If you go down to the woods today...

I am finally the proud owner of one very cute pink teddy bear! Cue me looking slightly demented with my first ever knitted toy. Not bad for a first try if you ask me :)) Ok, so he might not have eyes and my mom is convinced his nose should be black instead of a weirdy kind of ginger but I can't wait to pop a big pink bow around his neck and present him to my best friend on her 21st birthday! Hoping to find him a nice pair of eyes tomorrow when in Birmingham so fingers crossed! As for the black nose, my mom probably has a point as usual so it's subject to change.

    Knitted a load of icord flowers this week also and tried out several different techniques on them all but I think the original (photographed in a previous post) is the best so far. Managed to get my hands on some glitter in the kids section of Tesco - 3 for 2 wahey! Slightly embarrassing that I'm 20 years old but whatever.

    I need to get a move-on with the jams and chutneys I plan to make with the cooking apples gathered on Sunday. My brother, Baz, used some yesterday in his A Level Food Tech lesson during a jam making practical with strawberries and the finished result is delicious, if not a little dangerous as I haven't done any physical jerks in over a week!

    Finally, I start my new job tomorrow in the city centre and I'm so excited to get started. Full-time work is going to take a bit of getting used to after two years at university, though I'm sure I'll adjust :) especially when fancy clothes and money are involved, I'll take like a duck to water...

And now, off up the road to my friend Rach's for a catch up with her and Rosie but I must be a good girl and come home early-ish - I'm a working woman now! We stayed up chatting and gossiping until 6am last week, can't be  making that a regular occurrence!

Loves, Miss Cooksey x

An Apple a Day

After a day out shopping with a friend, my brother returned home with a brand new pair of much needed jeans, two tops and (unusually) a huge bag of cooking apples. It turned out that on his walk back home from the train station he passed a house with a bright red bucket stood outside filled to the top, a cardboard note perched on the apples reading, 'Lovely cooking apples, please take some'. Taking one of the little plastic bags also placed in the bucket, my brother thoughtfully filled it to take home with him. The homegrown lovlies made a delicious apple crumble after our yummy Sunday dinner this afternoon! We returned earlier and the bucket still remained near full, so we each took another bag to make preserves and chutneys to enjoy over the upcoming winter. So I guess I want to say a very big thank you to the nice people down the road for leaving their apples out for others to enjoy, I think I'll send them a card and a jar of preserve as a note of appreciation :)
    Other than that, I've spent my weekend knitting up my first teddy for my friend's 21st birthday and I'm pleased to say it's turning out so well! I'm off to buy toy stuffing tomorrow and all things going to plan, I'll have one reverse stocking stitched pink teddy sitting on my bed with me soon... I'm about to continue with some more icord flowers tonight and listen to some more of 'Eat, Pray, Love' which I have on CD at the moment, well worth a listen if you get a chance. Finally, I ordered a copy of '100 Flowers to Knit and Crochet' last night from Amazon after a recommendation on another blog I've just started to follow and I'm excited for it to arrive! 
Miss Cooksey x

F is for Family...

Whilst clearing out my wardrobe yesterday I stumbled upon my first piece of cross stitch on a scrap piece of aida. I'd completely forgotten it had ever existed, let alone been hidden for over ten years (which makes me feel a lot older than I actually am!)

Probably not the most accurate family portraits but possibly one of the funniest :)

Flower Power!

Went on a small shopping spree yesterday with my mom on our local high street in search of crafty inspiration. We rooted through the charity shops and I found some lovely little lampshades that would look great reupholstered and jazzed up a bit, so I think I'll get my mitts on them once I've finished my growing backlog of craft projects! Other than the lampshades, we popped in to a haberdashery and found a gorgeous pink and blue rose vintage fabric so naturally I had to have it! Also found a lovely thick evenweave fabric which should look beautiful once I've put my needle and thread to it. Managed to get my hands on a rainbow of felt squares too! I just have to decide what to do with them all now...

I've started knitting a range of different flowers which i'm going to make into brooches to sell online and (hopefully) in some local shops. Finished my first one using a simple i-cord for the petals (2.75mm double pointed needles) and garter stitch for the yellow centre (3mm needles). Here's a picture to show you :) 

How long is a piece of string?

Very long, when you've got a fair amount of patience and lots of wool to sort. My knitting basket has become a nesting place for wool oddments, cross stitch yarns, scraps of fabrics and now even twigs for a mobile project I'm yet to start proper work on. So I decided it was time for a tidy-up! I created new, smaller balls of wool from my various oddments and they look so cute!

They're ready to use for a new knit project I'm about to start in time for my friend's 21st birthday next month. After a lot of um-ing and ah-ing over exactly what to make her I came across some gorgeous soft toy patterns on the Knitting Patterm Central site (http://www.knittingpatterncentral.com/directory.php) and found this gorgeous pattern via their 'Teddy Bears' link: http://www.allaboutyou.com/craft/Knitting-pattern-teddy/v1


I'd noticed Sue dropping hints about a sweet Me-to-You bear we found in a shop a few months back and thought she'd love a unique handmade one a little bit more :) It's made up from two needles making it a little bit easier too.
I've also just learnt to use double-pointed needles with the help of a YouTube video and to my surprise knitting with five needles really isn't all that difficult! I've seen some lovely little pin cushion ideas ranging from hedgehogs to cupcakes but I think I want to make a bumblebee cushion for myself so I'll put my skills to the test and (fingers crossed!) have a cuddly bear knitted up in no time :)

A Thing of Beauty...

...Is a joy forever. This is why I love trawling through books, endlessly searching the internet and sifting through the hundreds of photos I have complied into my "Crafts" folder on my Mac desktop, always on the lookout for new ideas. Time spent pouring over the finest details in my craftwork make the finished product worth all the while, whether it's days making a papier maché box, a week carefully purling your newest knit-work or simply fifteen minutes serving the best beans on toast (with lots of cheese, of course)!

So I'm Miss Cooksey and I love to try my hand at anything given the right amount of inspiration, glitter, glue and ribbon. I can't wait to share my wares with all you fellow crafters out there so get your pin cushions out and your needle and thread ready and let's get crafty!