Gimme my crochet hook back!

I have knitted a small premature baby blanket using the pattern (click the title) with 4mm needles and 100 grams double knit. I have used acrylic as these baby blankets usually get thrown in the washer and pure wool wouldn't stand up to the punishment of a hot wash plus I read somewhere that some babies are allergic to wool. I know acrylic has a bad press with people saying it can melt and burn etc but quite frankly I would hope that premature babies are under constant surveillance and that prospect is highly unlikely.

The knitted blanket took me 2 nights and one afternoon to make and it is only 15" square. I do knit, but my first love is crochet. Today I picked a crochet stitch that I thought would not snag on tiny fingers and in one hour I had made approx one third of a blanket. That is more my kind of pace. There are some things that I prefer to be knitted - socks and arans etc but I relax more when crocheting. I think the rest of my blankets will be crocheted.

These blankets are destined for Bliss the charity nominated by the National Knitting Week (12th-19th Oct) and Vicky from the Knitting Noras of Bolton is organising a knit in, with donations for nibbles and drinks at her place, so I am going to try to make a few more blankets for this event.

The DROPS bolero is no more. I now have a pile of small balls which I am hoping to turn into something more wearable for Vicky. The bolero came out huge despite my making the smallest size on a smaller hook. I had not read the small print that said small = 42" bust! Needless to say as it was too big for me it absolutely swamped Vicky. I just hope I have enough to make something else. There is such a lot of waste when crocheting with small balls.

I did a bit more in the garden today. I have filled the wheelie bin again. The bin men will love me but as Bury council haven't provided me with a garden rubbish bin and I no longer have a car to take anything to the tip then the normal bin has to suffice. I have picked up all the small branches from the holly tree but I still have about 2 buckets full of leaves still on the lawn. I have learned to stop when my back starts to twinge. Tomorrow is another day (if it doesn't rain)

I am going to watch Midsommer Murders on TV now and finish off my baby blanket. My knee is getting better day by day and so I might actually get around to finishing off Vicky's shawl tonight. I will bring my blocking boards back downstairs again. I pinned the squares onto them just before I injured my knee and they have stayed there ever since.

All squared up

As you can see from the photos I have more granny squares in my WIP than ever before. The first set are destined to be a shawl to raffle for the Breast Cancer evening at the Kings Arms. The second 2 photos are the squares for Vicky's shawl which I put into colour sequence on my blocking boards before I injured my knee. They have languished there for almost a week and then the blocking boards decided that they no longer wanted to stand upright against the wall and parted company so they are now in 2 halves. I think I will have to try to rejoin them on my bed as I still cannot get down to the floor comfortably to crochet them together. I have to lay them out somewhere to keep the colours in the right order.

My knee kept me awake most of the night. It was even hurting whilst I was lying in bed. I must have done something to it despite Salford Royal assuring me from the X rays that there was no damage within and all would be well in a couple of days. The swelling has gone down a little but it is still very painful to walk on and even when I am resting seated or lying down. They told me not to strap it and whilst I am obeying most of the time I must admit that I had to use some tubigrip when I went shopping to Tesco the other day as I couldn't put weight on it that day without support.

I rushed to the door this morning to open my eagerly awaited magazine only to find that I have accidentally ordered the Interweaves Knit Fall 08 instead of the crochet version. I saw it advertised as newly in on Pavi Yarns and never even noticed that it said Knit and not Crochet. Apart from the cover jacket which my niece might like the book is one of the worst ones from Interweave that I have seen. I flicked through it and couldn't find one thing that I would knit for myself. Even the socks were toe up which I hate! I am back to the drawing board again looking for a UK stockist of the Crochet mag. I e mailed K&M at someones suggestion but never received a reply to my query. I could subscribe direct from Interweave from the US but according to fellow Ravellers they are so slow at processing subscriptions. One lady has just received her copy after subscribing in June! Let me know if you see any copies advertised for sale anywhere online. I have e mailed Pavi Yarns to see when they expect their copies of the Fall 08 crochet but as yet no reply.

