Autumn Zebra

Craft from December 2015. I think I made these for secret santa gifts. I didn't make the bears - those are from when I sent to Japan ages ago, in 1999. I was given them by the mother of a homestay family; they were samples from this kind of mail-order company she worked for, I think. To make the decorations, I used scraps of coffee sacks, a bit of stuffing, and various small pieces of ribbon and lace to decorate them. I think the purple strip is either a piece of polar fleece or a piece of felt. The edges of the circles are zig-zag stitched. These are one of the few "photogenic" crafts I have made. You could almost imagine this picture in a craft book or on a fancy web site! Normally my things look so haphazard, with no design principles, all the wrong colours and fabrics, and nothing matching for the photo. These are really easy to make. Make a circle template by tracing around a cup or something. Cut out your base fabric - you don't want it to be somethin

This craft is from March 2015 We went to a medieval joust in Upper Hutt, and there was a woman there who was teaching people naalbinding, so I learnt how to do this little stitch, and made this little pouch out of the little bit of acrylic yarn she provided. I got some kawakawa leaves from my tree and dried them and put them in a plastic bag in the pouch and gave it to my friend who gave me the tree. Of course, I've forgotten how to do it now, but it wouldn't be hard to learn again. That's the problem with all these crafts though: you have to keep going and re-learning them every time you want to make something; unless you somehow manage to keep all of them up and in practice.