A month old

This weekend is going much better than last, I am over the cold and enjoying having a day pottering around the house and crocheting. In a small attempt at feeling a bit more spring like I treated myself to a little bunch of flowers, I so love tulips and they make me smile every time I look at them.

As it is very nearly February (how did that happen?) it occured to me that my ripple blanket is a month old! It isn't finished yet, I'm not sure how much more I need to do on it as I haven't measured it or laid it out for ages. So I laid it out on the bed to see how it was coming along.

I'm surprised by how big it has got! I think it's about two thirds of the way there, then a good, thick border too. I doubt I will have enough yarn but still got enough to keep me going for now. 

Ripple progress has slowed down a little bit over the last week or so as I have been carrying on making some flowers for my picture.

I like all of these flowers and I am enjoying using this cotton but I really need more, especially greens so I put an order in yesterday and got myself a few more colours... which have just turned up as I wrote that last sentence, woophappyyarndeliveryjig! 

 Perfect!
That's me set for the afternoon then, I can't wait to get my hook on that pistachio and the red. This is going to take a while to finish as I have a LOT of flowers and leaves to make but it's great fun :)

XXXX

What a waste of a weekend

Yuck! I have been fully lurgy-fied for days now, full of cold and generally a big disgusting mess. It has only been a cold but still, all weekend was spent on the sofa doing not a lot of anything and woefully regretting the fact that I was poorly when there was some lovely sunny weather and things to do.

It was not a total waste of time though as I did get a fair bit of my blanket done and I made a start on some flowers for my picture!

Yes I found the yarn I wanted!! I have been looking around for some 4ply-ish cotton in lots of lovely colours for a while now, something I could use to make fiddly pictures and things with. I usually rely on Rico creative cotton for that sort of thing but it is an aran weight yarn and sometimes comes out a bit too bulky. I then remembered the DMC Natura cotton that I made some little bits out of a couple of Christmasses ago. 

I looked out the yarn that I had (those 2 shades of blue, lilac and white) and thought it would be just the very thing. But could I get hold of any other colours? A quick google and I found that yes, it comes in lots of great colours, even better my local wool shop still had some in stock so I didnt have to wait for a delivery.

So with my new purchase made I started making a few little bits for my picture. I bought this book a while ago and  I have been itching to try some of these flowers for ages.

So I had a bash at a few and I am so pleased with how they are turning out.  

I could really do with a couple more shades of green for foliage, I can see me needing a lot of leaves and stems and things and at the moment I just have the one green. 

So that is what I am doing, making fiddly flowers while the daylight holds and settling down to ripple in the evenings. I long for the Spring without the threat of snow and ice and all the dark evening hours, just a little bit more daylight to crochet by would be lovely.

XXX

An Idea

I finally took a break from blanketeering this weekend (it's coming on a treat!) and made a start on a new idea that is still very much a work-in-progress but I wanted to share it with you anyway because I am very excited about it!

I've mentioned before that I cannot draw, or paint, in fact my pen and paper artistic skills are pretty much limited to colouring in and stick men. I do so love making pictures with crochet though

Like my Summer sky tea cosy

or my beach hut picture

or my embroidery hoop posy.

I have lots of ideas of cushions with pictures on and they seem to be quite 'on-trend' at the moment but I really cannot find room for any more cushions in my house at present, I have so many all ready. The idea that has been buzzing around my mind for a while now is to make a big picture, along the lines of my hoop posy but bigger! So yesterday I went out and got myself a cheapy stretched canvas to have a play around with. 

I hunted out some ready made flowers, meant for something, I can't quite remember what, and some leaves in various shades of green and started playing around with them on the canvas.

Ooh I do like that! The problem is that I have so many ideas of what I want to put on it, settling on one thing is going to be difficult. 

For a start I have decided that I don't want it to be too child like, I was thinking of something a little bit more sophisticated. And I don't know if I like these flowers for it, maybe they are a bit wooly? Should I perhaps make them in some finer cotton? And the colour scheme is a bit hap-hazard with these, not at all planned out, just thrown together with spare parts. 

So I am going to try and sort out some yarn and make lots of different things and see which I like best. After spending three weeks or so making a blanket it is so much fun to do something quite fiddly and a bit arty. I will of course keep you updated :)

XXX

Can't put it down!

This rippling really is addictive you know. I had every intention of putting it aside for a while and starting something new at the beginning of this week. After my bit of yarnbombing at the weekend, I was feeling quite creative. While I thought about what I wanted to do next I decided to do a few more rows on my blanket and that was that. All thoughts of creativity out of the window, I settled back into that wonderful rhythm of making treble after treble after treble...

It's also lovely and warm to sit under while I make it. We have had a really cold snap lately and it's a wonderfully cosy way to spend my lunch breaks and evenings.

All this crochet therapy hasn't been in vain, I have decided what I would like to do next and if I can ever find the yarn in my big messy yarn stash I think I know where to start. It will be flowery, small and pretty I hope. This was a quick mock-up using little bits of my blanket yarn. The final version will have more to it than this.

I'm going to ponder the problem of 'where did I put that yarn?' while I just do another row or two, or maybe three...

Stay warm and happy hooking :)

XXX

A spot of Saturday Yarnbombing!

Taking a little break from my blanket today, I wandered upstairs to have a mooch through my stash to find some very well hidden wool for a few flowery ideas that I had. I know it is there somewhere but exactly where, your guess is as good as mine!

