I Am Still Around

Sorry that I haven't been around for a long time. I just simply fell out with blogging. My camera wouldn't let me make a video of more that a few minutes so I just temporarily gave up blogging.Videos were so much easier than typing and posting photos.

I got a new camera for Christmas but I am still coming to grips with how to work that so that I can make videos with this newer one as it has a longer memory for making videos.

I have still been crocheting. Not quite as much as I did in the past but I am still working at it. I think that maybe I suffer from the S.A.D syndrome as around my Birthday (November) all around Christmas and most of January I feel generally out of sorts and everything is just too much trouble.

Anyway I will do a bit of a pictorial catch up with you on a little of what I have made since I last blogged.

This is what I am working on at the moment. It is a pattern from Jenny King Designs and has still to get the sleeves crocheted. I couldn't get my tension on the hook recommended as it was a huge hook and I tend to crochet a bit loose anyway. I used  a 7mm hook instead of the recommended 10mm and although it does look tighter than the pattern picture does it still look large to me. Considering that loose crochet does tend to grow a little when washed.

Over Christmas I made a cardigan for my friend Sarah's mother and she liked it so much that I was asked to make another. This is made in King Cole Riot.The photo of the first cardigan is on Facebook as the original photo is not now on my PC anymore since the update.

I may have mentioned in my blog previously that I was doing a class teaching crochet at the local Ice Cream parlour and cafe. Unfortunately the cafe had to close but I did manage to buy some of his storage display units from the shop. My crochet friend Sue came down to help me and we reorganised the patio door end of my dining room into a workroom with knitting machines set up on either side. This has made a big difference to the room. I still have to tidy up the rest of the room as next week we are going to start organising the stash room as I have got a unit to go into there. I am hoping that this organisation will encourage me back into my machine knitting again,

I did manage to use the machine and make this sweater for my younger niece in Patons cotton that I bought on sale from Kemps. I had to hand knit the ribs as my chunky machine wanted adjusting as it was ribbing too slackly and I didn't have the time to sort it out until Christmas was over. Hopefully I have now solved the problem but I won't know for sure until I use it again,

As I wasn't machine knitting with the many cones that I had in stash I decided to use 4 strands of different coloured cones together and crocheted myself two very chunky sweaters for the cold weather. This one has 2 strands of different shades of purple, an aubergine and a gold worked together. I made a similar sweater in shades of red, maroon, orange and bright pink but when my PC died and had to go to the repair shop I have lost a lot of information and recent photos that I hadn't backed up. A lot of my more recent crochet otems are on my Facebook page UrbanGypsyCrochet which I update regularly as I do my personal Facebook page. You will find out my name from the UrbanGypsyCrochet page. I don't want to put any links on here and attract spammers. Since I stopped blogging my life and photos have been well documented on there.

I am still coming to terms with what I lost when my PC had it's mishap. A lot of the photos seem to be lost forever which is sad but I suppose that it is just one of those things in life sent to try me, The repair man also took off a lot of things like the printer, mic and web cam so I have to try to get them reinstalled. I have the recovery discs for the mic and camera but my niece gave me the printer so she is going to look to see if she still has the original disc that came with it so that I can reinstall that. If not I will have to get back in touch with my PC guy and see if her can help me recover the files that I need to make the printer work. I have also lost access to one of my e mail accounts. Fortunately it's the least used one but it is linked to Amazon so unless I can find the account again I will have to change the info over to another mail account.

I have made lots of other things which I can't post the  photos on here as they are now missing. I am sorry now that I hadn't updated my Ravelry for a long time either as now I can't catch up with my projects on that unless I save photos from my Facebook.

I hope to start posting on my blog again. Perhaps not as regularly as before but that was one of my New Year resolutions.

I hope that you are all keeping well. Happy Crocheting.

Jan