Makes i like 30-April-12

Cute emergency pouch at a spoonful of sugar

Adorable amigurumi corchet hook at nerdigurumi

A-mazing pencils at Present and Correct

V. clever wood grain effect laptop wrap at Fine and Feathered

Knitted Pencils

I feel in love with these little crocheted pencils at crochet n play designs but im rubbish at crochet and trying to make them was slowly driving me insane. So i thought - stick to what you know abi - and i found this cute knitting pattern for very similar pencils from Mochimochi land. (If you dont know about Mochimochi land then please check them out, they make the cutest little knitted things and they specialise in teeny tiny knits!)

Anyway back to the pencils - these were so easy to make, they took me less than an hour each and im not a fast knitter by anyones standard. I just changed the colour of the body each time to make myself a set (spot the 'deliberate' mistake with the tips though!). I used up my some of  my wool stash doing these and used lots of different thickness wools, which hopefully explains the varaiation in size (not that i cant count stitches or rows at all!) but i'm really pleased how they turned out, now do i give them away or keep them for myself...

Power of Making - V&A

Although I've always loved handmade crafts I've never actually made it to the V&A museum - horrifying I know! But when i saw they had an exhibition called The Power of Making i knew that was the one for me, and it didnt let me down. It was only a small exhibition, in one room, but i spend nearly 2 hours in there looking at all the amazing items. From incredibly technical pieces of mechanical engineering to bespoke shoes and incredibly detailed anatomy models of animal, i was amazed that everything could be grouped together in one exhibit, but it could. Everything there was handmade by incredibly creative and talented craftsmen and women. It was actually really humbling as the level of skill was just inmmense, far beyond anything i could even dream of.
Some of my favourite items were the alphabet pencils, where each letter of the alphabet was painstakingly carved into its own pencil lead (picture on the exhibit homepage), the dissected frog made from lego, disgusting and fascinating all at once and the Widow dress made with over 10,000 dressmaker pins, which at a distance i thought was fluffy or maybe furry and it was only when i got close up that I realised every bit of what i though was fluffy/furry thread was in fact a pin!
A really lovely 2 hours of my life, in fact so nice that i didnt leave enough time to go round any other bits of the museum - definitely an excellent excuse to go back again this year!