It's supposed to be spring, for goodness sake - the clocks have 'sprung forward' and everything. Yet here we are with sleet and snow all the beginning of this week. Still, yesterday afternoon there was a lovely pink glow on the hill opposite so I nipped out and took a picture. Do you think that red field at night could possibly mean shepherd's delight?
There I was at the kitchen sink yesterday morning, when I looked up and saw - a very disgruntled looking heron on the neighbour's roof! This was the sixth day of deep snow and frozen lochs and rivers, so I guess the old chap was trying his luck with suburban garden ponds.
He does look fed up - and I'm sure he's thinking I should have put some fish and frogs out on the bird table!
The picture's a bit grainy, because it was a very grey day and I was shooting through the window, but it is nice to have something unexpected in the file marked 'garden birds'!
Still, it's beginning to thaw today and I managed to get a decent sized shopping done, so the larder's all stocked up again for the next snowfall.
Yay! Sophie's Universe blanket in all her glory. What on earth am I going to do now? I was quite tempted to get more yarn and just keep on extending the border, but I thought I might ruin the proportions of the patterns. She's quite spectacular though, isn't she? I have enjoyed making her and have learned a few new stitches along the way.
I guess I'm going to have to go back to making little critturs and Star Wars peeps, though I'm toying with the idea of socks. I don't know how comfy crocheted socks would be, but it's worth a shot.
Meanwhile we're just pottering along here, enjoying the fact that dawn and dusk are gradually getting further apart and the snowdrops are out.
My super talented daughter's latest Novel was released on Thursday. It's called 'Beneath the Water' and is really very good. (I know, I would say that, but it's also perfectly true.)
Well here we are at the end of the festivities. Twelfth Night, the 5th of January, is actually our wedding anniversary, and for some reason we never do much in the way of celebrating it (or even remembering it some years). Could we be partied out? Or could it be that we were a solid couple for so long before we actually tied the knot. We got married in quite a hurry just before moving from Scotland to Wales so m'darling husband could take up a new job and we thought we'd better start off with as few things for People to Tut At as we could! Anyway, we get quite a lot of pleasure from taking down the Christmas decorations and restoring the house to normality. Doesn't take much to make us happy!
I had a brief break (2 afternoons) from crocheting Sophie's Universe to test out a Christmas present.
I was given the second book of Star Wars crochet patterns Even More Star Wars
by my lovely daughter, so I thought I'd better road test it. The patterns are obviously constructed in the same way as the first book, so all the characters will fit well together. It's based on 'The Force Awakens', the film before this season's 'Last Jedi', so it doesn't have a pattern for the Porgs, but I guess I can make something up for them because they have to be made, don't they? Anyway, this Jawa is pretty good, and there are patterns for Rey, BB8 etc., so that should all go down well at the next Christmas fair.
My only gripe with these books is that I wish they would just issue them as a wee pattern book (12 characters to make) and not bump it up into a 'kit' by adding a big box (lots of empty space), a couple of hanks of really naff acrylic yarn and a crochet hook and yarn needle (from the cheap end of the Chinese output). It could put people off if they were using this as a start into crochet, because the yarn splits really easily and the hook is pretty crudely made. So my advice would be to keep the book and throw away the 'kit'.
Use a decent acrylic yarn - (you're not going to use real wool for wee Star Wars figures) - like Stylecraft, and buy your crochet hook(s) from the same retailer. I recommend 'Wool Warehouse' - their website is easy to negotiate, their prices are good, their dispatch and delivery times are good and they are plugged in to the most popular craft blogs.
I'm not getting any commission, I just buy from them all the time. (and the yarn comes in nice organza bags)
Hello! I see it's two months since I last posted - so sorry. We have been having some lovely wintry evening skies lately, and last week we stood out in the back garden at midnight and watched a great show from the Geminid meteor shower. Falling stars in abundance to wish upon.
We've just put up our Christmas decorations so we're finally feeling festive, the cards have all been written and posted and the presents bought and wrapped. I can now settle down in my comfy chair and Carry On Crocheting. I've been working on the Sophie's Universe blanket since I last posted and have reached Round 64. Still a long way to go! It's a wonderful project, though, and I'm loving the Scheepjes yarn - it's a cotton/acrylic mix with lovely colour names like Amazonite, Canada Jade and Moonstone and it's great for crochet because it doesn't split. I've learned some new stitches from the project and the surface patterning and texture is amazing. Such fun! I look forward to showing it to you when it's finished - probably summer 2018.
