Day to Day

Cute crochet

Today I went to my friend Helen's house to do some morning crafting with her and Nicole.  Nicole scrapbooked while Helen and I worked on our crocheted blankets.  You can see my blanket progress above, but what I really wanted to post about today are Helen's current crochet projects.  Remember Helen? I've blogged about her darling bag and blanket (below) before:

 
She's the queen of crochet and queen of actually completing her projects (unlike myself, LOL).  Anyhow, may I present the most darling cushion ever - I tried to steal it today but she wouldn't let me. Sigh.

The pattern is out of the June issue of Better Homes & Gardens magazine. Yes, we're still in June - that's how fast Helen whipped this cushion up, she's a speed crocheter :)

Then, Helen's current project:

 
 

I can't describe how delightful this new blanket is.  There are 20 million more two inch squares to be crocheted and then joined together. Crazy but oh, so good.  The colours in the photo might be slightly off, that's really chocolate brown mixed with the yummiest sorbet palette.  Oh so good.

When I grow up I want to be just like Helen :))

What a week!

That's the only photo I have to share from our week, my little Bella with her new fringe (bangs).  Last week was long and yucky, starting with Rich coming off his dirt bike and spending most of the week on the couch, in bed or walking very s-l-o-w-l-y and all bent over while he recovered.  He put a crack in his sternum and tore some muscles off the bone in his shoulder area and I ended up with a week long headache that swayed from a migraine to a nasty headache and back to a migraine.

I'm all better now, Rich is still hobbling around, but back to normal posting tomorrow.  I hope your week was better than mine :)

Playmobil

Ahh Playmobil, how I love you so.      

Bella dragged out the Playmobil box late this afternoon and talked James into helping her put the main castle together.  I don't have a photo of its current state,  but it's filled to the brim with dinosaurs, Playmobil men and all sorts of evil Star Wars creatures.  It's the first time the castle has had other inhabitants come and visit, usually it's strictly for army style battles.  

Times are a-changing!

25th row

 

I've just started on with my 25th band of colour for James' blanket.  It's now at the stage where it's keeping me cosy as I crochet along, which is always a good thing as we head into winter.  I bought a couple more balls of yarn this morning because my stash was starting to get a little low on blues and greens.  What I'm really loving about this project is being able to hook on any colour and not having to think about whether there are too many rows of cream, green or chocolate brown etc..  - it's just totally random and that's really nice.

   

Send me a letter

I was lucky enough to play with the new Send Me A Letter collection from Tarisota a couple of weeks ago.  Yep, I actually did some scrapbooking!

It was super fun to spend some hours creating a few pages for our very neglecting family albums.  I haven't done any layouts for quite a few months, so was quite surprised that I even remembered how to scrapbook!!

You can view and purchase the collection HERE.

Granny stripe blanket update tomorrow!  I know a few of you have started one too, how is yours going???          

My day

I had Miss Bonnie over for a play today and she requested we do some cooking.  So, bake we did!  

There was a whole session of beater, spoon and bowl licking - ofcourse this always rates well with little people, much more fun than even measuring or adding the ingredients. 

While waiting for the first cake to cook we popped some popcorn.  Bonnie was quite fascinated with our popcorn maker and I had to keep adding in extra corns for more popping.

There was drawing and colouring in while we waited for the cakes to cool for icing.

Hooray! The cakes all iced and ready for afternoon tea.  Postcard writing in-between while Bonnie napped.

 

Plus a little bit of desk rearranging, because I do love moving things around inside!  I think I prefer it in this corner of the house, all cosy and nice in our book corner.

I hope your day was a good one.

Postcard wall

We've been creating a little postcard wall at home and filling it with a few of our favourite cards. Eventually the postcards will go all the way from floor to ceiling and then I might find a new wall in the passage to cover ;-)

 

The hardest part is deciding (and agreeing) which ones will make it onto the wall!

Thankyou for all your lovely comments on the blanket project.  It's still growing - I'm up 17 bands of colour now.  I'll share another photo of it soon :)

The granny stripe

Last night I worked away on the new granny stripe blanket and I'm still loving it.  

