Off to a good start...
I'm starting out slowly with a soft launch of the store as I am having to develop products as I go, test print colours with printed items and generally get everything such as my social media and this website up to scratch. So no big fanfare or launch party... I just want to get it right, but I have been slogging away in the background making plenty of progress, and so far so good I hope.

Where am I aiming?...
​In the past I have created digital artwork and designs, I have thousands of graphics files stored not a problem, but now I want to produce physical products and I have so many ideas. My store will be an extension of my workbench, I create something unique and it flows through to the store. Will it make my fortune? probably not, but it will bring me an enormous amount of pleasure. For me the creative process is the thing that I love, and as much as I want to keep everything I make, I think I would actually end up drowning in my own creations!

The upside of this is that anyone can purchase something that I've made and I hope that they enjoy the end product as much as I have. I want to create items that people will cherish and keep for a long time. Too many things are mass produced and discarded, sadly our society seems to thrive on wastefulness these days, so maybe if small makers can produce something worth keeping it may refocus our attention on quality and appreciation of workmanship... So watch this space!​

So here on the blog I will probably just be rambling on about my ideas and work in progress, (could be the best place to get a sneaky peek at things though!) or head off to the main homepage of Casam Studio UK to keep up to date with new items added to the store and soon to be, portfolio and gallery of creations.

Thank you for your visit and I hope you'll drop in again soon.

I first learned to knit when I was about 7 years old, taught the basics by my grandmother and mother and went on to knit a few things over a number of years. I remember knitting some fancy baby clothes, and a couple of jumpers, the last one about 20+ years ago. I didn't exactly lose interest, but at that time things were pretty much limited to what was available in the local wool shop or a couple of department stores in town; sometimes the prices of nice yarns in these places just meant it was all too much for my "mum with a young family" budget.

Ha! No problem, it's like riding a bike. I guess once you've learned it's all stored away in your head somewhere. After casting on the required amount of stitches I was well away, had the back ribbing done in no time and was racing towards getting started on the interesting part.

Following the pattern was easy for me, I usually just repeat numbers 1-16 (or however many rows form a pattern) on a piece of paper and tick them off as I go so I never lose my place; also later in the pattern handy to mark a little symbol against rows to be increased or decreased etc. In the old days I used to write it out, but good old spreadsheets made it even easier :)

With this thickness of wool and the large needles my project grew pretty rapidly once I'd really got going on the pattern, and I must say it was quite a pleasure to knit. The pattern has plenty going on so that it doesn't become boring and other than one tiny typo there were no errors in the printed pattern either.

As for the knitpro needles I really like them, for wood they are surprisingly sturdy and took the weight of this jumper without a problem. They are very pointy which actually worked well with this yarn. I have since purchased these in a number of sizes along with some Brittany birchwood needles. The birchwood needles have much more rounded tips and are soft and flexible to work with, which I also really like especially when knitting with much lighter weight yarns. 

Sewing it together using mattress stitch gave it a nice finish and the seams were not too bulky... (something else I learned from the internet, previously I had only known back-stitch and was never that impressed with the results.

So to finish up, here's a final pic of the completed jumper all sewn up and ready to go. My hubby loves it and says it's the warmest jumper he has ever owned! Yay!!!

Although not for a novice, I'd definitely recommend this pattern to any capable knitter. Having said that, if you've some successful knitting projects completed and are ready to step up a gear why not take the plunge; It's certainly a stunning sweater when finished.

I'd created an account on ravelry.com to document my knitting projects and get myself a little more up to date with current knitting trends etc, imagine my surprise when I logged in to my profile to find a request to feature my jumper on the pattern page for this sweater! Okay maybe I'm the only one at the moment to have posted pics of this project completed, but I was still stoked that they thought it was good enough to be there :D

Thank you ravelry xxx

I'm not sure exactly where I first got the notion, but I wanted to try my hand at playing with some precious metal clay as I've seen some great things made with it around the interwebs. Having said that, it all looked very practised and perfected, so I wasn't hoping for great things to transpire right off the bat, but no harm in having a go.

So with my book at my side and a big old lump of clay conditioned, warmed and ready to use I start following the instructions to form a basic head. Using a couple of glass boot buttons from my stash for the eyes and some blobs of clay placed diligently where shown, the lump actually starts to look like something! After more blobs of clay are added, pushed, poked, squeezed and smoothed to within an inch of their life ...waddayaknow... there's a real little face!!!

It's worth mentioning at this point that despite having a basic plastic set of sculpting tools, other than a cutter type thingy, I didn't use any of them. For me personally it was easier to "feel" the clay with my fingers and shape, also finding that using only the lightest touch did a grand job of blending added blobs at the edges or final smoothing. The one thing I did find invaluable was a set of three ball ended styluses I'd bought previously for embossing card and paper. With a range of sizes in the set, these made wonderful little gizmos for creating lines or indentations, poking holes, and perfect for getting into the little corners where my fingers were just too fat to go.

Now with confidence building his hands and feet followed close behind the construction of the head. The hands went smoothly, starting with a single lump of clay divided into two equal parts it wasn't too daunting to get them to look like a pair. So after this success why didn't I do the same for the feet? Because I went right into the cheddar-flipper zone and created a whole foot like a muppet. I then had a ***** of a time trying to match foot number two; it was too fat, it was too long, then it was too thin! Okay novice lesson learned after playing around with this second foot for far too long , thankfully, it eventually took shape (and size!)

*My handy hint: If you're making a pair of somethings start with one piece of clay and divide it **head-desk**  :D

At this point my other-half thinks it's totally scary, is completely un-nerved by it and gives it a wide berth each time he has to pass me to go to the kitchen, so the only right and proper thing to do was totally freak him out and bake it in the oven. Ha!

After cooling I used very watery colourwashes of acrylic paint with a "paint on / wipe off" technique to build up the shading and skintones.

So now we're into body-building, not the muscley variety though hehe.

Following the instructions for creating a wire armature I found this part to be straightforward, well okay I may have had a little help from hubby to avoid chopping my fingers off with wire cutters; but that aside the directions are clear and the measurements provided mean that you end up with a nicely proportioned figure once the hands and feet are added to the limb length.

The next step was to flesh him out so to speak. Armed with my hot glue gun (hmmm... so I can burn myself but not cut myself eh!) I wound and glued some long lengths of quilters batting to the wire skeleton. It was actually the pretty thick stuff but it worked out okay as I was then further able to needle-felt to it a tummy bulge and sqidgy butt cheeks using loose polyester fill.

You can see this in the mini gallery of pics below, and okay I agree maybe the butt cheeks and belly button weren't entirely necessary, but I would have felt very mean depriving him of them. Now he really has taken shape... albeit an odd one :)

Finally it came time to get him dressed. I really enjoyed creating a little costume for him. Using just odd scraps of fabric for his clothes, a little leather, string and webbing for his bag; all topped off with some tiny coin charms and a marble. So now he's standing there looking like a real little elf... and I must say he certainly looks pleased with himself finding one of the marbles I've lost. I can see it's definitely going to be quite useful having a gathering elf about the house!