Baby Granny Stripe Progress Part II

Hellooooooo! Thanks for stopping by :-) I just wanted to say thanks and much love to all my followers, I've gone from 1 or 2 to over 20 in a couple of months and I'm soooooooooooooooo chuffed! Literally beaming with excitement!!!!

This is a good thing (not just for my sense of ego, yay!) but because I feel more obliged to update and therefore to crochet more! So I'm pretty excited to let you know how my baby Granny Stripes getting on!

I went home to my parents house a couple of weeks ago and really got some good crochet time in! In fact, I managed to finish the main part of the blanket!!!

I like how it finishes at each end with the same colour, and I'm pretty happy with the length. It's for a baby but I wanted to make sure it's a little bigger so that when he or she's older they can keep using it!

Now that brings me onto the colours... A colleague at work said to me "it's lovely and girly isn't it!" Lovely I like, girly I do not because I don't know if my friends having a girl or a boy yet! I've decided when I do my edging to use a blue or green (both colours I didn't use from my Stylecraft stash) and this will hopefully balance out all the pinks I've got here.

Anyway, I'm super super happy and can't wait to post a finished photo very soon!!!

x x x x

Getting ready for Spring

Hello! Welcome back :-) Today has been such a beautiful day it would be a shame not to give it some credit! We've been warned that the sun won't last so I'm making the very most of it.

This is the view from our flat, it's not very pretty (not like some of these views, and these) but a lot goes on down there and I find it very interesting to watch the canal boats, trams, trains and rowers on the river.



This is Salford, our neighbourly city.

The weather up here (we're on the 7th floor) is pretty kind to my plants so most escape all the ground frost.



My bulbs have started to come up nicely so we'll have lots of colour soon!





It's so nice when everything starts growing again! After Christmas I really just want winter to be over :-)



Before & after!

I decided to get busy this afternoon by sowing some seeds while J was sorting out the millions of CDs we have in boxes!



I got to put into action my new scieve which makes me feel like I'm looking for gold!



Fingers crossed this little lot will make it, I've not always had much luck with sowing seeds (apart from sweet pea and nasturtiums which I think must be the easiest thing in the world to grow!)



I think I took too many photos to show them all so I've made a little mosaic to summarise :-)

1) Some tiny sempervivum "chicks" that I found in the compost, they'd rooted themselves so now they're in this little dish :-)
2) A plant I found in the green house, it has such lovely colours!
3) A hand carved muchroom from the Manchester Christmas Markets
4) My lovely polka dot watering can, I tried not to use it to keep it nice but it's got a great pouring action!
5) Tibetan Buddhist Prayer Flags from Glastonbury Festival
6) My hard work!
7) Hyacinth from Wythenshawe Market
8) The other end of the balcony
9) My £1.99 peony!

I'm off to watch Wonders of the Universe now with the lovely Professor Cox, byee!

x x x x

Japanese flowers

I should really be getting on with my work-in-progress things (baby granny stripe, hexagons, oh well...!) but have been totally inspired to start making some of these gorgeous little flowers!

First saw them on Attic 24 (where else?) and since then they've popped up everywhere!

They're from a Japanese book called Motif Book Vol 4 (I've linked to the etsy seller when Lucy in the Attic got hers) and it's been translated into French on this blog here where there are also crochet diagrams if you are able to reach such things, see:

Tuto réalisation d’une fleur (one flower)
Tuto assemblage des fleurs (assembling two flowers (join as you go))
Ou les 2 tutos en version pdf (a pdf (adobe reader file) which seems to work better than the other links)

Anyway I'm babbling, this is all on Attic 24 - go there! All I really want to do is say "hey look, I managed to make one too, yay!!!"









I've make a few more since, but unlike our lovely Lucy I have no idea what I'm going to do with them! Will I make a scarf, will I hang them up somewhere? Who knows! I certainly don't!

About bit:
The yarns Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino (tis lovely lovely stuff) and I think I got it from Hejhog which is a lovely website indeed :-)