Can I Have My Chair Back Please?

Every time I get out of my chair Buster jumps on it. He has decided that this is his seat and whinges and sulks if I happen to be sitting on it. My son would say that I should order him off the chair but as I am Grandma now and not his Mum anymore I do tend to spoil him. I did shout at him yesterday though. As I said on my last post Buster had lasted 5 hrs without an accident whilst I was at the hospital. Yesterday he asked to go outside and before I could open the patio doors he started to wee all over the carpet. I wouldn't mind but he had been out for a wee not a half hour before. He was watching me clean up with his tail down between his legs and his head drooping. After that he decided that he wanted to go out of the kitchen door for a wee instead of the patio doors!



The cardigan for my niece is turning out to be a bit of a pain. Sometimes I wonder why I just don't look at the picture and do it myself. I find these modern patterns so hard to understand and poorly shaped. My niece came today to walk Buster and I asked her to try it on. The pattern stated 4ply and I am using DK and yet still it is very small. Normally I would expect that using a thicker yarn would make it bigger and not smaller. I am not on my own with this as on Ravelry a few people have struggled with this pattern coming out very small. The armholes are very tight despite my working 2 extra rows on the body pieces. The sleeves are crocheted downwards otherwise I would unpick the shoulder seams and add another couple of rows to the body. I would also not decrease the front shaping as much up to shoulders as the neck is extremely wide. I just hope that I can make a silk purse out of a sow's ear when I make the bands. I am hoping that when it is blocked the pattern will stretch out. The wool is silky and got give except at the armholes where I had a set number of double crochet to pick up. As the sleeves are straight if I had picked up more stitches then the sleeves would have been too wide unless I shaped them in.

It's my younger niece's birthday today but apparently she is away on holiday abroad and is sunning herself on the beach. My elder niece's birthday is tomorrow ( they were born 3 yrs apart and not 1 day lol) but I won't have either of her jackets finished by then. She likes the wool that I bought from Kemps for her Mum and thinks that she will like it. We just need to decide on a pattern for later when I have finished both of my niece's jackets.




Tomorrow is Mothering Sunday in the UK. When I go into my kitchen I feel like I have been given some lovely flowers. This Amaryllis was given to me for Christmas 2009. It flowered twice, each time with three flowers, and then just went to loads of long leaves once the flowers died. I didn't know what to do with it so I just kept on watering the bulb until all the leaves bar one had gone yellow. I was very surprised earlier this week when I saw one flower bud emerging from the bulb. As you can see I now have 2 open flowers and a bud ready to open soon. I think that this will be the third and last time that it will flower as now it has no leaves at all to feed the bulb.



I could only take a photo of one of the blooms as they are facing different directions. Although this is a pale Amaryllis it has beautiful shades of peach and pink colour. Mother's Day has come early for me.

I haven't been doing much crochet and no knitting this week. Buster is time consuming mostly because I can't walk him and so he has plenty of energy and wants to be occupied. We have to play ball in the garden or even indoors when it rains. My niece walked him for me today although it took 2 attempts for him to go with her. He suffers from separation anxiety and even though he knows her well she is not me or my son or daughter in law. He likes to keep one of us in his sight when he is out of the house. He frets if he can't see any of us. Once he got to the woodland and off his lead he was fine and took her for a walk. He remembers the way to go no matter how long it has been since he went in there. He came back like a drowned rat as I forgot to tell her that he will jump in the lake and swim. Good job I kept all of his Buster towels when he went to live with my son and his wife. I picked up some black and purple hand towels ages ago in a sale for next to nothing. I don't suppose that those colours are ones that people pick for their bathrooms but they are ideal for dog towelling.

I have just checked and Buster is fast asleep on my chair. This means that I will have to find some cushions to sit on as my sofas are too low down for me. I can get into them OK but it takes me ages to get up and really hurts my knees. I am having a bad ache day. Even the soles of my feet are hurting today and last night I could not reach around to unfasten my bra. My fingers are stiff but I put that down to not doing as much crochet or knitting as usual. Roll on the Summer, such as it is in the UK, as my old bones like the heat. I am in a catch 22 situation. My leg bones, back and arms ache in the cold and yet if I try to warm them up it sets off my eczema and I spend the time itching and making my skin sore. I can't win can I? I do hope that the hospital has an answer for me next time I go.

I need to go and find some socks as now my feet are really cold. I never used to have cold feet and used to walk about bare footed in the house in all weathers but now even with slippers on my feet are cold. After about an hour my ankles will swell up and go itchy and I will have to take the socks off again. I think that I should knit some footlets instead of socks.

Another Christmas present finished!

I have finished a shortie crochet cardigan for my friend Caroline for Christmas. She is such a slim little thing that it seems to take no time at all to make anything for her. There is no pattern as I just made it up as I went along using her forgotten cardigan as a template. I really must sort out my digital camera as the cardi is a rather gorgeous shade of cornflower blue and my camera has turned it into another dirgy bluey grey colour. For some reason my camera does not like blue or purple shades. Turns them all to grey!

I have finished the first sleeve of Kevin's aran and done 32 pattern rows on sleeve number 2 so am on the countdown to hopefully finishing it this week. I love it when I am on the final stretch of anything makes me want to knit faster and faster! I can't stick at it so I will find another project from my Christmas list to start tomorrow.

The first layer of the M&S chocolates has also disappeared. I have tried to ration them out but they are just so yummy that I get tempted. I can't see the next layer lasting long either! I rarely buy chocolates for myself and it's probably as well as I just can't leave them alone if anyone buys them for me. I have put my bunch of flowers on the coffee table where I can see them most of the time. They don't last that long so while they are fresh I want to see them at their best.

