New Year, New Giveaway

Happy New Year!

Before I get to the looking forward part, I wanted to do a quick look back. These are some of the things I made/came across/thought were pretty enough to photograph through 2012.

January

February

 

MMarch

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Looking through so many pictures made me realise just how much I’d made last year. Some months were a lot more productive than others, but I’ve enjoyed my creativity very much this year.

I wrote last January about my habit of starting things that I never get round to finishing. I still do that – I have a box of unfinished projects (that I’ve managed to lose somehow!) but I’ve learnt a lot even from the things that I’ve not completed. I’m hoping that 2013 will be the year when I learn to finish the things I start, but even if I can’t manage that I’m sure I’ll continue to learn a lot of other things along the way. I hope you’ll continue to join me on my creative journey!

One last thing before I go. On 12th January it will be my One Year Blogging Birthday! I decided it’s about time for another giveaway, and my Blogging Birthday seemed like a great time to do it. I’ll announce the details of the giveaway at some point over the next couple of days, so watch this space 🙂

Operation Christmas Child

A few weeks ago my friend announced that she didn’t want presents for her birthday this year – or at least, not presents for herself. Instead, she asked for donations to a shoebox. You may remember (if you’ve been reading long enough) that I started making a few things for Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes earlier in the year.

Well, I have to say that all my ideas of stocking up on hats, gloves and scarves over the year didn’t work out quite how I imagined it would. Basically, I got distracted! So by this point I don’t have nearly as many goodies as I had once thought. But my lunchtime knitting has been going rather well, and just this morning I finished the scarf I’ve been working on over the last couple of weeks.

I also popped into the wool shop in town this afternoon to see what they had, and found some lovely chunky wool. I started knitting with it almost as soon as I got home, and 35 minutes later I had another scarf! I’ve decided that chunky wool is definitely the way forward!

Last week I decided that a hat or two would be good to include too, so started looking around on ravelry (what a great place!) and came across a pattern for this hat.

I was also inspired by several other patterns to make this one. The flowers are from an Attic 24 pattern.

So now I have a lovely little pile of woolly goodies ready to take to my friend later 🙂

 

Cotton slippers

Last week I bought a couple of bins. Not for rubbish, but to keep all my yarns in! They had got to the stage of just being everywhere, strewn about the room or in various carrier bags. I really should have got 3 bins, but I have managed to (just about) squeeze most of my stash into 2 – as long as a I have a selection in my stripy work bag it’s all fine. Until I go shopping again.

Anyway, as I was sorting through everything I came across my lovely cottons. I have had some of these for absolutely ages, and get them out to look at every now and again, but usually put them back without doing anything with them. But this time I was determined to actually make something. So I had a little browse through Ravelry.

So many beautiful patterns! I had a look for baby patterns, as I only have small amounts of my cotton yarns, and came across a pattern for a crocheted hat and sock monkey! The link is here, but I’m not sure if you’ll be able to view the page without signing in. If you can’t see the page, sign in to Ravelry and search ‘Sock monkey and baby hat’. I decided to make the hat without ears and added a little flower. Cute!

It looks a slightly odd shape here, but it looks better in real life – honest!

Anyway, after the hat I found some gorgeous patterns for baby slippers. Again, the link is here but if you can’t view the page search ‘Dainty Mary Janes’. They are just beautiful!

 

I’m not sure if I didn’t follow the pattern or something, but as I was taking pictures (and had them next to each other for the first time) I realised that the straps are in different places! So I’m hoping that I’ll have enough yarn to make another ‘pair’ to match up with the 2 I’ve already made. They’re really very tiny – only about 8cm long. Here is one on my hand to give you an idea of the size…

The flowers are actually in place of buttons. The strap has a loop on the end as a button hole.

I wanted to see if I could make similar but bigger, so I’m playing around with different yarns and numbers of stitches in an attempt to see if I can make it work. I’ll hopefully show you the results soon 🙂

Once every four years

Happy leap day everyone! I don’t know about you, but today hasn’t been that different to any other really, but it kinda feels like it needs mentioning simply because it doesn’t happen that often.

So today hasn’t been particularly special, just pretty crazy. And the day isn’t over yet and I still have a long to do list. So instead of getting on with it I thought I’d write about it instead! Don’t you just love procrastination?!

Anyway, what with having a kinda crazy week, I’ve not felt like crafting much. I come home exhausted and still have things to do for the following day, so I get on and do them as quickly as I can so I can fall into bed as soon as possible. How rock and roll am I?! Hopefully next week will be calmer and I’ll be able to get back into the crafting groove.

But for now, here is a little selection of what I’ve been up to this month. A nice lot of colour to liven up a pretty gloomy month 🙂

A Churchy Weekend

I have spent this weekend with a wonderful group of people from church. We have had so much fun, some great teaching and fabulous weather. When we arrived it was really quite wintery – cold, grey and just a bit gloomy. But by the time we left today it’d done a complete turnaround. The sky was blue, the sun was shining, daffodils were blooming and it was even quite warm – spring is on it’s way!

Yesterday afternoon was a time for walking (for those who chose to) or relaxing in the sun. I chose the latter. I had my large, stripy crochet bag stuffed to the brim with wool and many plans for what to do. Unfortunately plans don’t always work out. For one thing, I had planned to have another go at those slipper boots which hadn’t turned out quite how I wanted. But halfway through my journey on Friday I realised I’d left the pattern at home.

But it was ok – there was another pattern I wanted to try out, I’d do that instead. However, that pattern was scribbled down on the back of the slipper boots pattern.

Never mind. I had a book with several patterns that I wanted to try out. I selected a hat pattern – it looked fairly simple which meant that I could chat away to Emma (who was sitting next to me crocheting the most adorable little baby boots) at the same time. So I merrily chained 90 stitches, then did a few rounds of doubles before thinking that perhaps I should check the size. It was too small.

By this time I was already feeling quite frustrated, so rather than figure out how to adapt the pattern I unravelled it all and started making a pair of gloves instead.

I was merrily working away when the walkers came back. Most of the families had been out, so in traipsed a stream of children, all chattering away about what they’d seen and done. Then little Mouse, the cutest 4 year old you can imagine, hopped up on to my lap asking “Can I help you?”

Of course, I couldn’t resist, so away went the glove and out came the pinkest wool we could find in my bag. We sat there happily chatting and chaining until I had to go elsewhere. The resulting chain was only about 5 or 6 stitches long and was rather uneven and wonky, but Mouse and I had a lot of fun making it 🙂

 

Finishing off and sewing up

 I was having a bit of a sort out this morning. With all my new wool (and all the many balls I already had) it needed a bit of organisation. And as I was working my way through a carrier bag with some cottons I’ve had for a couple of years I found a nearly finished hat! No idea why it was in that bag in the first place, or why it was still unfinished – it must have been in the bag for at least a year. But obviously I was distracted from the sewing up process (never my favourite thing to do) by something far more interesting.

But it seemed a shame to leave the poor hat in its unfinished state, so I got out my big fat plastic needle and had it finished off in 5 minutes! And it’s now in my Operation Christmas Child bag, waiting to be sorted into shoeboxes later in the year.

But the hat wasn’t the only thing I finished this morning – I also completed my wrist warmers! And they turned out so much better than I expected! Halfway through making the first one I really wasn’t sure (especially as I was making it up as I was going along), but when the first one was finished it looked quite good. Now they are a pair they look even better! 

I just love the little flowers, and my new buttons give the perfect finishing touch. Beautiful!

So, what do you think? Leave me a comment and let me know – it’s always good to have feedback!

P.S If you really like them, you can go and buy them here 🙂