Slowly But Surely

Hello everyone, hope you have had a great week! I have spent most of it in the garden, Spring has truly sprung.  Weeds and grass are growing at a great rate!

I have managed to get some crochet time in and I am making progress with the Sacred Space Afghan, I am behind by 2 weeks in the CAL, but there is no hurry as the blanket wont be needed till next winter.

Sacred Place

 

It is getting quite large, and is about to be  turned in to a square, which will be fun as each corner is done separately.

Summer months for me is cotton time as I find acrylic and wool sticky to work with in the hot hot weather. Doing small squares is not too bad though.  I have seen a Cal by Cherry Heart that looks interesting.  It starts October I think.

I discovered a cute square by Julia Hart of Draigona  called Wispweave, there is a whole series circle, hexagon, octagon and a triangle.  So pretty.....

The square just took me an afternoon, it was complicated, so repeats will be quicker I think.  I am thinking of making a runner.

Wispweave Square

 I used Scheepjes Maxi Sugar Rush, equivalent to size 10 thread and used a 1.75mm hook, the square is about 4 inches (10cm).

I couldn't help myself and started on the circle tonight.  The centre is the same as the square so that saved a bit of time. It will make a nice small doily.

Wispweave

 I hope to do some work on Eves Sunflowers this week as well as Sacred  Space.  I also want to make some washcloths as I seem to have depleted my stash.

I am joining Ravelry Yoppers group for this post, why not head over there and see what other yarnies have accomplished this week.

Thanks for visiting and have a lovely week.

Mandala Love - in the pink!

Woohoo, I have created a mandala entirely of my own design.  I have been toying with the idea of making a mandala wall-hanging and thought that a sculptural effect would be great.

So I leaved through a book on classical motifs and thought I would try one, I made a mess of it as I didn't really understand the instructions. 

However I thought I would go with it and decided to make the petals stand out.

I used the idea of the African flower and made a short chain between the spokes I had to do the chain in front of the petal and then push it through so that the chain was at the back.

That worked so then I used the chain to do 2 rounds of trebles.

At this stage I toyed with turning it into a square but in the end decided to carry on.  So I did a row of double V's and a cluster in the V.  Then I did a scalloped round and gave it the treatment used for the African flower.

However it was getting very full and I needed to undo and do less stitches, but being lazy I learnt the lesson of the central flower and decided to try and tighten the last few rounds by using a chain to pull it all together.

Yay It worked.

I think I might do a few more rounds and turn it in to a cushion cover as I have some lovely textured linen.  I don’t really want a lot of pink in my wall-hanging.  I have a few areas where it needs refining which I will do for one in the wall hanging.  Maybe I will post my first tutorial!!!

This week I have been playing a lot with circles and have made heaps of coasters in different cottons.

This one is my favourite so far.

The weather this week has been dry but windy and grey, but we had a bit of sun and Ambrose took advantage to watch me mow the lawns.

It has been very mild this winter and usually all lawn mowing has stopped some of the trees still have their leaves, such as this tree I saw on a walk earlier in the week.

Beautiful!

Well that’s it for now have a wonderful week every body and thank you for visiting.

Linking to Annemaries Link Your Stuff

Happy Accidents

This was the sight that greeted me yesterday morning, naughty cat, Ambrose decided that the balls of wool made a lovely bed.  I had gone to bed without ptting away my crochet.  He had pawed the wools into a fine tangle! 

I have a ritual every morning of having a mug of tea out under the plum tree after I have done the housework.  Usually I take a ball or two of wool with me to kept my fingers buzy while completating the day ahead. I have several projects underway and the one that I usually choose to do outside is the plain hexagon throw for my two seater sofa in the lounge.

Yesterday, I was a bit distracted and snipped the wool after the second round.  Drat!  Looking at it I wondered whether to start afresh or make a join.  Something made me pick up one of the other colours and do a round.  I liked it a lot.  Coaster I thought!
  

So I did a round of double crochet and voila, later I had 6 coasters and this morning I did a large hexagon.

 

I am really pleased with them, they wsill make a wonderful gift for a friend who is crazy about aqua coours.  If I hadnt cut that yarn absent mindedly I nnever would have thought about doing hexagon coasters.  I really like the effect of the stripe and am seriously thinking of adding some randomly to the hexagon throw.

Might make a set for myself!