A Hooded Shawl

As I have mentioned before my son asked me if I would make a shawl or something with a hood for my daughter in law to wear when she is reading in bed and gets cold shoulders. As you have already seen I have made her a chenille knitted shoulder shawl but I decided to try to make something with a hood. I used the Triangle shawl from Contemporary Crochet by Sys Fredens as a base for the triangle shape. I used 2 x 200 gram balls of James C Brett Marble Chunky bought online from Purplelinda. It is a lovely soft acrylic chunky yarn that comes in a variety of shaded colours.

I then added a crochet edging as I think that the shawl as per the pattern looks unfinished without one.

Then I made a basic hood. Instead of sewing it to the shawl I decided to stitch buttons to the hood so that the shawl can be worn with or without the hood. If she wants to wear it over her dress then all she has to do is unbutton the hood and it's a normal shawl once again. I just used loops within the crochet as buttonholes.

I got these yarns in the Black Sheep online sale. I have ideas for yarn mixing for Christmas presents and for one of them I wanted themes of beige and brown so I am starting collecting bargains in fancy yarns to use up with some other yarn from my stash. The pink balls are just for frivolity as I love the colours.

Why exercise books and coloured pencils? I am going to try to be more organized with my pattern writing. When I am designing and altering patterns I have bits of paper scattered about the house which I invariably lose and then when I want to make something again I can never remember what I did. The books came in a bargain pack of 10 so I will use each one for something different. One will be for designs that are, as yet, still in my head, another for actual written patterns and another for my machine knitting. I am sure that there will be different categories as I go along.

I am still organising. Why does flat pack furniture have to involve so much sweat and tears? I am a woman so I did try to follow the instructions (unlike a man) but as they were just diagrams which didn't really help much there was a bit of unladylike cussing before the pieces finished up looking like this.

Yes I did notice that it said SHOE rack. However living in my little doll's house which has a hall the size of a doormat I needed somewhere to store my collection of scarves, hats and gloves. They were previously on a rack that was too small and finished up as a great tangle of scarves and I could never  find the right one when I was going anywhere. Now they are quite tidy and as the rack is on wheels it give me access to the meter box which is behind it. As it isn't very wide then there is just about enough room for me to pass by to the staircase and to open the front door. Gosh one of these days I will look tidy. I am sorting rooms out bit by bit.

I still have to find a permanent home for my little drawers and flat trays which hold my haberdashery as at the moment they are in my front room by the side of my chair making the room look messy. Perhaps I need to find room in my dining room as that is now a work room with 2 knitting machines and cones of wool stored in there. I could sort out my bookshelf that is filled with baby wool at the moment and make some spare room on there for them.

I still haven't got started on knitting lace on the knitting machine and every day I say to myself - Today is the Day but it never is !

Next week I will be taking part in this event (info taken from Artyarn website - link in my blog title) I am not sure which days I will be riding on the Metro but it sounds like a great deal of fun.

June 6th - 10th - Stitch n' Ride, Manchester City Centre (UK)

Join ArtYarn on a Manchester Tram and be part of a new performance based commission for the Lost & Found festival (via Manchester Contact Theatre).

More information will be released soon, in the meantime if you like the sound of this then e-mail for more info at: info@artyarn.org to get on the list of performers.

Venue: A Manchester Tram, Manchester city centre

 

Rachael's blog is well worth a visit as it is always full of very interesting things happening in our local area. I have been lucky enough to take part in quite a few of her  projects and hope to continue doing so in the future. She is a real inspiration to me.

 

The day is a wasting and so I must occupy myself with something. As my Mother used to say. "The Devil makes work for Idle Hands" Is it any wonder that I fill my days? I think that my Mother (and my Aunts) scared the hell out of me when I was a child. If I sit doing nothing I feel such a sense of guilt .

Friday Is for Crochet

I have been crocheting for a lot of today. The weather has turned cold again and my knees don't like it so I thought that I would spend the day crocheting to take my mind off things.

I have progressed with the Lacy Duster Coat and it now has two sleeves and I am almost at the place when I change patterns for the bottom third of the coat. I have put a link to the pattern (click on my blog title) for the anonymous person who posted on my last blog page asking which pattern I was using. It is a Doris Chan free pattern and this coat is the third one that I have made but only one of them was for me.

My knitting club friends Kath and Sylvia made it to the Black Sheep sale today and as I could not get there I asked Sylvia to look out for any bargains that she thought that I would like. She phoned to ask if I wanted a couple of packs that she had found for me so of course I said yes. OK I know I was not going to increase my stash but apart from buying wool for gifts I have managed to almost get to May without breaking my New Year's resolution and as I won't make it to Woolfest this year then I won't be tempted into spending there. I won't see my bargain packs for a couple of weeks as I don't see Sylvia every week. It will be all the more exciting when I do get to see them. Sylvia, I hope that you don't mind waiting for the money that I owe you until I see you next.

I wish that I could have gone there myself to have a look but it's probably just as well or I could have come home with a few more packs than the couple Sylvia has picked up for me . I can't wait to hear about what Kath and Sylvia have bought. Yeah for wool sales and bargains!

I may have a rest from the Lacy Duster tonight and start a bit of knitting. If I work too long on one craft then my fingers start to ache. Oh the joys of old age LOL if one bit of me doesn't ache then another bit does.

Stitch and Craft Show

I have just got back from the Stitch and Craft Show at Manchester Central (used to be G-Mex), I went there with Sylvia and Kath and I think that we were all quite disappointed at the lack of wool stalls once again this year. I am sure there was one less than last year. I certainly wasn't tempted by anything on offer this year. Sylvia and Kath bought some wool from the Black Sheep and Jen had left some wool that she bought from the Black Sheep under the Knitting Noras Naked Knitting Calendar stall for me. I am making a shawl for her with that.

Whilst I was briefly on the knitting Noras stand I met up with Ailsa (Mad about Craft) I have followed her blog for a long time and felt like I knew her really well when I saw her. She looks just like the photo on her blog and as she recognised me then I suppose that I must look like my photo too. After that, of course, we bumped into each other on almost every aisle. It's funny isn't it that you don't actually know some-one in person, then you meet them and finish up seeing them lots of times. It was very nice to finally meet up with you Ailsa (with daughter and Jan) I would have loved to have a longer chat with you but you were busy stall browsing and so was I. There were quite a lot of bored husbands around the place so I see that you wisely left Oh Bearded One at home!

The photo is of me with a couple of the props that I crocheted that were used in the calendar. The pink duster coat (pattern by Doris Chan) and the wrap that was used for the mermaid tail. The red stockings that you can see are also a calendar prop and they were expertly knitted by Julie who was manning the stall with Bev today.

I did buy myself something - a new hair clip as you can see. It is basically two hair combs with elastic and beads and it holds my hair very securely. The lady demonstrating them managed put people's hair up even when their hair was quite short. She had no trouble with mine as my hair is now half way down my back. They do sell online at www.africanbutterfly.net. I saw the clips last year and didn't buy one, couldn't find one in any shop, so this year I decided to give myself a treat as I wasn't buying any wool.


When I came home Julie, next door, kindly offered to cut my side of our joint hedge so the privet leaf in my hair is from when I was underneath the privets scooping up the fallen leaves as she was cutting above me. I hadn't realised that I was wearing a leaf until I put the photo on here.

My knee is aching like fury tonight so I am going to do nothing but rest it up.