A place for tea

I suppose I was always bound to talk about tea at some point, after all I AM English.  Personally, I don't drink tea.  I used to, buckets of the stuff.  When I lived in Poland I'd work 14 hour days and we never had any milk at the school so I'd drink my tea black during the day.  It got to the point where I found tea with milk disgusting, I still do.  One day, about 4 and a half years ago, just before I started working at my current job and a little after I'd met Mr CA, I started drinking coffee instead.  Just like that.  Now I'm a coffee addict - I know, I know, coffee + migraines = bad news, I mainly drink decaff, just two cups or regular coffee a day and the rest decaff.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to be wittering on about coffee?  Oh yes, tea!

So, Mother's Day 2012.  About 2 weeks before the event, I started making 2 tea wallets/caddies/holders from Australian Homespun Vol. 12 No. 4, designed by Jenny of Elefantz.  I thought that one of these with a nice mug would be a great gift for the mums.  I got as far as the binding, tried to attach it by machine as I was running out of time, failed completely and so they languished on my WIP pile, featuring as number #13 on my humongous list.

Tea wallets, languish no more!

 

I made the same wallet in two different fabric combinations and changed the embroidery a little.  I'd bought the tea in advance and so knew what I had and made a few changes to suit the recipients - the bottom row is for fruit teas and I missed out Earl Grey on my mum's as I know she hates it (who wouldn't, it smells like Dettol, who wants to drink Dettol?)

 

 

All I had to do to finish them off was hand sew the binding.  I managed to completely cock it up.  Check out that appalling corner! 

 

And that one!  Seriously, rubbish.  To be honest, I'm not sure what I was doing when I machine attached the first half, the corners were... weird.  I did what I could.

This one was for my mum and there are a couple of things I'm not happy with (besides the binding) - the appliquéd flowers blend in too much and are hard to see, and the ties - there should have been two sets of ties! 

There's a close up of the appliqué in case you didn't believe it was there!  You can also see one of the disastrous corners from the other side. 

My mum's was made from Amy Butler fabric, can't remember what this one for Mr CA's mum is called, I think it had Dream in the title...

We have the same old binding-corner issues going off here too, and the lack of the second tie...

But the appliqué stands out a lot better.

See?

If I'm honest, I've completely run out of things to say about these tea wallets but seem to have loaded a lot of photos.  Make your own commentry for these photos...

I have to say, tied up, they don't work very well.  I picked up one of them and all the tea fell out... ah well, mums don't mind these things!  I didn't go to see my mother in law on Mother's Day as I was too ill, but she rang me and I told her Mr CA had made it.

Don't think she believed me.

The ever-growing to-do list

I realise I didn't show you my glass class progress last week, I remembered this morning as I was putting my glass box in my car.  The thing is... I only have 3 little leaves to show you.  I had also made another fused piece, but the lady at the studio accidentally slumped it!  I'm hoping to get it back, unslumped, tonight and I can show you that piece, the leaves and the stem which I finished last week and left to be fired.

Thinking about this rather large work-in-progress (my glass window... I'm not sure if that train of thought carried out of my brain onto the keyboard or if you'd all be sitting there wondering what I'm waffling about now) led me to think about all the other work in progresses hanging around.  I really need to get some of them done as they're stressing me out a bit.  I don't even know why.  Why should a half-finished doily bother me so much?

Anyway.  I decided to share.  I know you've all been going crazy wondering exactly what is on my WIP list and so I thought it was about time I put you out of your misery.  I know.  I'm good like that.

1. 5 more babygrows for Jacob out of my brother's t-shirts.  Not technically a WIP as I haven't started... but I said I'd do it and I have the pattern cut out.

My very talented graphic designer brother actually designed this one himself:

I'd better not much that one up!
2. The granny square bathroom curtain.  I'm going for 3 blocks of each of the 4 colours.  That makes 12.  I think I only need 9.  I have plans for the others if they're not needed.

3. These tea wallets have been languishing in my craft room, almost finished, since the day before Mother's Day.  They were to be Mother's Day presents, but I messed up the binding on one of them trying to sew it on by machine both front and back.  It has to come off and both bindings have to be hand sewn.  I knew I wouldn't get it done in time so it got shunted.

4. 5. 6. 7. Not technically WIPs again as I haven't started them, but they're at the top of my to-do list (meaning I'll get another 85 projects done before I get to these!).  The Joel Dewberry herringbone is for a pattern in the bottom book, dungarees for Jacob.  There's something I want to make from Pretty Little Projects, can't remember what it is right now.. a potholder?  Then there's a lunchbag tutorial I've printed out and I can see two marked projects in Sew and Stow.  Wonder what they are?!

8. My project for my Something Old, Something New competition.

9. I last mentioned my giant granny way back in September when I was on round 36.  I hadn't touched it since then until the weekend when I had it as my in-car project.  I've now completed round 45!  It's no where near finished though, it's too small!

10. Another crochet project I haven't mentioned in a while is my giant doily rug.  I got quite far, then put it aside to work on something else and when I came back to it I had no idea what I was doing!  The pattern I used was only for 10 rounds but I'd carried it on.  I intend to do the same things again.  Yes, I did have to rip it back to the very first round!

11. So far I've frogged and recrocheted every single round of this doily.  I'm not sure why it's still languishing as I love crocheting it.  When I look back on my evenings of the last month or so, I don't seem to have done much crafting at all.  I hate being too busy!

12. The one thing I have been working on is this cross stitch.  I showed you this a couple of weeks ago and asked if you could guess what it was.  You couldn't.  Or perhaps didn't want to.  That's fine!  I hope you can tell what it is now though?

It's a pattern I'm testing for Beverly who sells her amazing cross stitch patterns, though I can't find a link to her shop on her blog - Beverly!  I'm hoping to get it finished soon.  It's been worked on a lot as I've been getting home so late and I'm so tired that cross stitch is the only thing I can do.

12 WIPs isn't bad at all, is it?  Well, it wouldn't be but I actually have a lot more than that... they just managed to escape the camera this time!

I'm hoping to get back into regular crafting again very soon, and I've also got a selection of craft courses to look forward to.  I'll tell you all about them later this week.



Don't forget to enter my Something Old, Something New competition. The deadline is 31st July and there is a prize!