- draw around your hand
- make your thumb a turkey head
- make the other fingers turkey plummage
- draw wings, beak, eyes and go crazy decorating and personalising the turkey.

We’ve now got a wall of turkeys in our office which the students are adding to. My favourites so far include ‘pilgrim and Indian turkey’ and ‘turkey with five turkey heads’.

What other hand animals/monsters can be made? A prize for the best one!

-wholewheat dough
- parmesan cheese (fresh grated)
- prosciotto ham
- eggs
- tomato sauce

Roll out your dough (or stretch into a weird triangle shape – so long as it’s thin enough, right?), spread with tomato sauce OR tear up loads of fresh spinach and add a little olive oil and garlic; cover in the ham, then grate on the parmesan cheese. Finally, crack two eggs on top. Shove it all in the oven at 450f for 15 minutes. Et voila! Delicious home-made pizza. Oh food network, how I love your silly shows with excellent recipes.

I was tempted to also make my Secret Comfort Food of Shame which is just cheese sauce. I eat with bread, or a spoon. Fairly inexplicable I know, but it works. What are your best and weirdest comfort foods?

A while ago I posted about the rug me and my boyfriend made. Until I made this, my craft projects were always tiny. Now they will all be huge! So let’s go all Blue Peter-y and I’ll show you how to make your own rag rug!

:: Step one…

You will be requring some canvas. I’ve read you can use hessian, but I managed to find the last bit of proper rug canvas at Kentish Town’s marvellous Delicate Stitches shop. So try there first if you’re in London, or bug Liberty’s haberdashery department. Last time I checked they had stopped selling it due to lack of demand. Show them there is demand. Failing that, I like the Willow Fabrics website. They’re always helpful and they have a gazillion types of canvas (and yikes, I just noticed they’ve put their business up for sale! Somebody buy it! Please!).

I think mine is 3.3 hole per inch hooking rug canvas. But I wouldn’t be too picky – take what you can get! Bind the cut edges with masking tape, as shown above. Oh, and you’ll need a latch hook too, as seen in action below.

:: Step two…

Depending on the size you’re going for, you will need either a hell of a lot of fabric, or a shitload. Seriously these things EAT fabric. Get all the fabric. Cut it into strips (mine were about an inch by six inches, but you can experiment). Throw away your ruler after the first few, and just hold your finished strips up against your fabric and cut by eye.

You can use a random mix of colours, or do stripes and patterns. Probably a good idea to draw any patterns out on the canvas first.

:: Step three…

This is where the hooker jokes come in. Push your hook down into the canvas, and up through the next hole. Place a fabric strip inside the hook part. Now pull the hook out, back the way it came. It will close on the fabric and bring it through. Viola! A tuft!

:: Step four…

Carry on hooking and you’ll start to develop a patch of rug. Find something good on tv. Clear your diary. Keep going. It will turn into a rug.

:: Step five…

The finishing step is to sew over the masking-taped edges with some ribbon or long fabric strip, to give it a nice soft edge (I used the long seams left over from a big sheet I’d cut up).

And that’s it! You’re a rag doll!

However, having stumbled across this blanket tutorial over at Purl Bee, I have found a rather charming way of using it. Instead of just stitching it on as zig zag trim, it is sandwiched between two layers with the tips pointing out. I guess that doesn’t take a huge leap of imagination, and it’s simple enough to do, but I wouldn’t have come up with it, so I thought I’d share the idea.

My blanket is for the soon-due baby of a friend. She’s going to be called Poppy, and will have a very stylish mother, so it seemed the perfect opportunity to use this lovely bold fabric from Marimekko. Oh how I love their prints! Add some orange jumbo rick rack, and a very well matched yellow green fleece from Ikea et voila. I’m thinking of quilting around the flower outlines. Good idea?

I would say that my absolute favourite thing to wear is a little cardigan/wrap/bolero – they’re so chic and dressy, and (unlike most of my other favourite things in this life) have at least some practical value.

I’ve been shopping around for a new one recently, and fell rather in love with the above. It’s by Irish indie fashion label Bonzie, whose Etsy store is filled with romantic, elegant delights.

Of course, being the kind of gal that I am, I couldn’t stop there. While it is undoubtedly a beautiful piece, I’m a) skint and b) in the mood for a new project, so I decided to find out how to make my own elegant evening wrap. After a bit of searching, I found this Threadbanger tutorial – with a few tweaks here and there, I think this’ll do the trick.

While I can’t guarantee the same beautiful results as the dreamy picture above, I can guarantee a couple of evenings out of the pub and a totally one of a kind garment. I hope to have a go at this during the next couple of weeks, so I’ll post the results when it’s ready. And I see absolutely no reason to stop coveting the above – I really don’t believe in the concept of too much of a good thing!

Bonzie

Here’s things that are making me feel excited today:

- really lovely camera case tutorial (pictured above) on Ayumill’s exciting new blog Pink Penguin, just crying out to me to make little quilted purses and clutch bags

- utterly charming broderie anglais pebbles from Stephanie Barnes upcoming picnic collection. I can’t fathom why these appeal quite so much to me, but they do

- Stuart Kovakolic’s amazing nine metre long Never Been mural

- cute and simple DIY paper sihouette tutorial by threepotatofour on Design*Sponge, giving me ideas for greetings cards.

The very first thing that I learnt to crochet was a square – yeah, forget the boring bits like making a chain or single crochet, try a square on your first day! You’ll be so pleased with yourself.

:: Step one

The basis of your square is a line – chain six stitches, easy peasy! The next thing that you want to do is pop your hook through your first stitch, wrap your yarn around and then slip the other two loops over your new loop, leaving just one on your hook. Now you have a circle, right?