I did have a couple of week's break from the blanket at the end of November, as I agreed at rather the last minute to do a Christmas Market in my lovely daughter's village, so frantic production of robins and penguins ensued. All went well, although the market was not very well attended. There's so much else on at this time of year.
As you can see, my kitchen/dining room gets a tree as well as the living room - I do need quite a lot of branches from which to hang the things I've made over the years - and of course every year you have to buy a new decoration, don't you - and you can't throw any old faithfuls away. Do you think it might be getting a little over the top?
I wish you all the very best of health and happiness this Christmas and for the New Year to come.
Wow! I finished this blanket yesterday afternoon. Isn't it fabulous?
I've had a lot of fun doing it, and have learned new techniques along the way. The Frontpost/Backpost crochet stitches are now second nature, and it's amazing how such a simple technique can produce such wonderful surface textures and designs.
The designer of this blanket Catherine Bligh is very clever. I would never have chosen this colour combination, but it works beautifully, and the CAL is nicely paced so an intermediate crocheter can learn as they go. (I wouldn't start a beginner on it!)
The end result is very satisfying and I can see myself using parts of it in other projects. That lovely Chrysanthemum (next square in from the corner square) could easily form the centre of a splendid Mandala - just keep it going as a circle rather than squaring it. The lovely lacy edging I can see being used to finish many other projects. Best of all, I've found that what looks complicated to start with is actually just a matter of using well known stitches in different ways to produce a stunning result.
Thank you Catherine Bligh.
I'm quite fancying setting off on the Sophie's Universe blanket next. I've got the book, now just need to steel myself to buy all that yarn. I did think of trying to use the Stylecraft colours I already have some of, but somehow starting a new big project with not-quite-the-perfect materials is off-putting. Sigh! I'll just have to accept that I'm never going to Bust That Stash - more yarn will enter the house very soon, I know.
Besides which, it's called Scheepjes. Sheepies! How can I resist?
Hello everyone.
We've just had a splendid 'welcome to autumn' week away in the wonderful west of Scotland. Why would you need to go anywhere else, when the first evening sitting outside your holiday cottage gives you this. What a great addition to a G&T is the lovely light show of a gentle evening twilight. (wait on for a proper sunset spectacular!)
We were in the Studio - an annex to a cottage beside the splendid Invercaimbe camping and caravan site run by Joyce Wilkinson.
The campsite is just a bit of diversification - her real love on the croft is the livestock. She was extolling the virtues and intelligence of a wee black bullock and speculating whether a harness and cart might be the way to go with him!
She's a hard working, fast talking, powerhouse. I commend her campsite/self-catering accommodation to you.
We were very lucky and had many lovely sunny days in which to explore all the little bays between Arisaig and Mallaig.
My lovely husband was happy because he could pursue his latest obsession (sand - in a geological context, you understand) and Maisie was ecstatic because she likes beaches too - they mean ball throwing and getting wet and rolling in the sand.
You look out over the little skerries to Eigg and Rum and Skye, so the views are always gorgeous.
There were some very low tides, so rock pooling and shell-collecting was very much the order of the day.
You can walk all the way from Arisaig to the Sands of Morar, should you choose to - but we split it up into bits and used the car to get us to the next bay on the list. Well, we are getting a little older and creakier.
I promised you a good sunset - the West Coast does them so well. Here's Rum and Eigg with turquoise, red and yellow striped sky. We were all (all the campers and caravanners and us) sitting on the beach at Invercaimbe, snapping pictures for all we were worth.
If you've never been to this part of the world - I urge you to go. Breathe, beach-comb, look at the lovely light.
Here's the latest in the series of strange beasties I've been crocheting to use up the stash. 'My Little Pony' Unicorns! The eyes are needle-felted on and the mane and tail are just strands of the Stylecraft yarn knotted in to the head and neck stitches and then de-constructed -ie unwind the three strands using a needle. You could also take a wire dog-grooming brush to the mane and tail to make it fluffier if you like, but I think I prefer the Kevin Keegan 70's perm look.
After doing these guys I got a bit fed up with crocheting heads, bodies, legs and stitching them together. I got the urge for another blanket project so went online to see what was out there ....
