365 pictures - Day 5

Forsythia in our garden. This poor plant has been moved from here to there and all over, and it's had branches broken off, and it's still flowering itself silly. I always feel that when forsythia is in flower, then it's proper spring. 

365 pictures - Day 4

Some lovely shiny celandines in our garden. I love the sheen on the inside of the petals, and the way they open out in the sunshine. 

365 pictures - Day 3

It's been raining overnight and here are some daffodils, heavy with raindrops. 

365 Pictures - Day 2

With all the trees full of buds, it's hard to choose just one, but I think this is special. A peek into the opening bud of a horse chestnut. 

365 Pictures

Every year, I seem to have more and more trouble with winter. And every spring, I'm thinking there's going to be another winter. It's not good for me. 

So what to do about it? Because I know there are beautiful things to see all year long. I'm going to try to post a picture every day. Something seasonal, from my garden or elsewhere. Just so I can look properly and see the beauty. And I'll limit myself to a single picture per day. 

Today's picture - one of the cherries in my garden. This one's called "Ruby" - my mum's name. We bought it in a garden centre in the Lake District one year. 

Blanket number one!

Yes, it's blanket number one. I not only succumbed to buying one pack of this gorgeous yarn, but also the one in the other colourway.  Here are the pics from blanket number one. 😊

Lots of squares for my Scheepjes Wol blanket number one.  This blanket was as random as I could make it - every square different. It was massively satisfying to pile all the squares up to admire them.

The week one pattern. I got so far, following the pattern, then started varying...

Week two, with bobbles. It was pure murder sewing in all the ends for the contrasting colour bobbles.

Week three.

Week four - the first week I used any sort of theme, colour-wise.

Week five. I altered the pattern on some of them to have more 'butterflies'.

Week six - another theme for the colours.

Week seven - the original pattern didn't have the double flower at the centre, but I felt the gaps were too big, so I filled them in a little.

Week eight - I closed up the gaps around the flower on this one too.

Week nine - plain colours, but every pattern different.

Week ten - more bobbles!

 All joined together! It turns out that random actually takes a lot of organisation.

A pretty lacy border.

And thanks to Wink from A Creative Being (see the link in my side bar), and the ladies from the Facebook CAL group, I have a lovely bright blanket to go on my sofa and snuggle up with in the cold winter evenings.

You can see the other blanket folded on the end of the sofa, and also some of my other current projects, which I will photograph and display soon. That's the plan. For now, on with the projects!

I can resist everything but temptation...

I can resist everything but temptation and more yarn. I succumbed, and ordered the yarn for Scheepjes Wol's Crochet-A-Long. The colours are just so lovely! I ordered the 'Succulent' colourway, after much deliberation, and it should be arriving this week.  The first part of the pattern is released this coming Friday.  Excited!

In the meantime, I've finished the blanket I started a couple of years ago.  Very pleased with that. Except for the small issue of the ends not being quite the same width.  That'll be down to one end being granny squares and the other being granny stripes.  I padded the short end out with stitches as much as possible, but it's still a little uneven.  Not noticeable as long as I don't fold it up...

It is just the right size to go over our bed in the winter.

The pattern came from Nicki Trench's Cute and Easy Crochet, but I widened it to go over the bed, and changed the edging. I was going to do a zigzag edging I found on Pinterest, but in the end I did pretty much the same thing in a straight line. It's crocheting into only the back loop for each row, so it comes out with that little ridge.

I'm trying out some patchwork too, right now.  I got a book for my birthday called 'Quilting On The Go', about English Paper Piecing.  I prefer to work by hand, so it suits me nicely. I've learnt some really good techniques for making the patches, and once I realised I could order precut paper templates, that was it! It was always the hours spent cutting the inevitably wonky hexes out that put me off when I was younger.  These must be die-cut or something - they're so magically even! It makes the patchwork even too.

That's it so far. It's going to be built out to a rectangle, then evened up with some half-hexes.  After that, I'm feeling my way a bit, but the book is very informative. Finally, it's going to be a little quilt for Hattie to sit on my lap on. She's not majorly fussy about perfection, but I'd like to make this as nice as possible. It's a good practice piece.

I also found a good way to keep my patches in the right order while I stitch them on. That photo there is a quick pic on my phone to remember the order for the next row, but then I thread the patches onto a length of cotton with a button on the end, so I can slide them off one by one in the right order. I'm sure this is a very well known method, but I was really chuffed with myself for coming up with it.

And of course there are always multiple projects on the go. A while back, I got a job lot of Sirdar yarn from eBay with the idea of doing a blanket from squares.  Each square is small, so it can be worked in the car or with a cat on my lap (a permanent fixture in the winter). I just make as many squares as I can get out of each ball, then I'll work out an order to put it together in.  That'll be fun.

Nice colours. They screamed 'blanket' as soon as I saw the eBay pics.

And no post would be complete without a portrait of a pusscat!

Penny on my birthday.  Or her birthday. She certainly thought it was her birthday when all these bags and paper turned up one morning!