Treats

Thank you so much for all your lovely good wishes for my birthday last week.  I really appreciate them.

I had a lovely birthday week with the wonderful surprise visit of Grace on the evening of my birthday.

I was so lucky to receive some fabulous presents, including a gorgeous project bag that Grace made for me.

I just love the polar bear fabric which Grace bought specially for me because she knows how much I love polar bears.

There's a lovely snowflake charm on the zip and it's lined with pink snowflake fabric.  It's just the perfect size to hold my latest sock project.

She also bought me this ball of sock yarn.  I love the colours and can't wait to cast on with this .

I have been ill the last few days - thankfully not on my actual birthday - so I've slept most of the last few days.  I've missed reading your blogs, so I'll be catching up today.  It'll be nice to get back into a normal routine. I hope you have a lovely week.  Bye for now.

Look Who's 55!

Yes my birthday has finally arrived and here we are the birthday girl and boy.

I'm not sure which one of us is wearing better (I should have put some make up on before taking the photo!).  My teddy bear suffered considerably during my teething years and became threadbare at an early age, hence the extensive darning and patching.  He's a Wendy Boston bear - one of the first washable bears, and he went through the washer quite a few times when he was young.

For his 55th birthday, I decided to knit him a new outfit - he's been wearing his 40th birthday outfit (a Fair Isle jumper and baggy green trousers long enough).

The new outfit makes him look rather like a Hipster, don't you think?  So I'm assuming he's having a bit of a mid-life crisis!

I have so enjoyed being 54, I feel sad to let it go.  It has been a wonderful year.  But I'm embracing the year ahead and all that being 55 brings and I hope that it will be as much fun as the last year.

I have a day of treats planned so the year is already off to a good start.
Bye for now. X

What a Jolly Weekend!

Hello Everyone, I hope you are having a lovely time.  I am truly blessed at the moment as I am having a wonderful time.  Tomorrow is my actual birthday, but as you know I've been celebrating for some time now and have no intention of stopping for a while.

This weekend my husband and I went up to Kendal for a short stay.  Kendal is only one and a half hours drive up the M6 from us so it is nice and easy to get to.

The hotel we stayed in had a swimming pool which was wonderful.  We were only there for one night but we managed to fit in quite a few swims.

We also did a lot of walking and sightseeing.  We climbed up to Kendal Castle, which is just a ruin but has spectacular views across the Lake District.

We visited Kendal Parish Church which is beautiful - and found lots of angels.

I spoilt myself with a gorgeous ball of Juniper Moon Farm lace weight yarn (50% merino, 50% silk) from Williams' Wools - I just couldn't resist it and it is my birthday!

I managed to bash my toe in the swimming pool and I have a colourful and painful bruised toe now - the colours match my new yarn!

The sun shone and it wasn't too cold for walking around (we were well wrapped up) - just perfect.

Did I tell you that Kendal is only one and a half hour's drive away? - well coming home yesterday it took four and a half hours because the M6 was closed between Kendal and Lancaster!  Oh well, the silver lining was that I had some knitting with me, so I got plenty done.

Have a good week.  Bye for now.

Happy Mothers' Day

Happy Mothers' Day to you all - a day to celebrate, not just Mums, but all women - because we are so wonderful!

I hope you are having a good weekend.

As part of my Mothers' day gift to my Mum, I made her a crocheted coat hanger.  This one has lovely rainbow stripes.

I added one of my floral embellishments, which I think finishes it off nicely.

I have partly typed up the pattern for the floral embellishment and I will finish it and publish it shortly, but you will have to forgive me this week - as it is my birthday week (how many days in a week?  eight, nine?) I am busy treating and spoiling myself.  Normal service will be resumed shortly - well, at least whenever I decide that the birthday week is finally over.

May your week be filled with treats, even if it isn't your birthday.  X

Delayed Shawl

So didn't get my shawl finished in February after all.  But it was a close thing.  It meant that my destashing totals for the month weren't as high as I had hoped but they weren't too shabby.  Especially as I only started the stash busting counting part way through the month.

So the total destashed in February was a splendid 755g.  I'm pleased with that and hope that March will be even more impressive.

I'm off to a flying start in March because the shawl I didn't quite finish in February will now count towards my March totals.  And here is the finished shawl.

The pattern is Hansel Hap (the half Hansel version) by Gudrun Johnston.

