A collection of current and past crafting projects using many different materials and techniques. Search within project categories for projects in a particular area, or just browse through all the different handmade things that spring up in our home.
Art, crafts and projects made by me and my toddler. Ideas and tutorials/templates provided for free to help make a both children’s and parent’s worlds a more colourful and creative place to enjoy making things together.
Occasional informal posts about life, learning, and the discoveries I make about who I am, and where I fit into our world. Though I aim for rainbows sometimes I get caught in the clouds, and I can write here during all weathers.
After welcoming in the cooler days of autumn with our hand dyed paper leaf wreath, we have a bit of a bug for autumn colours and textures in our toddler art and crafting at the moment. As well as the falling leaves we have been […]
There are occasions when I feel a bit (as Scarf Lady would say) ‘knit stuck’. In case you do not know who Scarf Lady is, this is she. My future (or maybe present) self. I just need that top knot. Because I do not have […]
I had an evening that required a dip into the Craft Snack Drawer. My Biopsy results were good, a couple of problems with white cell count, but overall, doing OK. The weight of the wait just meant that I was burned out and needed to let go of my thoughts and employ my nervous hands, so to the drawer did I dive.
I made this.
Do you know… I can’t work out what it is? I mean, it’s a ‘kitsch wall hanging’. It’s ‘festive weaving’. The kit tells me this. I’ve actually seen things like this on Pinterest, so I think it must be… fashion? The colours are cheery and it has some texture, but it makes me feel old and befuddled, like when all of the shops started selling heavy sweaters with no shoulders for two winters running and all I could think was ‘there is no appropriate climatic conditions for that garment’. It made me feel out of the loop.
This sort of does the same. I know that these wall hangings are popular (and there are far more accomplished examples out there made from beautiful natural materials) but they do remind me somewhat of the card loom weaving I did at school where a string warp was decorated with anything that could be manipulated enough to be woven through it (bits of string and shoelace, a lolly stick, a feather, bits of crepe paper) to be presented to an adoring adult who’d put it on the kitchen side, never to be seen again.
But I followed the instructions and I made my wall hanging, and that was the main thing. I just made it. And I’ve hung it up for a while at least. Actually, quite a few times. It has been migrating around the house since I finished it. Currently it is hanging on the wall about four foot above the toilet roll holder where it has brightened up a dull corner, and we’ll see how long it stays there instead of it being left on the kitchen side.
The third single-focus, deep-dive technique book by the Arnall-Culliford team is about to land with knitters in the form of a new eBook about …Helical Knitting, and the project promises to be pretty exciting. Following soon behind the release of the new Something To Knit […]
The last few weeks have ben a bit of a whirlwind here at Castle Codd. I’ve steadily been busy making things to bring us into the new season, which is one of my favourite of the year, and is now always brought in with a […]
I’ve just heard, by way of newsletter heralding good news, that the latest line of yarn from Arnall-Culliford Knitwear has been released for sale, and I’m excited because it’s really, really good.
I have been lucky enough to have an early play with Something To Knit With Aran, the bulkier, warmer, and all together more autumn/winter loving companion to the Arnall-Cullifords’ 4-ply line of yarn, and it’s quite likely the aran yarn you’ve been waiting for.
When I first received the squishy package of yarn I did what everybody else would do. I put my face into it. It is important to sniff your yarn to ensure that it is good stuff. It was good stuff. It was soft but not tickly on my nose. I could tell we were going to get on. The label gave it as 70% Highland Wool, and 30% alpaca. I could feel the wool, but it wasn’t crunchy, like some highland wool sometimes feels. And it had alpaca-softness, but without that slight itch. Blends: we like them because they work hard.
So, because I am curious and wanted to see this yarn show me what it had to offer I decided I would test these qualities with a tricksy project. Highland wool spun to a fine and even degree can give great, crisp texture, but alpaca can often soften that texture because of the slight halo it often carries. I knew the yarn felt great, but wanted to make sure it looked great when knitted up. Cables, they’d pop easily, but an actual knit/purl textured stitch? It takes a good yarn to make a showstopper project out of the basics of knitting, and this was a great yarn.