A few people emailed/asked a question here relating to finished size etc...  So I've popped a few details below:

My blanket measures 145cm across (57.1 inches). I cast on 240 stitches using 8 ply yarn for this size, ofcourse it might be a little different for you, depending on what your tension is like.

I'm aiming for a final depth of 150cm - it's already 20cm deep.

Each double stripe of colour takes approximately 25grams of yarn.  I've roughly calculated that there will be 60 double strips in the blanket, so that's around thirty 50 gram balls.  While that sounds a little daunting, I'm using up quite a few scrap balls, so I'm hoping to not buy too many new balls along the way.

The original tutorial for the granny stripe was found on the lovely Lucy's blog (Attic 24) HERE.

I hope that's everything.  It's proving very difficult to put this down and get back onto Bella's blanket for a night though, I think that's always the case with a new project though....well, it is in my house anyhow :)

Oh and I found THIS fab tutorial today for another blanket - next time perhaps?!

Hello new project

This is extremely embarrassing after my post yesterday about finishing Bella's blanket and how I was then going to shift my focus to James' blanket.  But, my blogging friends turned me to the dark side, I swear.

I'm blaming Cindy who left a comment to tell me about how she was joining in with Lucy's granny stripe crochet-a-long.  Um, so after 5 or so minutes I too was joining in the fun and did up a little sample of the granny stripe, just to see whether I could master it or not.  Today I was out buying a few more balls of yarn to add into my stash for this new blanket, then home agin to cast on my 240 chain.

It's going to be a new blanket for James. HA! I'm so crazy! I'm actually ditching the two blankets I have started for him already (oh my goodness, I can see you all rolling your eyes) and using all the leftover yarn for this one, plus the addition of oranges and blues that I bought this morning.  It's already grown so much more than the photo above, I have seven bands of colour on there now.  It's so boyish and yummy, I love it already.

I'm going to alternate - one day for Bella's blanket and one day for James'.  How does that sound?  What I can't believe though is how seriously fast 8 ply crochets up - the 4 ply I'm using on Bella's blanket takes forever to turn into a square, the 8 ply is kicking butt!

 

I do have good news though :)  Remember my knitted cardigan that was on my *to do* list? I finished it a few weeks ago and have been wearing it like crazy. It's very comfy and warm in this cold weather that we're having at the moment.  It needs a little de-fluffing by the looks of things in the photo above, but that's a good thing - it means I really have been wearing it to death :)

I'll share another progress photo of James' blanket tomorrow.

 

Nearly there

I actually feel like I'm going to finish this blanket for Bella soon, it's coming along so nicely and even though I'm generally whinging about getting the flipping thing all done (remind me not to do another 4 ply blanket), I'm also feeling quite excited that I'm on the homeward stretch!

I've mentioned before that the blanket is made up of six 30 square blocks (180 squares).  I've completely finished three of the blocks now and they're all sewn together - that's ninety squares.  Then the fourth block is pretty much finished, except for a little bit of edging and then I'll have to sew up the squares:

The fifth block also has all of the squares completed, but each square now needs edging - here they are all piled up with Miss Bonnie in the background:

For the sixth block I've crocheted 10 squares, so only 20 squares to go!!!  Then I'll have to edge them all ofcourse and join.  But, it's getting pretty close :)

I'm planning on adding a thicker red border around the entire blanket too when all the squares are joined up, then it's onto finishing James'.  I think everybody is getting sick of it all spread out on the carpet, but when it's there I find it motivating to keep on crocheting.  I'm also getting really tired of everybody walking and dragging quilts over the top of it every two seconds - I've repositioned the loose squares back into place about a million times now!!

Anyhow, back to crocheting :)  

If you have any *must see* crochet blanket links, please leave them for me - I do love looking at yummy blanket photos.  I'm already planning ahead to my third blanket (after I finish James') but can't quite make up my mind yet how I want to do it. I know it's going to be 8 ply and possibly autumn toned colours, but that's about it.  Any favourite blanket pics that you have would be very welcome.