Belated Christmas Wishes

I am sending you all belated Christmas wishes and hope everyone had a lovely time. I myself have had a chest infection but over that now (yeah), My family and I all had a lazy Christmas just chilling and appreciating the fact the my husband is still here with us after having a double heart bypass just 9 weeks ago. So I know feel after a very stressful year that its goodbye to 2014 and I'm looking forward to 2015.

Now I don't normally go in for new year resolutions but this year I am. My studio/office is where I keep all of my woolly loveliness plus all my other craft items from buttons and ribbons to scrap paper and card plus beads and embellishments and because of the recent stresses everything has just been piled up in heaps and I feel claustrophobic.  So with this in mind I have been researching storage ideas and thinking of how to clean up my space and make it more workable.  The 1st thing I am doing is sorting through my woolly oddments that have been left over from projects and organising them in to different categories. I alway make sure that I use 100% of the ball of wool, so the beginning of the ball is my current project, depending on the project I might have a good sized oddment left over, I then make something for charity with it like a baby hat or bootees or granny squares which will be joined together later with a main colour to make a blanket which will then be donated to charity, if there is anything left I add to my little hats bag to make innocence hats to raise funds for AGE UK. After all that my offcuts when weaving in the ends are kept in a little bag and when it's full it is sent to my good friend Maureen for stuffing handmade toys. I'm going now to play with the wool winder and start my organised 2015.

Happy New Year!

The end of the rainbow

Yeah! I have finished my latest rainbow blanket and it shall be winging its way to my customer later today.  Although my arms are aching a little today after a mammoth weekend of crochet to get this loveliness finished I really enjoyed making it again. The simplicity of the V stitch gives a soft textured finish especially when using Stylecraft Special DK yarn. It's funny though how you just don't realise how long it takes to make a blanket this large until you are making it for someone else. When its a gift for a loved one you just hook away and don't think of the time aspect, when making to order you realise just how much love and effort goes into making something that is going to be loved for many years to come by someone you haven't even met. I hope a special little girl in Bristol is going to love her new blanket.

The rainbow is getting bigger!

Firstly I need to apologise for the photo, I haven't had time to create a space in which to photograph my wares. Plus I agreed to share my rainbow journey with you all the way, but real life took over and I have to admit that I haven't been able to work on it for a couple of days, so this is a quick update then I'm going in for the the long haul today. So far the rainbow is on 25 stripes which equals 75 rows, since it is 1m wide I suppose that means I have crocheted 75m so far with another 78m to go. Not sure I like saying 78m out load, I think I shall go back to saying stripes, I have another 27 stripes to go, there thats sounds better.  Well time to go and get my crochet on. Happy Friday everyone see you soon with the next update.

Rainbow on a wet and dreary day

Afternoon everyone. I wanted to show you how my rainbow blanket is coming along. So far I am only 7 stripes in but I hope to make that 20 (ish) by the end of the day. Working with these lovely colours really cheers up on a wet and dreary day. We have had fog all day with rain mixed in just because thats what the British weather can do. I suppose we shouldn't complain, after all it has been a very mild Autumn.  So the plan is to complete another 13 rows tonight, not sure if I shall succeed but I shall give it ago.

So far I think the blanket is looking lovely (even I do say so myself) and I am sure its going to make one little girl very happy.

What a lovely surprise!

I posted earlier today and wasn't expecting to be posting again until tomorrow but I just had to share what my lovely husband just had delivered to our house for me. A beautiful bouquet of flowers just to say he loves me. A  lovely surprise and he made my day.

I see a rainbow!

After a mammoth couple of weeks of making a dress and the huge candy stripe blanket in previous post I was happy to take an order to make my rainbow blanket.

Now, I normally just show you the finished article but I felt like sharing this one all the way. I have made this blanket before for my daughter, although I busted my stash by using various types of DK wool. I have tried to match the colours as near as I can and these are them. I have opted to create this lovely blanket using Stylecraft Special DK, the colours are lush and so is the feel and texture of the wool. My rainbow blanket is a simple V stitch, there is a pattern on the 'Free Patterns" page if you want to take a peek.

I actually started the blanket last night but 4 different colours in I realised it was smaller than I quoted to my customer so I start again today. I am making this blanket 1m wide and began with an initial chain of 180. The blanket will end up being slightly wider due to the border.

So the colours I have gone for are a mixture of spring and autumn colours and there is 13 in total. I know 13 is a bit of strange number but that's how many I used when making my daughters blanket so I decided to stick with 13. 

1: Spring Green, 2: Fiesta, 3: Lemon, 4: Sherbet, 5: Spice, 6: Wisteria, 7: Lime, 8: White, 9: Pomegranate, 10: Petrol, 11: Saffron, 12: Silver and 13: Emperor

I shall keep you up to date with photo's as I progress. The aim is to have the blanket finished within 2 weeks, so best grab a cup of tea and get to work.

Candy Stripes

I was asked to make a cot blanket for one of my lovely customers. Here is my candy stripe blanket. This one is for a cot but can be made in any size. It got a bit heavy towards the end and the border took me longer than I thought but I think it turned out well.