Happy New Year to one and all.  Here we are just a few days ago looking happy and optimistic for the year ahead.

When we left you we’d finished our last craft fair of the year.  After this we went into something of an inspiration meltdown and there we have remained for the past month.  There have been minute flurries of activity in the needlefelting and knitting departments but nothing worthy of photographing and writing about.  Indeed we have struggled to put a sentence together about anything much at all and to be honest this small update is difficult.

We had a good old chin wag last night and made some decisions, partly for our sanity and partly to ensure the continuance of this site.  We’ll be spending the next year focussing much less on trying to please everyone else and going back to the humble beginnings of doing what pleases us.  There will, hopefully, be regular features and lots of craft from us and other people but we don’t intend to get all hung up on making stuff all of the time.  We’ve got a house that badly needs to be turned into a home so we must focus on that first and foremost and the craft will hopefully come from living in a much better place.

One thing that has happened is that I’ve decided to participate in the project whereby you take a photo each day for a year.  I’m off to a great start with 5 photos and hope that taking part will enable me to improve my photography skills.  I’ll be making regular round-up posts to show the week’s photos.

As for what else we have planned…you’ll just have to wait and see.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this ingenious project from ‘How About Orange‘.  She bought some very cheap bits of wood and transformed them into some beautiful keyrings with sharpie pens, which is what it’s all about really…making something from not much at all.  If you can’t find wooden discs you could always cut a branch into discs.

It’s been a wee while since I finished these off and I’m afraid they’ve been lying around gathering dust until I managed to find some time to take some photo’s of them.

As ever, each Poke has been created using a combination of power-carving, hand-carving, sanding, pyrography and oiling to protect the wood from the elements.  Although initially conceived as a little something to accompany pot plants there’s no reason why these little chaps couldn’t be equally as at home in a garden border or bed.

Available to buy in the shop

A Prince among wood sprites?

Surely he must be!  Look he has a crown on!?

I’ve put in place a self-imposed ban on making these sprites as they seem to be quickly taking over the house!  Until I start making more again I’m just going to drip feed the existing ones to you!

Available to buy here.

I have blogged about these before, so won’t bore you with the details again.  I have been trying to get some decent individual shots of them though and having struggled with lighting and props I finally managed to get some pictures for the shop, I’m rather please with them so I thought I might as well share them.

Click to view full sized images, there will be more to follow as I upload them.

These sprites are available for sale here.

As promised, here’s a quick how to for making your own wooden crochet hook.  These are easy to make but you will probably need to practice before the shape is akin to a mass manufactured crochet hook.  I know I need to practice more on the shape.  The thing is, these work regardless of how misshapen they are and you can have a whole set of different sizes with very little outlay.

You’ll need:

- A piece of dowel approx 18cm long.
My dowel was 6mm diameter but you can use whichever size you want.
- A hacksaw
- Sandpaper
- Craft knife
- Ruler (optional, measurements are approximate)
- Pencil (optional, only if you want to measure accurately)
- Pencil Sharpener (optional, you could use your craft knife)

Instructions:

1. With the hacksaw cut your piece of dowel to around 18cm long.

2. With the pencil sharpener, sharpen one end to look like this:

Rotate two to three times in the sharpener to get this shape but it really doesn’t matter since you’re just rounding the end that sits in your hand.

3. At the other end, measure about 2cm from the end and mark a line (or you can eyeball it).  Start carving with your craft knife rotating as you go to make a point like this:

4. Cut off the sharp end with a saw or craft knife if, like me, you can’t be bothered to go back out to the cold garage!  It should now look like this:

5. Sand both ends now to remove rough bits.

6. Continuing to work on the sharper end, make a mark with your craft knife around 1.5cm from the end.  Cut down slightly at a 45 degree angle.  A few millimeters away from that cut mark and cut down at a lesser angle to make a triangular cut out as shown below:

7. Keep working away at this cut out, alternating between cutting a 45 degree angle and a lesser angle.  It helps to hold the hook flat on a board and skim off layers towards the point, then cut down at the 45 degree angle to remove the ends of the slithers.  The picture below shows this work in progress.

Be careful to cut downwards and not across because the grain will split if you cut straight across or a too small an angle.  You’ll be sanding the rough bits later so don’t worry if it looks a bit ragged at this stage.

8. Once you’re happy with the size and shape of your cutout (it really doesn’t have to be perfect but you need to be able to catch a bit of wool with it…obviously!) sand the whole hook, paying particular attention to the base of the cutout part to ensure your wool doesn’t snag.

