I Paid My Money And Got A Surprise

I am always ordering bargain secondhand knitting or crochet books. The one I got yesterday and the one I got today I ordered blind. There was no description of what was in the book. The one that arrived today was just described as Exciting Crochet by Muriel Kent. I took a chance. Paid £2.81p and waited.

It certainly is exciting and challenging too. Beverooni will laugh and perhaps be a little jealous when she sees that most of the patterns are Tunisian with some Broomstick crochet (as on the front cover) I have all the hooks and I have tried Tunisian a couple of times. Now I really do not have any excuse as I like so many designs in the book. They may not be high fashion but they are certain my kind of designs.

Classic Chanel style waistcoat where the stitch looks close enough to be so warm. I love the pretty trim.

Interesting textures in the pattern stitches for this jacket. I think I would prefer slightly stronger colours though.

A basic warm winter jacket with useful pockets.

I am not as keen on this jacket but the stitch could be useful for something else.

Another pretty waistcoat that seems to be worked in mohair with a fancy yarn for the stripes.

A page that shows examples of the stitches on some of the projects in the book.

A full length coat in a slip stitch stripe pattern. Once again I would change the colours.

This is a straight neck long sleeved sweater. It has an interesting stitch pattern. Stripes but with block patterns within the stripes.

These are a couple of sweaters in broomstick crochet. Although I did learn the technique years ago I found it rather awkward holding the overly large knitting needle that is used for this method of crochet.

I could have made a hat for the Royal wedding if only I had this book then!

Another waistcoat and collar that don't seem to be as openwork as some of the broomstick crochet can be,

The coat looks very pretty but I think that I would worry whether the fabric was firm enough to stop it from dropping downwards. It does look like it is crocheted in mohair so it won't be as heavy as normal yarn.

An afghan in striped for you afghan lovers. I am very bad at making anything so large in one piece. I have only made throws etc when they are done in granny squares. Apart from that the largest blanket I have ever made was for a baby.

These bright pop up laundry baskets are a very cheap option for storing some of my stash to keep it tidy. My pile of wool descended on me the other day like an avalanche. Hopefully netting some packs in these will stop it happening again when I pull the bottom pack of a pile!

 I have started another top for my niece with the remainder of the Silky Look from her Doris Chan jacket. I would have done more but I was crocheting last night and I was a bit tired and I misread the pattern. When I awoke this morning the mistake was glaring at me so I had to unravel a whole ball. It's maddening when that happens but the motto is don't crochet half asleep!

Oscar the cat has gone missing. My ex neighbours accidentally let him out of the door and they haven't seen him since. I am really worried as if he tried to come back to his old home then he has to cross busy main roads and a motorway exit and entrance. I am trying not to think what his fate might be and hope that by shouting him in the neighbourhood where he is living now they will eventually find him.

Still No Books

I waited in all day in the hopes that my books would get delivered. I got excited when I got a knock on the door this morning but it was the postman with a parcel for my neighbour.I have never known Amazon to be so slow with their deliveries once they have sent the e mail saying my books are in the post. I do hope that they arrive tomorrow. I start to worry when parcels don't show up when I expect them.

I have been crocheting away with the grey jacket. I am doing it in pieces as I am juggling the wool. I want to get the back and fronts to the same length to see how much wool I have left to finish off the jacket. The green jacket is my old version of the pattern but Sylvia's won't be quite as long as I won't have enough wool for that.I am not putting a base rib on Sylvia's either as it pulls around the bottom. I think a simple UK double crochet edging will be better.

I haven't gone mad and knitted the child's cardigan in red chunky overnight. I made this jacket ages ago and it had a very small dodgy looking hood that I was never happy with. I decided last night to take off the hood and remake the neckline with a neckband. At least now it can be worn.

Nothing much else to report. I have had a quiet day. I was supposed to be doing a few things but instead I waited for the books to arrive. The postman doesn't bring items from Amazon so they can arrive any time during the day. One time my books arrived at 6pm. Amazon use a home delivery service instead of the post.

Still no concrete news on any foster babies but we do know that there are baby girls around waiting to be fostered so fingers crossed that my friend gets a girl. Meanwhile I have stopped crocheting baby things until we know for sure that a baby is arriving soon. Babies go into foster care for all kinds of reasons. Temporary placements and more permanent ones. Newborns and toddlers. I am waiting to see what arrives sometime soon before I make any more items for my friend.

I am going to have a rummage in my buttons that are left over from when I had a shop and see if I can find any suitable for the grey aran. Not that I think I will get to the borders tonight but if I find more than one type of button suitable then I can give Sylvia a choice before I make the buttonholes. Depending on what buttons I have defines the size of the buttonholes

Fingers crossed that my books get delivered tomorrow as I have to go out to do some shopping soon and as I am the person who takes in everyone else's parcels I know that no one will be home to take in my books if I miss the delivery man. I can't report them as missing until 7 days after dispatch anyway.

The Postman Brought Books

I went to pre order the new Doris Chan crochet book from Amazon (even though it is not due out until April) and these two books sprang into my basket. Oops. The Crocheted Gifts book has a few things in it that I will probably make and I will take a few photos later in the week to show you some of the things in the book that I like. The front cover afghan is a favourite and guess who it is by - yes Doris Chan so it was bound to be a winner in my eyes. The Natural Crochet book, however, I have found very disappointing and I doubt if I will make more than one of the items in it. I try, wherever possible, to support UK designers but when the books are as lack lustre as this one is I find it hard to be enthusiastic. The designs are pretty mundane and don't seem to fit the children in the book too well. The front cover shrug appears to bunch up around the back of the neck which I am sure would annoy any little girl who wore it. Ah well I will just add it to my pile of books and think that maybe one day I will make something from it.

