A Piggy Giveaway!

A couple of days ago I was thinking about having a bit of a celebration when the Stitchybritt blog turns one. So I went back and checked out when the blog's birthday is... and realised that it is actually 18 months old! I totally missed my own blog's birthday!

So instead of celebrating my blog's first birthday, I'm celebrating its 18 month birthday! And to celebrate, I am having my first ever giveaway. Yay!




A few of you might remember my Peanut Pigs - cute pink squishy, huggable pig softies that are oddly peanut shaped. These little guys are completely handmade by me, right down to the little knitted scarf and crocheted basket. Well I have two Peanut Pigs left and you could be the lucky winner of this piggy pair!

To be in the running to win these two Peanut Pigs, all you have to do is send me an "oink"! Either comment on this blog post or jump over to the Stitchybritt facebook page and 'like' me. Or do both for two entries! Very oinky easy : )

Entries will close at 11pm on Saturday 7 August 2010, and the winner will be announced the next day!

Good luck everyone! And thanks for celebrating with me. Now, go eat cake.

Yay for weekends

I've gotta say - I have had a great weekend. Here is a list of things that made this weekend awesome:

- I refashioned this dress
(it was a second because it had a rip in it)...

into this skirt!



- Friday night we went to Madam Fling Flongs, which I had never been to before, but is probably now my most favourite local bar

- I got my free Sydney Design Pocketbook (so many interesting events coming up!)

- I bought some organic Aussie wool from A Coffee and a Yarn (great coffee/knitting shop on King St, Newtown) and started crocheting a baby blanket for two friends who will be three friends in September

- We had Circus Sunday in the park today which involved hula hoops, friends, juggling, snacks, slacklining (like tight rope), sunshine and lots of cute pups who stopped by to visit (or steal snacks)

- I made Hommus

- Sam, being the excellent beer homebrewer that he is, won a homebrewing competition and gets to brew a beer at the Lord Nelson, Sydney's oldest licenced hotel, which is also a microbrewery. He was so excited to find out that he jumped up and down all day

- We watched more Northern Exposure, which we are quite hooked on at the moment

Hope your weekend was awesome too!

Little crocheted teacups

One thing that has been precious to me as an Etsy seller has been the ability to link up with other Etsians. I joined the Down Under Street Team (DUST) earlier this year and only wished I had done so earlier. The DUSTers are wonderful people and have been a fantastic source of information and advice for all things a craftster would want to know. I visit the forum regularly - the people there are so friendly and more than willing to help each other out.

In August this year, DUST will be having its annual conference on the Gold Coast. Unfortunately I can't attend as I have a bunch of other travel commitments around the same time, but I wanted to send something along to go in the conference bags for all the DUSTy delegates. What to make? I know - a whole bunch of tiny crocheted teacups!




If you are heading to the DUST conference, expect to see one of these little cuties in your conference bag attached to a Stitchybritt discount voucher (for DUSTers only!)



The rest of the world - you should definitely head over to the DUST site and check out the amazing talent coming from this part of the world.

Dusting Cap

I have been working on a Tshirt Refashion, merging three shirts into one, and thought that I might be able to actually blog about the finished product tonight. I was wrong. I ran into a problem with the bottom hem, got a bit frustrated and just wanted to put it aside for a bit. So, I was in need of a bit of instant sewing gratification. Hence, the Dusting Cap.



I bought this awesome book - The Pictorial Guide to Modern Home Dressmaking - from a market stall in Woodend, Vic. The book unfortunately doesn't have a publication date but looks to be from the 1950s. It has a fully comprehensive guide to pattern making, in classic styles that are still relevant today, but I'm yet to attempt anything from it. This little section with instructions for making a Dusting Cap caught my eye on the first flick through, and I knew it would satisfy my need to make something cute and quick.



And here is the finished product...


Hey look! It's Minnie Mouse!




Ok, I'm off to do some dusting (yeah, right).

Pickles!

"Rare is the August evening when I'm not slicing, canning, roasting, and drying tomatoes - often all at the same time. Tomatoes take over our life. When Lily was too young to help, she had to sit out some of the season at the kitchen table with her crayons while she watched me work. The summer she was five, she wrote and illustrated a small book entitled "Mama the Tomato Queen", which fully exhausted the red spectrum of her Crayola box."

The above quote is from my favourite book, "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver (p.199).

I too love pickling, and pickles. Last weekend saw us preparing a whole host of pickled items - I made pickled beetroot and tomato & chilli relish. Sam made pickled onions and sauerkraut. Our friend Lucy made the most fantastic cumquat and ginger marmalade. Yum!



Cutting and boiling the beetroots. Love that pinky red goodness.


Peeling the pickling onions. We all got stingy eyes and had to take teary breaks. Luckily we had some homebrewed cider to see us through.


The sauerkraut - ready to start fermenting.



Pickling is actually quite easy to do, you can find loads of recipes online and if you can pick up a big bag of tomatoes/onions/jamming fruits that are about to go out of season and are going cheap - it can be cost-saving too (of course you can also grow your own, like Barbara Kingsolver did, but our vegie garden isn't quite up to that yet). At the same time, pickling is quite time consuming, but if you invite some friends around to join in on the making (and the onion-related crying), put on some cider and a cheese platter, it makes for a fantastic afternoon in this cold weather.