When I'm sewing bunting

Hellloooooooooo!

Whoever sent us beautiful sunshine thank you!! It's been so lovely today :-) I met a friend for lunch and gave her the baby granny stripe I'd been working on for her absolutely gorgeous little son J! He is the most beautiful little baby e-v-e-r!



Bye bye blanket! I'm pleased to see it go, it was made for someone else & is now with its rightful owner. I just hope he doesn't dribble on it toooo much!

I'm super excited about the end of this week, we're off to Sicily for the bank holiday weekend for a friends wedding! My friend's a very lucky lady (marrying an Italian and all that!) and I've known her for years yet I had no idea what to get her. I also never got her a present when her daughter was born (we live far away!) so there was only one thing for it...

Bunting time!



I know one should be quite humble about ones projects but I really really love this and I have to give it away!!! What I really love is the fabric & the colors, which I didn't make, so I'm actually loving someone elses creativity instead. I have quite a nice stash of fabrics now in greens, reds & blues, some of the patterns (like these dots) are reoccuring so this kinda just happened!



The tape at the top has worked really well. Normally I use bias binding but I bought this huge roll of tape for some ridiculously cheap price (10 zips and this for £2!) and it's going to last me ages so I'm very happy! It also works quite well in white. Like I said, love it!



But guess what... I made a lot more triangle flags that I haven't sewn together yet so there's more bunting to come! I might keep it or I might sell it again :-) Or I might do both!

When I get back from my hols I'll show you something else I've been learning. *Cough* knitting with DPNs *cough*!!

See you soon!

x x x x

I need to stop cooking the tea towels

And I need to blog a bit more! I shut a tea-towel in the oven door (apparantly) but it's ok! I haven't blogged in 33 days and that's not ok! But you know how life is, everything suddenly happens all at once instead of spreading itself out across the year. I mean there are 365 days in which for things to happen, but in the last 33 days I have been to 2 weddings, a funeral, London, Yorkshire, Scotland, London, Tuscany, London and then London. Somewhere between all that I managed to keep on hooking and participate in a crochet swap on Ravelry, yay!

This is me, enjoying a glass of Vino Rosso on holiday, look I'm crocheting!






I found some fab yarn in Florence (Firenze) and started making a stripy cushion cover straight away because I couldn't wait to use it. Tuscany was very beautiful, we had gorgeous weather, a fabulous villa and pool, great company... I'm not sure what more you could have asked for really!





Most of my projects recently have been little things, like the monster and flowers I made my friends kids when we went over for their wedding (#1!) The Pattern for the monster is from EssHaych and I thought I'd given his face a twist of my own, but then I was looking on Rebecca Danger's blog which I've visited lots but not recently and saw that most of hers are like him, so it was obviously stored somewhere in my subconscious!






The flowers went down well too, especially at the tea party.













For Wedding #2 I made another crochet card but this one had an extra little touch because they got engaged in Paris and I had just the button!









I've been making more hexagons too but I think I'd better save that for another time (soon though!) because I don't want to bore you too much information all at once. I'm also really excited to share with you the swap I was in! All that needs much more photography and time, time I don't seem to have but I am trying :-) I'm not sure how parents manage to blog, I seriously think they must be a breed all of their own! Better go, the supermarket is calling to me...

x x x x

Baby Granny Stripe is.... Finished!!!

It's finally time to reveal my finished baby blanket. Yay!!!

This has probably been my favourite thing to work on, it hasn't taken me a hideous number of months to complete and I couldn't put it down! I am so pleased with the edging too, usually I get so bored of my projects I hurry to finish, but not this time.

So here we go... Drum roll...

Yay!





Ohh I know I shouldn't be this pleased but really I am thrilled to bits, I hope my friend loves it too and that it keeps their baby snuggly and warm!

I think the edge it my favourite part actually. Remember how I said the blanket looked quite "girly" before and my friends might be having a boy, well I really think this has toned the pink down a lot!





I did treble clusters around the edge and into that single trebles into each st and 6 into the corners. I wish I'd taken a photo before doing the shells because it was lovely and round! The scallop or shell eddging was a little improvised. I looked at some tutorials and ended up using a mix of a few.

Now if I remember rightly it was sl st, 1 dc in next st, 2 hdc in next st, 1 dc in next st, sl st









I can't wait until this little one is born and I can finally give the blanket away. I'm going to be very sad to see it go so I might just have to make another.....!

x x x x

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

Baby Granny Stripe Progress

Ahhh now time for a little update. I'm not too much further on yet but we're 28 and a bit rows in now! Looking good isn't it? I'm liking it very much, I can see why so many others have also made Granny Stripes using Styleraft (see here!)

