A few different craft projects

Here's a progress pic of my scarf, as of April 20th when I had finished knitting 2 balls of wool. I'm currently finishing up my 3rd ball now. Unfortunately it's looking similar to my last effort at making a scarf, skinny, fat, fatter, skinny. LOL

On another note, it was recently my niece's 18th birthday and I wanted to come up with something special, or a keepsake type gift for her. Unfortunately I didn't dream up any brilliant ideas, but here's what I did make for her. The first pic is just a whole lot of bits and pieces for her car, which her dad bought for her. The container is a car rubbish bin that attaches to the back of the seat. I've included things like a car charger for her mobile phone, tissues, wipes, a steering wheel cover, jumper leads etc.

The second pic is a chocolate bouquet I tried my hand at. (It looked so much better in my head!) I used a cardboard gift box for the base, wrapped some red and white "happy birthday" ribbon around it and added floral foam to the box. I found some heart shaped chocolates wrapped in red foil, and also bought some lindt balls wrapped in red too. I cut out some flower shaped pieces of black cardboard and stuck the heart chocolates to them. For the lindt balls I used red cellophane and black tissue paper squares to make "petals" around the chocolate. I then attached wooden skewers to the chocolates and poked them into the base as well as the "18" thingy that I'd bought. Then I just tore up some red and white tissue paper and screwed it up to cover the foam base. Although this pic doesn't show it, I then wrapped the whole thing in clear cellophane and added some of the matching ribbon to it.

The third pic is of a balloon bouquet, once again not as pretty as in my head! I bought a black and white gift bag and added more floral foam to it. I put balloon sticks into the foam and added some 18th birthday balloons.

A WIP pic and some knitting!

Here's a progress pic of my 3 Christmas bears as of the17th of April:

I've put my stitching aside for the moment to work on a knitted scarf. I found some pretty "fuzzy" wool for 75 cents a ball (at The Reject Shop for you Aussie ladies who might be interested) so decided to make a scarf. I recently bought a new cardigan/jacket thingy in a bone colour, and some camel coloured boots so a brown/cream scarf will tie in well with those. I started this last night, after reading my instructions on how to cast on. I tried knitting as a kid, but didn't go on with it. I had to get my mum to cast on and cast off, as I could purely knit in basic rows. Thanks to the wonder of the internet, I've since found simple casting on instructions and can recall how to knit. The problem is I don't have casting off instructions, LOL. Not sure how I finished the other scarf I made a few years back. I'm hoping this one is a little better as the other one starts out fat, becomes thinner, gets fatter in parts......not my best crafting effort :-)
Anyway, here's the pic, what do you think? I love the fact it's so fuzzy you don't actually see the knitting, probably a good thing considering my last effort at making a scarf :-(

Australian Open Karate Tournament

Last Friday we had another early start for another karate tournament. This one was the Australian Open and had competitors from Fiji, New Caledonia, New Zealand, the UK as well as interstate competitors. In DS's divisions there were a couple of kids from interstate as well as the usual ones he comes across in Victoria. He was entered into 2 sections, the kyu grade (basically anyone who isn't a black belt from what I can gather) and the open (for everyone including black belts). He had a major loss of balance in his first kata in the kyu grades and lost out in the first round. He didn't let that bother him in the open though. He got a bye in the first round, he won his second round 3-0, then lost 0-3 to the eventual winner in the third round. There was a repecharge system in place, meaning he could come back and try for one of the third place medals on offer. He came up against the 2nd place getter from the Victorian Championships and won 3-0, taking the bronze medal for his half of the draw. Another Victorian took 3rd place in the other half. First and second place getters were both from interstate and quite strong, so he did well.

Apologies for the washed out pics, not sure why the camera won't play fair today:

  

I'm still cross stitching away on the 3 Christmas bears, making good progress.

Is it Christmas yet?

It certainly feels like it with one Christmas cross stitch piece finished and another one started. Not sure why I'm in Christmas mode, but I'm going with it! I started this one on Saturday the 3rd of April, it's a free design I downloaded from the Cross Stitchers Club website. Here's the start I've made, and what it will look like once done:

  

Hmm, not sure why my parcel looks washed out, I used the same DMC colour that was listed. Maybe backstitching will bring it to life a little more.

A Santa Finish

This needs a good wash and iron, then some plain buttons added to the jacket as well as some holly and berry beads either side of "Merry". I'm not sure how I will finish it just yet.

Here's the details:

• Name of the design  "Claus and Company banner" 
• Chart is from a kit by JCA Needle Arts, kit # 02841. It's adapted from a design by Giordano Art Ltd
• Fabric is a piece of white 25ct evenweave
• Thread came with the kit. It was fun sorting it all, trying to work out what colour was what :-(
• Stitch count is 146 x 99
• Completed in April 2010. I'm not sure how I'll finish this one off yet