Sunday 21 August 2011

Sew long.

It's been so long since I last posted, well over a week. And I really don't have much to share. A few rounds of a sock - hmm, you don't really want to see that do you? I have just been so busy and tired lately, hardly any time to craft. Although there has been one special thing I have been working on, a craft I don't pick up too often but one I really enjoy. The past week or so I have been using needle and thread to stitch away on a a little gift for a new baby away across the ocean. A very time consuming gift and something that seemed to take forever to grow. But grow it has and it's almost ready to send away to it's new home. Well it would be..........except that when it was being admired by a certain person who shall remain nameless, it managed to acquire an extra bit of colouring that really has become a nuisance to remove. I won't bother to point out where the mark is, it's very, VERY, noticeable, but if anyone has any idea how to remove a chocolate fingerprint form Aida then please share as soon as you can!


So what do you think? Aside from the huge grotty blemish of course? Eeyore is just such a cute character, so much more huggable than the rest of Pooh's friends don't you think? I hope the parents of the new little one think so too.
I have a few more projects to share but as one is a gift for a mama swap, and the other is not strictly my crafting, I'll save them for another time. You know, I think I'll start to think about Christmas gifts, it's not so long now. The last of the little ones birthdays was today (Cain is now no longer the youngest, now that he is five and the same age once again as his niece Sophie and their shared friends), and with only a couple of big peoples birthdays to go before Christmas I might actually get ahead of myself for a change. Are you ready to start Christmas crafting yet?
Happy crafting everyone.

-x-

Tuesday 9 August 2011

Great Granny's.

 
So I said I was working on a little something for Owen? A little something using an old stash of granny squares and lovely yarn? Well I finally finished weaving in the last few ends and decided on the nicest way to join them altogether. 


In fact the hardest part of this whole make was deciding how the squares would fit together and I ended up removing two reds and adding two blues instead. It's a little harder to settle for the right design when limited by using only stash of a particular yarn. For this make I was using only Mirasol T'ika cotton DK and as it is no longer available I only had what was in the stash - 7 skeins of red, 6 of fuchsia, 3 of royal blue and 1 of green.


I wasn't sure that the one green would be enough to complete a border row so I decided to use it to join the squares together instead. When the squares were all joined I needed to think of a way to edge it, and as this is a make for a boy boy I decided on a simple treble crochet border all the way round in alternating stripes of red, blue and fuchsia. I repeated the red and blue once more and was going to add another fuchsia but decided that the blue final row gave just the right contrast and set off the limited blue squares perfectly.


Ideally I would have liked to have another skein of the lime to work the first border row but I didn't and so that was that. I could have done with blocking the squares a little better too but  it's quite a heavy blanket anyway so it will drop into it's own shape soon enough, and Owen was too impatient to wait fr me to do much more with it.
So here we go in all it's glory:


And now back to that in between stage of deciding whether to work my way through the W.I.P.'S, or to work on a little easy finished quick fix, or to start on the next big project......although I haven't decided what that will be yet!

Thursday 4 August 2011

Old projects.

Otherwise known as "the post where I tried to save on photo's"!
The camera battery is down to two dot's now so don't think it has much life left and with no trip planned to the caravan, and therefore getting the charger, for a few more weeks yet I'm trying to save camera usage as much as possible. Just wanted to give a sneak look at what I'm up to right now though :)
Remember this? And this? Or even this? Well after coming across a lovely find at the car boot sale last week I thought I would get creative and make it even lovelier. This is very much a gift for Owen so his favourite colours in use, which just happened to be the very colours I had stashed away and already started with.
I know a few of you  fell for this Mirasol yarn in a big way and started your own little projects after clearing it from the sales and I know that someone zoomed through the Granny squares  (Shell?) but I don't remember a finished project? :) 
So not quite ready for a reveal yet but the squares for this make are all done and I've even woven in all the ends so far. Just the joining up now (the part I like the least!) and then deciding on how to finish it off. Here's a peek of the colours in use, including the extra three skeins of blue I bought recently in the end of line at Blacksheepwools:


Really enjoying making this and half wondering why it has been stashed away for so long, whilst half pleased it was as I am really liking working with the yarn again. Funny seeing how my crochet has come on too - when I started it I wasn't sure what I was doing and it looks like I worked the treble clusters into the chain on the previous round rather than into the chain space! Phew, glad I understand crochet a little better now, it looks much nicer done the proper way! But I'll be using the older squares anyway as they are a reminder to myself of all I have learnt. And I'm fairly certain Owen won't mind or even notice the "wrong" squares.
Right, enough putting it off, back to joining the squares.....

-x-