Little blue flowers

I decided the wreath needed a small addition and went with tiny blue flowers dotted about between the daisies and buttercups. The pattern for the blue flowers I worked out for myself based on the larger yellow buttercup.The buttercup is made by chaining up to get the height,doing a couple of trebles and chaining down again for each petal.i figured this would work one a smaller scale so started doodling.

Not very technical I'm afraid as am tentative in my pattern drafting. The pattern is as follows

Little blue flowers

(Uk terminology)

Form a magic ring

Row 1 Work 5 double crochet into the ring ss into first dc

Row 2 ch 1,dc in same stitch,ch 1.ss into next stitch,ch 1, dc in same stitch,ch 1,ss in next stitch,ch 1,dc in same stitch,ch 1,ss in next stitch ch1,dc in same stitch,ch 1,ss in next stitch,ch 1,dc in next stitch,ch 1,ss in first stitch,this forms 5 petals,fasten off

Make loads.........

Sew middles in contrasting colour and add to project

Wreath finished?

Have finished my first wreath but feel it needs something extra,am toying with the idea of tiny lilac flowers dotted about. you can't tell from this picture but there are quite a few big gaps.my other idea was to have a crocheted bow at the top. I may make both and pin them on to see how it looks.

Been busy in the kitchen,made vegan pizza with vegan cheese from vegusto and chilli in my

 New slow cooker with vbites mince.i have also made extremely crumbly but not dry flapjack,I don't mind the crumbly bits,they are nice for breakfast with almond milk on top.

My crumbly stop your tummy rumbly flapjack!

Vegan pizza,the brown bits are vegan chorizo.

Chilli slow cooker styly! Love my slow cooker.......

Good wreath

I have been busy today working on my spring wreath,have now nearly finished making all the flowers,the leaves are done and then I get to do the fun bit,sewing them all onto the base.

I'm going to have to block the daisies to keep their shape but I think the buttercups work better with their natural curve in them. The daisy pattern I made up and is as follows below(under the link for the book) the buttercup pattern and leaf pattern is from this book:-

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I got mine from Amazon 

100 flowers to knit and crochet

It's a lovely book,full of crochet and knitted flowers.i have used this pattern book a lot in the 5 years I have had it.

Daisy pattern 

Make a magic loop

Row 1 in yellow 6 dc into the magic loop,ss tog

Row 2 in white in any dc from previous row attach and ch5,miss first st and dc in next 4 stitch ss tog,repeat in same stitch to make 2 petals in one dc space. Repeat around making two petals in each dc of first row.

The daisies need to be blocked as they come out quite curly!

Vegan felting

One of the things that stopped me going fully vegan was my love of needle felting. I was very sad about the idea that I would never play with fibres and colour combined again but didn't want to be a hypocrite. Enter the wonderful internet!!! I found out from google searching that you can felt with plant and synthetic fibres!!!! I had always thought that this wasn't possible if the fibres weren't some kind of wool.

I have the post by mythillogical of the myths and fabrications blog http://mythillogical.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/bamboozledexperiments-in-bamboo-fibre.html to thank for pointing me in the direction of world of wool world of wool website who seem to be the only company selling ready dyed bamboo,most company's sell it white,it felts when needle felted,I cannot vouch for wet felting as I don't do it. It is a different texture to wool,shinier and slippery and slightly harder to get to felt,it doesn't seem to mesh quite as well as wool fibres but still felts,I find it best to rough it up a little first by carding it between my dog brush carders!!!

This also makes it possible to mix colours together,the colours from world of wool are quite bright so if you like a more subtle palette mixing is the way to go. I have been experimenting with mixing mid tones to my main colours and got some beautiful orangey pinky colours. 

My next test would be to use the fibres in a design. I drew out a mandala pattern and then hit a snag.....how to transfer the design to felt? You can't draw on felt to mark where you want the lines of your design...so I decided to stitch the areas of the design in running stitch and hopefully be able to pull them out later.

I then started filling in the colours and was pleasantly surprised how well they took to the background felt.in some places the background felt was starting to warp a little so I kept it in the embroidery frame for stability.i used my Janome Embellisher to smooth out the fibres but didn't linger to long in one spot as I am aware that the acrylic prefelt background is not that robust.

Very happy with the results so far and extremely happy to be needle felting with totally vegan fibres!!!i am embroidering gold lures thread around the coloured areas,this is how far I've got at the moment.

Guess what just got delivered? More felty goodness from world of wool,black and white bamboo so I can mix tones as well as colour and an interesting fibre called super right trilobal nylon rainbow top. It's much harder to felt and makes a fluffy mess everywhere but is so shiny and sparkly,I think it will make lovely highlights to a felted piece.

It's the rectangular sample at the bottom. Am excited about all these new fibres and am off to mix some new colours.