A Busy but Unorganized Sort of Week

You wouldn't think that the simple task of packing up Eve's belongings to load into the car to take to London could take so long.  Eve is now in London, she went by train on Thursday with enough stuff to last for a few days.  All the rest of her belongings are still in Liverpool waiting to be driven down.

So I have spent the last few days, sorting, packing and loading up her stuff.

There was a time when I thought it wasn't going to fit into our small car - but I did manage it.  I think a love of jigsaw puzzles helped me to fit everything in and some super vacuum bags that compressed all the bedding and towels down to a manageable size.

So we're ready for the off, to drive down to London so that we can reunite Eve with her belongings.

I feel that I haven't caught up with myself this week, there seems to be a lot of unfinished business.  Knitting and crocheting have been neglected and it's been difficult to find time to blog.

I'm hoping that next week will be different.  I'm definitely planning on being organised next week!  I have serious plans for September.

In the meantime, I'm feeling very indifferent to my current knitting project.  It's the Dancing Bees shawl.

Each section of the pattern represents something different.  The first section is the bees in the hive.

The second section is the honeycomb of the hive.

The third section is the bees a outside the hive.

The fourth section is lavender flowers.

And the fifth section is a trellis.

The final section will be the border which is more flowers.

I'm just not liking the different sections, I don't think they flow into each other very well.  The lavender section doesn't do anything for me.  The shawl is also very large, far larger than I would need, and that was after doing a reduced number of repeats.

I may give the border a try and see how it looks, but I've a feeling this shawl is heading for the frog pond.  We'll see!  What do you think?

August Socks

I thought this month I would count the socks I knitted for Grace for her birthday as my socks for this month, but then I couldn't resist casting on and knitting myself a pair as well.

For my socks I used the Vanilla Latte pattern I've used before.

It's a nice and simple pattern that doesn't require much thinking.  The yarn is a Regia sock yarn from the Kaffe Fassett design line.  I like the regular coloured stripes.

You can see details of this project on my Ravelry page, here.

I have a couple of other projects that I have either just finished, or are about to be finished.  Hopefully I'll be able to show them to you shortly.  Right now we're knee-deep in Eve's belongings which are waiting to be sorted before being boxed up ready to go down to London.  Exciting times, I'll keep you posted!

Family Matters

I hope you all had a good weekend.  Our weekend was special because it was Grace's birthday and she came over from Sheffield to stay with us.

It was just like old times.  We sat and knitted together and talked about knitting and watched Formula 1 on the television.  Perfect.

Here's the card I made her.

I really enjoyed drawing and colouring the owl.

Besides giving her plenty of knitted related presents, I knitted her these socks.

They have little owls worked in cables.

I learnt a new technique in the process, adding beads with a crochet hook, a very useful technique.

It was so lovely to have all the family together.

This week is going to be a busy one as Eve is moving down to London in a few days time.  She starts work there next week.  Very exciting for her.   This week will be spent packing up all her stuff and transporting it to London.

It will seem strange - this weekend a full house, next weekend, just the two of us!

Inspiring Colours

This year, I've learnt to love my garden more.  It still needs a lot more attention than I am likely to give it, but nevertheless, it manages quite well with the little attention it gets and I'm pleasantly surprised by the persistence of the plants to bloom and continue growing.

I'm hoping to spend some time over the next few weeks planning ahead and thinking how I can improve things for next year.  In the meantime, here are some pictures of the beautiful colours I'm enjoying in my garden at the moment.

Yes, I'm feeling quite inspired to devote more time to my little patch of loveliness.  Hopefully the feeling will last through to next year.

A Few a Little Distractions

Thank you all so much for your generous comments on my finished blanket.  I'm enjoying having it around and it's certainly adding a splash of colour to the place (not that the house isn't colourful enough as it is).

The last few days I have been catching up with my Dancing Bees shawl.  Clue 5 was released last Friday and I had only made it to part way through clue 2.  I've almost caught up now, so I have allowed myself a few little crochet distractions and diversions, just to keep me going.

The first one is this chunky bowl.

I wasn't making it with any particular purpose in mind, I just felt the urge to make it.

I used three strands of double knitting weight yarn from my stash held together.

I love the tweedy effect these have produced.

For now the Baby Mice are sitting in it.

I may experiment with some other colours and designs just for the fun of it.

The second project I made was this cute pin cushion.

The pattern is called Macaron Pin Cushion and it's by Tatsiana Kupryianchyk, the same designer who created the Circles of the Sun CAL I'm currently working on.

It's a lovely quick project and is a great way to use up small amounts of stash.

If I can remember how to do it, I'll link these in with Linda's Crafty Corner Stash Buster Party.

Bold, Busy, Bright Block-a-month Blanket

Hurray!  It's finished!  My Block-a-month blanket.

My bold, bright and very busy blanket.

It certainly is colourful.  It has been fun trying to place the squares, in the end I decided it didn't really matter where they were placed, so I just got on and sewed them up.

I did a simple border of lemon then lipstick to.complete it.  I think the lipstick helps to bring it all together.

It has a certain jolliness about it that will make it a lovely blanket to snuggle under in the Winter.

Despite cutting the project short, the blanket is still a generous 52 inches square.  You can see full details of yarn colours and amounts used on my Ravelry page, here.

It's good to get that project out of the way, it was starting to become a bit of a chore.  I still have another CAL (the Circles of the Sun cushion cover) and a KAL (the Dancing Bees shawl) on the go.  They should both be completed by the end of the month.  I'm then looking forward to starting some new projects - I can't believe how disciplined I'm being at the moment.  Although, there are a few other CALs I have my eye on but I'm trying not to be tempted to start them yet.  For now I'm concentrating on catching up with the shawl knit-a-long whilst watching the golf in the evenings.  Hope you're having a good weekend.  Bye for now.

Final Squares

Here are my squares for the Block-a-month CAL for August.

The main square this month is called Cow Parsley Afghan Square.  Isn't it pretty?

The filler square, that we voted on, is called Tropical Delight.

It's extremely beautiful but it was anything but a delight to make.  The pattern wasn't clear or helpful.  It was a frustrating project that was only excused because of the gorgeous end result.

The small square this month didn't appeal to me, so I substituted this one, called Sunburst Square.  As usual I made four.

So that brought my total up to the equivalent of twenty four large squares.  As I have decided to call it a day on this project, I needed one more square to be able to complete a 5 x 5 blanket.  So I decided to use the See How They Run square.

A nice and straight forward one that looks quite effective.

So now the fun begins.  I need to decide in which order to join the squares.

They're all so bright and colourful, it'll be fun to plan the layout.  So that's my task for the next few days.  See you next time, enjoy yourselves.

Summer Has Arrived

Well as soon as I had published my last post, complaining about the weather, the Sun comes out, the wind drops and lo and behold, summer has arrived!

It may not last, so to make the most of it we packed up our lunch and went and sat on the beach for a picnic.

Delicious camomile and honey tea.

Goats cheese sandwiches, followed by home made chocolate, fruit and nut flapjacks.

The figure in the background on the left of the above picture is actually one of the Iron Men statues. Someone has given him a lovely blue and floral outfit to wear.

This singled him out from the other (naked) Iron Men and he was proving to be quite popular with the photographers.

A lovely treat to be able to enjoy the lovely weather, and visibility was very good so the Welsh Mountains, across Liverpool Bay, can be seen clearly.

I apologise to all of you who are not having the best of weather.  I know some of you are struggling with near impossible conditions.  Here in Britain we like to complain about the weather even when it isn't really that bad.  But it's good to be able to cheer when the Sun shines.