Frank and Josie's House

I have a new obsession: creating lovely things out of recycled t-shirts! How did I not know of this before?! I love recycling, I truly believe it's the only way to give our kids the best world in the future, so I've evolved from chucking my plastic bottles in the green box to using old t-shirts as yarn. One day maybe I'll be brave enough to use the plastic bottles to crochet with too....is there a big enough hook?!?! Also, I'm a  fan of the 'make do and mend' initiative that is best known for taking off during the 2nd World War. I never just chuck out clothes because they no longer fit or have developed a hole. My sewing drawers are full of clothes my family would like back (minus holes) one day. So when I saw a pattern in Inside Crochet magazine this month for baskets made out of t-shirt yarn I immediately looked up how to make my own. I found two helpful instructive blogs on the subject (thanks to Pinterest)  here  and  here . Both said use t-shirts without se...

Lately I've been working with a lot of patterns that start with a magic circle. Personally I prefer the chain ring method but I was starting to wonder if I'd missed something exciting with how everyone kept going on about it.   So I decided to do a little research and I thought I'd share for the benefit of others. If I'm honest my attempts at the magic ring have been more than a little hit and miss in the past. I thought perhaps I was doing it wrong but having looked into it it seems there is no specific right and wrong way (at least no one has said that) and just preferred methods. I've looked at three different methods: one I found on Ravelry, a method from the Crochet Bible and finally a method detailed in Inside Crochet magazine. I did two rounds as I found the circle always came undone during the second round and have shown pictures of each. Firstly I tried a technique I found here  on Ravelry. The PDF is free and uses pictures to make it easy to understand and...

I confess I hate itchy wool. Some might say I'm in the wrong business but I say I'm sure there's a way I can change the itchiness. Recently I tried this by following a suggestion on Pinterest. The results were interesting. So I had been given this brilliant wool by my sister. It was super chunky and great for a blanket of some kind, wonderfully colourful but superbly itchy. The suggestion I followed was to loosen the ball of wool, wash it on a delicates wash in a laundry bag and then tumble dry it. I was dubious about the last bit because the ball band said not to tumble dry. However, I was brave and gave it a go on a delicate setting which I'm lucky enough to have on my tumble dryer.   [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="3000"] The wool before the treatment and in preperation for the wash[/caption] I followed the instructions to the letter expecting a beautiful fluffy wool to appear by the end. Instead two things happened: the wool di...