Not Much Crochet - But Oops I Have Been Stashing Again

I haven't been doing a lot in the way of knitting or crochet these last couple of days as when Buster stays he has a habit of moulting over everywhere so I keep my Christmas present knitting out of his reach. I could not start my niece's black cardigan as I have been waiting for the parcel to arrive.

Today (Sunday) I was amazed to get a delivery of 2 parcels. I think that Royal Mail must have saved them up to get in a bit of overtime money before Christmas unless they really are mowed out with Christmas on line orders. The newspapers do say that more people are ordering their Christmas presents online this year.

The first order was delivered on Saturday and that was my patterns from Kay Jones (Kay's Creative Crochet) I do like her patterns and think that I have now ordered almost every pattern of hers that I like. I have quite a collection. They are written out in UK terms which is a bonus for me. I could order them as PDF's and save the postage but as I didn't have a working printer when I placed the order I sent for hard copies. I am addicted to the nice squeaky paper that she uses to print them out on. If I printed them they would just be on normal A4 paper. I have been using my new printer to print out the patterns that I have ordered PDF recently. I do like a paper copy of my patterns. I haven't as yet tried the scanner that is with the printer. I will have to read the manual for that.

The orders that I got today were from Purplelinda and McA Direct. From Purplelinda I ordered the Black Patons Diploma DK for my niece's cardigan. I also got a bag of stuffing for the Christmas decorations, a Sirdar crochet pattern for my great grand daughters, and two double ended hooks by Knit Pro. Each end is a different size. My online friend Zuleika (Life in the Zu) has had double ended hooks for ages and loves them. I am not sure if they are Knit Pros but Rachael (Artyarn) got a hook bought for her for her as a present and she loves it. I will let you know how I get on with these hooks once I have a trial run. I am famous for buying all different kinds of hooks and then going back to my old ones and giving the new ones away. Still if you don't try anything different then you will never know if you like them.

I have not ordered from McA Direct before but they were recommended to me by a Ravelry friend. I ordered from them as I love Regia wool for socks but in the 6ply and not many people stock that. I can get 4ply anywhere but I do like the 6ply as I only wear my socks around the house or when I wear my boots and so I like the thicker wool. Not to mention that they knit up much faster! The recommended amount is 3 x 50 gram balls per pair of socks and it is £3.95 a ball but as I only like very short legs on my socks I can make a pair from 2 balls. The huge knitting needles are not to knit with. I watched a video on You Tube showing Broomstick crocheting. I tried doing it many years ago but this video made everything much plainer than a book does. My broomstick needle is made of wood and really heavy to handle so I have bought two sizes of plastic needles to try the stitches out. I have the patterns in Doris Chan's latest book and also a booklet with baby blankets in that I have had for many years. The metal clasps are for stash. I cannot buy them anywhere so when I saw them online I just had to buy a couple of sets to keep in my stash. They make a nice single fastener for an edge to edge cardigan.

Yesterday I went to the Islington Mill with Rachael. We were carrying on making some more ornaments for the Christmas tree at the Kings Arms. Rachael is going to take a photo of everything that has been made so far and post it on Facebook. I will copy the photo and put it on here for you to see. On Monday we are starting to trim the tree and see whether we need any more ornaments making. Last night I made a couple of snowmen (they are flat, not stuffed ones) and a couple more Christmas wreaths. I was supposed to be going to my daughter in law's 50th Birthday party in the evening but my back and legs were hurting so much I just didn't feel like making the effort. If the weather had been warmer I would have gone as I do like their parties. They are biker events and great fun. I would have been the misery sat in the corner had I gone. It's hard to feel in the party mood when my back hurts. I don't know why my back pain has suddenly started up again. I can only guess that it's because of the cold weather. I don't know what I would do if I had the snow that Beverooni has. I would hibernate! I have the heating on and still feel cold. I am dreading the winter fuel bills despite getting my heating allowance.

Thanks to everyone for your lovely words and wishes for my Birthday. I do appreciate them. I think that the best part of any Birthday is not the presents (although it is nice to get some) or the cards, it's the fact that people take the trouble to wish you a Happy Birthday. I had visitors, phone calls and of course my online wishes. That, to me, makes a Birthday special. It must be awful for lonely people if they have no one to wish them a Happy Birthday or a Happy Christmas as well.

