Birthday Card

For my sister's birthday, I had great fun sewing a card.

I sewed ribbons, lace and fabric strips onto a backing fabric, with one ribbon attached diagonally.

I then put the fabric inside a large rectangular aperture card.

Simple but very effective.

A Birthday Milestone

A VERY VERY HAPPY BIRTHDAY, today, to my little sister.

I can't believe that I now have a sister who is fifty years old.  Where does the time go?

It seems like only yesterday we were playing in the back garden together.  I must say that I am enjoying my fifties so much, and I hope that Lynda will experience the same enjoyment in hers.

The Cleanest of Pets

We've never had any pets in our house - aren't we miserable parents!  It's something I don't think the girls will ever forgive us for.  The nearest we ever got to a pet was my Mother-in-law's budgies.  Sadly they didn't live very long, but have stayed long in the memory of the girls.

Grace now has her hamsters at her flat and I think Eve would consider owning a budgie of her own - but she'll have to wait until she has her own place.

In the meantime, my solution to everything - if you can't have the real thing - crochet it!

I've made Eve three budgies to share with her friends at university.  These are the cleanest types of pet, they require minimal attention - so simple.

I'm sure she'll think I'm mad - but I saw the pattern for the budgies and just had to make them - any excuse!

The pattern is free (you can find it here) it is in Spanish but there is a video to help explain the instructions.  I adjusted the size of the budgies because I wanted them smaller - I used the pattern more as a guide.

They really are so cute and irresistible - I may have to make more!

After the Storm

With all this stormy weather, I haven't had much of a chance to get down to the beach.  A lull in the wind and rain at the weekend, finally gave me a chance for a stroll - although it's still quite windy and cold.

Just in case you're not aware -
these are the Iron Men - not real people!

I saw two bouquets of white roses that had been washed up - I wonder what the story behind them was.

The sand dunes have been severely eroded along the promenade - where has all the sand blown to?  A lot of it is on our windows!

I love looking for "treasure" on the beach and I wasn't disappointed.  Being a sandy beach we have lots of cockle shells and razor shells.  Occasionally you can find a nice whelk shell, like this one I found last year.

After the storm I was excited to find this enormous one.

It seems far too exotic to be on our humble beach, but it definitely deserves the title of "treasure" as far as I'm concerned.

I also picked up some bits of driftwood.

Not very exciting you say.  Well just take a look at what I did with my driftwood.

Inspiration came from Pinterest and it was great fun crocheting the sail to fit the little boat.

I'll have to get back down to beach and see what else I can find - all this treasure, I feel so wealthy!

A Splash of Colour

One good thing about the bad weather is that staying in the house means more crafty work gets done - as if I need an excuse.

I seem to be in a crochet phase at the moment - no knitting - I can't find the inspiration to start a knitting project.  Never mind, it will come back.  So, in the meantime, my crochet hook is working so fast it has sparks flying off it.

This week I completed some simple granny cushion covers for the living room.  I've been meaning to get these done for a while so I'm feeling very satisfied that I can finally cross them off my "to do" list.

Our house is already very colourful, so why not add another few more splashes of colour?

The more colour the better as far as I'm concerned.

I'm off to start another crochet project - there's no stopping me at the moment!

Happy Valentines Day

Happy Valentines Day to everyone.

Here are the cards I made for my two best girls.

I started off with a little doodle of embroidery.

Incorporated it into some patchwork.

Added some appliqué.

Put it in a card and added some stamping.

A little bit of everything went into these cards and I really enjoyed making them.  I hope you all have a lovely day.

Dreaming of Cables

I do get all excited when I see some lovely knitted cables.  I would love to have the patience to sit and knit something intricate and complicated.  I dream of one day sitting down and knitting this gorgeous cardigan by Alice Starmore.

Unfortunately I don't think I have the staying power to complete something like this.  I dream of embarking on some lovely pattern but in reality I know I wouldn't enjoy it.

Nevertheless, every now and then, I feel I should make some effort to do cabling so I opted for a quick and easy hat pattern by Kate Davies to satisfy the urge.

The pattern is called Catkin.  You can see full details of the project on my Ravelry page, here.

It's knitted in 4 Ply wool - I used the leftover balls from my Edith cardigan - and it uses very small needles so the knitting it quite tight.  There are minimal cables but I can't say I enjoyed knitting it.  All that stopping and starting with a cable needle and remembering to twist the stitches the correct way - it's too much for me!

I think I should stick to what I like best - colour work.  Although I like to think of myself as a jack-of-all-trades, cabling is my least favourite.

Enjoying Some Embroidery

One of my New Year Resolutions for 2014 is to do more embroidery.  I have a few large projects on the go, but I'm also having fun doing little doodle embroideries.

Here's one I sewed the other week.

And this is what I turned it into - a birthday card for a friend.

What fun - I think I'll do some more this afternoon!

Crocheted Shawl

This was supposed to be a quick project and it would have been if I didn't allow myself to be distracted.  Anyway, it's finished now.

I made it because I wanted to use up the Sirdar Click DK I had left over from knitting a sweater.  I had just under 5 balls left so I just kept going with the shawl until it was all used.

Part way through crocheting this, I did consider that I should have used a larger hook, I used a 4 mm, but I resisted the urge to frog it and start again.  I'm glad I didn't because my shawl is lovely and cuddly and warm and I still managed to get a good size shawl out of the yarn I had.

The pattern is from Miss Bidules Chouettes and is available for free.  You can see full details of the pattern on my Ravelry page, here.

Lucy -Resized

My Lucy pattern is proving to be very popular.

Originally, I wrote the pattern for my own size.  Having been asked on a number of occasions if it was available in larger sizes, I rewrote the pattern.  Because larger sizes hadn't been test knitted by me, I didn't feel confident in publishing the pattern.  However, I've sent copies of the rewritten pattern with the larger sizes to so many people now, and no one has come back to me saying that the pattern doesn't work, so I've decided to make things easy for myself and publish the rewritten pattern.

So Lucy is now available in sizes small, medium, large and extra large.

The pattern is available as a free download, here, and also on Ravelry, here.

Leaving Our Mark in Sheffield

This weekend we had a lovely time visiting Grace in Sheffield.  So good just to be together again.

We found a lovely pub on Saturday night to shelter in from the wind and the rain and met some of Grace's friends.

On Sunday we had our usual walk around the park.

I think the footballers are very brave, we were all wrapped up in hats and scarves and I was still shivering.

It was great to sit with Grace and crochet together and just chat about crafting.  Over the weekend Grace made some cute mini bunting for her desk in work and I worked on my little tablecloth.

I remembered to have a photo taken of me wearing my new cardigan.

I still have two balls of the wool leftover so I think I'll use that to make another hat.

The weekend was made even more memorable by the fact that we managed to drop a tin of paint over the road outside Grace's flat - the less said about that the better!