Here’s mine after it had been sanded.  Notice the angle of the cutout, cutting across the grain rather than into it.  And the other side:

That’s really all there is to it.  It just takes practice to get the shape right.

As a bonus, you could make your own knitting needles.  I cut all of my dowel into 18cm lengths before I realised but all you would need to to is sharpen one end until sharp and stick a large bead or button to the other and then sand really well … shh, don’t tell the knitting needle manufacturers!

Suffering from lack of crafting activity for the past week, I decided to whip up this crochet hook this afternoon from a piece of dowel.

Later in the week I’ll show you how to make your own…but for now, it’s time for tea!

Skot is another artist found through DeviantArt where he goes by the name Lord Hoki, living on Austrailia’s East Coast Skot works in a variety of media creating a range of drawn, painted and sculpted objects.  Much of his DeviantArt account is taken up with his Hoki range of work such as those pictured below:

Above is just one of a wide range of character sketches featured in Skot’s DeviantArt account.  Aside from the sketches there are also fully worked up paintings (see below) in what is probably best described as, full 21st century technicolour:

I really love the blending and highlighting used in this painting, the background providing a wonderful richly textured contrast with the smooth features of the the face itself.  It could be that I’m attracted to these works thanks to the eyes – eyes being something of an obsession for me – and what eyes these are!  I almost feel like I could fall into them, a real focal point of many of these Hoki works.

If you like these characters painted, then you may well like them painted on t-shirts (below), wear an original work on your chest … I’d pay for that!

It only seems right that the Hoki’s be brought to life in an altogether more 3-dimensional fashion, and so it is we discover Captain Hoki:

The Captain here is a sculpture in papier mache that really fits in with it’s 2-dimensional forebears, the nose and eyes being the main feature with colouring and details in keeping with the designs I’ve already featured here and the others in Skot’s gallery.

Given what’s gone before you may well be forgiven that Skot is something of a one trick pony, yet nothing could be further from the truth and so, before I finish this post I’d like to share a few of Skot’s other works with you.

A pencil sketch entitled “My Dad”, we presume it is … his … not mine!

A couple of bird boxes made from reclaimed and recycled materials … makes me think that the birds we get around where I am are a bit rubbish.  Having said that the Buzzards, Grouse and Barn Owls are pretty cool … oh! and we don’t get deadly spiders, snakes or other nasties!!

As ever I can’t recommend enough that you check out this artists gallery which is available here.

I spent an hour or two this week ogling at Joel Henriques’ blog and artwork.  I was particularly struck by the simplicity and beauty of these wood and wire toys:

So inspired was I, that I had a go at making my own wire bird…I think it’s ok for a first attempt.  I’m pondering a range of wire owls…

I had to take it outside for a photo opp.  It’s still so dark and dreary here despite us being south facing.

Good news though…the daffs are pocking their heads out…spring will be with us soon enough.

Jolene and I spent a couple of hours last night collaborating on this Christmas Wreath for the front door last night, we’re fairly pleased with the end result even if I did get pricked so many times by the pine needles that my hands broke out in a mild allergic reaction that made it look like had small pox or some such … oh, what fun!

We actually collected the pine cones for these a couple of months ago and they have been sat in a bag waiting for us to do something with them since then, they were actually intended for the local playgroup but there were far too many and so we resolved to use them ourselves.

The cones themselves were initially sprayed silver, before a quick dash with the gold spray.  The berries are beads cut from a beaded Christmas tree decoration and the pine branches and Sitka Spruce from the garden (I was out cutting these in sub-zero temps last night.

We mounted the whole lot on willow branch (also from the garden) that we bent into a circle and twisted around itself, we used wire to secure the first layer of pine branches before using thread to secure the last couple of layers.  The pine cones were then threaded on, as were the ‘berries’.

I think if we do this again I’m going to find myself a pair of light gardening gloves!

This will probably be the final batch of plant pokes until after Christmas as ‘other priorities’ take over … also, the workshop gets hellish cold at this time of year due to gaping gaps under the doors and roof which may as well not be there when the cold winter gales get going!

Click image for full view!

As ever these were made using the power carver, actually my new power carver following the untimely demise of my last one.  I went for a different model and whilst it doesn’t have the same grunt as it’s predecessor it’s actually not too bad once you get used to it’s foibles!  Next time I may need to invest in one of the heavier duty motors.

There’s a good chance that I’ll be putting the power carver to greater use in the future for larger carvings, currently I exclusively use traditional hand tools for these but the amount of time this takes just even from a roughing out point-of-view can be excruciating … time will tell.  Still at least the traditional tools can be used in the house … by the fire!