More unicorns! I swear, this little guys are the only thing people would have me crochet! Beautiful blankets, creeper toys, even the My Little Pony plushies I have planned.... Nope! None are enjoyed as much as these little chibi unicorns! I think I have made nine of them so far, maybe more! Most of them have been gifts, but since people have been asking me to make them for other people, I have started asking for a donation to the Aching Arms charity. These guys made such a difference when we lost our son last year, and it's nice to be able to give something back. I usually ask for a teddy bear to be donated in Quinn's name - a plushie for a plushie seems fair to me! It seems like such a small thing, but having that bear to cuddle when you have to walk away and leave your baby in the hospital - It's actually a very big thing.
As always, the pattern used is the Shy Little Unicorn, by Ana Paula Rimoli. The pattern is available as a paid download from Ravelry, but I have it as a pattern in a book - "Amigurumi Toy Box". It is a very simple pattern, and I have had very little difficulty in mastering it. In fact, parts of it are becoming permanently embedded in my memory now. It's not often I have to pull the pattern out to make a unicorn - usually only when it's been a while, to refresh my memory!
The first unicorn was actually finished a few weeks ago, before the end of the summer holidays. I started the latest three plushies at the same time, but one of them had a rush on it as it was for my son's LSA at the school he just left. Of course, it had to be ready before school broke up, and so it was the first to be finished. Fortunately, the unicorn was much loved! I do like it when gifts I make are appreciated - A lot of effort goes into them.
The remaining unicorns were a little less hurried. The first is a gift to my niece for her first birthday. I have made unicorns for all of my nieces, and so I couldn't let this milestone pass without making one. I'm hoping she will like it, though I am sure she will be completely spoiled on the day. I haven't seen a kiddies birthday go by yet in our family where the kiddie isn't spoiled - My son lead the way for this. Ooops! The second was a request from a friend, who wanted to give a unicorn to his friend as a birthday present at the end of August. It's finished well in advance (for a change!) and has already been delivered.
Hopefully I won't have to make any more unicorns for a while. They're very cute, I do agree, but making so many of the same thing can get very dull after a time. It becomes almost a chore to make something so cute, and surely that in itself is a crime to crochet?
One of the things in my seemingly never-ending 'to do' list has been to weave in the ends on my sister's wedding blankets. I should really have done this long ago, as they spent three weeks in South Asia on their honeymoon, but the weather was just too hot for working on a blanket. When I make blankets I spread them over my legs - I mean, where else would they go? And unfortunately, the short-lived British summer made this impossible! So the blankets were not ready for them coming home from Bali. They are ready now, however!
Fortunately for the blankets, the temperatures have dropped since my sister returned home (though probably not so fortunate for my sister, coming home from a tropical paradise to damp and dreary?!) and so I was able to bite the bullet. I hate weaving in ends with a passion! I usually like to weave as I go, crocheting each row over the ends of the last. I could do this for some rows, but unfortunately the nature of the blanket design meant that I had a lot of ends hanging out, and in the name of a speedy finish I made the rookie mistake of leaving all ends til last....
It literally took me days to get these ends finished, but I finally finished them several days ago. I am so glad to get them off my plate though - the blankets look amazing. I don't think I will ever use this pattern again, as I didn't enjoy it as much as I enjoyed, say, Sophie. But I can't deny that it is a beautiful pattern, and I know that my sister will treasure it. And with the UK winter coming, you know they're going to need them!!
Success!!
Following my first attempt at intarsia, I learned a number of things. The biggest thing I learned was that I hate intarsia! I can't stress this enough. Working on the Star Wars blanket for my partner is definitely going to be a labour of love. I also learned a number of minor things, such as the need for a printer that actually works, or that there is such a thing as a ball of yarn that is, in fact, too big. But mainly I learned that the Star Wars blanket is going to take me a LOT longer than I realised, and that it will be imperative that I actually weave my ends as I go. As a result, I am trying to get up to date on all the little odds and ends that are lying around. Having half a dozen unfinished projects lying around when I am about to start a monster doesn't seem like a good idea.
