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

Where do I begin?

Yep that is the question! 

Normality is slowly returning to the house, my girls went back to school yesterday, in a way the whole house feels calmer.

I spent most of the day picking up the sea of Lego off the floor, every time I moved something  I kept finding more.

I started to tidy my craft table as well, what helped with the process was actually doing all the repair jobs which have hanging around on there since before Christmas.  My table is not perfectly tidy yet, but I'm starting to find space where I could actually do some work.

Also I've decided to keep a project (journal/log) book of all my craft projects, up to now there is only one project in, which is my current crochet project I daren't put any of my hibernating UFO's in yet, as think I would need another book!

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 

Next off the sewing machine

Well not exactly that exciting, but I have made something. 

After publishing my last post I put the granny square project away, out came one of the tried and tested pyjama patterns again, down came the four metres of brushed cotton fabric, which has been hanging over the door since the beginning of May and the said fabric became more pyjama bottoms for the girl's again! 

Nice fabric to work with 

French seams for the legs, very neat!

And finished with a label, not for personalisation but so my girls can tell the front from the back 

I most probably can make these in my sleep (ha ha!), I have made "NINE" pairs of pyjama bottoms this year! I've already done more sewing makes this year than last year. 

All nine pairs!!!!

Now I think that it's time to leave the comfort zone of pyjama bottoms and do something different, as the great pyjama shortage has now ended. But the big question is what to do next? I'm not short of fabric or patterns and I don't even have a shortage of sewing thread or other haberdashery supplies either, so what will I make next? I'm off to look through my pattern box and fabric stash.

Stuck in a big rut

That's how I feel at the moment and it's a horrible feeling too.

Well let's start with the ongoing granny square project, which is basically going nowhere at the moment, a little while ago I counted  how many granny squares I had made and there is over two hundred, which is a quite a positive thing knowing that I had made that many, but I have still got a basket full of yarn which is a negative thing. But I think it's time to put the ongoing granny square project away for awhile.

The positive side 

The negative side

So what have I been doing since I last posted? 

Well on the non-granny square making front I have done some sewing, well a little bit of sewing to be more precise. 

Project number one:- some pattern weights 

A little project that has been on my want to make list, these were a quick easy project to do and they used up some squares that I had left over from another project and are filled with some of the rice from the damaged beyond repair doorstop (ask my youngest daughter why she destroyed it). I have certainly made use of them and wonder why I didn't make some sooner.

Project(s) number two:- pyjama bottoms 

Not for me for a change, for the girl's instead. They both are in desperate need of some new pyjama bottoms and this need was made more urgent by that my eldest daughter was going on a school residential trip and she hadn't got a hole free pair to take with her. This would use up some of the fabric from my stash, it was going to be green brushed cotton with owls for my eldest and cream brushed cotton with monsters on for my youngest. I managed to make two (long and short) pairs out of each piece of fabric.

Project number three:- is something that I'm not ready to blog about yet, as at the moment I have got a problem with it, well let's just say it involves something that my youngest daughter has done, so at the moment I'm trying to salvage it.

So what is happening on the stash fronts Then? Well the yarn diet is sort of working, I haven't bought (or received) any yarn since October last year, but due to the slow ongoing granny square project all the odd bits of yarn are not disappearing as quickly as I want them to do and I desperately want to do some knitting for a change. 

Let's move on to the fabric stash front, well let's just say that is a diet that isn't working. First let's look at the plus side since the beginning of the year I have used five pieces of brushed cotton fabric, but those five pieces have been replaced by five more pieces - another piece of brushed cotton, a piece of polar fleece, a piece of knitted lace fabric, a very nice piece of liberty fabric and yesterday a piece of tee shirt fabric.

 Do I have a problem yet?

Still got a long way to go till the stash in under control