Demelza! The talented Catherine Bligh has designed some blankets based on the characters in the BBC series Poldark. This reference means nothing to me, as I've never seen the programme, but you have to admit it has generated a lovely colour palette. It is also quite a complex pattern - full of front-post and back-post stitches and taking stitches down through the previous rows etc.
So far I've done part one - the four inner corner squares made up of four small squares each. The colours remind me of my Gran's living room - that sort of mid green that Lloyd Loom furniture was painted and floral curtains. (I am quite old, you know!)
It's certainly proving interesting and challenging and I look forward to showing you the finished article.
Hello there.
We've just spent a week on Rousay - one of the Orkney islands - dubbed 'the Egypt of the North' because of the number of archaeological sites there are.
We stayed in a self-catering cottage, The Bakehouse. This lovely place is spacious, disabled friendly and extremely well-equipped. A real home from home. It's dog-friendly, too.
The island is only about 14 miles in circumference, so wherever we went for our morning walk we were able to pop home for lunch and then go out for the afternoon walk - it's astonishing how much less hassle that is for the chief cook and bottle-washer -i.e. me! No fussing about making sarnies and filling flasks first thing in the morning! Loved it.
The archaeological sites are indeed many, but they did give us a little pause for thought. Conservation of these fragile sites is of course essential, but on Rousay they seem to have gone a bit overboard.
Mid Howe chambered cairn is an impressively huge many-chambered cairn in which family burials were discovered - but they've built a barn roof over the top of it, so you now go indoors and gaze down upon it from scaffolding. This was an extremely unsettling experience - those with vertigo will find themselves on a narrow wooden walkway above an entirely unfamiliar landscape. I took a deep breath and walked on - there are handrails to help - but when I looked back my poor wee dog, who was following me as always, was completely frozen on the walkway. She hadn't got the benefit of the handrails, and was suspended on a narrow plank above a very odd drop. She really was utterly frozen. Mummy strength to the fore! Never mind your own terrors (like when you take your kids to the dentist!) rescue the wean! I climbed back up and walked backwards off of there with Maisie gazing at the toes of my boots and therefore able to move.
MidHowe Broch (just next to the cairn) is also very impressive, but the Ministry of Works in the 1950s obviously rebuilt some of it and tied it together with iron bolts.
It's very difficult to get the sense of connection with your ancestors that you can have when you're on your own in a stone circle, for example.
I know, it's a very difficult line to tread - preservation versus authenticity, but every cairn on Rousay has been roofed over in some way, and we soon found ourselves heading for the more recent remains of old farms and threshing barns which have been left (so far) to crumble.
We walked along the coast and around the headlands and, this being the breeding season, were sworn at by Curlew, Arctic Tern, Oystercatcher and the enormous Bonxie - The Great Skua. You need to be wearing a hat - they will dive-bomb you - and holding your walking pole up above your head helps, too! All good fun, and great views of birds you don't usually see that close up. An Arctic Tern hovering right above your head and screaming at you is quite an experience.
We all had a lovely week - even Maisie, who made much closer acquaintance with a deep mud pool than she really meant to. Nothing a dip in the sea and a Nice Bath couldn't sort!
There is a new Guardians of the Galaxy film out in which, so I'm told by my offspring, Baby Groot has grown up a bit and hopped out of his pot.
So I thought I'd better keep up! I looked for images on line and mostly found pictures of plastic toy Groots. I haven't seen the film yet, so I don't know if I've made him the right shape or not. Anyway, it's the first pattern I've done absolutely and completely from scratch rather than adapting existing ones, so it's an achievement of some sort.
I did front-post half double crochet round the top of his head and the ends of his feet to try and get some sort of bark-like texture. The yarn is Rowan Felted Tweed because the splendid nubbly yarn I found for Baby Groot is now discontinued. It's a little bit too dark in colour for the texture stitches to show up well, but it's a very nice yarn - an alpaca/wool mix which crochets nicely - not too liable to split.
If anyone wants the pattern, post a comment with your email address and I'll type it up for you. At the moment it's in the form of scribbles in my notebook. I'm from the paper and pencil generation!
In other news, we're off to Orkney (Rousay, to be precise) later on this week, so hopefully there will be pictures to show you in due course. Here's hoping for good weather.
I'm a happily married grandmother who's retired from work and enjoys pottering about with crafty stuff.
Recent Comments