A BIRTHDAY CARD FOR MICHAEL

I've been doodling a lot of woodland creatures recently, so I decided to make my old flatmate Michael a birthday card with some of them on it. I was planning on using Adobe Illustrator to practice a little, but eventually I decided I was too comfortable where I was sitting, and ended up just free-handing it straight on the card in stead, while Bo and Graeme had a wrestle.

It was actually Michael's birthday about two weeks ago. But as his celebrations were postponed until today, it only gave me extra time to actually buy him a present and make him a card. I think if more people gave me a two week warning I'd probably be a lot better at actually organizing a card and present for them. Just saying!

DIY RAG RUG

Flat 3/6 is a pretty small flat. There's not a lot of storage space, so in order to keep a pretty basic level of order in the flat I do genuinely try to limit my hoarding, difficult as it may be. For example, we have far too many bedsheets. Even after haven given a couple to charity, we still have about six or seven left, which is way too many when we only have one bed. To add to it, we also recently received a king sized duvet, which means these six or seven duvet covers won't even fit our duvet. I've been looking for ways to recycle all these sheets though, as I feel it's a bit of a waste just binning them or giving them away to charity. I mean it's a lot of fabric, just aching to be used for something.

So when I saw the idea of crocheting a rug and using old bedsheets for yarn on Meet me at Mikes's, i got pretty excited. I ran out and bought a giant crochet hook straight away (I had been waiting for an excuse to get one anyway), and went home and started ripping up one of my bedsheets.

This is an extremely simple project, so the list of supplies is pretty short. You'll need fabric. In my case, I used old bedsheets, but you could easily use any fabric, maybe a set of old curtains or a table cloth or something. Or of course just regular old fabric. Other than that, you'll probably need a pair of scissors to cut the strip, and then of course a crochet needle to crochet it all together again. I used a 9 mm crochet needle.

First you'll need to make your fabric rag yarn. There's loads of tutorials online on how to do this, but the gist of it is that you cut a ginormous continuous strip of fabric, which you then roll into a ball of fabric yarn. A lot of tutorials recommend doing all your cutting first, but I prefer cutting and rolling as I go along to limit knots and tangling. I also prefer tearing the fabric rather than cutting. A little less control, but it's a lot faster and the strips turn out pretty straight. Plus, I quite enjoyed tearing up my bedsheets. It made me feel a little bit like a the heroine of a story who's tearing up her bedsheets, tying them together and escaping through the window. Yes, I probably need to get out more.

Once you've got your ball of fabric yarn, the remaining is just crocheting. Of course, you can chose to follow a number of crochet patterns for this. I decided I wanted my rug a bit different, so instead of just doing a big circular rug, I decided to make several circles and join them all together. Each circle started out with 10 hoops, and then I just added on circles using a treble crochet stitch until the circle was as big as I wanted it. Once I had enough circles in different sizes, I joined them all together. One bedsheet resulted in four bigger circles and three smaller circles, i.e. a nice, irregularly shaped rug for the hall.

Any other suggestions of what i can use my extra bedding for?

NEON PINK BLANKET

I've been doing a lot of crocheting recently, both making this neon pink blanket and another project I've been working on which I'll probably post about once it's finished. In fact, I've been crocheting so much recently my hands are sore. Of course, I've been up to other things as well, like cooking this amazing soup, listening lots to this wonderful album, and watching a lot of episodes of Nigella on the Food Network. I've also been drawing lots, but I'll probably post about that later too.

I'm a pretty slow crocheter though - still in at the learning stage really, which to be honest, is the main reason why this ended up being a blanket for Bo. After having made two trips to the shop for more yarn, I decided that this final ball of yarn would dictate how big the blanket would be. And In stead of aiming for another blanket for the couch, I'd aim for a new blanket for Bo's bed.

