A different finished project

Soooo, who remembers the blanket I was putting together?

It’s all done now!!!

About half the ends are now darned in; the other half should get done next weekend at my spinning group meeting. Then it should get washed but probably won’t bother before taking it to work to use as a lap blanket when it gets cold (like now! It snowed this morning!)

I’ve got a lot of partial balls of yarn left…any suggestions? I’m thinking crochet hexagons but nothing’s decided yet.

Sami’s blanket is nearly doneeeee

The ends have been darned in (that was a very long session at my local crafting group!), and the border has been started.

The border will be these colours, in this order.

and so far I’ve done the yellow, the pale blue and half of the next one alone. Here’s hoping it can get finished today!

So, umm, yeah. Hi?

Ok, so life has been somewhat crazy (surgery, recovery, etc). I’m better now, but so far behind on my to-do list I’m running in circles. Clearly I need a better to-do list, with things such as ‘eat breakfast’ on it. Sigh. NExt week…nah, next week is also going to be insane.(Side note, I really really really miss my bike right now. How do people cope catching the bus everywhere???????????)

Anyway, enough about that. Whilst on recovery, I had a friend come stay with me. And so naturally that meant I had to make her a blanket (She had to ditch the old one I made her due to an extremely bad personal set of circumstances, so a replacement was doubly necessary). She liked the harmony blanket by attic24, but wanted different colours this time, so I sent her colour samples for all of the attic24 blankets, and she went with the coastal ones. Over recovery I made all the squares:

(Note that of course I’m not being sensible and darning in the ends as I go….)

And start joining them up with the yellow

It worked so much better than I was expecting 🙂 Here it is with 4 stripes joined

Unfortunately, it’s also a lot slower than I was expecting, so I had to cart it back to my place after recoery (I went to stay with the parents)

These are the colours I chose for the border

Unfortunately, it’s kinda fallen onto the back burner as I have a few urgent projects on the go which I can’t stop doing for the length of time it’ll take me to finish the blanket 😦

Must dash to the bus, back later with a cross stitch I did over recovery (after I finish-finish it!)

WIP Thursday- Omnibus edition and a bonus FO

Ok strewth this has been a busy *some vague length of time*. I feel as though I’ve been getting on really well with all my various WIPs, which may be because a lot of time has passed, I’m not quite sure how much time has passed (partially because I’m not quite sure when I’m counting from???).

So, I thought I’d do a thorough update of all my current WIPs. (I also looked at my ‘current WIPs’ page and was horrified at it…)

Firstly, the conservatory cross stitch- butterfly fairy. This is kinda not really a WIP at the moment- I had to put this scroll bars away beause my sister’s cat is here for the week and parked threads on the aida + kitty =bad idea. But I have still done some more on it since the last time I gave you all a photo of it, so here it is.This is a close up of the edge of the wing of the fairy. I’ve also been doing some of the large areas of stitching (but that involves blending filament so I’m sort of avoiding doing that…), so I’m more than half way down the right side now!!!

Quick question, looking at this. Would it be better if I rotate the pictures so they’re the ‘correct’ way around for you? I’m used to seeing them this way as I’m working sideways accross the design due to the size of my scroll bars?

I’m really looking forward to seeing the cat go (although he is an adorable cat, I think he’s put me off getting a cat when I’m older), so I can go back to work on this.

Then I have three WIPs in the sitting room… the blanket is officially on hold. I just can’t really be bothered to move it. Occasionally I’ll pick it up(in the evening, when it’s nice and cool) and do a few rows, it’s just too hot to work on most of the time. It’s my official completely mindless project! No pic because it’s impossible to photograph well and always just looks that same!

The cardigan is kinda-not really stalling. I’ve done the left front, but rather than use that momentum to see if these buttons will work, I’ve moved back to doing the sleeves. I had paused one sleeve to do the main body (easy way to gauge swatch, anyone?), so I’ve now nearly finished the sleeve cap ready to do the second sleeve. No photograph of this because I am upstairs and it is downstairs and I can’t stand the thought of having to go down and up the stairs again after my bike ride this morning (so unfit! Must do more cycling!). I had previously said that this appears to be knitting itself. I’m less convinced about that now, because all my energy is on the socks, so naturally they’re the ones knitting themselves now!

