Turn around where possible

the phrase I least like to hear from Ken - the Aussie Satnav. Especially when I am on a narrow country lane and had just done a 3 (well 8) point turn because he had already suggested I was wrong.
Its all a bit discombobulating when you have a deadline - leading worship - but no real idea of where you are in the scheme of things and whether just heading for a place you have heard of would help. Praise the Lord that Carys was with me and had googlemaps on her phone which got us to the right place and almost at the right time. But Ken, what were you thinking?

There is a lot of turning around in my new job - but in a good way. On Thursday I was supposed to meet someone who had got the date mixed up. Instead I met everyone at the Volunteer Bureau, went to the cafe for a drink as I had another meeting set up for a short time later and bumped into someone else I have been emailing but hadn't met yet. Who told me about the Sidmouth folk festival being on, just after I had agreed to step in to cover a double booking, so then I asked Carys if she wanted to come along - which got me to the church on time (ish)

Meeting loads of new people and being at the start of new developments is amazing. It always comes with a weather eye to the fact that what works for a town of 3,000 houses won't always translate to 8,000. It does mean that I still have less creative time and energy - I wonder if it is because my day job is now so creative in a different way? I'm determined to get into the groove and think I might have to use my diary to sort myself out!

So here are the cards I have made for the dares - and I have made a whole other one in the last 2 weeks :(
A week ago the Dare was called Doodle, Doodle Do which was right up my street as I do like to doodle flowers. Purvi, who is behind the dare, almost always adds hand drawn features to her cards.
Here is mine

I drew some flowers on watercolour paper, coloured them in with my Kuretake watercolour pens. Then I cut them out before added black pen, white dots and a whole load of sparkle with a Wink of Stella pen. Its so sad that you can't see it. I matted some white cardstock onto black and added it to a white card. I die cut a Paper Smooches "love" three times from more black card and added them together. I think the "sending you my" is Wplus 9? Then I played around with the composition of the flowers and leaves til I was happy.
It is enjoyable - but quite time consuming.

this week it was my turn and I thought I would feature the thing that alongside work, has sucked up a lot of my creative time - crochet. The good thing about this craft is that I can do it with other people around and strangely, my family do like me to spend time with them. Having originally promised myself I would only ever do one project at a time, I now have three on the go. That is very much due to going on holiday whilst the crochet-a-long I have started was happening. This is it

not my version as I am still behind - I have two more navy blue squares and the 4 bottle green ones to do before sewing it together. It is to go in our bedroom and matches really well - better than with the other bedroom we had when I started it and had no idea we would be moving! I didn't know any of these stitches before so it has been fun learning. The project is dedicated to Marinke Slump - a really talented crochet designer known for her colourful patterns and love of teaching new stitches, who lost her battle with depression last year. She started this off and many of her friends got together to choose a square to design in her memory - you can read a little more here.
I'm not sure my blanket will look as good as this one pictured but I will show it when it is done in a few weeks time (I hope). I'm also making a corner to corner wrap for winter and a multi coloured blanket for the sitting room that is supposed to use up scraps but I ordered more wool to do it :)

Back to cardmaking - I asked the Daring Cardmakers to be inspired by crochet - maybe by the square patterns, or to use some wool or even a bit of crochet. I went for quite a simple design in the end, based on the squares

I'm not that happy - I think because I found this really, really old perspex button to use and felt it wouldn't look right on white cardstock but I don't like the cream. I may just have to make it again with white cos I am sure that would be much, much better!
Anyway I chose 4 colours of cardstock and ran each colour through a different embossing folder. Little bit of pen, a die cut banner and a really old dome sticker later and done.
The other designers did a much better job - go and have a look :)