I used Jamieson and Smith 2 ply jumper weight yarn from my stash.  I originally bought the main colour to make a cardigan but when the the wool arrived I thought the pink was a bit too salmony for my liking - the problem with buying online!

I think it works ok in the shawl and I'm liking it more now, especially when combined with the other colours.

The shawl itself was great fun to knit.  Because it's knitted in garter stitch, it's lovely and squishy.

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

Now I need to get back to knitting Eve's Fair Isle cardigan for her birthday later this month.  Lovely Fair Isle - I do so enjoy knitting it.  As this is now officially the start of my birthday week, I'm enjoying myself with extra knitting time and watching knitting podcasts - what a great way to spend the day, I'm so lucky.  I hope that you are all enjoying some crafting time.

Only Eight Weeks to Go

Yes, amazingly, it's only eight weeks today to my birthday.  I love my birthday, I love doing lots of special things - so much so, that it's impossible to fit everything into just one day.  My birthday celebrations, over the years have expanded into a week and then a month.  I like to start planning in January so that I can savour every moment.

With "only" eight weeks to go, I've made a special entry in my journal - an eight week challenge - to do 54 things before I'm 55.  I usually write a list for the year of what I want to achieve in that year, I've mostly completed the 54 things I wanted to do when I was 54.  Now with "only" eight weeks to go, I've come up with a supplementary list, of smaller tasks and treats.

One of the problems of getting older (besides the obvious ones) is that each year you have to try to think of extra challenges to make up the numbers - I might struggle to think of 87 things to do when I'm 87, but I'll worry about that nearer the time.

For now I've written out my 54 things to do before I'm 55, but I had to add flaps to the pages to fit them all in.

Some of the challenges aren't challenges at all, some will be easy to do, others may be more interesting to complete, but the point is, that it will be fun.

Maybe as part of this challenge I should have added - think of a list of 55 things to do when you're 55!!!

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!

Belated...

...good wishes for Mothers Day,  sorry I'm a day late.  I hope that Mums everywhere had a wonderful day, whether they were celebrating Mothers Day or not.  It's always good to make Mums feel appreciated, every day of the year.

Yesterday we drove down to Cambridge and back.  Time to collect Eve at the end of term (doesn't time fly?).  We stopped off at my Mum's for a quick visit on the way.

I knitted her this lacy shawl as a present.  

The pattern was from an old magazine with some modifications.

I loved knitting the lacy pattern and I think it looks really pretty.  The colours in the wool are gorgeous - lovely and fresh.

The reason I've been away from the blog for the last few days is because, having returned from my birthday celebrations in Lincoln, I caught a virus and lost all my energy for several days.

I'm not a good patient!  I hate being inactive.  Thankfully the worst is over now and I can feel my bounce returning.  I need to get back up to speed because it's Eve's 21st birthday this week.  There are some lovely treats planned, so we'll be doing lots of celebrating.  Bye for now.

Thank You Thank You Thank You

Wow, I can't thank you enough for all the wonderful messages I received for my birthday.  I am so grateful to you all.  It made my birthday extra special to hear from so many of you.

I'm leaving the calendar unchanged for a few more days so that I can carry on celebrating.

I had an amazing weekend.  Firstly in Sheffield with Grace and then in Lincoln.

Our hotel looked up to the Cathedral, which was beautifully lit in the evening.

The view from the windows.

Lincoln is a beautiful city.  We've been there before and I loved it so much, I chose to go back there for my birthday weekend.

The weather wasn't great but we got out and about to see the sights.

Cup of tea and some cake - with a little knitting time
thrown in.

Grace knitted me some lovely socks and also gave me the remains of the ball of wool.

The colours are just perfect.  I think I'll make some fingerless mittens or wrist warmers with the remains.

For my birthday I received lots of lovely presents, including this book.

Who would have thought there could be so many ways to cast on and off in knitting.  My aim is to try and sample them all!

Whilst in Sheffield, I topped up my Stylecraft Special DK, adding some new colours to my stash.  And I couldn't resist stocking up on yellow and pink ribbons.

I also bought some of this lovely Alice in Wonderland fabric.

How happy I was to come home with such lovely goodies.

So, once again, thank you for your thoughts and wishes.  I think I need to come back down to earth and start getting back into the swing of things.  It's Eve's 21st birthday next week, so I had better get myself organised before she comes back home on Sunday.