I did the heel turn!!! It really reminded me why I dislike knitting socks cuff down (I despise picking up the stitches along the heel flap, but there we go. Knitting and purling two together is so much easier than the wrap and turns used when knitting toe up, so swings and roundabouts I guess (where does that saying even come from???). This appears to be knitting itself since I’ve spent quite a few afternoons knitting while watching tennis. Very exciting sport for us Brits!

And finally, the WIP in my bedroom- Stained Glass. I finished a page on it!!!

This is page 6 out of 16, so I’m more than half way accross the second row now. I also started page 7, but I’m really thinking that I don’t want to keep working on it. When I started it, I had this grand plan to ‘colour’ the areas in different colours, but I’m not sure that I’d ever get around to it, and it’s really not ‘me’. Far too monochromatic. So I think I’m going to stick it back away for a while to see if I change my mind, and if not, just toss it. Life is too short to waste on things you don’t want to make and then dont want to use after it’s made!

Ok, I didn’t actually think I was going to type that all out, but then it happened! So I guess that’s going away again then, and I’ll find something else to start doing up in my bedroom. Hmm. Or maybe not, and if I’m up in my bedroom at a loose end I’ll start playing my computer games, which I have missed quite a bit!

And finally, the bonus finished object!It’s my mum’s birthday soon, so rather than trawl through card shops looking for something suitable, I decided to make my own card! Much less hassle, cheaper (if you take the cost of the card by itself, rather than the 10-pack), and probably didn’t take that much longer than the length of time I’d spend staring at cards hating life. Win all around really!

Penultimate blanket post???

So this blanket is really racing along now. The joining is nearly halfway done, and I think it’s looking pretty good (having Friday off really helped with this!)

(It’s all piled up like that to make it more manageable as I add new squares in, I’ll get a decent pic of the whole thing when all the squares are added 🙂 )

This joining method is pretty awesome, and I’m now very tempted to make a new scrappy blanket joined this way. Its another way of making lots of squares and then putting them together, making it portable, but they aren’t sewn together, so it’s much less fuss than that! Maybe after Christmas! Although adding in new squares is rather annoying. I’ve got a method going pretty well, but manhandling the whole blanket is already annoying, and it’s just going to get harder…

Hopefully it’ll be finished next week… I have a deadline in my mind of posting it next Monday, so if I’ve joined it all this week, then I can do the border over the weekend, hopefully. We’ll have to wait and see really, if I can wrangle enough time to spend on it!

I’ve also decided to really get on with this annoying Dick Bruna blanket The realisation that I’ve been working on it for more than a year suddenly hit me, so I’ve decided that it can be my NaNo project 😛 So every day in November (until it’s finished) I will finish a square on it (I’ve done up to and including O is for Octopus). I should finish sometime in the middle of November then, and the damn thing will be done. I’m so never doing it again!

Cute blanket piles

So, I was going to write a cute blog post about how my granny squares grow, but then I got rather caught up making them, so I’ve finished that part of the blanket. So have a photo of them all together instead 🙂

I think I need a break from crochet before I crochet them all together, but I’m not really sure what else to do…the other Christmas presents with an early deadline are also crochet…note to self: next time organise it so you have a choice of things. Hmm, I’m knitting one of my aunt’s an advent scarf (the aunt who didn’t get the first iteration of the advent scarf because she doesn’t like mohair). I may as well make a start on that, I suppose.

How is everyone else’s Christmas presents coming along?

More blanket work

So, this isn’t exactly the most interesting to posts, given that I’m still just crocheting squares, but I’m more than half way there now! So have a photo of pretty piles of squares!

I’m also thinking about all the other presents I need to make, but I’ll work on that some more before finialising the list and letting you all know. 🙂

Intermittent blog posts the first

I was asked a curious question today (don’t worry, crafts will come soon enough, and I promise to not drown this blog in maths stuff!). I was asked whether or not I was still happy that I’d decided to do a PhD, and was I still happy that I’d decided to do it at York. The answer to both of these is unequivocally yes, and while my future is still scary and un-defined (job applications are really awkward!), getting to this point is amazing, and I love it.

