Cushion cover

This is one of the gifts that seemed to take the longest time, and I finally finished it on the 21st!

I don't think I realised how long it would need to be!

I had been wanting to try a ripple pattern for a long time now, but I knew that a blanket would take me far too long (and probably never get finished.. I still have 3 blanket WIPs). Eventually I realised that I could use the ripple pattern to a make a cushion cover. Incidentally, not much after that I was gifted a crochet book by my mother-in-law which had a pattern for a ripple cushion.

I attempted to follow that pattern in the book, but I just couldn't get to grips with the way their ripple was constructed. I decided there must be an easier method, after a little searching I rediscovered Lucy's ripple pattern. I then just adjusted the stitch count so that it would fit the cushion pad that I bought in Wilkinson and off I went! When I finally finished the crochet I sewed up both sides with an overlap and dug out some pretty buttons. All finished!

Yarn - Stylecraft Special DK in Turquoise 1068 (darker blue) and Cloud Blue 1019 - 100g of each

Pattern - http://attic24.typepad.com/weblog/neat-ripple-pattern.html 

And here it is:

Catch up!

Its been a very long time since I have made a blog post here. I'm having that issue that a lot of craft bloggers have at this time of year though, everything I'm making is for Christmas presents! 

I'd love to show you what I've been up to, but since I don't want to risk people seeing what they're going to receive in a few days time, I thought instead that I'd show you a select few pictures from my honeymoon last month!

I'm starting to draft posts about the different things I've been making for people, so I'll schedule those to appear throughout January, and then hopefully I'll be able to keep a bit more up to date with this blog.

Now, on to the pictures I took in beautiful Prague..

I've been rather busy...

There has been lots of crafting, as well as lots of other busy-ness.

I got married on Sunday, and did quite a bit of last minute crafting for that.

I finished off the bridesmaids' earrings (but didn't take a picture.. oops).

I made the seating plan (the day before the wedding.. again, oops!)

 Picture taken from my Mum's collection of wedding pictures, on her facebook page

I made (assembled) bracelet presents for my bridesemaids

I also found time to make a birthday present for my Mum, which I started last week, after making a mistake with the project I had been intending to give her, and scrapping the knitting for crochet instead!

More about the knitting another time, but here is the result of the new project. Crochet fingerless gloves/wrist warmers, pattern can be found here

The yarn is stylecraft special DK (I finally bought some) and the colour is Aster.

I also made a new hat for myself. I started it Saturday night, when I should probably have been trying to sleep. Then spent last night and this morning finishing it off. I didn't follow a pattern, just increased until it felt like it would fit my head, then just sc in each stitch until it was the length I wanted :)

And to finish off this huge post.. a little sneak peek wedding photo taken by our brilliant photographer Hayley, from Tigerfly Photography (on facebook here)

Oo look at this.. exciting news...

I've been a bit behind with my blog reading, but I'm glad I finally got to Woolhogs this week

I found out that I was awarded the voters' choice for September in the Made It Challenge.

As a result I'm allowed to show that lovely little badge over on the right >>

Isn't it beautiful?

Thank you to everyone who voted! :)

Lonely Tree Shawl

I finished my knitting last week!

Here's my shawl, originally mentioned and linked to the pattern here, when I finished it:

Looks alright, but not perfect, and you don't really get the gist of the pattern.. so I had to block it.

And apparently this is the bit where most knitters turn away in horror, or so I've read in other blogs!

To begin with, the blocking was a bit of a nightmare.

I remembered reading on Lucy's blog, Attic 24, about blocking acrylic with steam, which she had suggested for the bunting for yarndale, which has just passed by!

Remembering this, I realised I'd need an iron, and ours, sadly, is not capable of producing steam, due to a crack from it being dropped (thankfully cold) on to our floor...

So, I had to borrow my Mum's, which meant waiting until the weekend to be able to wear my shawl!

Once I'd gotten hold of Mum's iron though, the blocking process was fairly straight forward, if a little time consuming.

I pinned the shawl one section at a time to my ironing board, hovered the iron over it, pressing the steam button far too often, then let it dry, unpinned, and repeated.

When it was finally done, I had my finished shawl (almost.. I sewed in the ends in the car as I was so desperate to wear it!)

So there we have it.. and now I would happily try knitting something again. It gave my fingers a welcome change from my awkward style of crocheting! :)

A different kind of crafting...

Recently I've been doing a lot of baking!

I thought I'd show you all the raisin bread I made this week. I'm quite proud of it as it is lovely toasted, and I managed a plaited loaf on my second ever attempt at making bread completely from scratch!

Not bad huh?

If you fancy having a go, I found the recipe through a bit of google searching, but it is here. I didn't do the glaze partly because I'm watching the calories, and partly because my plan for this bread was toasted for breakfast and I thought the glaze might go a bit sticky in the toaster!

And for good measure, here is my first ever loaf of bread (made completely from scratch, rather than a bread mix), which I made earlier in the week.

This one was made using Paul Hollywood's recipe on the bbc website, here.

Knitting!

I have actually been enjoying some knitting this week! I have always felt like I should love it and persevered to try but it has only really clicked with this recent pattern.