:: Step two

Chain three stitches, to bring yourself up to the right height for the next row.

Now for the exciting bit – the treble (called the double in America – crazy talk)! This is an incredibly important stitch to learn, so listen carefully. Firstly, loop your yarn over your hook, then slip your hook through the circle that you’ve previously made, loop the yarn over your needle again and bring it back through to the front – you should have three loops of yarn on your hook. Now, loop the yarn over again and bring two of the existing loops over and off the hook, so two remain. Loop the yarn again, and bring the two existing loops over and off, leaving just one loop on your hook. Smile like a loon – you’ve done your first treble!

Crochet eleven trebles to complete a circle. The three stitches that you chained in the beginning stand in for your first treble, so only eleven are needed.

So, your line has become a circle on its way to becoming a square. A few more stitches and you’ll start to see the square emerge…

:: Step three

Next up is your first corner. Again, chain three stitches up to the correct height for the next round. Now, crochet five trebles – go on, you remember how! – into the last stitch of your previous circle. Excellent. Count three stitches along and crochet six trebles into that stitch. That’s corner two. Count three along, crochet six trebles, count three along, crochet six trebles. Now you should be back at your starting point with something resembling a square dangling from your hook. Slip your hook into the third chain stitch that you made, wrap your yarn around your hook, bring it back to the front, wrap your yarn, and slip two loops over and off, so that one remains and your square has been joined. Fabulous!

:: Step four

Now that you have your basic square, all you need to do is keep going until it reaches your desired size. Chain three stitches to the next round. You’ll notice a little space between one set of trebles and the other – this is where I want you to crochet two trebles (your chain of three stands in for the third, like on the corners).

Move around your square, crocheting six trebles into each corner (to find the right place to pop your hook, count three stitches from the start of your six corner trebles) and three into each side, until you’re back at your starting point, where you’ll join your square as before.

You’ll notice that you now have two gaps on each side of your square – this is how your square grows. Crochet three trebles into each gap and six into each corner (remembering that your chain of three always stands in for the first treble on each layer) – you’ll have one more gap on each side with every layer that you crochet.

And now, my lovelies, you have a square!

When you’ve completed your last layer, join the square as usual, cut your yarn and pull it through your remaining loop to bind off.

First of all, we decided to use back issues of ‘The Believer’ magazines which are packed full of interesting columns and weird images. We cut same sized column strips (okay, Stephen did – straight lines are not my forte) and circles out. We made sure to cut pieces with the same border, to form a border round the table.

Then, we applied lots of glue (I used Hodge Podge) to the clean table. If you had a table with a painted surface you’d probably need to sand that off.

We pasted down the paper and applied a thin layer of glue over that, and waited till it was completely dry. Then we tried a clear, spray varnish on top of that – I don’t recommend it, because it just doesn’t build up fast enough.

To speed it along we applied several coats of clear wood varnish and left the table outside to dry on our balcony (easier to do in LA, admittedly, where the chance of rain is less).

Finally, the table dries out (allow it to dry between each coat of varnish) and is waterproofed. One corner did peel up and we superglued that back down. Et Voila! I can eat my breakfast off Amy Sedaris’ face. Happy collaging!

Despite being one of the first things I blogged about right at the beginning of December, I finished this little beauty with only a day to spare! I was so happy with it, though, that I decided to share. This is the first knitting pattern that I’ve ever written, and, luckily, it’s nice and simple to follow. I’ve called the scarf Cirrus, as the wispy cables remind me of the pretty clouds at sunset.

A worry with cables is that the back will look an awful mess, which isn’t good for scarves and other two-sided pieces. One way of combatting this is to use the double-knitting technique (more on this at a later date), but I thought that the back of the cirrus scarf had it’s own charm.

The Pattern!

:: materials ::

:: 4mm knitting needles
:: 4mm cable needle
:: yarn needle
:: 2 skeins of artesano inca cloud alpaca yarn

:: pattern ::

:: cast on 32 stitches
:: row 1 – k2, *(p4, k2), repeat * to end
:: row 2 – p2, *(C4F, p2) repeat * to end
:: alternate rows 1 and 2 to desired length (I used just under two skeins)
:: bind off in pattern and weave in ends
:: tassle using remaining yarn

:: key ::

:: k2 = knit two stitches
:: p2 = purl two stitches
:: C4F = slip two stitches onto cable needle, knit next two stitches, then knit the two stitches on the cable needle

If you decide to give this a go, I’d love to see the results!

I screen printed my mittens in white onto brown recycled card and paper. For the cards I cut out the mittens, hole punched them and threaded them onto white wool, so that they could be hung up as little decorations. They are supposed to bring to mind those childhood mittens threaded on strings through your coat sleeves.

I’m sure they’d look lovely on different coloured card stock as well. If you do make your own from this pattern, I’d be so delighted to see how they turn out.

Here is the PDF file that you can just print out yourself: Mittens pdf

For gift tags A4 size will work ok. If you want to make cards or decorations it is better enlarged 200%, which is the size I used.

Whilst we are at it, there are quite a few talented bloggers sharing their wrapping paper and gift tag tips. Here’s a few favourites:
- Angry Chicken’s witty gift tags
- Derek and Lauren’s DIY ink stamp gift tags at Design*Sponge
- Not a blog, but some rather lovely wrapping paper for you to print out at Blueprint. Such a shame the magazine is no more.
- Who thought popsicle sticks could make stylish tags? Patricia from Little Hut did. And also cute tags with handwriting lines for children, a lovely fabric and paper ribbon, and a very elegant one using punched paper. I think Patricia wins!

Happy wrapping!