Beavering Away....

I have had an extremely busy fortnight, and my Cals have not advanced very much.  I realised  a couple of days ago why.  All my cals are complicated, I need to have the pattern in front of me and I need to count all the time.  When I finally get time to do crochet in the evenings I am too tired to do them.  So I needed a project  that did not require me to peer at the pattern. 

Now there is something about the word Cal that attracts me and when I read Sandra’s (Cherry Heart) post about her proposed Weekender Cal,  I was hooked so to speak.  While it can be any blanket, she and many others are doing a Hexagon blanket.  I looked at her pattern and knew I would get bored with plain hexagons so I decided to put a popcorn flower in the center of the hexagon and use some colours that I have been longing to use for a while. 

They are addictive and just the job for when I just want to sit in front of the TV and crochet.

The other Cals

Any way here is how far I got with the Sophie’sUniverse Cal.  I hope to do a few rows this weekend.

I am at a standstill with the Mini Rings Cal as it is really quite large already and if I follow the pattern it will be too large for my bathroom.  So I might just stop it where it is now and add my own edging of some sort.

And as I said the word Cal lures me, I have been keeping a close eye on another Cal from Yarn Inspirations.  I've been doing just one motif just to see what it is like and it is quite strange but interesting.  Goodness knows where it is going next week.

Doily

I do have a finished item to show – doily no 5 for my doily bedspread.  The last row took me ages!

Penny Lane 

Finally, Ambrose caught in the act! 

Every morning my lovely tidy pile of crochet projects are in a right mess.  I knew it was one of the cats. 

But which one.

Evidence!

sweet dreams!

Have a lovely week and thanks for visiting.

Happy Valentine!

I have been making hearts today!  Well,  it is Valentine’s day.  I want some hearts for a tea cosy.  You see I want an elegant tea cosy for when I play at ladies!  Wool cosies are lovely, but you could never call them elegant.  So I had an idea of using cotton and some fancy stitch.  I thought of using hearts to embellish it and went looking on Pinterest and Ravelry, but amongst the hundreds I saw, nothing hit the spot.  I realized I wanted texture so thought of popcorns, so out came the hooks and cottons this morning and I experimented.

These were very nice and I think I will turn them into brooches.  However, I wanted something bigger to put on the side of the tea cosy and voila…..

It needs refining a bit as I think my sides are not even, but not too shabby for a prototype.

Last week I feel in love…… with Sophie’s Universe Cal, I had been keeping a weather eye on it and when I saw how it turned from a circle to a square I could not help myself.  A rummage around in my stash and yippee I have almost enough yarn, will have to top up later.  So I can justify this as a stash buster for Linda's February's Link Party

So on Tuesday as the weather had turned bad I had a lovely crochet day and did weeks 1 and 2.

The instructions and tutorials are the best I've seen!

Yesterday and today I have been working on week 3.  

It took me a long time, and that is the reason I was unable to do this week’s Mini Rings of Change, that and this, Lucy deciding that it made a wonderful  place to have a kip!  I couldn't move her could I?!

However that is on my radar for tomorrow!  That is if I can keep my hands off the lovely Sophie’s Universe blanket!  Well, week 6 instructions come out tomorrow and I have a lot of catching up!

Have a wonderful Valentine’s Day and a great creative week.  Thanks for visiting.  Ambrose Sends his purrs along with Lucy and Peggy Sue.

CALS and Award

I love CALs they stop me from racing ahead, give me time to ponder.  I have completed two more rounds of Kate's Cal Mini Rings of Change.

I was going to do the Moogly 2015 Cal blanket, but when I saw the first square I decided not to as it was very fussy, and looked very difficult.  However when I was reading Kates post today she had done an alternate square that was rather nice! So what to do?  I had already decided to do a blanket using Cherry Heart’s Vintage blanket using Jan Eaton’s book of 200 blocks as inspiration.

 I rather like them and will keep on with it.  However I think I will keep an eye out on the Moogly Squares and see how they  go.

This week the lovely Anna of Annas Simple Crochet awarded me this award.  Thankyou very much Anna.

Following the rules, I have to : follow the blog who nominated me, answer to 5 questions and nominate 10 blogs.

The questions -

1  What would you change in your current situation? Nothing!

2   What you do not forgive? Lying

3 What would your perfect disguise? Dark glasses they say the eyes are the window to your soul!

4  Do you believe in eternal love or is it a fairy tale ? Love with capital letters.

    5  An important song in your life.  Lady in Red can’t recall who sings it!

The blogs-

http://senioradventureswithlindakay.blogspot.co.nz/

http://sftandthe101challenge.blogspot.co.nz/

http://ellengiggenbach.blogspot.co.nz/  *

http://lovecraft2012.blogspot.co.nz/

http://papermoonliving.blogspot.co.nz/  *

http://bicocacolors.blogspot.co.nz/

http://jsmwebber.blogspot.co.nz/  *

http://mythreadbearlife.blogspot.co.nz/  *

http://sssinthesun.blogspot.co.nz/

http://www.girlswearbluetoo.com/

The * marks NZ blogs.

The cats are in hiding today, as it has been rather noisy here today. 

Ambrose hiding down the back in my wild area!

Lucy has been deep in hiding and just come out for dinner.

Peggy Sue is staying under the bed. She is a nervous cat, she was a rescue kitten and I am sure she was maltreated as she hates loud noises and children!  She will come out when it is dark.

Why the noise?  It is Wings Over Wairarapa Air Show this weekend and the jets, biplanes, etc have been screeching above the town today.

google imagrs

But I won’t let it distract me like a couple of years ago, I was watching planes doing loops while I was pruning some bushes and partially cut off the tip of my little finger! Spending the rest of the day in A&E.   So there will be no pruning this weekend!  Hopefully,  lots of crafting, LOL

.

 Have a great Weekend.

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.