The first project I decided to finish was my Truly Hooked circles blanket. The latest pack was pack six, and the colour scheme was yellow. And I do mean yellow - Like, the standing in front of you with a megaphone, screaming YELLOW!!!! at the top of it's voice sort of yellow.
I didn't enjoy this pack as much as the previous packs. It's not even the colour that bothered me (as it did others). I don't mind the brightness of the yellow - there were bright pinks and oranges in previous packs, and I'm fully expecting an almost neon green at some point. I love bright rainbow colours, so the colour didn't bother me in the slightest. What did bother me, however, was the texture of the really bright yellows. The texture of the yarn I use means a lot to me - I prefer soft yarn over the scratchy feel of cheap acrylic. In all of the previous packs I have gone on and on - almost gushed - about how wonderfully soft and squishable the yarn has been. When I received the first pack, I sat there for a good ten minutes just squishing the yarn over and over. When I was showing off the yarn packs the first thing I said to people was "feel how soft it is!!!" And this time I just couldn't feel it. I don't know whether it was the dye that hardened the yarn, or whether it was maybe a guest dyer (I know that the next pack features a guest dyer) but the neon yellow skeins had the feel of acrylic rather than the soft wool feel that I have come to be used to. That said, the remaining colours in the pack were as soft as I remember, and once I got the neon colours out of the way I began to thoroughly enjoy working with the skeins again. I don't expect that I will come across many more that I don't enjoy working with. Overall, the blanket club has been a wonderful experience! I would love to do it again one day.
I am really beginning to love this blanket as it works up. I have loved it from the beginning, but as I see it grow I love it more and more. It makes me feel a bit sad to think that it will be finished soon - We are two thirds of the way through the packs - but I am also excited to finish it! I am definitely keeping this blanket for myself. It's a bit small to go on my bed - I think it's the perfect size to be a single bedspread - but it will make a great sofa blanket, if I can only keep the cats off of it. I think what I really need is a box by the sofa in which I can store blankets for the cold nights that come with having those pesky British Victorian sash windows. I would also put my ever suffering rainbow ripple blanket in there, my scrap square a day blanket, and the three shop-bought blankets I have - though those would be right down at the very bottom, for when we are desperate!! Alas, our flat is way too small, but I can dream, right?
It's been a few days since I had any crochet news - I am still recovering from an impromptu family 'holiday' to Chessington World of Adventures. It was a full on couple of days in which I did more walking than I've done in a very long time, drank more Cola than I thought humanly possible, and got absolutely no crochet done whatsoever! Now I am catching up on laundry, resting my aching muscles, and hoping our bank account recovers quickly! :D It was worth it though. Look how happy he is!
Since getting back, I had my first attempt at Intarsia. I have decided - I hate intarsia. I was watching the tutorial videos linked in the Star Wars blanket pattern by Ahooka, (last mentioned here) and I noticed that the edges of the motif always have little 'bites' out of them if you use single crochet intarsia. I hate it. I would like a smoother edge, similar to what you get with a C2C blanket. So I tried my first design for the blanket in the C2C style... I got about one third of the way up the edge of the motif before realising that this was impractical - The square would work up to be about 45 cm long on each edge!! That's fine if you're only doing a few designs, but my partner has expressly told me - "As many designs as possible". Using C2C and a 4mm hook, the blanket would be at least 3 metres along it's shortest edge. While it would be a lovely snuggly blanket, it's really too big! So then I tried double crochet intarsia. This made the square smaller than the C2C did, but it was still almost 30 cm along each edge. Still too big. And so I had to resign myself to single crochet intarsia. And I hate it.
