Dealing with ends

This evening I had a bit of time watching TV… There’s a new series of celebrity masterchef! So I could work on some crochet at the same time. I decided to tick one item off my to do list and weave in the ends on my rosie posie granny squares from cherry heart. I always find weaving ends a bit hit and miss , and just make it up as I go along. Is there a specific way it’s meant to be done? 

Having done this I now need to figure out how to join them, and I’d appreciate advice from anyone with ideas please. I really need about an inch between the squares but don’t know  if there’s a way to crochet that size of a border between them. 

Also, i don’t want to join them with one of the colours I’ve already used in the squares as I think that would look odd. At the moment i am considering pale grey. What do people think? 

I also remembered reading a blog about using bits of wool to make pretty dishes (I’m sorry, i don’t remember whose blog it was, though I’m half sure I commented on it… If it’s yours or you know whose it was then please comment before and I’ll link to it) and thought I’d try that with my ends, using the bottom of one of my pretty puffin bowls.

 Unfortunately I didn’t really have enough ends to make it very deep, so it may have to wait for more ends to be added! 

Finally, I carried on crocheting the shawl which is growing to a more decent size. Although each row takes longer to make I’m really enjoying working with this wool in these colours… It’s really soothing. The photo doesn’t do justice to the colours… I’ll try to take a photo in daylight so you can see the moorland colours better. 

Please do let me know :

How do you weave  in ends? 

Is there a way to crochet an inch join between my granny squares? 

What do you think about the pale grey, and do you have any suggestions of other colours that might work? 

Thank you all for your help. 😊

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Giveaway-woohoo! 🌈

Hey  there everyone… My lovely followers who have got me to this point! I said I would do a giveaway when I got to 50 WordPress followers, and here we are. I never started blogging in order to get loads of followers, but I’ll admit it’s exciting every time I see that someone else has signed up to follow my blog. I’d had an idea that I wanted to do a giveaway, and 50 followers seemed liked a good reason to celebrate!

So here it is… A giveaway of some of the little things I’ve made, with 3 prizes.

First prize is:

A flamingo card and envelope, a sloth keyring, a crochet may rose and a pinky-red flower button ring.

Second prize is:

A flowery card, a puff stitch flower, and a dark blue flower ring.

Third prize is :

My first ever paper cut on a card and a rainbow coloured flower button ring.

I had fun making some of these prizes this morning while listening to cds of some of the bands I got into at chagstock, the music festival we went to in Devon last weekend. In case you fancy checking any of them out they are :

Raghu dixit– Indian guys playing seriously cool, beaty Indian music

Mr tea and the minions – a band from Bristol with a very cool female singer, playing bouncy music with balkan gypsy influence.

Skinny lister – another British band playing rocky folk music and sea shanties… They were the only band I’ve ever seen to have a head-banging accordion player and a double bass player playing it while holding it up on his shoulder!

Echo  town – 2 brothers who play music that I’m not sure how to describe but which includes harmonica (lush!) , slide guitar (awesome!) didgeridoo (so cool!) and other instruments. They have very cool lyrics including “fighting fire with fire only makes things burn… You can’t solve problems with war and hate coz the more you destroy the less you create” (seems appropriate for a creative blog!)

So, plug of my new favourite bands over… Here are the rules for the giveaway. If you’d like a chance to win one of the prizes then just leave a comment on this blog post. If you’re not sure how to do that then feel free to email me /text me and I’ll add your name to the hat. And I genuinely will use a hat… put all the names in it and pull 3 out. First out will get first prize and so on. The giveaway is open to anyone from any country.

You have until saturday 12th August to register your interest and i shall do the draw at midday UK time that day.

Ooh I’m so excited! Hope  you are too! 🤣

Blanket WIP update

Well, I’ve done lots of the blanket, which unfortunately means I’ve made lots of mistakes! The blanket will be fine but I’m not sure how useful my services as pattern tester will be. 

This is where it was last time I blogged about it. 

Then I had a lovely evening crocheting with my friend lizzy while she knitted a hot  water bottle cover. It got this far then

Then I did the odd few rows, and then went to a crochet morning at our church. I did a couple of rows and realised I’d missed something out so frogged. But then I realised I hadn’t frogged far enough, and to get it right I’d have to frog back past my new ball of wool join and lose about 2 inches of work. Well, that would just be too disheartening, so i keep going and decided i’d have a pair  of leaves missing and a bigger  gap between the flowers. 

So tonight I’ve kept going and have appreciated they loan of a spindly spool thing that I put the wool onto so it unravels without going everywhere. Thank you to lovely Ann from church for lending it to me. I normally take wool from the centre of the ball, but i felt the colours would match better if I started from the outside of this second ball. 

Here’s where I’ve got to now after an evening of sitting listening to my sister reading a loud from little town on the prairie to my niecephews as I crocheted… I felt like I’d gone back in time! 

Just need to make the final flower and then make the blanket the right length and do the border. 