So, let me introduce you to the "Lonely Tree Shawl". I first saw this pattern on not your average crochet when Hannah posted a ravelry knitting wishlist. I loved this look of it and started hunting for yarn to use!

I haven't done any sort of lace work before, or even ever worked from a chart like this does. I am finding working from a chart easy enough though, and getting hang of all the yarn overs now too! I needed a little help from my future mother-in-law to begin with, but after a quick phone call I was on my way.

What do you think of my attempt so far?

A big congratulations...

...to my lovely Mum who found out she passed her degree this week!

To say well done I made another little graduation owl for her.

This one is a little bigger than the 2 I've made before.

Mum's a big Portsmouth football fan, so I crocheted this little guy in their colours for her!

Details

Yarn: blue, yellow and orange are Dolly Mix DK from King Cole

White and Black are nameless acrylics

Hook: 4mm metal hook

Size: I forgot to measure him, but I think he's around 10cm tall

Time to complete: 3 evenings from start to finish

For the first time I'm linking up with Handmade Monday (which I always read about and follow but have never joined in with!)

Another amigurumi animal

Sorry I've been away for a while. Every time I tried to blog it all felt a bit forced. I've also got a bit behind with my crafting, studying for exams took over in the priority list for a while. I'm starting to catch back up with my CAL blanket... I'm on week 9 at the moment, whilst Hannah is on week 13? I think, so I've got a while to go!

I'll update you on that when I'm a bit more caught up and show some pictures of the blanket when it's a bit bigger!

What I really wanted to tap about today is my latest amigurumi make. A lovely little giraffe for my second cousin's second birthday!

Isn't it sweet? I don't want to try to give it a gender yet.. I'll leave that to its new owners I think.

Now, I'll try and give some stats on the project:

Number of colours used: 9 plus black for embroidery

Type of yarn: mostly King Cole dolly mix - the dark purple was from a magazine a while ago and the white/cream is an anonymous acrylic

Height: standing, from foot to horn ~15 inches (just under 40cm)

Time taken to complete: a few weeks as I made the arms and legs and then gave up for a while (oops)

Pattern: I used a free pattern from a blog I ordinarily follow - I love buttons by Emma - the pattern (here) has been available for a while but I saw it had been updated and suddenly really wanted to make it!

What do you think of my venture back to amigurumi? Was this a good project to come back to?

Octopus number 2

I whipped up another octopus this week for my friend's 19th birthday. I was really surprised with how quick it was to work up.

I used a slightly different pattern than for my last octopus. When I went back to the pattern I've used before the webpage wasn't there any more, so I did a quick google search to find another.

The new-to-me pattern makes the body and the tentacles separately so that you sew a circle of tentacles on to the body at the end. Easy-peasey :)

The pattern can be found here.

Week 7 already!

I can't believe we're already on the 7th week of the CAL already. This also means I'm in my 7th week of living in this house! All of it is going well, which is always a good sign.

I am loving my blanket at the moment, and it seems to grow a lot every week.

Here are this week's rows :)

And here's my ever growing blanket!

CAL week 6

Oops I've done so much in the way of crafting this week that it's taken me until now to get around to finishing week 6's rows and posting them!

I finished them off this morning before starting on week 7.

Here are week 6's rows:

And here is the entire blanket so far:

It's getting so big now! Exciting stuff :)

Easy lemon and blueberry mug cake

After trying this lemon mug cake last week, I decided there must be a way to make a version with blueberry added in!

I used the same basic recipe to make mine but there were a few tweaks.

The ingredients I used were:

4tbsp of self-raising flour

3 tbsp fat free blueberry yougurt (I used one from ASDA)

2 and a half tbsp of caster sugar

1 tbsp of vegetable oil

1 tbsp lemon juice (I used the stuff you buy in the supermarket, rather than freshly squeezed)

• Add all ingredients to a microwave-safe mug

• Mix well making sure all the flour from the bottom of the mug gets combined

• Microwave - times will vary depending on your microwave. I used trial and error to get the timing right anyway but mine took between 45 seconds and 1 min

The top of the cake doesn't look great, but once you tuck in..

A quick dessert, and as the yogurt is fat-free.. it can't be that bad for you.. can it?

Coral crush

I have now worn my other Miss Sporty nail polish and have to say, this one impress me more than the last.

Here are the swatches of Coral Crush.

The formula of this polish was much nicer, less "gloopy" than Popcorn was.

It only took 2 coats for me to be happy with this one.

It lasted well for 6/7 days (without a top coat) and started to chip on the very last day of wearing them.

I'm starting to believe though, that this may not just be down to the formula, having been asked this week how I stop my polish from chipping!

Honestly.. I don't know, but polish always seems to last well on my nails. I guess I'm just lucky there!

Week 5 of the CAL

I went to start this week's rows when I realised that I had missed the last one from last week!

So, I started with that.. and here was my blanket after last week's rows.

 Now on to this week's rows..

A double crochet row..

The "Mirrored chevron" rows:

A row of half double crochet (HDC):

Another DC row:

Another HDC row:

And my blanket progress so far!

I really liked the mirrored chevron rows.. I love how they turned out!

I think they might even be my favourite part of the blanket so far :)

Happy with my colour choice with those rows too.

Definitely the right decision to add in the turquoise-y colour!