I probably didn't start with the easiest pattern for my first try - the number of colour changes along a row gets to be quite high in some places. I think at one point I was working with six balls of grey and six balls of black, all at once! And I didn't do a very good job of keeping the balls separated, so the strings all got tangled up towards the end and I got quite frustrated. But the tutorial said to start with a pattern that only used two colours, just to get the hang of the colour changes at first. I don't think I've done too badly for my first time. It helped to have a symmetrical pattern, so that it didn't really matter which direction I read the pattern. I do need to get the hang of reading the pattern in the right direction for future squares though. My Jabba will come out a bit squiffy looking if I don't get the hang of it!
At least you can sort of tell what it's supposed to be....right?
As I find myself melting over my current WiP's, I can definitely say that Summer is well and truly here! Today is the hottest day of the year so far in the UK, with temperatures reaching 35C. Melty!!
Summer brings with it the end of the school year, which is especially important this year as my son will be making the transition from primary to secondary school. He is rather upset about leaving, as he will not only be leaving his friends behind (he is going to a different school than the majority of his friends) but he will also be leaving behind some wonderful teachers. One of the people he is leaving behind is the LSA who has been working with him for the most of the last seven years!
Proud parent moment: He received the Headteacher's award at his school yesterday!! Lookit how grown up he has gotten!!
As such, I have promised that I will make a unicorn for him to give to her. I am currently making another three of these unicorns in total - one for my son's LSA, one for a friend who has put in a request (I did say they were popular!!) and one for my baby nieces first birthday next month.
The pattern used is the same one I use for all over my unicorns, and can be found over on Ravelry. Be warned though - it is not a free pattern. It is wonderful though. The directions are simple, and it works up quickly and easily. I could probably put one together in a day, if I tried, with the mane being the most time consuming part - As I give my unicorns to children, I have to make especially sure that the mane is well secured!
I just use any yarn I have lying around in my stash - I never buy anything specially for it - and the customisation possibilities for this pattern are amazing. It would make a great zebra, give it a yellow and orange mane and you have a Ponyta, or freeform some wings and you could turn it into a great Twilight Sparkle allicorn lookalike! Out of all of the patterns in my library, it is definitely the one that has got the most use.
On that note, my son's unicorn needs to be ready by tomorrow morning.... So I better get a wriggle on!
Two days ago I took delivery of pack six of the TH blanket club. The yarn in this pack is again super soft and squishable - I swear, the softness is spoiling me! I have held off from posting about it's lovely softness, however, as I wanted to complete packs one to five.
I just noticed that you can see where I threw the pillows off the bed to take this photo!! Ooopsie! Haha!
It took me a few days to correct the stitch counts in each of the first 32 squares, and then to stitch them all back together. It was mind numbing, and I don't want to put myself in that situation again. Check your stitch counts, guys!! Once I finished the corrections, creating new squares became much more enjoyable. I have decided that the rather ambiguous colour from pack four, (which looked either pink or peach to me) is actually red after all! Once it was worked up it was quite obvious, and once it was placed next to the orange it was clear.
Pack five actually looked quite yellow to me, if I'm honest. There were a lot of very sunshiney or sunflowery colours in it, with some reds and some oranges, and it wasn't until I received the yarn for pack six that I was really sure it was orange. When pack six arrived, it was so yellow and almost neon that I half wanted to check whether it glowed in the dark!!
My aim now is to complete the sixth pack so that I am completely up to date before pack seven arrives, which I am pretty sure will be green! In the meantime, however, I have three unicorns to create, and at some point soon a Star Wars blanket to begin! I better get hooking then. :D
Oh, I do love a good yarn box, and this one was Absolutely Fabulous... Literally. Back in April when I had a bit of extra money from my Ragged Priest work, I saw that Lollipop Guild Yarns were doing an Absolutely Fabulous themed yarn box. Growing up in the 80's and 90's, I was of course hooked on the TV show as a teen, and so how could I turn it down? The Facebook post promised two skeins of yarn - a collaboration between Lollipop Guild and DeFarge yarns - a crochet hook, and some extra surprise goodies. Yes please!!
And so, knowing that the packs were due to go out in the first week of July, I have been stalking Mr Postie like a madwoman, and this morning my diligence was thusly rewarded! I have yarn!!!
