Easter Weekend, part three – was I supposed to resist the wool?

On our way to our holiday house in Dolau, I saw this sign;

Of course, my yarn-shop starved brain screamed to GG to make an emergency stop as soon as I saw the sign, and of course he refused! However, my brilliant best friend Maria took pity on me and we called in there on our way back from a trip to Llandrindod Wells to buy milk.

 This was the view of the back of the shop, and the entrance (sort of in between the ex-tree trunk pillars, bottom left-ish of the photo). The shop itself seemed to focus a little more on made up goods rather than materials, but there was a decent selection of specialist yarns in a corner upstairs, as well as some wool for felting which was very tempting but I managed to resist! However, Maria is a bad influence on me, and on finding some skeins of hand dyed laceweight kid mohair, neither of us could resist. We’re planning a weekend away later in the year, and we both have visions of wearing light and pretty shawls while wandering around our chosen destination! So, to our choice of yarn.

 As I’ve said, the yarn is a laceweight kid mohair (and soooooo gorgeous to handle), and we spent ages agonising over the different shades available. In the end, Maria chose this pale green with hints of peach, and I chose the marbled blues below. Neither picture (taken in the evening in our farmhouse) really does credit to the glory of the colours, but I was determined to have these wound into balls before coming home, and so this was the last chance I had to photograph them before they looked like colourful tennis balls! I’ll be sure to photograph the finished articles one I get through them (definitely a May or June project!), and hopefully in the right light you will be able to see how lovely the yarn is.

Another good day!

Despite the rainy start, today has been another good day. It started with an early morning visit from Jo for coffee and toast, followed by the school run and a somewhat soggy wait at the bus stop. My policy of crocheting on bus journeys actually encouraged a lady to talk to me this morning, asking me what I was making and developing into general conversation about her jury service. It made the journey pass quicker, anyway!

Work was really good again. I’m definitely enjoying working in the week and having the opportunity to do more than one task at work rather than being stuck on the same one for eight hours on a Saturday! I also get to mix with more people and, while the Saturday staff are all lovely people, they’re all students and so we have very little in common. On weekdays, I work with more people of my own age, and people who have children, so more in common with me. Also, today my boss complimented me on my work, and the fact that I managed to achieve 101% productivity last month despite not having done lots of the tasks for several years before that. She told me that I was a valued employee and that they are always glad to see me, which was lovely to hear!

Handsome, especially, has been really happy since I’ve not been working at the weekends. He always meets me after school on a Thursday and Friday asking whether I’ve worked enough hours to stay home at the weekend. It’s very flattering to be so loved!

In HUGE news, last night I finished ‘War and Peace’! Yay!! 958 pages down, none to go!! I’ve not yet decided what I’ll be reading next. Maybe something a little shorter! I’m very glad though that for the rest of my life I’ll be able to say (with truth, honesty and conviction) that I have read ‘War and Peace’ all the way through!

I completed two more squares for my crocheted patchwork blanket today, in a sunny yellow colour. I was working on dark red yarn, but the ball was too big to fit in today’s choice of handbag, so I went for the 50g yellow ball instead. It was actually very cheering to be working with that yarn on the bus, when the rain and wind were conspiring outside to make it as miserable a March day as they knew how. I really need to work out how many squares I’ll need, although I had decided to crochet a huge pile before I made that calculation, so as not to put myself off the job.

I went to Shaws today and bought knitting needles for my Easter jumper project. I looked at their chunky weight yarn, but wasn’t grabbed by any of the colours so decided to do some online shopping instead. Does anyone have recommendations for online yarn shops for me? So far, my search has been more or less limited to Ebay, as I don’t have a lot of money to commit to the project and so I thought that might be my best bet for a bargain.

Right, off now to do some online yarn searches. It’s not the same as actually being able to see the yarn before you buy though. I’ve no idea why South Wales, and Cardiff in particular are so poorly-supplied with yarn outlets. People obviously don’t knit and crochet in sufficient numbers to keep the businesses profitable. Ah, to be wealthy and to be able to afford all the lovely yarns that I see advertised! I’ve entered all sorts of yarn giveaways recently though, so keep your fingers crossed for me. x

Completed projects 6 and 7; potholders and dishcloths

I finished these a couple of weeks ago, all but the loops on the potholders and I wanted to bleach the dishcloths before I took a picture, as the cotton I used is a ‘natural’ colour and I prefer my dishcloths to be white. I’ve not done a lot of crafting recently, as I’ve been trying to decide what to do next – so many crafts and so little time!

These were both reasonably frugal projects, with the cotton yarn for the pot holders coming from Lidl, at about £4.50 for 8 balls (50g each) and the dishcloth cotton from Shaws’ at 80p a ball (100g). The dishcloths were experiments to try out new stitches, or at least combinations of stitches. I’m not sure how successful they’ll be at cleaning dishes, but time will tell!

Right, time to start the next project. But what to do next?!

Another 2009 project

This is going to be a project which will take me right up until next Winter, I reckon! I’m quite quickly getting through my stash of DK yarn, crocheting squares to make myself a patchwork quilt for my bed. My plan is to make a normal patchwork blanket, and then add a fabric back to make it a really cosy quilt. So far I’ve got 24 squares, and I’ve no idea how many it will take! I plan on making a fair few more squares before I even look for the answer to that question. Otherwise I get the impression that I’ll get discouraged!

Completed projects 3 and 4, 2009

So, here’s two more projects that I’ve recently completed. At least having a cold means that I can be productive in alternative ways, and I don’t have to stop altogether! First is a picture of a bronze-coloured scarf which is a present (belated!) for another friend of mine. She should also have had it at Christmas, but I only finished it last week; I’m sure she won’t mind as she likes Christmas to be spread out!

This photo is of my hat which I finished this morning. I had three balls of this dusky pink wool (Bergere de France, Magic) sitting in my cupboard, and decided that I should really use it up rather than having it gathering dust – I’ve got plenty of other places to gather dust, and I don’t need to create more! The hat used a ball and a half, so I’m thinking of finding another pattern to find either a collar or a pair of mittens to use up the yarn.

The yarn stash is starting to decrease! And I’ve never made a hat before, so I can be happy on two fronts!

An ex-WIP!

I don’t think I’m alone in having a mini-celebration in my head every time I finish a craft project – there’s something so satisfying about producing something entirely under your own steam, whether it’s a drawing, something from yarn, some foodie item that you’ve taken extra time and care over or one of the countless other forms of crafting.

For all you non-‘yarnies’ out there, WIP stands for Work In Progress. I’ve lost count of the number of WIPs I have lying around my house, and I hope to reduce that number this year.

Before Christmas, I started scarves for two of my friends. I obviously didn’t leave enough time to complete them though, given that I finished the last stitches on Thursday evening. I gave the scarf pictured below to my friend Maria yesterday evening, and she seemed very happy with it!

She loves wearing scarves, and so when I saw the pattern for this over at A little slice of life I couldn’t resist. I love the lacy stitching, and the lightness of the finished scarf. I could picture Maria wearing it on a warmish Spring day. I hope to get a picture of her wearing it later on.

As I said, I love the stich combination used in this scarf. It’s very simple to make but very effective, and I have plans (when I’ve cleared some of my WIP backlog a little!) to make myself a summer top using this stitch. More on that at a later date though!