 

Anyway, on to the crafting! Most of the time, I’ve been working on my housemate’s birthday present, and I have 9 squares finished

and a 10th nearly finished. I have also decided on my next blanket (when all the other presents planned so far are finished!).

One of my friends recently got a job, which is amazing, and so naturally I decided that she deserves the next blanket I make 🙂 I sent her attic24s washing line of colour palettes to see what she liked, and then narrowed it down to the Harmony blanket, which I sent her a pic of to confirm that she likes it. She does, and I can’t figure whether she’s oblivious about the fact I’m going to make her one, or whether she realises I’m going to make it, but is playing dumb, so I get to feel amazing about it all 😀

Either way, I can’t wait to get on with it 😀 However, my shoulder has really started playing up, so I’m trying to limit the amount of time I spent crocheting This is rather difficult to do, since it takes less than a row to upset it on the longer rows. *sigh* I’m going to start yoga again to try and deal with it, but it feels different to the crunchiness which was sorted by yoga last time. Any tips, lovely people???

A medley of crafts

Hi all! Life suddenly got very technical here for a while, and while that hasn’t stopped (and won’t until I finish the PhD and (hopefully) get a job in August…) I have managed to wrangle a few minutes to talk to you about crafts 🙂 Which I’m sure you’ll all agree is more interesting than the maths and teaching I’m also busy writing about!

So, what have I been up to? I’m still having fun with the attic24 blanket, it’s amazing! I’ve not completed 6 squares and sewn them together (I know far better than to leave them to the end!)

And there was one final craft session with the DIYSoc at Uni. This time was lino printing, and we were all given a bag to embelish

This was rather amusing really. Everyone else made a few stamps and then reused them, so they were stamping very early on. But I wanted to make a statement, so I opted to cut out one big stamp, and use it once. Much harder work (my shoulder still dislikes me for that!) but I think it was worth it. I know I couldn’t’ve managed such an awesome shape (although I did want it the other way around!) with just a few shapes.I also deliberately didn’t touch it up with the paints afterwards. I’m thinking that I’ll maybe embroider them, or add some sequins or something. Thanksfully *not* a craft I want to keep doing, but it was definitely fun trying it!

I’ve also jumped off the ‘Christmas presents before other crafts’ train, and cast on for a pair of socks. Thes are incredibly lazy socks, since I’m doing them one at a time (I’m not quite sure why they’re lazier in my mind, but they are!), but they are definitely my destress project. Which I didn’t realise how much I needed until I cast them on just a few hours ago, and hey look, a blog post!(And you know you’ve been writing too much technical stuff when you immediately try to reference something for that…*facepalm*)

The colours are much more vibrant in real life, but it still gives some indication as to how awesome these socks are going to be 🙂

 

I should probably also mention that I’m planning on starting reading blog posts again soon! I stopped because I didn’t have the time, and then I started deleting them from my inbox because I couldn’t deal with having so many unread emails! But I’m figuring that I should wrangle the time to read all about your awesome crafting/lives even if I don’t have the time to reply to them all!

Crochet Blanket

So, I started getting a little bored of the Dick Bruna blanket, and decided to have a little fun, and break out the new yarn 🙂

A while ago, I decided I wanted to crochet a blanket for my housemate’s birthday (it’s his 21st), which, naturally necessitated a trawl through ravelry. For a while, I was taken by this one, but then decided to go with attic24s latest, a log cabin blanket, after I looked up a bit of the history (they used to be given to children when they flew the nest, so it makes perfect sense to make it for him!) So I ordered the yarn, and it sat around for a while because I was being good and trying to get the Dick Bruna one out of the way, and then the other day I decided I’d had enough and I was going to start crocheting damn it!

I piled all my lovely yarn in a crate, because it needs to be contained somehow and I need to be able to cover it in something until the housemate leaves on Sunday! It’s all so pretty!

And so naturally I had to immediately start crocheting 🙂

I think it’s pretty darn adorable 😀 So far I have 4 finished, so I’d better get back to it now…or not actually, the housemate’s come home. It feels rather strange having a secret project again 🙂