When I opened the parcel I found two 100g skeins of beautiful sock weight yarn - One each for Eddie and Patsy. I love these yarns. It's so hard to choose a favourite. I love the vibrancy of the colours in Patsy - The richness of the red and the deepness of the purple are wonderful. But then I also love the lightness of the Eddie. The pale blues and pinks running through the length of the yarn make me think of a light fantasy theme, like unicorns or fairies. That's probably not what it's meant to convey, but I love it nonetheless!! I am not sure what I will do with these yarns - I will have to browse Ravelry for something special.
In addition to the two skeins of yarn, there was also a 6 mm moulded crochet hook. I love these handled hooks so much - I do have some clover hooks, but I love to have the hand moulded ones too. Usually I like a Harty Hook from Fleabubs. The appeal of a moulded handle is that it fits nicely in my hand. The standard hooks are fine in the larger sizes, but as they get smaller they put pressure in various places on my hand, and so cause pain and soreness. Moulded hooks all the way! This moulded hook happens to have champagne bubbles on the handle. Some are raised up to give a nice texture, and some are painted on. It's a lovely tribute to Eddie and Patsy that just had to be done!
The tote bag with the word tree will make a great WiP bag, especially as I have Sainsbury's bags lying all over the house with my various WiPs in, and in fact my TH club blanket is already nestled inside. I do fear that the cats will make a bed of the bag though - They seem to know exactly where I don't want them sitting and they make a beeline for it!
Finally, there was a lovely wax block in the bag - strawberries and champagne scented, fittingly - which I have no idea how to burn! I have a little Stonehenge shaped oil burner, but I don't know if I can put wax in there. I am scared to try, which is a shame, as I am sure it smells lovely! Maybe I will have to ask hubby if we can get a wax burner, specially?
Do you know that feeling you get when you are in the middle of creating something amazing? You are enjoying every stitch, and can't help but look at it over and over. It feels nice, it looks great, you feel so proud of it... But the more you look at it, the more you think that something seems off... Maybe the squares aren't lining up quite right, or the tension of the stitches appears to change. So you look at it even more, trying to convince yourself that you're being paranoid. But then you see it.... That one mistake that is offsetting the entire project that you have spent so much time and energy on. And because you are a stubborn perfectionist, the realisation that hits you like a mach truck is that the only course of action from here is to sit and unpick all that you have done, taking your work back to the last point at which it was correct... It is a cold and lonely feeling.
I have been here twice. The first time was with my Rainbow Ripple blanket. My rainbow ripple was the second large project I ever started, and as yet it is still incomplete. The plan is to incorporate four repeats of a rainbow gradient of eleven colours, with each colour having four ripple rows. This means that each gradient has 44 ripples, and each ripple takes me about an hour to complete. So imagine my horror when I was just a few ripples from completing my third gradient, and I notice that for some reason, the edges of this gradient are not lining up with the edges of the previous two... It was much narrower here. What had happened was that the first two gradients had been completed with a 5 mm hook, and for some reason I picked up a 4.5 mm when I continued with the third gradient. Since then I have considered many ways to rectify the mistake, but the only way I will be truly happy is by ripping back the entire third gradient, and starting again with a 5 mm hook. As such, the rainbow ripple has gone into hibernation until such a time as I can face it again...
After this disaster, I swore that something like that would never happen to me again. I downloaded the hookers journal from the Crochet Crowd website, in which I made notes about each of my projects. What size hook I was using, the shade, dye lot and samples of the yarn I was using, links to the pattern, etc. So when I was looking at my TH Club blanket last night, I was incredibly annoyed to notice that the squares that I had previously joined together appeared to be wonky. It seems that due to the way I finished the last two rounds of cream, each and every square had three sides of 15 stitches, and one side of 16 stitches. Annoyed wasn't the word. At a time when I had previously been feeling very happy with myself because I had just finished the squares for pack four (and so was this much closer to being up to date) I was suddenly feeling absolutely rubbish. Not only did I have to un-join all 36 squares, but I then had to undo the last two rounds of each and every square, to correct the miscount on that one side that the join was on. Un-believable.
