Update on Harry Potter Night!

Alright, lets just get it all out here on the table...

I've been a lazy LAZY little girl lately with my arts and craft projects...  at the moment I have about 4 things laying around half finished. BUT it's all OK.

Why? I can hear you asking yourself, let me tell you why. I've noticed it! Plain and simple truth... I'm slipping back into my old habits of starting stuff and never finishing it so now I'm doing something about it!

First thing's first, the Harry Potter night goodies. I have finished the Hufflepuff set of bags and scarves, and am 80% finished with the first Ravenclaw bag (the last of the sets that I need to make) And I've found that as long as I am doing other things while crafting I get a lot more done.

So I've been watching movies, and even the Australian version of Kath & Kim, and have almost finished this bag in record time!

Now if only things will stop interrupting me... either some one comes to visit us, the dogs have  been escaping our back yard because our next door neighbor is a moron who has no respect for his neighbors, or we have had to go out to see other people....

This week I have no plans to go anywhere, all I need to do is my housework and my crafts.

So with you all as my witnesses, I plan to at least have my Harry Potter sets finished and photographed by the end of this month!

As promised!

BAGS!!!!!

and 

Scarves!!!!!

As I've said before here is pretty much what I've done since my big break. To the left we have our Gryffindor bags and scarves, and to the right we have our Slytherin set. I've decided to make two of each bag and a total of eight scarves, four in single blocks and four in stripes. These have taken aaaaages to make, but they have been totally worth it! My only problem is that when I went out and got all my yarn to make the bags I didnt notice that the sizes I got were all different, but that's alright it just means everything will be different sizes.

So here we have our scarves, made from the same yarn as the bags. Four were made of each style. The pattern for these scarves is simple, I just did a search of what styles of scarves there were and made miniature versions. They measure approximately 8 inches long and have a fringe on the bottom just like a normal scarf. There is a problem with rolling up on the edges of these, but if you use a yarn that is iron-able it is easily fixed.  There is a pattern for some double knitted book scarves that gave me the idea for this which can be found here and its free! That's always good to have.

Golden Snitch Key chain

I decided to try and make a few golden snitch key chains, only because knitting them really was making my fingers bleed. It's ok though not everything needs to be knitted, there are more than a few ways to do what you like! I went to my local craft store in the jewelery section for this little number, and let me tell you it was a little hard to find what I wanted. I ended up having to go several times and to a few different craft stores to find all the parts I needed, you wouldn't think it would be so hard... Now I ended up using some end posts which were pretty long, some silver wing charms, phone charm lanyards (the black thing in the photo) and some small golden balls. I was looking for some plain golden beads, but instead I found these very ornate balls with holes on each side just the right size for the end posts to go through. Using a pair of wire curlers I threaded the end post through the wings and the ball, curled the end around making it nice and tight and then attached the charm lanyard to the curl. To top it off it will be presented in a small silver gossamer drawstring bag, with a small note reading the line from the last movie where Harry Potter receives the golden snitch in Dumbledoor's will reading.

Coming up next: Huffellpuff Bags and Scarves!

The First bag...

So here we go! Now I got the pattern for these bags at This Site, and in the instructions it says to knit it "in the round"... now since I'm only a beginner I dont really know how to do that so I have cheated a little bit and decided that I am going to knit two different sections and sew them together.

This is a quite difficult thing to do (unless you're an expert knitter), I had to start over about 4 times which is why it has taken me so long to put up a blog about it! I am VERY happy with the end result even though it took me a while and its not entirely finished, this part on its own could be used by its self, for a wall hanging or a patch on a jacket, maybe even sewn on to a pillow for a Harry Potter themed throw!
For this one I use some angora wool not sure what size it is, and size 11 knitting needles. There is more to this project though, I still have the other half of this bag to do and the other three houses as well! But now that I know what I'm doing it will be easy peasy! So hopefully this will get you all in the mood to try it out, and attempt it at least its a really fun project to do, especially on a rainy day like today was!

Next on the list: finish off the bags! Make more snitches, mice, and cats, and figure out a way to make some magic wands!