Earth Tones at Dream Valley

Hello!! :)

A fortnight has passed us by in a flash again, which means it’s time for another new challenge over at Dream Valley... and this fortnight we’d like you to use ‘Earth Tones’ in your creation!! :) We have a fab sponsor this time, BeadCrafty... I popped over to their site a while ago and they had a lovely selection of slightly more unusual beads as well as all the basics you just have to have and the lucky winner of our challenge gets a £20 voucher to spend... so wishing I could enter myself!! ;D

It’s still very much ixnay on the papercrafting around here at the moment so I wasn’t really sure what I was going to be able to show you... turns out, though, that I have two things to share!!lol First up, a pair of earrings I gave you a sneaky peek of {in this post} last year when I made them for my step-mum’s birthday... they are the perfect earthy colour tones for this challenge and it seemed apt to share a beading project as we have a bead co. as our sponsors :) Here they are...

I used my fav antique gold effect findings- ear wires, head pins and some chain to suspend them from-  with a selection of pressed glass beads from an Earth Tones mix I’ve had in my bead stash for a while, along with just a few tiny golden glass pearls for a bit of a brighter pop of colour/reflectiveness :)

They were pretty quick and easy to make (I was on the last minute again... as ever!!lol) and I like the cluster effect... might be inclined to try a smaller bead at the bottom another time though...

And for my second share I have something more recent... infact, I only just got it finished in time to get the pictures edited last night... I mentioned in my last post that I’d been knitting as well as crocheting while not papercrafting and this is what I’ve been working on- a shawl...

I saw this being knitted on craft telly a few weeks ago and liked the look of it... but wasn’t about to buy a bunch of wool I didn’t want and a set of 4 patterns just to get this one, though, so I asked my Mum if she thought she could figure out the pattern for me!! :) Mum used to knit a lot and is pretty good at figuring this sort of stuff out... as well as sorting out my messes when I go wrong, thank heavens!!lol Anyway, it took us a while- yes, ‘us’... I was actually able to offer a couple of helpful observations myself!!lol- but we got there and I set to later that afternoon...

Since I started knitting again a few years back, I have really only knitted scarves with very basic stitches/patterns and I’ve been thinking for a while that, if my hands ever let me start again, I should really try and progress a little beyond that and this pattern included stitches which I haven’t used before in order to make the holes (never made anything with holes in on purpose before!!lol) plus the return rows meant a refresher in purl which I’ve not done in years, so it was perfect :)

A couple to show the stitches more clearly :) I used an Arran weight acrylic yarn that my mum found in Aldi a few years ago- a 450g ball which barely looks like I’ve used any even after knitting this!!lol I had intended it as a scarf for myself initially but the yarn doesn’t drape well enough for that so I just made it a bit bigger to make the shawl and I think I might try a finer cotton yarn for my scarf sometime :) I was planning to add tassles but mum said she’d rather not... which saved me a fair bit of time and yarn so I’m not complaining!!lol

If you’d asked me before hand if I could knit something like this, I’d have thought not, but it’s actually fairly simple once you know how... I’m a pretty slow knitter because of my hands and not being able to do too much in one go so it took me a few weeks in the end... not helped by the fact that I kept going wrong due to my rubbish concentration and had to take it back rather a lot :S This is where my mum’s patience and ability to figure out what I had done (as well as volunteering to take it back for me a few times when my hands had had enough :) ) came in so useful!!lol Frustration aside, I did enjoy it, though, I like the result and I really feel I’ve learned a lot from doing it... plus mum has a shawl to keep her shoulders warm from the drafts of an evening!! :)

My mum was, understandably enough, not too keen to have her pic on my blog but she said I could put this one up so you could get an idea of the size of it!! :)

I was planning on trying come more crochet or maybe making some jewellery when I finished this but have actually already started on my next knitting project after seeing this post on Dawny P’s blog and I’ll share the results of that with you when I get there... it will be a baby jumper and hat which will be heading off to Africa for babies who have nothing... if you have a a bit of spare time and wool then do pop over to Dawn’s blog where she has more details and the patterns for the jumpers :)

Okay, waffle and photo overload over for today- thank you if you’ve had the patience to read all the way through my ramblings again... two posts in one again!! :S :) Please pop over to the Dream Valley blog to see the fab creations from the rest of the DT... if you think ‘Earth Tones’ seems a little too restrictive a palette for you just have a look at the variety of styles we have over there!! :) I’ll be back again soon I hope- maybe with a card from a while ago as I know this sort of post is not a lot of people's cup of tea!!- and thanks for stopping by... have a lovely weekend!! :)