That realisation was last night, and since then I have corrected 12 of the affected 36 squares. Now I have to correct the blue and the purple blocks. Before I leave to do that though, I want to leave on a happy note. So look! Look at the 12 squares that I got right first time! Pretend that they (and I) are absolutely amazing, and they are not representative of the mere 25% of squares that I actually got correct....
Can I cry now.....?
It is so nice to be able to take a nice, relaxed approach to my crochet for a while. Over the past few days I've been able to get so much stuff organised at home, and still be able to pick up my crochet at my leisure, in my own pace. I'm enjoying it!
I am finally up to date on my Square-a-day blanket. From now on - as the name suggests - I need only do one square each day to keep on top of it. My square for July also comes from Ellen Gormley's book - "Crochet to Go!" This square is called 'Cherry Cordial', presumably because of the colour of the sample square.
This isn't my favourite square out of the book. I'm not entirely sure why. I enjoy the clusters around the edge, because they give the square a nice, soft squishy feel. But the actual look of the square is quite similar to the one I did previously (Oscar) and like Oscar, it has lots of large holes in it. I was originally planning on this blanket being a year-long project - 12 months at around 30 squares per month. After dropping it last year and picking it up again this year, I decided to add 12 months of squares to the original 4 months that I had already done. That's looking at around 480 squares, so the blanket is going to be pretty big to begin with. Now I am thinking that I might do repeat months of some of the solid squares - like the manghan square, or the solid granny square - to offset the sheer number of squares that have holes in them. I don't know if I will definitely do this, it's just a thought in the back of my mind.
Now that I am up to date with this project, my next plan is to get up to date on my TH club blanket. I have two packs of wonderfully squishable yarn waiting for me, and I believe the current dispatch date for the next pack is July 10th. That will make 3 packs left to do - literally one THIRD of the total blanket. At least it won't take me long!
I did not realise that I was so far behind on my Square-a-day blanket. Wow! Last time I was up to date was some time in May, and the last time I mentioned it in a blog post I had finished about 18/31 of the squares for May. But that particular post was earlier this month......in July..... And I obviously hadn't touched the blanket in a while at that point, because I had been focusing on my sister's Persian Tiles. Ooops!
At that point, I was busy working my way through a small pile of Manghan squares, the pattern for which I found on the same website as the Sophie's Garden crochet-a-long, Look At What I Made. I love these squares. They are so simple to make, and they work up really fast. The actual stitch is very squishable, and if you were making a blanket for really tiny babies, I would definitely recommend this pattern as a starting point because there are far fewer holes for little fingers to get caught in than say, a traditional granny square. I have to say that when I next make blankets for the maternity ward, I will definitely be using this pattern for the preemie babies. Thanks to the simplicity of this design, I was able to catch up on these squares very quickly, and swiftly moved onto my next month - June.
I took June's pattern from the book that first started this project: Crochet to Go! by Ellen Gormley.
Ellen was the designer of the Sunny Spread pattern (founds on the Red Heart website, here) that I am using for my Truly Hooked blanket club yarn. This is actually a complete coincidence. I chose the Sunny spread design for the same reason I chose this book from the craft store I was browsing in - the designs are small, quick to work up and easy to learn.
I eventually plan on working up all of the square designs from this book as I would like at least 16 different designs incorporated into the blanket, more if I can manage it! So for this month I am doing the Oscar square:
I am currently standing at 21/30 squares for June, and so I am very close to being up to date. Like all of the designs in the books, they work up very fast - the most time consuming part is changing colours! There is a lot of blue and green in this months batch of squares, as I am trying to use up balls of yarn to get them out of my drawers. I have so many odds and ends that I can't really use for any project of a reasonable size, so the only thing I can really do is use them for a patchwork project such as this one.
