Starting early

The last week of my summer holidays is progressing nicely. I've been busy sewing, baking and of course crocheting. I started messing around with a few ideas at the weekend and came up with this little Christmas jar cosy and this stocking.

I know, I know, it's only August! So why am I already thinking about Christmas? It could be the weather we've been having lately, so wet, dark and grey all the time it does feel like summer is over. Anyway I digress, I've wasted no time in getting this Jar pattern written up with a full photo tutorial no less! You can find the pattern here.

Don't they look sweet with candles in them? I have made them to give as Christmas presents that I will probably fill with sweets for people. I have several of these jars spare and this pattern is so quick to make, I might make a few more. 

If you would like to make your own jar cosies please don't be put off by some of the stitches that the pattern calls for. I've added as much detail to the photos as possible so I hope they will be fairly straightforward and when you get the hang of them they are quite easy.  

It's great getting started early on Christmas makes, takes the pressure off nearer the time when all thoughts turn to shopping, baking and organising. That said, there is the whole season of autumn to go first and I have lots of ideas of things to make on that theme.

XXX

House stuff

I have been taking a well-earned break today. This last week or so has seen me FINALLY decorating our bedroom! It's has only been planned for the last 12 months and at last I got the paint brushes out and got stuck into it. Of course it's never as simple as just painting is it? There is always holes to fill and sanding to be done and all the shifting of furniture etc etc. I am now at the reassembly part of the job which isn't simple either. We have an awful lot of clutter and tat and nowhere to put any of it so I am having a good throw-out too.

 We had this old mirror up before. It's just a cheap plastic frame that I think I got from a car boot sale and painted black.  In an effort to try and make the room much cheerier and prettify it a bit, I have been thinking of ways to up-cycle it. Obviously my first instinct was to yarn-bomb it and crochet a cover for the frame. I soon realised that would not be an easy job, it is a tight fit in the frame and having yarn involved would complicate things. So I grabbed some fabric odds and ends and a pot of PVA glue and set to covering it in fabric, decoupage style.

I also found these pinking shears that I got from my Granny, still neatly boxed, I love the box!

Using the pinking shears on the fabric should be a nice simple way of avoiding fraying, I hope.

 MESSY process!

I wasn't sure if PVA would do the job, it was taking forever to dry so I got my hair dryer out to speed up the process. It seemed to be sticking OK so I carried on.

Now it's finished and up on the wall, I keep looking at it, do I love it or hate it? Is it too girly and not grown up enough?

I am 99% sure I like it. Taken as a solitary item yes it is probably a bit twee but as part of the room I think it works.

|XXX

New project, new stitch!

I have been beavering away being quite inventive and creative lately. I have been asked to design a pattern but I have so many ideas I am not sure exactly where to begin!

Obviously the first thing to consider is the yarn. Different types of fibre and weight are good for different types of things. For example, I like cotton for things that need to hold a shape (flowers and decorations) as there is little give with it and it has a nice definite clear edge, no fuzziness.

Acrylic mixes tend to work well for baby blankets as they wash well and keep their softness and woollier yarns tend to be good for garments and shawls.

Of course most of the yarn I use is acrylic, it's cheap and the colours are limitless. The yarn I will be using in my new project is acrylic and in these wonderful colours!

 Ooh so lovely. So first things first I decided to just start crocheting and see what the yarn was like to work with, what kind of fabric it made and how the colour would work up.

This brings me to the title of this post, a new stitch! I was just randomly hooking up a flat circle but was getting annoyed by the gappiness of the usual 3 chain at the start of each row. I vaguely remembered reading about a way to avoid this a while ago by using a different stitch, so I took to Google to find out more.

Standing stitches! You basically create a treble stitch from the top down, ok it's not perfect but I am hoping with a bit of practice I get better at it and it is so much better than the usual chain 3 gaps.

It’s still early days with this project but I am super excited to be making it, I just hope it turns out well!

XXX

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

Bags and Buns

This is a very strange week for me, the start of the school summer holidays! Six weeks off from work and all that time to do whatever I like. In the past when I've had this kind of time off it has meant unemployment of one type or another and endless days ahead of job hunting and worry, but not this time! I do have a very long list of things to get done over the next few weeks but I have decided to take a few days out to really get into holiday mode. I started by baking some Chelsea buns yesterday.

I LOVE my mixer, makes easy work of any dough making. And oh the heavenly smell when they were baking.

Not bad, they look a little bit singed on top in places but they really weren't and still all soft inside with melted brown sugar, cinnamon and fruit. Yum!

Of course the problem with baking when there are just me and Mr M around means that we also have to eat it all, not good for any diets that we might be trying to stick to, but ah well, I'm on holiday ;)

Any afternoon sit down with buns, tea and a good film wouldn't be complete without something yarny. So I made a rosette for my new little granny stripe bag.

I knocked this very quick and easy bag up on Sunday for something to do. I still had a big bag of stylecraft special DK lying around, left over from my last ripple blanket. As luck would have it, I had small amounts left of each colour and then for most of those colours full balls of yarn too so it made it very easy to use double strands for this little bag, in effect making my own chunky weight yarn.

I have seen many bags around like this so I won't be writing the pattern up but you can see here how it was made. Rows of DCs for the bottom, a few rows of granny stripes then a few more rows of DCs for the top. To make the handle space I chained 16, skipped 16 stitches and then on the way back DC 16 in that chain space. Easy peasy!

I think today will follow much the same pattern as yesterday, minus the baking. I’m not sure what I will be making next but after a bit of chunky crochet I fancy something a bit more fiddly and delicate, and I have lots and lots of time to do it :)

XXX