Sheep and wool

I hope you are having a good summer; yes it is summer, despite what the weather has been doing lately. Rain, drizzle, showers, storms, spoilt for choice! The weeds in the garden are loving it. In a dry spell yesterday I stepped out of the back door to have a look at all those weeds and got mesmerised by the bees on my lavender, it was covered with them. 

I keep meaning to cut this lavender back and replace it with some new, it's got very woody and old but I definitely want to put more lavender in as a replacement, the bees seem to love it every year. I also saw this little fella who posed nicely for me.

All this weather has kept me indoors pretty much since the weekend which means lots of crochet time. Time to get some unfinished things sorted, first on the list was the sheep blanket that I started ages ago. I was fairly sure that it was nearly done, just a couple more sheep faces to sew on and the edging to do. 

So I started on that and soon realised that this little bit of edging was in fact a mammoth task, 1 dc, chain 5, 1 dc, chain 5 (in front loops)... over and over and over. Wow did that take a long time to do and then when it was done, a row of trebles and then another row of 1 dc, chain 5 etc. 

Usually I quite like this kind of repetitive crochet, it's quite soothing when you get in a rhythm with it but I found this frustratingly slow, inching along for hours. Was it worth it? YES!

I love love LOVE it! Not my usual style at all, all in cream but so effective. Even the sewing of the faces looks good, I was a bit worried that would let me down (I am not a great sewer) but on the reverse it does look quite neat, for me.

Finally I get to tick this one off my list and get on with something else. 

It’s all very well being creative and trying new things in the day time with plenty of light to crochet by and time for my mind to wander and be inventive, but I still need something to do in the evenings that is simple and requires little thought.

This is the bag of stylecraft special DK that I had left over from my last ripple blanket, remember this little bag I made with it last week? Doubled up the yarn to make chunky.

Doubling up yarn is a great stash buster and as I have such a big bag of it, (as well as much more in other colours in bags somewhere) I decided to double up again and make some squares.

Nothing flash or exciting, just humble granny squares but I have never made anything with granny squares so it's about time I did. They certainly meet my requirements of mindless crochet and should help get through some of my stash so I can see what else I have to use. :)

XXX