Here’s a close up of tonight’s flowers which look different to each other when they’re supposed to be the same, and which have big gapey holes in the bottom edges. Other than those two issues I’m quite pleased with them! 

I’m getting better at living with and adapting as a result of my mistakes in crochet, but I’ve realised that I overestimated my ability as  a pattern tester, and I’ve also learnt a very important lesson that it helps to tick off the tows on the pattern as you crochet them. On my defence I didn’t do that because I thought I would want to use the pattern more than once, but I’ve now realised that problem can be overcome with different coloured pens!! 

Super quick crochet project

Oooh this was fun… A  project I could start and finish in one very quick sitting! Thanks to kristabellashodgepodge I learnt how to make this very cute flower. Think I’ll be making more of these in the future in loads of different colours. 

Loads of different things!

Hey there everyone. Hope you all had a good weekend. My husband and I had kept this weekend free, after having a few busy weeks, and it was lush to have time to catch up with each other, and have time to focus on crafts. 

On Saturday we  went to a gorgeous cafe next to the canal, called the stables café. I took my crochet and sat  in the sun with this beautiful view! 

The blanket is coming along though I still seem to be making lots of mistakes. I know they won’t really notice too much, but it’s bugging me that I keep ending up with too many stitches in the row and I don’t know why I’m getting them. Plus I obviously got a bit cocky with one set of leaves and managed to add an unnecessary loop in front of the stalk! But… At least it is growing! 

I also spent time making collage cards for a giveaway on kelleysdiy which I am really excited to be part of. Do go and check it out… She’s had loads of sponsors donating things for the giveaway so there will be loads of chances to win something lovely. 

I love the idea of giveaways, and can give you a heads up that I plan to do my own to celebrate when I have 50 WordPress followers… Don’t think it’ll be too long now! 🤣

I got really excited when I discovered a blog written in french and English, and found that Charlotte makes beautiful wooden items. She wanted to do a craft swap for a gorgeous unicorn necklace, so I’m going to make her a crochet shawl in exchange. It might take a while though as I really need to finish pattern testing this blanket too. 

My final area of creativity was making a photo book online for one of my nephews who I’d taken on a zookeeper day. It was so much fun going through the photos again and adding comments about what he’d been doing. They’re coming to stay soon, so i hope it arrives before then so I can give it to him and see his  reaction. 

Ooh, and finally… How could I forget?? I had the most gorgeous parcel from wool warehouse, with my book and the wools to make Sophie’s universe. I love the bag it came in too! 

The project will have to go on hold for a while as I have too many things on  the go at the moment, but maybe it will make a lovely winter project. 

It grew!

This evening while babysitting for our nephews I thought I’d do a couple of rows  on my spring fields baby blanket, and then I got caught up in it and suddenly it had grown loads! 

At the end of this evening

Where I’d got to yesterday

I like reflecting on the growth of the blanket and the growth of the baby I’m crocheting it for, and have a much stronger sense of that with this blanket than with others because while crocheting I am making the flowers grow taller and sprout leaves. 

Stalk with first set of leaves

I feel quite proud of myself as I’m doing stitches and techniques I’ve never done before, while following a pattern written in American terms. Mainly its ok as  there are really useful descriptions of what to do for each stitch, but i realise I did one row wrong as I forgot to translate double crochet up to treble crochet. It made my row a bit wobbly (see the picture above of where I’d got to yesterday)  but I sorted it with some stitches with  less  tension on the next row! I realise things also went rather wrong somewhere in the first couple of rows, making the stalk a bit wonky and the edge very uneven, but I think I’ve sorted that now, and have the right number of stitches between each flower stalk, so i hope it will be ok from now on. By the time I realised I’d made these mistakes I’d gone too far to consider frogging. Crochet is helping me to learn to live with and accept my mistakes instead of trying to make them disappear. I’m beginning to accept that things that are less than perfect are still acceptable and often even still really good. Hopefully I can begin to transfer this acceptance from crochet into my life a bit more. 

Wobbly edge!!

Who knew that crochet could have such an influence on personal and spiritual development?! 

Craft swap

This evening I went to our local library where they have knit and natter on a Wednesday evening. Tonight they also had a craft swap. I came away with lots of bits of material that will hopefully feed my new found patchwork interest for a while! 

I also spent time there and then back in my garden with a lovely Korev lager, crocheting an octopus to send to a hospital for a premature baby. After about an hour and a half i have an octopus with one and a half legs! I love how their legs curl up as you do 2 or 3 double crochets (UK terms) in each of the chain. 

It took me a while to get used to crocheting with cotton, but it’s  ok now and I’m getting quicker with it. It was fun hanging out with lots of crafty people, and bizarre because when one lady asked what I was making and I told her she said “what, one of these?” and pulled a finished octopus out of her bag! She’d already made two, so it was handy to chat to her about it. 

Beautiful slippers!

They’re finished! 

