesome, if I can finish it in a night then I'm automatically in love), I found this rather adorable quilted post card from Merry Mayhem on Etsy. Holy cow man, it's super awesome!

The world's most famous hedgehog

I finally got round to scanning in the article about Viola, so without further ado, here it is! They spelled Hobbes' name wrong (Hogs, psh) but I'm the Edinburgh based vet student, I'm famous!



Also, another old one, Patchy, the world's largest patchwork quilt. I've started a new log cabin quilt because there's so much wrong with Patchy, the stitching is wonky, I don't like the backing (I backed it in sweatshirt material with the fleece side out because I bought a huge bag of it for £5 from a car boot sale), it's HUGE and so really hard to handle and it's generally a bit rubbish. I mean, don't get me wrong, I like it just because it's my first ever patchwork blanket, but I know I can do so much better now. I'm going to do the log cabin quilt properly, with batting and proper quilt stitching. It's good to look at Patchy and see how far my skills have come in the past 2 years though.



I can hear them turning on the christmas tree lights across the road but I'm alone in Andrew's flat and I don't have a key, so I can't go outside and watch because I'll get locked out. This makes me sad, they have a bagpiper and everything.

Scarf

This is another golden oldie, so apolgies to those of you who've seen it before. I'm currently working on 2 new versions of it though, one in brown for Elisa for christmas and one in navy for a friend of Vicky's. Elisa's is going to be a late christmas present as I'm never going to get it done before christmas, so she's getting cushion covers instead.

This one is mine though and I love it, I wear it pretty much every day. It's such a simple pattern as well, it's from a girl on Craftster.



Sorry for the change in size, it looks so messy but I can't work out how to make photos larger in photobucket! I fail at the internets.



In other exciting news, my latest thriftstore find arrived and it is just as lovely as I thought it would be. Amy is happy.

Crafty clothing

One thing I really want to start doing in the New Year is buying more handmade clothes. I'd never really thought of Etsy for clothing before, I don't know why not because it's pretty much my first port of call for everything else.
Cruising around though, I came across several things I'd love to get next year. This handmade pleated tube dress is lovely, as is this shawl sweatshirt from the same seller.



I love this funky teal sweater, though blatently I wouldn't look half as cute in it as the model. This high waisted pencil skirt is awesome, I would definately put that on my wishlist and it would look marvelous with my winter boots.

I think for pure whimsicalness (is that even a word?), this Late For Tea Dress has to win hands down. I would look quite ridiculous in it but still, how lovely would it be to run for a steam train in this dress, carrying a small battered leather hold-all and clutching your hat to your head, all Railway Children-esque?

Crochet blankets - the best kind of blankets

Apologies to those who've been with me since my geekzoidtastic days, you might have seen this already. I've actually been really busy crafting recently, but everything is either unfinished or packaged up because I'm rubbish at remembering to take photos. So, to keep the blog-ball rolling (and also because we've got a slightly irritating house guest at the moment so I can't get any studying done), here's an old one from the summer.

I crocheted this for my friends Claire and Mikael, who got married in sweden over the summer. I love crocheting blankets, they're so easy and so good to do whilst watching TV, you don't really have to be paying much attention. They look quite impressive when you're done and people seem to really appreciate them so everyone's a winner. Also, I just saw this in a photo of their new flat that Claire posted on facebook (I know, I'm a facebook nerd, it's the saddest thing) and it makes me happy to know that it's taking pride of place on their new sofa.





We had a minor hedgehog emergency yesterday. This is the second time it's happened, Viola tries to go into hibernation. She gets really cold and sluggish and doesn't respond to you at all, especially suprising considering normally she's super huffy and trying to spike everything in sight. Hibernation is dangerous for African pygmies, 90% of the time they don't survive so you have to keep them warm enough so it's not an issue, cold triggers hibernation for them. After 10-15 minutes of being wrapped in a towel and held next to a heated wheatabottle she generally perks up, but it's a worry, what if it happens when we're not there to check on her? We're away to St Andrews in 10 days for the weekend and Andrew's flatmates will be feeding The Trons (the new nickname for the hedgehogs. When we first got him Hobbes quickly became Hobbetron then The Tron, now he's barely called by his real name.)

So, I went to Edinburgh Fabrics and bought some fleece (£1.50 for a quarter metre, bargain) to replace the strange bedding material she came with and we went to Pets At Home tonight to stock up on warming things. The best buy was definately this, how adorable is the name SnuggleSafe?! Her hogpod is now perched on top of that, so hopefully that'll stave off the cold overnight. We also had to buy an extortionately over-priced bag of her old food since she's refusing to eat Hobbes' food. Bloody woman, she's so high maintenance.

New hedgehog addition

As you may or may not know, Andrew and I have an African pygmy hedgehog called Hobbes. He's just turned a year old and is possibly the most adorable and the most grumpy creature alive.

But, last weekend, we acquired a second one! She's called Viola and we bought her from a family in Aberdeen who didn't have the time to exercise her enough. She's taking a while to settle in, she's not taking well to the food we feed Hobbes, but she's so lively and active and *really* pretty.

She was advertised in several papers and the family really wanted her to go to a house who already had a hedgehog so we were perfect candidates! It all happened really quickly, within 24 hours of seeing the advert we'd agreed to buy her and drive to Aberdeen the next day to collect her. We're really hoping we can breed from her in the new year but I'm nervous, we've never done anything like that before and there's not a lot of information available about breeding them.

She was on North Tonight though, check out the video here, skip forward to 14.05 minutes. I'm mentioned as well, I'm the Edinburgh vet student she's been sold to!

She was also in the paper as an actual new article (rather than just an advert) so I'll scan that in and upload it as well. We've yet to take any photos of her but when we do I'll be sure to upload them.

In the meantime, here's some photos of Hobbes







♥

Frances' Christmas present

How organised am I? *pats back* This was posted off last week so should hopefully have arrived already. I've also finished Vicky's present but stupidly I parcelled it up and posted it before taking any photos. Still, Vicky's much better at photos than I am so I'll try and persuade her to take some for me.

Once again, these pictures are really dark. I don't lie when I say the sun never shines here, we're all suffering from Vitamin D deficiency. Frances and Mark have just got engaged though so I thought I'd make them something for their flat. Last Christmas I made Vicky some knitted cupcakes and Frances loved them so I've made some for her as well, presented in a charity shop biscuit jar. They look lovely in real life, promise, the photos are just plain rubbish *sigh*

Latest thriftstore find

I bought this off a lovely girl over on ThriftstoreUK, I've been wanting it for ages but either didn't have the money or she wouldn't trade. Well, yesterday was a bit of a rubbish day so I decided to cheer myself up with a bit of a splurge.

It's a vintage school jumper, I love the old-fashioned, almost boarding school look about it. I also made the mistake of going into Oxfam yesterday and I came out with yet another vintage suitcase (it was only £4, I couldn't resist). Photos of that to follow...