Amenably Crafty: Battling hijabs and videos!

Tuesday, 5 April 2011

Battling hijabs and videos!

Oh boy! I've been fighting this morning - I mean REALLY fighting. I'm obsessed with hijab tutorials, I think I must have watched just about all of them on You tube. The thing that really miffs me though, is the fact that all the girls making them, are slim, young and beautiful, infact - perfect! Unfortunately, some people (like me) are a little less than perfect - I'm not a hippy just because I like flowers and saying "peace maaaaan" (not that I DON'T like flowers and wishing peace on everyone!) but I'm also majorly chaotic in my life - my house is a minimalist's nightmare, and housework gets put aside for any projects that just so happen to pop into my mind at that moment! What I'm trying to say is - I'm FAR from the perfect world that these women come from - I haven't time, inclination or patience to put makeup on, I don't actually wear a scarf, but I'd love to (hence my obsession) but I get so frustrated, I sit and watch, and try to learn, trying desperately to "get the look" - fighting madly with bits of cloth that should be sitting in neat little folds on my head, but just end up in a crumpled mess on my shoulders, vaguely covering my hairline!
It's not that I've got anything against these beautiful women, far from it - I TOTALLY admire them, love them but, I'm so far removed from the ideal, that I made the mistake of complaining to a friend on facebook! She said, "why not do your own video?" BLAST! WHY did she have to say that?! I took it as an INSTANT challenge, and threw down the duster (didn't have a handy gauntlet, and I was SUPPOSED to be doing the housework!)
I did the video - I'm dowloading onto facebook as I type, can't hear me, and my "banter" is what I'm famous for, so it's really not up to much, but I met the challenge with a smile, (and a grimace as I poked pins into my scalp!) it's done! My very first video as a scatty, happy hippy housewife! I await the criticism (inshallah relatively constructive) on my face book page, I don't think I'm quite up to You Tube's standard yet.

2 comments:

The Life of Aaliyah5 April 2011 at 05:38
Make sure you send the link to me as I'd love to see your video. I too used to watch all those kinda videos on YouTube before I started to wear the hijab. Since I started wearing it though I haven't tried any of the styles out. I only use two styles depending on the type of scarf I wear, I haven't got the patience to try any others, lol.
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Unknown5 April 2011 at 06:47
Uploaded it to Youtube, under the name of "The Scatty Housewife's first hijab tutorial ?" :p let's see what happens, inshallah, only good.
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My First peruse into the world of Free form Crochet (Scrumbling)

Well! I can hardly be called an exemplary Blogger can I? It's been nigh on 8 months since I last wrote on here - I will endeavour to do better. I didn't take many photos of my latest project, but I'm very proud of it none the less, I'm currently in to making phone socks, mainly because they're relatively quick and easy to make (well, for the average crafter, not me, because I keep getting side tracked!) I'm absolutely determined to get myself a shelf in the crafter's shop on Burton Road at the top of town. It only costs £25 a month, but when you have no job and no money, that's a lot of money to find. However, I keep working on it and thought to make the phone socks as a quick fill for the shelf whilst I'm working on larger and more time consuming projects. Seemed like a good idea anyway. I've made a variety of socks and am relatively pleased with the result but, as always, they're none of them actually 100% complete and ready for sale yet. I really must work on my attention span! Anyway, I was particularly proud of my latest phone sock because I've started tying in different skills that I've been teaching myself - and this particular phone sock was done entirely by SCRUMBLING, or Free form Crochet. I really enjoy this kind of crochet, not least because I have a massive problem with following patterns, I tend to start off reasonably okish and get sidetracked along the way and the next thing I know, I'm completely fobbing it! So free form suits because there are no rules to follow, absolutely perfect for me - but I don't have much imagination, so it's still a pretty hard process for me. Unfortunately there are no photos to show - other than the end result because I didn't think to write a blog about it, however, I shall try to do better next time. I started off with a small piece of green wool from my oddments bag and started practising with the Bullion Stitch, I love it - but haven't really ever got the hang of it, now this is where scrumbling really comes into it's own, because you're not following a pattern, so you can just do as many or as few stitches as you like. My practice piece was 13 bullion stitches long and curved off to the left slightly - that was as far as my attention span took me, so then I got bored and started to add several stitches into one stitch, kept this up for a while to develop a nice little wave. I then moved onto scarlet wool and double (UK triple) stitch except I was doing the chainless double foundation stitch, did enough of those to have a nice curve that allowed me to make a full circle and tail which, rather fantastically seemed to flow nicely from the green Bullion curve - at that point I decided I had to do something with it, and ended up drawing around my phone to get a rectangular base to put my scrumbled pieces on. From that moment forward - I was making a phone case. Grabbing a lilac, I did yet more Bullion stitches, was back on track with my practice by then, (but only briefly, 13 stitches seems to be my limit) did a bit of a chain and made some shell like curves and moved onto dark purple. Tried a bit of lattice stitch and a rectangle of (US) treble (UK) double. Another frilly effort around the base and corner of the phone sock, with a smidgen of scarlet on the top side. Then I had a go at making little puffs, I just stitched in a round from a base of two chains, and kept going round until it was big enough for me (about three rounds) then I started pulling it in by missing a couple of stitches - and the next thing I knew, I had three beautiful puffs! I played around with my scrumbled pieces and chose the best fit for them, and crochet them together in what I considered the best pattern. However, it still looked pretty bland, I wanted more, so I sewed on some beads to bling up the center of the puffs, and crochet in embroidery thread (which is incredibly hard to do I found!) over the top of the green frilly bit and then did a slip stitch chain to highlight the swirl of the lilac bullion stitch. I'm pretty pleased with the result, especially for a first attempt. I do enjoy scrumbling and am in the middle of another set now - I haven't decided on what I'm going to make from it, but I figured, if I just did my own thing and then kept them all in a bag, at some point, they might come in useful. In the meantime, I have a rather interesting phone case to complete and sell. I intend to line it with some kind of matching/complimentary lining, if I said it was mainly because there are so many loose ends for me and my gnat's attention span to concentrate on, would that be a bad thing to say? If it is - then I'm going to line it with a complimentary material because I think it's a necessary addition :p