I tell you this yarn is so lovely to work with, it's so soft for an acrylic! Much better than any of the yarns I used in my Granny Squares (a project which is finished by the way, despite the lack of a tah-dah post which I only just noticed I never wrote...)

Here's a little close up. Mmmmm stripy goodness!

Have a lovely weekend! x

Baby Granny Stripe Blanket

I'm really very excited about starting this next project as it's the first big thing I will have made to give away. Shocking I know! I read about all these generous people whipping up blankets for friends and loved ones and here's me surrounded by my own creations, hoarding them for myself! That's probably why I like reading Lucy's blog because she has no problem making herself lovely things and keeping them - and so she should!

I made a granny stripe (see here!) before using Drops Paris, and although I'm happy with the result now I wasn't at the time and admittedly I hated the yarn! It was too splitty and my fingers hurt the whole time I was making it, BUT! It has lovely colours and my friend thought so too because she's creating a child in her womb and has asked me to make her a granny stripe! I was thrilled, chuffed to bits; someone liked something I made enough to wrap their own child in it? Amazing!!

I've dropped the Drops though (haha) and instead opted to use the Stylecraft I've been making my (abandoned) hexagons* out of because it's going to be a lot softer and snugglier for a small person. I also love using it!
*Hexagons not abandoned, just postponed!

So here we go!

I hadn't planned to start so soon but got a little carried away, and the light wasn't good (and still isn't here) so I'd already finished 11 rows before getting my first picture. I hope you like it, I hope they like it and I hope they don't see it before its finished! I also hope that annoying little blue stripe between the green and yellow doesn't annoy anyone else as much as it annoys me!

Bye bye bye x

Granny Stripe Update: 2

It would be nice to have a finished "ta dah" post but we're not quite there yet with the Granny Stripes. I thought I'd give an update anyway as it's probably at least half way there now, 46.5 rows!

Do you like my slippers? I wish I could make things like this!

I started to do the first round of the border before finishing purely because I'm impatient and I wanted to see what it would look like! Using a different colour to the stripes and I think it works quite well.

Granny Stripe Update

I admit it, I am a terrible blogger but now I finally have something to write about. I've been making good progress on my granny stripe blanket and I'm just about half way through. My starting chain was 130 and I've found it to be a little on the small side so with the help of some lovely peeps at Ravelry I've been given some ideas on how to make it a little wider. I am so so loving it thought, I can't wait to finally finish something - I'm still waiting on some blue wool to arrive to finish my granny square blanket.

Granny Stripes

I know I shouldn't be starting a new project, what with my granny squares blanket still not complete, but I just can't help it! I recently added to my wool stash recently with a lovely order or Drops Paris after another blogger Corn Poppy Girl put some pictures up of the lovely colours. I have to confess I bought the exact same colours but they are just so fab!

So a little bit about Drops Paris then. I'd heard about it being quite splitty, you know where it all starts to unravel and your hook ends up putting it apart? Well it's not as bad as the Kool Kotton I've used before and I think I've gotten used to it so I can't complain at all really. It's a very thick wool so would make for good winter blankets. But what to do with the new stash :o

I've been following the blogs of Lucy in the Attic of 24 (as I'm sure you already know) and tried my hand at her ripple blanket, which went very well in the test (pictures later) but I just wasn't sure I wanted my own ripple blanket. As it happens she has been working on a wonderful new (ish) idea; Granny Stripes!

I say new-ish, I was sure this must have been done before due to it being such a simple idea, however it's actually really difficult impossible to find other people doing it! So perhaps this is a brand new thing, who knows, what I do know is I love it!

What do you think? It's a little on the small side I admit, after the granny squares blanket I think I need to keep things simple. This should make a nice little sofa blanket however, or a throw or something like that, we'll have to see I guess!

P.S Thank god for autosave as I just closed this by mistake. Eeeek!

Tulips

I almost always buy what my mum calls pinks at the supermarket but on this occasion I was inspired by Lucy at Attic 24 and went with pink tulips. They've just started to open out and they're so beautiful aren't they? A definite future purchase!





Onto more crafty stuff now, I finished my friends cushion I'd been making on and off for a few weeks and here it is!




Lovely flowery buttons :-)