knitting winter hats and crocheting scarfs

Everyone should enjoy a relaxing past time, and for me that is knitting. You can sit and watch tv, while still being productive. Here are some of the projects I've done this year. They are made with Caron Cakes yarn, and a little red sparkly yarn left over that I had from another project.




This is a scarf hat - a hat with a wrap around scarf. The yarn is the Caron Cupcake, which comes with a pom-pom. It may be a waste of yarn, but it is nice to have something unique.

The rainbow hats were actually a challenge as its been awhile for me, and i tend to deviate from the pattern. I probably made about 6 hats in total, but when one didn't work out, i pulled it out and started again. I love that the Caron cake yarn is so sturdy and i could pull it out multiple times without fraying. It looks like a fresh ball no matter how much i use it.
Crocheting is interesting way to make things, and in my opinion, very versatile. Even if you get it wrong, it still looks good.  I think my double crochet has a missed step, but the outcome is a tighter scarf, which i like alot. Still not sure what i did wrong. Happy accident.

Hogwart's Express Miniature part 5 Trunks Harry Potter

Although I have a few ready made trunks from aliexpress, it is important to have some authentic Harry Potter trunks. These miniature trunks were purchased online at a really good price.  the dimensions are not ideal, but they will be extras. The leather straps were removed and will be used inside as pant belts for the children's wardrobe. My plan is to make Harry, Ron's and maybe more trunks. 

 There are a few tutorials out there, and they really helped in making my own. Check out instructables.com where harry watson has a good tutorial, avanasminiworld.blogspot.ca, and 1inchminisbykris.blogspot.ca. I tried making trunks with cardstock and leather first.

I used the templates on Kris's website, and then modified my own on my silhouette. I wanted an outside template as I planned on using leather and don't want to waste any. Using cardstock was ok for the body of the trunk, but after a few tries for the sides, I cut and sanded wood for more stability.

This pattern really addressed how to make a trunk with a beautiful lining, and although that's nice, my concern is more for the outside of the trunk. Here are my attempts and although I'm happy with it, I will try some other methods. The mid-coloured brown one on the lower right is made of wood, and is part of my second attempt.

Here are my finished leather trunks in the open position. As you can see, the inside is very neat and looks great.

Working with wood can be a little intimidating, but with some softer wood that is easy to saw and a miter box, it is quite doable. I started with the dimensions that I thought looked close to the movie stills. Once the first one was made, it was easy to assembly line the rest, and it took only an afternoon to make the trunk pieces and glue them with wood glue. The only mistake was sanding off and curving all the sides, the ends of the trunk are supposed to be flat. Hopefully, the "wooden" slates will cover my mistake. I will try to use bakeable clay, but think it will be too delicate and break easily. My back up plan is leather lacing, or fabric cording. Because I chose wood that is quite thin, I can't actually screw in my hinges, they will be glued. Hinges were bought online on Bangood.com. They come with little tiny screws that hopefully I can use on another project.

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In order to get various colours as each trunk should be different, I gathered all my wood stains and leather dyes. I even found some dollar store wood markers that might work. After staining, colouring, and painting (watered down grey acrylic paint for Ron's trunk), I am happy to not have to go out and get more stain. It's just a shame that now I'll have to sand some of it down to make it look worn.

The trunks are looking more like they come from Harry Potter. These trunks have baked clay on them for straps that needed to be glued on with plastic cement. The look is very good as it actually has a wooden grain look to it, but may not stand up to much handling. If the clay breaks, then on to plan B.

I have made some lock templates on my silhouette cameo and hope they will look authentic.

Here is what they will look like. Perhaps I will paint or use my ink and dye stamp pads to add colour and age to them.

Here is a set of locks made out of silver cardstock.

Now the leather straps on the sides. It took me awhile to get at my totes of leather in my storage room. Looks like there is a lot of scrap leather in my totes and I even discovered some tan lace to replace the tan clay for the four straps that goes around the trunk.

I cut out leather templates for the handles and glued them to the leather. Now is the chore of cutting out the tiny notches on the leather.
Why did I spend an afternoon cutting out the notches? They're just going to be covered with metal strips! Oh well.

