Banana bread Saturday

Ok it doesn't look like bake off standards,

but it is banana bread 

and it will get eaten in this house.

 

Oh! 

And some knitting which is resting for the summer,

but that's a story for another day 

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 

Trying to get back on track again

Hello again! This must be the third or fourth blog post this year? But there have been many more attempted tries at writing a post.

Well what has been happening since I last posted? Well a lot some good and some bad which may explain my absence, let's start with the good bits we've had a new bathroom roof, along with a new bathroom suite fitted, which were needed and a new boiler finally, we now have a boiler that is not living on lifesupport (hurray!!) Don't ask me how good the heating is because we haven't needed heating for quite a while, as you can see from the above photo which is the current state of my lawn, a combination a lot of sun and no rain!

Well after the very cold winter (see photos below) we get blessed with the hottest driest summer in a long long time.

My poor primroses took a severe battering 

The slight calm before the beast from the east struck 

So what has been happening on the craft front then? 

Not a lot 

 I Started this granny stripe blanket, but it got too warm to have it anywhere near me, so it is now currently in hibernation for the summer.

Made four pairs of pyjama bottoms for the girls (no photos) that were badly needed. Tried to make myself a top which went wrong, so that is now sitting in the sulking pile, defiantly no photos of that one and yes I do have a sulking pile. 

The only successful sewing project I've done recently is this small knitting/crochet project bag, I know you can't see much of it but currently it contains a secret knitting project that I'm working on at the moment, enough said about for that for now.

Well I suppose I'll have to talk about the bad bits, which I'm not going to dwell on too much, I will say I've had a lot of stress with the work we've had  done on the house. But also with the builders who have been working on the house next door for over 18 months and are nowhere near finished. I've had to put up with a lot noise and mess (dust) from them, the weather at the moment is a little on the warm side to keep the windows shut, so the house is full of brick dust, which makes me feel like giving up on doing any housework, the knock on effects of that is the decluttering is at a stand still and I'm not doing much crafting either, because everything  is covered in dust.

Well that's enough of my little rant, I'm off to make a cup of tea and see if my washing is dry yet, it's great weather for drying washing! x

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

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