I decided to crochet the second slipper properly, making sure the scales were offset this time.  I was worried that once I finished it I might decide to frog the top of slipper one to make it the same so a few days ago I sewed the ends in, added the buttons, and sewed the nonslip  backing  to the soles of both slippers to prevent me from doing that. 

Yesterday and today I have been off sick – getting dizzy and feeling off balance and like I’m gonna throw up every time I’m upright. Yesterday I couldn’t even crochet and spent the day lying flat. Today I’ve managed to prop myself up a little bit with my head resting on cushions so it can’t move, and i managed to crochet the last couple of rows to finish my second slipper. 

I’m pleased I followed  the pattern properly for the second one… I much prefer the scales offset. It makes me confident too that I can make another pair that match for my friend who asked if I could make some for her. That will be an interesting process as I don’t think I’ve ever crocheted the same thing twice before. I’ll make them from a different wool though, which will look a bit more wood nymph than crazy fairy! 

Here are some more pictures of my completed fairy/pixie boots, now keeping my feet cosy as I cwtch up with a blanket and rest on my sofa with a good book. 

Non slip backing – the kind you put under rugs. Hopefully this will stop me from wearing through the wool on the heel

Mis-matching scales but I don’t think they’re too obvious after all

Cute buttons

Crocheting on train journeys

The last couple of days Mark and I have been to visit friends in London and other friends in South Wales. This involved a fair bit of time sat on trains so I thought I’d take my crochet with me. I worked on my slipper(s).
Gloucester to London: I finished off the sole, adding extra rows as i measured it against an outline of my foot. Then I did the row of double crochet all round the edge.

Then I put my foot on it and realised the front end was too long and square. So I frogged all round the edge and the last 4 or 5 rows! For those who don’t know (and I only just looked this up now having read it on other people’s blogs) frogging is undoing what you’ve done, or ripping out the stitches. Apparently ‘rip it rip it’ reminding us of frog noises!

And having frogged I then had to redo the edging.

This was frustrating but resulted in a much better shape.

Visit to friends in London :I spent time chatting and crocheting, and was pleased that the front post and back post stitches worked out well. I’ve never done these before and the first row was tricky but it got easier after that.

London to South Wales journey :this was a crazily busy train but we got seats at a table. I carried on building up the sides of the slipper with front and back post stitches.  A young girl and her mum sat with us for part of the journey and admired my work (always nice!) and as they were leaving the girl said “it’s looking really good now” (which depending on the tone of voice you read that with could sound a bit negative, but her tone  was all positive).

I was also able to start closing in the toe on that trip, which started to pull the sole tighter, but it stretches back out when I put it on.

South Wales to Gloucester: I finished closing in the toe, even though I stopped crocheting often to see the beautiful views of the river Severn from the train.

Chilling out at home while catching up on episodes of masterchef from last week : I started to work on the cuffs with scales. I thought this was going to be complicated but was very pleasantly surprised to find it quite simple. It did take me a whole  row of scales to eventually figure out how to hold the crochet on the second side of the scale so the stitches didn’t keep falling off the hook though.

Progress will slow down dramatically now as I’ll be going back to work on monday and have got busy evenings scheduled. Also, I’ve adapted this pattern as I’ve gone along as my foot is bigger than the largest size in the pattern. I’ve written down what I’ve done but on two occasions I’ve been meant to have a certain number of stitches and have ended up with a number that was closer to the real pattern. This seemed like a good thing at the time, but I’m really not sure how I’m going to deliberately recreate that when I move onto the left foot. I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it… Got three more rows of scales to do on this one yet (and I’m too tired to tackle  any more this evening.)

Here we go again!

Well, I’m not sure how many times i have restarted this project but hopefully this is the last time! The fabulous Joyce Barker (my husband’s aunt who i’m very pleased i get to share!) had a look at the original pattern and spent time figuring out what it should be. My attempt to remedy the pattern wasn’t far wrong, but the end of the rows were a bit hit and miss. So, now that Joyce had told me how it should be (and she’d tried it out and done a sample of it to make sure!) i decided to unravel one more time and start again! Unfortunately the wool had been crocheted and unravelled one too many times and snapped, so i just started with a new section of wool. 

And here it is! 

It’s actually very simple, and works up very quickly once you know what you’re doing, and I’m enjoying the fact that I’m confident in what I’m doing at the end of each row. You can see the difference below, between the actual pattern (top) and my previous attempt (bottom) with its wonky edges!! 

While praying for the future recipient of the scarf/shawl I’ve continued to pray for her perseverance, but also that she’ll have people alongside her who can help her figure out where things are not quite going to plan, and how to fix the issues. Here’s praying for her to have an ‘Aunt Joyce’  too.

Thank you Joyce for your interest in this project and for the time and effort you put into figuring out  the real pattern. And while we’re here, thank you too for showing me how to hold a crochet hook properly! It’s definitely sped up my crocheting by miles! 

And now a quick update of how far I’ve got with an evening of crochet:

The colours are actually a bit more muted than they appear in the photo, but i love how they gradually blend into each other subtly