One of the first things I found through this mooching was an oblong piece of rippling, I think it was originally intended for some sort of blanket but that idea is long gone. 

It seemed a shame for it to go to waste so I began hunting around the house for something that needed covering.

The computer chair in our dining room is ugly, functional but booooring. It is necessary though as both myself and Mr M. spend a lot of time on the computer. You might remember me mentioning that we decorated the dining room towards the end of last year. The computer chair leaves big black marks on the walls if it knocks them (which it does all the time) so I had popped an old black T-shirt over the back to stop this happening to the freshly painted walls, as a temporary fix. Perfect for a bit of yarnbombing don't you think?

This piece of ripple wasn't going to be big enough to cover the whole back of the chair so I had another rummage and found these granny stripes which were just big enough to fill the gap.

First things first, I had to take care of those ends that I had so carelessly left unfinished.

When they were all sewn in and trimmed up I tacked the pieces of crochet together to make a kind of sleeve, then popped them on the chair to make them fit properly and sort out the corners. This is the same method I used when I covered my granny chair and it worked very well.

I thought it would take ages to sew it all together but it took less than an hour! I surprised myself with how neatly they went together too, just the right size. 

Not sure how to secure the bottom of the sleeve, I threaded a double strand of yarn through the bottom to make a draw string so that it could be pulled tight to fit and also be removable for washing.

So there you have it, my yarn-bombed computer chair. I'm not happy leaving the seat like that and the bottom draw string bit needs a bit of work too so at some point I will cover the seat and tidy that up. There's not much that can be done about the shape of the chair, (which I am not too keen on) but I think this is a vast improvement to how it used to look.

Phew! With all that sewing finished I think i will go and do a few more rows on my blanket :)

XXX

my life is admin

Hello there, I do hope you are having a good week so far.

Frequent visitors to Hooking Crazy may notice one or two little differences, I found a multitude of settings at the weekend and have changed things around a bit in here, the new header banner for one - it wasn't easy finding a picture I liked but settled on my flower shawl, it's just so pretty. I have also added a couple of widgetty things on the top left so you can subscribe if you wish, you need never miss any of my ramblings again! There is also a search bar, I haven't tried it out but the description says you can search for anything in my blog so I thought it might be handy.

I also got around to finally posting my Tunisian Entrelac Cushion pattern and I am glad to see that quite a few people are already giving it a go. If you do want to try it out please don't be put off by the long winded pattern, I have tried to be as thorough as possible with the instructions and added photos where I think they might be needed. It's probably a bit over-kill but I wanted to make it as easy as possible to follow.

So in between my day job of admin and my blog admin, I have been hooking up a few more rows of my new ripple blanket and I am pleased to say that I am still enjoying every ripple!

I will be putting this down for a while later in the week as I have a few little bits and pieces that I want to try, nothing very time consuming or complicated, but if I don't get these ideas made they will bug me! I do so wish I could draw; if I could sketch them out I could carry on with other things and come back to them later, however I struggle with stick men so anything more elaborate than that and I'm stumped :)

XXX

2014 Review

Good morning, hope you are having a good weekend so far. As it is back to work for me tomorrow I thought I would do a bit of a review of 2014 and have a look at some of my crochet projects. On a personal level it was a strange and challenging year, but on the bright side being made redundant from my job early in 2014 gave me time to start this blog and spend lots of time crocheting while I looked for something new. I am excited for 2015 and all the possibilities that the new year holds, and all the things I can make this year too! So please bear with me while I have a nostalgic moment and go for a wander down the not-too-distant memory lane.

January

An Iris

Crocodile bag

Daffodil pot cover

The start of my Granny Stripe Blanket

 

Another Happy Flower

February
Tulip the Hippo

African Flower Bird

 Bumble bee

Anna's Giraffe

Hoop Posy

Two baby ripple blankets

March

Happy Heart

Mother's day hearts

Circle-Square Cushion

Experiments with edging

 

A clock 

 Mandala Bag

Rooster

April

Spring Garden Tea Cosy

Started my Flower Shawl (I will finish it this year, I promise!)

Granny Stripe Blanket Ta-Dah!

May

Beehive

Baby Bunting

Tunisian Tote Bag

 Tunisian Mitten

Hot Air Balloon Mandalas

 

Start of my Granny Chair

June

Summer Sky Tea Cosy

Granny Chair Ta-dah!

Flower Garland

Home Bunting

Freeform Mushroom

Dolly and Polly

July

Hearts Cushions

Broomstick scarf

Beach hut picture

August

Basket Weave Bag

Hen for a Hen party

African Flower Bag

Christmas Tree Bunting

September

One Ball Slouchy

Baby Granny Stripe

 

Star Stitch Hood (I will write up this pattern at some point, if I can remember how I did it!)

October

Blue African Flower Giraffe

Lacy Doily Bag

November

Pink African Flower Giraffe

Jingle Bells Bunting

Start of my Nativity (might get finished for this year!)

December

Holly Brooch

 

Start of my New Ripple Blanket

Wow what a busy year! It wasn't until I came to look through the pictures for this that I realised how much I had done! I have left out quite a bit too, things I'm not so keen on or ideas i've tried and not liked. I think the highlight of my crochet-year has to be my Granny Chair, I LOVE it! 

I can see here that things started to tail off towards the end of the year, a new job and the loss of my cat really did take lots of energy out of me but I feel reinvigorated to get going with new things and can't wait to see what 2015 holds!

Have a wonderful hooky year and thanks for joining me on this little trip through my picture archives :) XXXX