Happy (belated) Easter

What a LOVELY weekend we've had! The Easter bank holiday weather exceeded all expectations and didn't let us down :-) I went down to London to see my folks and home friends, it was nice and chilled and I had a fab time, apart from getting stuck in London for THREE hours on the way down because the Blackwall Tunnel was closed. Our Satnav diverted us away and all was good until it said "After 200 yards, take the ferry." Other half and I looked at each other; "Ferry?!" I'm still amazed that in our Capital we've not got enough bridges or tunnels on my end of the Thames but an old car ferry!

So onto happier things! My mum always gets me cool things for Easter so I now have a hen mug and plate to go with the plate I bought last year (Matalan if you live in the UK)







We visited a lovely town called Tenterden which has the cutest little shops ever! Lots of little homeware places, coffee shops and an old steam train which my Dad loved! To be fair I enjoyed myself too, we had an old carriage to ourselves and it was a nice trip through the countryside.

I bought this pretty little milk jug and some little forks for cake eating, a very important activity in this house!




It now sits in my cupboard of pretty kitchen things :-)




Hope you've enjoyed your Easter break, enjoy the Royal Wedding tomorrow if you're watching!

x x x x

Knit one purl one...

Hello there! I'm sorry I haven't been a very attentive blogger, life has been very busy lately and it doesn't look set to stop - between now and June 4th I'm away every weekend :-o Nearly everyone I know has decided to get married this year and I'm off to Italy in a few weeks so could do with a rest before this all kicks off :-)

I've been knitting (yes I know!) and I'm really enjoying it :-D I've always said "I don't like knitting" and this is really a terrible lie - I just haven't been very good at it. Now I've put my mind to it (and discovered tutorials on youtube) I'm getting a bit more adventurous!

So... I started off with a scarf :-) Nice and easy huh? And yes I know it's the hottest April on record since records began, how was I supposed to know this!





Here it is before I blocked it. I hadn't learnt to knit the end of the purl rows to stop it from curling...





This is me! But I cut my head off because I was pulling a stupid face... ;-)

What this is all leading upto however is Alice's Spring Explosion Tea Cosie on her blog. Since I started reading Crochet with Raymond I've wanted to knit everything! So she has definitely insprired me and was also a huge help when I got stuck on bits! So Alice, this ones for you, ta!!

First things first, casting on and then knitting one side... I'm using a stitch holder!!! Things are getting technical!!!






And then all of a sudden (after a few k2togs)...





:-D





Tea pot bottom shot.





Now I need to make some pretty flowers and leaves for the top. Something for the Easter weekend me thinks...

Thats all for now, I might see you in a bit if I survive the chaos that will be May! Happy Easter!

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

April showers

What a miserable day it's turned out to be! This morning it was gloriously sunny, I was quite excited about getting outside on the balcony and doing some gardening. The seeds in the greenhouse all seem to be pretty well compared to previous attempts at seed growing.

However the sun didn't last and it's rained on and off all day. Boo! We went out for lunch this afternoon but failed to get a sunday roast - literally no where near where we live make sunday dinners anymore. This should be a crime! So I got a burrito and the Mr-non-crochet got a steak.




As it's so dull I can't really take any pictures of what I've been working on but I can tell you that thanks to Alice @ Crochet with Raymond I have been knitting!!

Nevermind, what I can do is show you some cards I've been making for the million weddings I'm going to this year (not a sniff at an invite to the Royal Wedding, think my invite got lost in the post). The pattern is the Sweet Heart Crochet from Bella Dia, the small one is just a slightly smaller modified version and they're just hand stitched onto card.




And even more excitingly I can show you this!!



Ikea have these reduced to a mere £20! My Local Yarn Shop Purl City Yarns has these in the larger size, and obviously with their collection of millions of amazing colours they look fab! I might only have enough yarn to fill one square but I love it :-D And it's freed up some other shelves for J's fish keeping equipment...

I will leave you with some nice photos I took in March, before it started raining... I'm off to knit! 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

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 :-)

A weekend in the Lakes

I don't usually get the chance to put up lovely photos of the countryside like a lot of other blogs I read because I live in the centre of Manchester, but lucky lucky me went on a hen-do this weekend to the Lake District and I had a very lovely time indeed.

Now I'll spare you all of the photos I took, some are probably not best put on a nice safe blog about crocheting!!! However, the little enormous cottage we stayed in was absolutely gorgeous and I can't believe the owners don't want to live there all the time :-o



This was Fell Gate Farm where we stayed, unfortunately we never made it to the Fell but I'm sure it was lovely, the views we had certainly were!







So, in through this beautiful wooden door...



Into the cosy sitting room with this amazing fireplace, and look!! Heart bunting. Ooooooooh :-)



Through to the kitchen with it's lovely Aga!



The owner had even put some pretty tulips in a vase!



Bulbs in the garden were just starting to come out



And we found a little pond with a duck house!



We visited Lake Windemere on Saturday and even though I took several photos, I think this one is my favourite (even though it's also out of focus!)



We had a very posh afternoon tea with champagne which was verrrrrrrrrrrrrry nice, and spent a lot of time enjoying our lovely house and having a very silly time!



Now I'm very very tired but looking forward to sharing some crochet updates soon :-)

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