That said, I even have lengths of yarn that are too short to incorporate into one of Ellen's 11 by 11 stitch squares. But will I throw them away? Never!! I am a hoarder of the worst kind! That is where BoB comes in. BoB is my Ball of Bits. Whenever I have a length of yarn that I can't do anything with - and this may vary from anything from a couple of inches to a couple of feet in length - I simply tie it onto the end of BoB.
The idea is that I will eventually have this wonderful ball of many colours that I can crochet a blanket for Greebo with. Greebo absolutely loves synthetic fabrics, whether it is my dressing gown, the throw on the bed, or my current WiP. He just loves to settle down on it, and knead it with his claws. So I would like to make him a blanket of his very own, and what better yarn to use than my left over scraps? Of course, many of the scraps are incredibly short, and I won't add anything that I believe I can use for something else, so BoB is growing rather slowly.... Poor Greebo will have to wait a while for that blanket!
Ok, so my sister's wedding has been and gone - it was on Friday. She looked amazing, everybody cried when they saw her in her dress, the venue was perfect, all of her handmade decorations were exactly right....It was just wonderful. Perfection! In the aftermath of the wedding, my bedroom has found itself home to as much of my sister's bouquet as I could fit between my university textbooks. Well, I need to use them for something post-uni, right? Heheheh!
Believe it or not, I actually finished crocheting the second Persian Tiles blanket on the Wednesday before the wedding. I was so pleased with myself! Of course, finishing the crochet means I have to weave in all those pesky ends that I didn't weave in as I was going. At first I thought I could do it on Thursday but then life threw me a curve ball, as it so often does! As a result we didn't get to the hotel until after midnight, and I still needed to adjust Damien's page boy tie to fit a child! So that didn't work... Friday was the actual wedding, and I knew I didn't want to just leave the blankets in the gift pile and walk away - they were too personal a gift to gift in that way - so I wasn't in a hurry. I thought I could weave in the ends on the Saturday, and then gift the blankets on the Sunday when I went to see them before they went for their honeymoon... Yeah.... That didn't work either. After spending 90 minutes waiting on an ambulance, and over 4 hours in A&E for my partner (Don't worry - He's OK now!!!) and then still having to travel back home for three hours, I didn't have as much time on Saturday as I thought I had. So all in all I think I only managed to weave in about half of the ends, on one blanket. :-/ That was not the plan!
However, I wasn't going to let my sister go on her honeymoon before seeing her gift that I had spent months working on, and so I carried them round to her house last night. I confessed that I hadn't had as much time as I thought I would to get the blankets properly finished, but I wanted her to see them anyway. I've promised her that I will have the ends fully weaved in for her coming back from her honeymoon in the Far East. (That gives me three weeks!)
As it happens, they both absolutely loved them, and were surprised when I gave them a blanket each, which was really nice! I hadn't mentioned that I was making a 'his and hers' gift, and they seemed very touched to have one each. They love the design and the colours, and have asked me if (when I get time!) I can use the left over yarn to re-cover their footstool which is in a dire state right now. I would love to do that - In fact, I think the Mandala Madness pattern would work amazingly as a footstool cover. I don't really want to use the same Persian tiles pattern to cover the stool - For one, I am absolutely sick of those large octagon motifs, and for two, I thought about it last night, and I don't think the holes in the pattern would work well on the footstool. The Mandala Madness pattern (which I briefly discussed here) would be a nicely co-ordinating design, especially in the same colours, and has the added bonus of being a solid design, with few gaps.
The existing footstool cover
However, before I consider that, I have Edwin's Star Wars blanket to make a start on, my Square-a-day blanket to catch up on (I am currently at 18/31 linen stitch squares for May!), two packs of my TH yarn club to do, and now three unicorns to make - two are requests, and one will be a surprise gift. So even when I am not busy, I am really busy!!!
I'm feeling pretty good right now. Since I had to be up at the crack of Sparrow Fart this morning to get my son to the coach for his Isle of Wight trip, I decided to get some extra crochet time in. And hey, hey, hey - Check it out!!