I have now put most of the stash back in the small bedroom after moving it for my son to take the divan bed away. I decided to take an inventory of what was in there and keep a list on my PC for the future. What I did discover was things that I had forgotten that I had ever bought! They were in plastic bags at the back of the shelf along with a couple of partly crocheted tops. I think having a list of the larger amounts will be beneficial to me when I am planning my next projects. I am not listing all the odd balls or sock wool as that doesn't count as stash. Ha Ha - well not in my eyes. I have bought quite a bit of wool recently that was on offer especially to stash so I want to keep a list of what I actually have in the stash room.

My New Year's resolution for this year not to buy wool for a few months (unless it is for someone else as a gift) lasted until about July and this coming year I should be able to last even longer now that I have catalogued my stash!

I am still waiting for a couple more parcels containing wool and then I am putting my bank cards away for a while. I had to order more as the wool is for presents. That's my excuse and I am sticking to it. Some wool for me might have accidentally jumped into my basket as I browsed but that's allowed. Think of all the VAT and postage that I have saved by ordering now. That's a good excuse isn't it? I don't count the postage as I usually order enough to make it worthwhile. If I had to go and shop for it personally it could cost me more than the postage money in journey costs especially at the moment when I am not using public transport.

I hope to get to the Kings Arms tomorrow night so will make a couple more ornaments tonight. Once I have given everywhere a good hoovering and washed the throws and cushions tomorrow then I will be able to start the black knitting and the navy crocheting.

Time for another cup of hot coffee and a bit of playtime with Buster before he goes home later.

Foliage Cap and Neckwarmer

Despite the many interruptions from Buster I did manage to finish off this knitted cap and neck warmer.The pattern for the cap is a free pattern called Foliage and can be found on Knitty.com. The crochet neck warmer is a length of alternating UK dc and UK trebles to make a short scarf. Each row I put a dc in the treble and a treble in the dc of the previous row. It makes a close interesting stitch, 2 rows from the end I put a couple of buttonholes to fasten the short scarf into a neck warmer. I had seen similar ones on Ravelry and decided to just use up the remainder of the wool to make one to match the cap. The wool that I used is approx 130 grams of Patons Shadow Tweed Shade 06214 that I had left over from another project.

Buster is still with me but my son is calling to pick him up after dinner. They are back from their weekend away but have taken my great granddaughters to the cinema as a treat. It is Emily's birthday tomorrow and she will be 3yrs old. I will get to see the girls briefly as they are calling for Buster on the way home from the cinema before they all go home. Buster is getting very fed up with me as he cannot understand why I am not able to walk him.

I had a bad night and got hardly any sleep because of the pain in my knees so I was definitely not in the mood to walk him today. I miss not having him on a full time basis but I hate the guilt that I feel when I am unable to walk him. We play ball but it is not the same as a good walk. No doubt the other dogs will chase him around once he gets back home again.

I have reached another bag of blue oddments down from my stash as Nexus Cafe in Manchester is asking for some hats,scarves or gloves for the homeless and are having a knit out day next Sunday. I thought that it would be a good way of using up some of my oddments. There could be a lot of striped hats but if they keep people warm I am sure that they won't mind. I will be crocheting most of the hats that I make for quickness. Most of my stash isn't wool but I am sure that they will still be warm enough, Any hat is better than no hat in this cold weather.

"Granny takes a trip" is blocking

All it needs now is 3 crochet buttons and Granny Takes a Trip is finished. If you like making heaps of granny squares, have lots of oddments and like standing out in a crowd then you can get the pattern by clicking on the blog title. I hope that Lisa will like it when she sees it. I will try to post better photos tomorrow without all the pins and with buttons. The sleeves are really wide and hard to show whilst it is blocking out on boards.

A friend used to tell me that I was good at making something out of nothing and I must admit that it gives me a thrill to see a garment made from bits and pieces that some people might throw away or knit toys or stripey scarves with. I used some of Lisa's oddments plus some of my oddments from stash and between us we didn't buy one ball of wool for this jacket.

I am going to start a jacket tonight for me to wear at my niece's wedding and guess what. The jacket I like best has motifs included in it. At least they are not multi coloured granny squares as I feel all grannied out at the moment. Every time I finish off a biggish project using granny squares I say never again but a few weeks further down the line I start again. They are such a good way of using oddments up in a decorative way.

Buster is going home tonight. I will have a mammoth clean up, knee permitting, tomorrow and de hair the house.