Washed, dried, ironed and ready to go

Hello 

This might not be the best picture in the world, but it shows that there was fabric hanging on the washing line drying last weekend, which has been ironed and now is hanging over the door waiting to be used.

There has been action on the crochet front as well, a few more squares have been added to great winter blanket, it's still not quite halfway yet but it's getting there 

Also I made a haul (well a naughty haul) in the charity shop this week these beauties all for 50p each, it was so good that I had to go back today and buy the the remaining three, no photos yet of the other three. Not sure what I'm going to do with them yet, there's a lot of ideas going around in my head at the moment 

Back soon x

2019 A year of uncertainty

Hello again!

This may be be a long post 

So you have been warned!

Is it me, or has this year just flown?

I know people say as you get older time flies

But this year has flown!

But this year we were waiting for brexit, which never happened in this year, after passing two deadlines, but personally I think we still have along way to go before we can say brexit is done and dusted.

So what have I been doing then?

Well lets say a little and a lot 

Well I've done a lot but got very little to show for it.

The reason why is that at the beginning of last year I decided not to make any new year resolutions for 2019, which at the time felt good, a sort of feeling of release not being bound down by any resolutions which would be probably broken before the end of January

But a few months into the year I suddenly had the feeling of no direction, there was no goals to achieve or no silly plans to do

Which felt weird 

Like driving on a road not knowing if you are going in the right way because you have left the directions at home, so it's a case of making things up as you go along and hoping it will turn out alright in the end

So what have I been up to then?

Well there has been knitting, crochet and sewing as well, also some baking too!

Lime drizzle cake

Lets start with the knitting front 

Well nothing big happened on that front I've knitted a hat for myself, no photos of that yet due to rubbish weather and that we don't get much sunlight in the winter on the back. More socks knitted from the toe up (again no photos) which has become my prefered method of knitting socks, I have decided I don't like doing kitchener stitch. Also a few scarfs / shawls and other small (travelling) projects which are works in progress

Ok now the crochet front 

Well not a great deal going on there, apart from the great winter blanket project (which it is now known as) is progressing along slowly, currently nearly halfway. I thought it would be something that I would do a lot of between Christmas and New year, but it was never touched

And finally the sewing department 

Well lets talk about the successes first

Another pair of pyjama bottoms for myself ✔

A prom dress for my eldest daughter ✔

A dress for myself, which is very wearable ✔

And another dress, which I'm about 50% happy with, it may be a case of using wrong type of fabric, but it's completely finished ✔

Now for the not so successful

Only one item this time 

A summer top for myself which is a total disaster, why I burnt two holes in it with the iron! So that is definitely unfinished because it has been semi destroyed by me ❌

No questions thank you 

Also I now have a totally f****d pile

So what are this years resolutions then?

ready

1. Read more books. I listen to a lot of audio books while knitting, crocheting, sewing, ironing, other house chores and general wandering around, but this year I want to try and read more actual physical books

2. Make more clothes for the girls and myself. First on the list for the girls are some more pyjama bottoms and for myself no idea yet, but pyjama bottoms are top of the list, just need to get the fabric washed and dried 

3. Try to learn some different sewing skills. Last year I learnt how to insert an invisible zip (prom dress) and how to make a rouleau strap loop (50% dress) 

4. To try and perfect my sock knitting skills 

5. Bake more cakes. I'm not bake off standards, but the cakes that I bake do get eaten very quickly by DH and the girls, so they must be edible

So that's the list, short and sweet this time

xxxx 

Just keep going

I think this has become my motto for January this year

I'm still here, I've just got over the post Christmas cold, the girls are well and truly back at school and already looking forward to February half term. 

I've have finished the blanket that I started to crochet when the boiler was broke and well ahead of schedule, the original completion date was end of February. I haven't taken any photos of it yet I want to do it outside, but the light and weather isn't very good at the moment, it is really wet and dark here this morning.

And now this is my next my project some knitting, I really want to do some sewing but there is too much junk in the dinning room at the moment. All the yarn I'm using is from my stash it's a mix of Rowan and DMC yarn for this project I've given myself the completion date of of mid March, I've already frogged it once so what you see in the photo will not be the actual finished project, but we will see, oh and it is a shawl/scarf that I'm knitting if you are wondering. 