That there is a pile of sixteen octagonal panels. All finished. I'm really pleased about this because the octagons make up the bulk of the blanket. From here on in, progress will speed up dramatically, and I'm pretty sure I'll actually finish it in time for the wedding (next week!!). Course, I still have all those ends to sew in, for both blankets, but I don't mind doing that in the hotel room the night before, if it comes to it.
My plan is to finish this blanket before Saturday, when I can hopefully start adjusting my son's tie for the wedding. He's going to be a page boy, but the tie to match all the Groomsmen was only available in adult size, so I need to resize it. That's going to be fun - I've never adjusted a tie before!!
So, my fifth instalment of the Truly Hooked blanket club has arrived, and this pack is yellow!
As always I am loving how squishy the yarn is, and the colours are so vibrant! I can't wait to get to work on it - I have itchy fingers!
Unfortunately, I haven't even started on pack four yet (the orange) as I am still working on Persian Tiles. The wedding is two weeks today, and I've had a pretty lax crochet week due to having other commitments. As it stands I have finished 10 octagons, and have two more almost completed. I am hoping to finish the two today, and if I can finish the final four pretty quickly then the rest of the blanket should work up pretty fast, but I am starting to panic now!
As I have mentioned a number of times, my sister is getting married soon. In about 5 weeks, to be exact. This means two things - First, I am running out of time to finish the two Persian Tiles blankets I am working on. But secondly, HEN NIGHT!!!!!
My sister in fact had a hen weekend, and it was amazing. The first day and night was very much what you would expect from a standard hen - We went out for dinner, where I tried a catfish jambalaya for the first time, then we went to a cocktail bar where everyone around me drank a great number of cocktails, (I'm not a big drinker, and when I do drink I drink beer!), and we ended the night by hitting a nightclub. The nightclub in question was very impressive. Based in an old theatre, there were a number of cabaret and dance acts, cake eating competitions, free alcohol, the biggest disco ball I had ever seen, and the music was all 80's, 90's and 00's cheese - Our 'Guilty Pleasures'. Overall, the night was very enjoyable, even if my anti-social self did feel a bit out of my depth.
The second day was a LOT more my thing. After a slow breakfast, we headed out to 'Drink, Shop, Do' near Camden in London, where we had an English cream tea - sandwiches, scones and cakes galore! Om nom nom! After our tea, we had an organised activity - embroidering panties!!! Definitely a hen activity, but much more refined. I thoroughly enjoyed myself!
Having chosen our pants size, we were provided with a selection of templates - and it was a WIDE selection! There were sharks, unicorns, hearts, flowers, engagement rings, candy skulls, and a lot of tattoo style designs. Of course, there was also the obligatory selection of boobs and willies! Many of the girls chose the unicorns, but I was feeling very much like none of the designs really suited me. I mean, if you're going to have a design embroidered on your knickers, it really ought to be a reflection of yourself, right? Right!
After discarding the templates and taking a big drink of my glittery bellini, I set out to create my own design.
FOR THE HORDE!!!
This lovely symbol - which my sister assures me looks like both a willy and 'weird lady parts' - is the symbol for the faction I associate with in my game, World of Warcraft. I have been playing this game for 9 years now, it's how I met my partner, and how I met some of my now closest friends. I wouldn't be who I am today without World of Warcraft, as sad as that may make me seem. ^^ So when it came to choosing a design for my panties, there was really no other option!
Of course, choosing my own design left me at a bit of a disadvantage, as I was only just transferring my design to the pants while others were quite far into the actual embroidery. So of course I finished last. And at around £30, these pants are the most expensive pair of pants I own - even considering the fact that they are from Marks and Spencers....
They took me several hours, and an entire skein of red embroidery thread, but these are now officially my favourite pants.
I am always on the look out for crochet gifts that I can make for my friends. I have a to-do list that is about a mile long... Ok, maybe not a mile long, but certainly several years long! Every time I find I new pattern, I save it while in the back of my mind I am making a mental note of who the pattern would be perfect for. And I'm sure I'm not the only one!