Charlie's 2nd aran cardigan has made some progress and now has two fronts as well as a back but as you can't keep me from crochet long I decided to start a crochet pram blanket with some Hayfield Baby Chunky that I had in my stash. Nice mindless crochet whilst I watch catch up TV on my PC. Today it was Piers Morgan in Hollywood and then interviewing Sir Cliff Richard. Then for some reason I found an audience with Kenneth Williams from years ago and watched that as well. It was that old that Matthew Kelly was in the audience with dark hair and a beard and wearing some kind of strange rainbow sweater! A lot of people in the audience have long since departed to the theatre in the sky along with Kenneth Williams.

Buster has settled down quite well apart from the fact that he seems to be super glued to my feet. Everywhere I go he goes. I have almost tripped over him quite a few times as he lies at my feet even when I am washing dishes or on the PC. We have just come back from a walk. It's funny but he wants to go out at exactly the same time as we used to go out when he lived here and stops for a stick throw in all of the same places. It's almost like he has never been away. I love him being here but I find it all a bit too much for my knee. I think I will be sad to see him go but glad not to have to walk him up hill and down dale every day.

New crochet books

I overslept this morning which is hardly surprising considering how little sleep that I have had in the last few weeks. I was woken up by a loud thud on the doormat. It was my new crochet books from Amazon. I was surprised to see them this early as I only ordered them on Thursday evening and I chose the no postage option which usually delays the books by a day or so.

The book on crochet and knit flowers is well worth the £7+ and I am going to make use of it later for some more flower brooches. The crochet sweater book contains many patterns that I will make, perhaps not fashionable for the young but practical for me who doesn't always want crochet to be openwork and lacy.I will take some photos of the contents of the book later. The odd ball book is a disappointment. Silly pillows and baby hats with fun fur fringes around the face are not my idea of using up odd balls. The only pattern that I think I will use is baby shoes but I will adapt from the mohair in the book. I mean - just who puts babies in mohair slippers? Have they never heard of wet sticky baby fingers and shedding mohair? The thought of all of that mohair finding it's way into a baby mouth is unthinkable. I am sure that some of these designers for children and baby wear don't actually have children of their own otherwise they would use far more practical wool that withstands the rigours of multiple washings that a normal baby generates during the course of a day. My son could get through at least 3 changes of clothing in a day when he was a baby and there would have been no way that I would have been hand washing and pulling into shape anything he wore.

As I said yesterday the wool for the rest of the mermaid tail arrived yesterday and I diligently crocheted most of a ball last night by the light of my lamp. This morning in the sunlight it became apparent that the colour has varied considerably from the first ball that I had crocheted a few weeks ago but as the pattern is intricate and the triple trebles are playing havoc with my wrists there is no way that I am undoing it all the way to the beginning and starting again. The wool is fluffy and I would probably waste loads of it as the strands tend to weld themselves together in crochet. Each ball appears a slightly different to the other when I look at it in the sunlight so there isn't a lot that I can do about it and I am certainly not faffing about doing a couple of rows from one ball and then changing to another, and then another. Fish have different colours so I will just have to hope that the changes don't show too much on the photos. That is one of the drawbacks from hand dyed wool. It can vary considerably from ball to ball.

The weather is lovely today but I haven't seen much of it so far. I just feel incredibly tired as I usually do when I have too much sleep. I hate lying in bed as it spoils the rest of the day for me.

Crochet granny square shawl with flower motif centre

I can post a heading to my blog today - yeah! I have not been doing a lot of crocheting or knitting for a couple of weeks due to the house renovations. The indoor ones are almost finished with the exception of re-painting the bathroom door and putting up the towel rail and hooks. I also do not have a handle on the said door so visitors have to sing loudly if they want to use the bathroom as the door won't stay closed. For the last few days I have been putting stuff into storage bags and boxes, putting them into the loft area and cleaning up the bedrooms. The dust got everywhere even with the doors closed. I guess the next projects indoors will be painting and decorating the bedrooms but not until later in the year when I can perhaps get a little assistance with that.

I have been sorting through finished projects as a young lady on my street that my son grew up with is having another baby ( a girl Tilly due in August) so I thought I would see what girly baby things I had already made up. I found this shawl. I made the crochet flowers first and then worked a row of trebles (UK terms) with 3ch spaces for each corner behind and under the flower. I then turned it into a traditional large granny square, crocheted 12 squares together and did a shell edge border. I am undecided whether to give her this shawl or a pram blanket made in white granny squares with a rosebud sewn into the centre of each square and a pink and white twisted cord threaded through the edges and tied with bows at each corner. I also have a small crochet matinee in white with a pale green edging and several bonnets. I will photograph each one and put it on Flikr before giving them away as I have started to keep a record of finished articles. Many friends kept saying they wished they had seen things before I gave them away so I made up a site on Flikr in case anyone else wanted to view them as well. http://www.flickr.com/photos/55069560@N00/

I have got a new crochet hat book from Amazon Hip Hats and Cool Caps by Afya Ibomu and a crochet garment book called Fabulous Flirty Crochet by Katherine Lee. (I had won an Amazon voucher) I keep looking through the books trying to decide which project to start when I have finished off my knitted tie fronted shrug and crochet short n sweet shrug for myself. So many nice things I don't know where to start. I will have to use some more of my yarn stash. The last 2 projects I am making didn't make much of a dent in the store! It is all stacked neatly now in underbed storage and catalogued on my pc so at least I can see at a glance if I have enough yarn already purchased for projects I have in mind. I must use some more stash before I can justify buying any more yarn.