More about it next time x

Waiting to for normality to return

Yes it's that time of the year again! Christmas has been and gone in a blink of an eye and now new year has arrived. The whole house is mess (as usual), it currently feels slightly worse than normal. Not only is my craft table mess, but what is annoying me more is that I can't actually get to my craft table without nearly breaking my neck in the process, because of all the Lego, boxes and other miscellaneous bits of junk that seems to be living around there at the moment.

Chrismas was quiet as usual, the only thing that happened that was out of the ordinary was the boiler breaking down on Christmas day, which was a bit of a pain having no heat or hot water for a few days until it was repaired. I got so cold at one point that I started to crochet another blanket, just to keep my mind off the fact that it was cold and I could snuggle up under it as it gets bigger,  well the boiler has been fixed and the blanket isn't big enough to snuggle up under yet, but I am using up some yarn which has been sitting in my stash for over four years! 

So this is my first project of the year, I have decided that I am going to do more finishing and less abandoning of projects and also I'm going to not buy any yarn and fabric until I've made a serious big dent on my stash. But when I start a new project or get one out of hibernation I'm going to set myself deadline to finish the said project, so for the current blanket project the deadline is the end of February which I think is a realistic deadline than saying next weekend.

And Happy New Year to anyone who might read this blog x

Experimental blue crochet that's going nowhere!!!!

And this is as far as it has got and it doesn't seem to be moving any further along, which is a bit depressing at the moment.

This is how it all started, I found these three lurking in my yarn stash and thought that they looked good together.

So I started to crochet a blanket, because a blanket is quite a nice project to do in the winter, ok it starts small but it soon gets big enough to snuggle up and that is quite a nice thing to do on a cold Sunday afternoon.

I soon settled on a pattern, for a change I thought I would like to try an ombre pattern, which would look a bit different than doing just stripes. 

And this is as far as it has got, I don't think I'm a hundred percent happy with it, I like the idea of an ombre blanket, but at the moment I don't like the way the pattern is working out. So I think it's back to the drawing board for this one.

Happy new year?

No I haven't gone completely mad 

But September feels more like new year to me than January does, I think it is because I can start to get the house back to normal after the long summer holiday, it's also the start of the new school year as well, for me that means packed lunches again, having to remember what days is PE, swimming, music practice, after school clubs and homework! The word homework can be classified as a swear word in my house at times.

So what have I been doing since I last posted anything on this blog? 

1. Well I've finished the ongoing granny square project finally!!!

A picture of some granny squares I did on a weekend trip to Scotland 

Don't know what I'm going to do with them all yet, currently they are all in a bag in a box, waiting for a fash of inspiration.

2. I made myself a summer top 

Made from a piece of cotton lawn (not Liberty) which I found in Abakhan last year, it was £1.50 a metre in a end of roll sale bin, there was nearly 2 1/2 metres left on the roll so I had the lot for £3.00!

3. Two charity shop finds up cycle projects for my daughters 

A £3.99 dress turned into a skirt for my eldest daughter 

And so she didn't feel left out

A £1.00 top turned into a skirt for my youngest daughter 

They both are pleased with their new skirts, they didn't take long to make, I think the unpicking of the unwanted bits off each items took longer than the actual making of each skirt.

4. Some knitting 

Ok this is where things get a little complicated 

Well here is the story, as I was approaching the end of the ongoing granny square project I decided to put the crochet hooks away and get the knitting needles out, so the said day arrived I finished, away went the crochet hooks, out came the knitting needles and off I went to rummage around the nice and expensive yarn section of my stash and found this nice sparkle sock yarn

I purchased this last year at Fibre East, along with other yarn from Truly Hooked, the colour is Dusky it's a lovely yarn to work with and a nice colour too. So I found a shawl/scarf pattern in my Ravelry library - no fuss shawl pattern by Susan Ashcroft, which is a lovely easy pattern to knit, a real sit down and relax knit. Well I finished it and I don't like it, I love the pattern and I love the yarn, but the combination of the two together just don't work for me, so it has been abandoned for now and guess what the crochet hooks are out again 

An experimental blue crochet project