I turned down going to Fibre and Clay at the weekend as I didn't think I wanted anything and so now I am going to have to go to Ramsbottom for some wool to use for my niece and her husband. Of all the yarns I already have I can't see any suitable colours in the right amount for what I have in mind. Isn't it always the way? I have managed to make 2 gifts from my stashed yarn so I don't feel too bad.

Kamrin - I am so glad that you too understand my joy at the birthday gift of a sock book. I love books and I browse all the time on the net for the latest crochet books. I do wish they would give more photos of the book contents as I can only afford the odd book now and again and so would like one with at least 3 or 4 things in it that I know I will make. My local library is useless and I have tried browsing the cache of the other local libraries via the library's facilities and have come to the conclusion that the people who order the books in Bury obviously are not crafters in any shape or form. The choice is pitiful. I went into Waterstones in Bury and they had 2 knitting books (both basic how to knit books) and I got told "We don't have any call for knitting books as people buy them on the net" I said people probably do that because you don't have any !!

16 rows done so it's time to crochet

I did my obligatory 16 rows on Kevin's aran and that brings me to 8 rows short of the armholes on the front so I may get more done tomorrow as the V and raglan shaping will mean I can get more rows done as the stitches decrease. There is hope for a finish before Christmas. This knitting is taking me the longest time to complete a garment in a long time. It's very slow going compared to my usual speed.

I could not wait to start some crochet. I am making a short sleeved cardigan for my ex husband's new wife for Christmas. I am using some cotton I bought from Lidl and am very pleased with the quality of it considering how little I paid for the cotton. I have made the back already and started one of the fronts. I really am a crochet girl at heart. I just love how fast it grows. My wrist is aching somewhat but I am not sure if it is from the aran, the crochet or just the cold weather annoying my arthritis.

I must try to master how to use my digital camera as the photo above taken with a web cam is fuzzy and the colours are all wrong. The aran is a denim blue shade and the crochet is a dark denim blue shade.

The dog is happy now he is back to his off the lead walks and stick retrieving. He loses the stick many times though because of the thick drift of leaves. He has a habit of skidding to a halt and that causes a mini avalanche of leaves down the hillside and so he loses the stick. He has a good nose and often eventually finds it but sometimes I have to distract him with another stick or we would be there all day whilst he sniffs around trying to find the lost one. We had a hairy moment today when we met a woman walking 7 dogs in a variety of sizes. She had them all off the lead and so they were reacting as a pack so it was a bit unnerving for Buster as they clustered all around him. I managed to shoo the aggressive ones away with my stick as she had little control over them. Surely even an animal lover would not keep 7 dogs. Imagine the vet bills on those!

I overslept this morning as I had a very disturbed night's sleep. I must have eventually dozed off in the wee hours and so I slept in until 9.30am which is unheard of for me! I normally get by on 5 - 6 hours sleep per night. Last night I had about 4hrs I think. I was going to have an early night but here it is at 1.30am and I am typing on the blog as I don't feel tired at all. I will go to bed in a few minutes though and try to get some sleep.

I seem to be unable to type a title to the blog today so I hope it will save anyway.

I finished off the 2 baby crochet jackets in time for Emily's (my youngest step great grand daughter's christening) on Sunday. These jackets were my own design loosely based on a jacket I had seen in a Candi Jensen book. She had used chenille with a fabric border and purchased frog fasteners. I like the style but not the use of chenille for a baby and I am not much of a sewer so the fabric border was not to my liking.

I just used double knit and crocheted a stitch I had used in a previous garment. It is 1 relief treble around a treble post and then one normal treble. The next row is double crochet all across. Followed by a row similar to the first but alternating the relief treble and the treble again followed by a row of double crochet. The 4 rows form the pattern and it makes quite a chunky fabric so I used a 5mm hook with the double knit so the jackets would not be too stiff to wear. I used one of my previously finished baby jackets for size and just crocheted these jackets to the same measurements. Unfortunately as per usual I didn't write anything down so if I get asked to make any more jackets then I will have to wing it once again. I made one for each baby but the photo is of the smaller one.

The frog type fastenings were my own design. I made a centre ring and then put 3 petal shapes into the ring and then put a chain loop where the 4th petal would have been. I then went around the chain loop with double crochet. I made another the same for the other side and crocheted a ball in double crochet stuffed with a minute amount of wadding to form the button.

I have now sort of mastered my digital camera that my son bought for me last Christmas so maybe in the future my photos on here will be crisper on the details but as I haven't yet mastered the flash it may be a while!

Today the rain seems to be holding off for a little while so I may be able to get into the garden and sort out my veggie plants in the grow houses. They have been sadly neglected of late what with the rain and all of the buidling projects in the house. I still have to put the storage stuff back into the loft. I purchased some storage boxes and bags so my stash of buttons, ribbons and yarn will be nice and dry as well as clean when it goes back into the loft space.

I had a little drama on Saturday evening. I had just got into the shower when my smoke detector started screaming at me. I checked (dripping wet from my shower) but there was no fire. I had to ring the fire station as they had fitted the detectors with the warning "do not touch them yourself no matter what" It got quite exciting after that as they sent a fire engine ( they had to in case they got called to a fire whilst at my house) and I had the pleasure of 2 extremely handsome firemen who removed the faulty detector and replaced it with a new one. They said that dust had gone into the detector. It must have happened when I had the loft re-lagged and boarded but didn't trigger the detector until a few days later. My neighbours were all concerned as it was 11.15pm and they thought I had a house fire!