So when I accidentally stumbled across My Victoria Rose, and the selection of gorgeous blankets on their site, I fell in love. The selection of superhero blankets on the store page are just so gorgeous. The colours are vibrant, the contrast is amazing, and the use of different stitches produces what look like simply sumptuous blankets. And I know so many people that would love the blankets on this website. I could buy every one of the patterns on here and it still wouldn't be enough.
The first three on my 'to do' list are Wonderwoman, Batman and Catwoman - One of my best friends and her two kids would absolutely adore these. But I want them all!!
These photos have been taken directly from the website, so you can see just how wonderful these blankets are. I intend to buy every one of these patterns over time. And they don't just have superheroes, either. There's a great NES controller blanket, a 1950's Barbie pattern blanket, and of course, you couldn't have superheroes without having the villains to match.
This website has definitely just become a permanent feature on my 'watch' list.
Hello!!! I am sorry for the lack of updates! Between trying to find a new job, getting the house ready for moving, and getting my son through his SATs, things have been pretty hectic around here. I haven't spent as much time crocheting as I would have liked. Which is a shame, because I am starting to worry about my sister's wedding gifts now.
Last time I posted I had made the decision to make two Persian Tile blankets - one for my sister and one for her fiancée. This was because the overall size of the blanket was smaller than I originally anticipated. It is a great size for one person to snuggle under for movies, but not two.
Progress has really picked up lately, and I do think I can get both done by the wedding if I really push it - They're not that big after all. But joining the motifs together and weaving in the ends? It's just so dull!!!. Here is my progress on the first so far:
The blanket is 4 by 4 octagonal motifs, so this is very nearly finished, and then there is an edging which won't take nearly as long! When I lay it flat I remember why I fell in love with it in the process. The colours are just so vibrant, and the squares offset the orange of the octagons so nicely. I really can't wait to gift them, and I am hoping to gift them a few days before the wedding if possible, as my sister recently asked me if I would be able to crochet a throw for the sofa in the hall where they are throwing their reception. With a bit of luck, although not fitting with black and white theme, these might be suitable for that too!
So, another project on my never-ending 'to-do' list - The singing sunflower!
Ok, so it doesn't actually sing. I found this pattern through Facebook, and when I saw it, I knew I had to make it. In fact, I have to make ten or twelve of them. In the game I play, World of Warcraft, there is a companion called the Singing Sunflower. It is acquired through an annoyingly difficult Plants versus Zombies style mini-game which tends to rely on luck rather than any kind of actual skill. Once (If!) you complete the game though, you are rewarded with this cute little sunflower pet, which does sing:
Daegore with his Singing Sunflower
So when I came across this free pattern by Ink and Stitches, I immediately noticed the resemblance to my annoying, sickly sweet, loyal little sunflower.
So, when I finally get some time in between projects with a deadline, I plan on making one of these sunflowers for each member of our guild's raiding team. Official Ænigma mascots! That's a lot of sunflowers though. Our raiding team is growing regularly - It started with about 8 people, and now we have 14-18 people regularly turn up on a Wednesday evening! That's a lot of crochet time!
My next yarn package has arrived!! Several weeks of not much crochet at all, and now I'm at a loss for what to do, with so many projects screaming for my attention at once! Not that I'm complaining, mind.
This is what my yarn club blanket looked like the last time I posted:
Colour-wise, we had received blue, purple, and then pink. I was predicting that we would next be receiving a package of red yarn, moving to orange, yellow, etc. I was wrong!
I am not sure what colour this is... It's not a pink, but it's not really an orange either. Peach? I'm not sure, but I know that I love it. I can't wait to get started on it and make more squares for my Club blanket! However, with my sister's wedding looming (and my crazy decision to do TWO Persian Tile blankets) I feel that I must really hold back. Once I have finished the wedding gifts, THEN I can focus on this package. Who knows - Maybe by then I will have two packages to keep me going?