There’s texture so defined here, you could see it from space. That’s just knits and purls. No twisted stitches, no tricks to make those stitches pop. They just do. I love this yarn.
Here’s a close up of the texture on the pinecone stitched tank top that I made for my little boy:
The stitches are beautifully separate and each one is given its own form, but the knitting is beautifully smooth and even, which is hard to achieve with rougher yarns. The yarn is soft and round enough for the stitches to glide into place and settle neatly where they should be without getting stuck on the way.
As the weather turns to a slight chill, this is a great staple yarn for so many projects, and is available in ten shades from subtle and muted greys and the pale blue ‘Sky’ that I knit the tank top in, through a rainbow of saturated shades to suit all. Perfect for colourwork, cables, and ideal for texture, Something To Knit With Aran is in the acknitwear shop now.
DISCLAIMER: all opinions are my own. I have enjoyed the work and friendship of the Arnall-Culliford team for many years, but would not speak positively of products I did not truly believe in.
It’s been two years since our family grew by one. I think we were always a family, Russell and I. From, perhaps, the day that I felt like I trusted in his goodness to let go of that little bit of certainty and security of the path I was on, soon to have my own little place to live, and took the leap that I could trust in this human to be good and to care and love enough that I could uproot once more and move in with him to a pokey little cold flat in Whitley Bay. Boy it was cold. And it was so tiny! But perhaps it was my favourite of all the places that I have lived due to it being where our story began and the first place in which I had felt safe in a very, very long time.
But my favourite chapters of the story so far all burst into colour two years ago when a tiny human popped into our world, a mixture of Russell and I. This whopping great blackcurrant stained baby shot into the world at a faster rate than I could really handle it. But after all the worry and panic there lay this 9lb bruise with a wrinkle for a nose and Russell and I cradled pure love in our arms. It had not been so very long previously that I did not think that I could trust anyone to truly love in my lifetime, and now I had these two pillars of love, one huge and protecting and one (not so very) tiny, heartbeat fluttering fast upon my chest, and I knew that I would never feel the same again. And our family was strong.
I truly love being a parent, but as so many people will tell you, parenthood is tough. Gosh, yes we have our off days. Tired, grumpy days, days of illness and the mystery maladies of baby and toddlerhood, sometimes that write themselves apparent three days after the screams and sobs with a scarlet rash and sometimes which manifest on no physical symptoms that you will ever detect and are put down to some mystical condition which may or may not have existed. And you are always, always doing it wrong. So says that lady in the supermarket, or the health visitor who you’ve known for four minutes of your life, or that relation who’d do that differently, or the neighbour who is old enough to remember when babies did not cry because in those days 10 month old babies did as they were instructed, and probably earned their keep down the mines at the same time.
If my little boy knows or feels anything I would hope it is just how perfectly I love him and that I love learning from him more than from any of those people. I hope that Russell and I can teach him, above all else, how to be kind, how to be thoughtful and how to have empathy for all the people whose lives touch on his. I do not expect that as he grows and natually makes mistakes for him to always be good, or that he will always make the right choice, but I do so hope that we will always have time to put three chairs around the table and to talk about how we feel and how others might feel, and the effect of our actions on others. And from him I am learning how to best see the world anew. How the most basic and fundamental feelings that I have can be best nurtured and put to use. I am tougher in my resolve to surround myself with good and kind people and to not let damaging influences into our lives without guard, and to that end I have a strong determination to stand up for my family and to know when to say ‘no more’.
I hope that our third year together will be one of greater learning and growth. I hope it will be full of rainbows and colour, but when there are grey days that we can make things better with love and understanding. I hope that that there will be laughter, kindness, and, importantly, dinosaurs.