And then again, I very rarely make things for Bo. And after spending all week in a cone, I thought she might appreciate a new blanket. She is a snuggle bunny after all, and one of her favourite past times in the world is to nap, be comfortable and to snuggle. Some dogs might enjoy being outside rolling in the mud, but Bo prefers being rolled up on the couch watching TV. She definitely shows signs of city dog syndrome, as she refuses to go outside when it rains and has been known to jump at the smallest of things, like that time a bird's feathered that was lying on the ground was caught by the wind and unexpectedly tickled her belly while she was out on a walk and she squealed like she'd been stood on. Yep, Bo definitely enjoys a good snuggle in a cosy blanket.

DARK CHOCOLATE LIME COOKIES

I’d had a bit of a traumatizing morning involving a doctor’s appointment and having to give a blood sample, when I walked past Roots & Fruits on my way home and decided that the only way I would feel better was if I went in and bought myself some cookies.  I mean, isn’t that what you’re supposed to do if you’re feeling a bit shaky after giving a blood sample?  Especially when you can tell the nurse is a bit nervous because you mentioned that last time you had an injection you passed out and she obviously doesn't want that to happen again, but she still ends up injecting you not once, but twice, because the first one “didn’t break” (or did she “say take”? I’m no nurse-lingo expert and I was probably a bit delirious at the time, but in my mind she said “break” which traumatized me even more).  She made me lie down and reassured me it was all in my head.  I miraculously survived and was conscious throughout the whole ordeal, but even just thinking about it now makes me nauseous.  But I’m sure that’s what I’ve been told, that when you’re feeling like this the best way to get over it is to load up on sugar.  Either way, it’s what I told myself as I approached the Roots & Fruits cookie section.  I had quite a few options, but eventually settled on a box of Chocolate Limes.  I like chocolate, I like lime, and the box promised “luscious, lime infused biscuits dunked in a dark chocolate”.  The cookies were just the pick-me-up I needed, and two thirds of the box was gone before Graeme even made it back from college.

Today seemed like the perfect day to try to recreate these cookies. The recipe itself is very, very loosely based on a recipe for oat & ginger crunchies from Sara Lewis' cakes and bakes, a  birthday presents I got at my old work. I made a few changes though. I took out the ginger and replaced it with lime and dunked them in dark chocolate. I also attempted to ease my conscience a little by using honey in stead of golden syrup. Oats + honey = healthy food, right?

Dark Chocolate Lime cookies recipe:
100 g butter
1 tablespoon honey
1 teaspoon baking soda
100 g sugar
juice and zest of 1 lime
100 g flour
175 g oats
100 g dark chocolate

Directions: Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Put sugar, honey and butter all in a small saucepan and gently heat until it's all dissolved and melted into a lovely goo. Remove the pan from the heat and let it cool a few minutes. Add baking soda, lime zest and lime juice and stir well. Once you put in the baking soda, the whole mix will bubble and foam lots. Throw in the flour and mix until you have a batter before you add the oats. Spoon the mix onto greased baking sheets and bake for about 8-10 minutes until they're nicely golden brown. Once they're done, let them sit on a wire rack for a while until they've cooled. Melt the chocolate, either in a bain marie or in the microwave. Dip each cookie in the chocolate and return them to the baking sheets to let the chocolate harden.

Nom nom!

DIANA F+ PHOTOS

So yesterday I finally got some films developed, including four rolls of 120 film that I took a while ago with my Diana F+. I've been faithful to my Diana mini for years now, and never really wanted an F+ cause I figured 120 film would probably be a bit of a pain in the ass to both to buy and get developed. But then the flash of my mini broke and I decided that instead of buying a new just a new flash I'd get a Diana F+ with a flash. It made perfect economic sense at the time. In retrospect, I do wonder if maybe this might be getting a bit out of hand.

I am of course now completely in love with this camera. The pictures come out dreamy and unpredictable like the mini, though I feel the success rate is a bit better with the F+. The whole thing feels a lot sturdier, but you still get the cool light leaks. I also love how you can get loads of different lenses for it and different backs so that you can use regular 35 m film or even instant film. My wishlist this Christmas is gonna be huge.

These were taken at Irvine beach in Ayrshire and Victoria Park in Glasgow. Now off to buy more film for another photo adventure!