Gluing the leather handles on, with the leather bent a little.

Experimenting with metal strips. They can be painted to look more metal or age a bit.
Sooooooooooooo.... the clay "wood" did not work, and neither did my plastic cement. Today I will try contact cement to glue leather lacing to the wood. wish me luck! Gorrilla super gel glue worked for glueing the leather lacing to the wood.

The last glue I tried finally worked to glue the metal hinges to the wood, E-6000.

Here are the completed trunks! The initials were a great find at Michaels, see through gold and black stickers. I left all the interior of the trunks unfinished, and figure it doesn't really matter, as I will be filling them all with student items!
First, Ron Weasleys'. His are unique, grey/black. Hope it appears like in the movie. I did use a silver cardstock for the "metal" locks and pieces, and distressed it with a black ink stamp pad.

Next, is Hermione Grangers'. Her trunk is the basic brown and thankfully there are some pictures online to replicate this one.

Harry Potter's trunk is more of a mahogany colour, and I wanted gold for the locks and metal pieces, but had to keep it distressed, as if he had bought the trunk second hand.

I went ahead and made some trunks for the dorm rooms as I am planning an epic miniature tower of Gryfindor. Neville Longbottom, Dean Thomas, Shamus Finnigan, and will also do a trunk for Ginny Weasley as well. This is why there are 2 trunks each for the 3 main characters, as I knew I wanted to do this tower eventually. For the Hogwart's Express Miniature project, I made the Weasley twins' trunks.

Hope you like it! They look good to me and I am well pleased with the trunks. It has given me the confidence to try making more wood furniture and a bigger project. Stay tuned!

here is a picture video I made

Hogwarts Express Miniature part 4 interior assembly Harry Potter

I took a break from my miniatures to do some relaxing knitting. But, I'm back now. I started working on the interior walls. The lights were bought on aliexpress, and although I'm not planning on having them lit, I decided to leave them intact just in case I change my mind. I made a small hole in the cardstock and fed the wires along the wall and under the bench seats. The pictures took a lot of time to choose, as i had tried to find the originals  online but alas, could not really find a good image. So I picked out a few illustrations that were close and that i liked. The middle black panel actually was the most difficult as apparently i can't cut a rectangle to save my life, and resorted to using my silhouette cameo cutting and drawing machine to successfully cut out 2 identical rectangles of black cardstock. On each i glued out a tiny Hogwarts crest. Then modpodged (gloss) over all the pictures and glued in place. Behind the bench seats I glued brown acrylic painted skinny wood sticks. I resized pictures of the vents, then printed and glued them to the front of the bench seats.

So there are my 2 benches and walls.

 I decided not to put up the metal racks above the lights as I think they will detract from the scene.The benches are not perfect, and that's the whole point. The train is old and we are in the magical world, after all.

I was hoping to glue down the walls and benches, but forgot that the door to the compartment needs door handles. It was easy to just cut a bit of aluminum from an aluminum oven tray, and bend and glue to a handle shape. Weldbond worked ok, but i ended up using crazy glue.

Here are some prop photos to compare. 

Hope you enjoyed these pictures. Chao

Blue Beach Fossil Hunting

Well, I'm back from vacation, and thought you'd like to see some fossils I found.  These fossils are from Blue Beach, Nova Scotia.  The museum is quite small, and they are looking for funding/sponsors to build a proper museum on site. There is a hike to the beach, and once you get there, you can see fossils almost at once. This beach is known for its trace fossils, which means that they are tracks or traces of creatures and even plants. This stretch of beach  represents Romers Gap, a part of our natural history that is not well known.


creature tunnels in the mud, and beach ripples
reed like plants leaving traces in the mud
possible tetrapod tracks !bark or a root piece?
is it a fossilized tree?
ostracod - the most abundantly                                                                                                                     preserved arthropods.
section of tree trunk
mud cracks
 When I got home, I used my silhouette machine to make myself a t shirt as they don t have a gift shop yet. Hope you enjoyed seeing some of the fossils that can be found at Blue Beach. It was a great vacation. ❤😀