My Week

It has been a typical spring week, one day a taste of summer and the next a reminder of winter.  One thing I love about spring is the elderflower trees in blossom.  Elderflower cordial making is the top of list.  I love it with its musky flavour.  I have never made elderberry cordial, I mean to but the birds get the berries before I do.  May be I will have to camp beside the tree!

This week I have been busy with the blanket for my niece it has to be finished before Thursday!!!  I am busy sewing it up, hopefully tomorrow I can start on the border.  However I have done some other crochet to lighten the load.  One was a little cowl, as it still can be cold in the early morning when I leave the house and I wanted something to keep my neck warm.

I used V stitch it was super quick to do an hour or so.  I have worn it most mornings, and soon as it is warm enough I slip it off and put it in my bag.

Pretty colours!

I have also done some work on my Painted Rose cushion and it is now ready to sew to the back

I am using the curtain material leftover from when I made new ones earlier in the year.  I just love this pattern from Cherry Heart.  I cant wait to get started on the blanket.  But it will have to wait as I have other projects that require my attention.

For a change I decided to try my hand at making embroidered brooches.  I had seen some on Pinterest and thought they would make great gifts.

So here is my first attempt.

Think I will keep this one for myself as it has a few errors in it!  But I love it anyway.

So that has been my week, I will leave you with my recipe for Elderberry cordial.

Elderflower Cordial

Ingredients

25 - 30 elderflower heads

1.7litres/3 pints boiling water

900g/2lb caster sugar

50g/2oz citric acid

3 lemons, sliced

Preparation method

Gently rinse over the elderflowers to remove any dirt or little creatures.

Pour the boiling water over the sugar in a very large mixing bowl. Stir well and leave to cool.

Add the citric acid, the orange and lemon slices, and then the flowers.

Leave in a cool place for 24 hours, stirring occasionally.

Strain through some muslin and transfer to sterilised bottles.

Thanks for visiting and have a great week.

Roses, Inspiration and stash busting

This week, I have been plugging away crocheting my nieces blanket.  Nearly there, hopefully I will be able to start joining the squares before the end of next week.

When I have been blog reading this week I came across two inspirational projects; one from Lucy at Attic 24 and the other from Sandra at Cherry Heart.  They preyed on my mind and I had to start!

First of all, the project that made my heart sing - Cherry Heart’s Painted Rose Blanket.  I had decided earlier in the week that I wanted to make the blanket and it went into my queue of projects.  Yesterday I succumbed and rummaged around in my stash and came up with similar colours.  My hook came out and before long I had made two squares.

I just love them, makes me think of my paternal grandmother, these were her colours.  I don’t have enough of these colours in my stash to make a blanket, but these squares will become a cushion for my bedroom.  I think I will be able to match the colours but it will be a different dye run I suppose. But it wont matter as they wont be next to each other.

For any Kiwi readers I have used Crucci Olympus for the blue (it is not quite as bright as this in real life) and the pink petals and Patons Panda for the mustard and green, I had a lime similar to Sandra’s but it was too strong and dominated the square so I went for this khaki colour, makes it look vintage.  I still am trying to suss out the joining colour, it is between a teal and the light blue I have used above.

The other inspiration I had this week was Lucy ofAttic 24 Cosy Blanket Cal.  Last Monday I pulled out some wool that I had earmarked for a scarf last winter and never got around to doing.  I thought that the texture of the pattern would make a wonderful scarf and it does.

It is such an easy pattern and soothing to do, and I will definitely be making a blanket at some stage using this brand of wool (Countrywide Yarns, Windsor), I have never used it before - it is so soft and the colours are quite lovely.

Both of these will be linked to Linda of Linda’sCrafty Corner November Stash-buster link party.

Now I will leave you with some close up photos of roses that I have picked for the house.

Thanks for visiting and have a wonderful weekend and week.

Blankets

This week I have been crocheting away at the blanket for my niece.  I have completed all the pink squares and now doing the blue squares.  I am a bit behind schedule but I will get there.

I wanted something to do as a bit of change and while blog reading I came across the Scheepjes CAL that Wink of A Creative Being is holding.  It is a mystery CAL and each week she releases a PDF pattern for one of the squares.  (It is free and the pdf’s come in 4 languages!)  She is up to week 6 and all of the squares are rather nice so far. 

A bell went off in my head, as some of you may know I have wanted to do a cotton blanket for ages and have fiddled around with motifs and colours only to be abandoned for various reasons.

I have a lot of cotton in my stash, so even better!  The only problem she is using no 8 cotton and mine is no 10.  With a bit of experimenting I have worked out that I will need to do 7 squares of each motif instead of 6 as in her pattern.  (She has a pack that you can buy but I rather think the cost of postage and time getting here would rule that out for me.)  That is the problem living way down under all those lovely materials that I see on blogs are not available here!)

Anyways, this where I have got to so far:

The blue one is week 5, the instructions are fine but it took a while to get use to her instructions, it is fortunate that there are rather large photos of the squares as I was a bit mystified at times.  That’s why I like charts; it has been a great learning process.

There are two Facebook groups one that started 6 weeks ago and the other that started yesterday.  However, I don’t do Facebook but I will post mine in the Ravelry Group.  I really think I am going to like this blanket.

It has been a beautiful day to day, very summery and the flowers are starting to look wonderful.  Here are two from my front garden.

Have a wonderful weekend and thanks for visiting!

How a blanket turned into a shawl!

Last July I started a blanket (see here ).  It sat on the back of my small sofa for the whole winter.  It looked nice there and I had serious doubts about its suitability as a blanket.  The was very soft a bit like mohair, the cats adored it, and would work their little paws on it and snag it! 

Well, this week I needed a little relief from a big project for a certain young lady who has a 9^th birthday at the end of November.  It is very bright as you will see.

She chose the colours, big pink squares in the middle and a border of aqua colours, an artist in the making?  She so wants it for her first sleepover she is hosting on her birthday.  So muggins promised! 30 squares, 10 completed, 10 next week and the10 the week after and the last week sewing up and the border, whew!

Anyway I have been making bracelets (last post) as a change, and finally the Japanese flower blanket screamed at me to do something with it!

It was so lovely and soft, it had to be a shawl, so a shawl it became, I only had to do another 6 flowers, and a lot of sewing the ends this morning.

Excuse the quality of the photos, the light was very bright and I think I had the camera on the wrong setting.

I had to show it with some bright geraniums!  It will be perfect for those cool evenings that we sometimes get in summer.  It will go back to the sofa as I really like it there too.

I wonder what other UFO I can finish next week for relief from the bright blanket.  Actually I really love the colours, warms the soul.  Great for playing around with the camera.

Hope you all have a colourful week, I know I shall!  

Oh and thanks for visiting.

I do so appreciate your comments and visits.