I must go an investigate the bathroom to see if the huge bird eating spider has vanished. It wasn't one of those really but it looked pretty huge to me when I made my first bleary eyed visit to the bathroom this morning. I cannot stand spiders. I have a real hatred of them. I can look at them whilst out in the garden and admire their pretty webs but I hate it when one of the huge fat ones decides to camp in my house. I had a friend years ago who had tanks of tarantulas in her dining room and I loathed visiting her. It was hard to have coffee and biscuits with them crawling all over the place near me! Another friend kept snakes and lizards but I don't mind those and even handled the python and the iguana.

Today it is torrential rain here and so the holly tree branches are getting very wet. I hope that the logs stay dry under the plastic bags that Caroline put over them yesterday.

Woodman spare that tree!

Oops - too late. At last the massive holly tree has been chopped down. My son still had to argue with the landlord from next door about chopping it down. He still only allowed my son to chop it to the height of 6 feet and it looks a bit ridiculous now but of course it will bush up again next year.

I cannot believe how much light has now flooded into this room and the kitchen. I had been trying every trick in the book to try to lighten this dark room and it was the tree blocking the light all the time. My lawn is flooded with sunshine today but I can't sit out for obvious reasons. The tree is so huge it will have to be chopped into pieces to even get it on the trailer to take it to the "green" recycling tip. The tree looks a lot larger spread all over the lawn. I really hadn't realised just how big it really was whilst it was in the sky.

My son had to enlist help with it and both he and his friend got prickled to death with a bad case of tree rash from the prickly holly leaves. There was a lot of ouching and grouching going on from the depths of the tree! I bet my ears will be burning tonight when he gets in the shower and sees the extent of the scratches. The next project is my Sumac tree at the bottom of the garden. I love the colour of the leaves in the autumn but it has got too top heavy and is rather taking over the garden. I want to get it trimmed down before it falls down and I lose it altogether. I am sure that my neighbours will be relieved when the height comes down in the same way that I was with the holly. They must be losing sunlight from their garden because of my tree although they haven't complained.

Buster is apparently in disgrace. He had a huge wee all over the place whilst they were at work so I think he has outstayed his welcome at my son's house. I said to bring him back home again but Ian said not just yet. I am just worried he has another water infection as he is prone to getting and when he has one he needs to wee a lot.

I went to the Kings Arms last night and although Sylvia and Kath were really kind to me, met me at the tram stop and took me back to the tram stop after the Knit Out I was still very nervy walking back home from my local tram stop. There was no one around and it was really eerie even though it wasn't late. I didn't see a soul whilst walking from the tram stop to home which made me very nervous. I think I will only go to the Knit Out if I can get a lift or a taxi home in future.

I am half way through the last 10 squares of the granny square shawl and will hopefully finish those off tonight. I started a pair of men's socks last night at the Knit Out for someones Christmas present. I will take the sock with me when I go to the hospital for my post op appointment tomorrow in case I have a long wait.

Too many loops on my pineapple

The Blue Curacao shawl has been unravelled and restarted. I could not understand why I kept going wrong and had to keep unpicking almost as many rows as I crocheted. All was well for the first few rows then it all went pear shaped. After my 4th or 5th unravel I decided to bite the bullet and restart with a new ball. I sat quietly with the pattern and counted and counted every stitch and every row and realised that in my original shawl I had one loop too many on each pineapple! I must have kept misreading the pattern over and over in the same way but by starting again I read it differently ie. the right way. I am hoping now that the pattern will make sense and that my pattern sequences will all match up this time.

I had said today to Vicky J when she called that I couldn't understand why I was finding it so difficult when loads of Ravellers had no trouble with the pattern. In my own defence I do struggle with Doris Chan's way of writing patterns out. She is not the easiest of people to follow. Too many * to " and ** to ** repeats on every row it is so easy to miss the odd * or repeat the wrong bit.

Vicky J brought me the crochet hook roll that she has made for me. It will be so useful. I had intended some time back to make one for myself but if you remember the disaster when my sewing machine blew up. I have not got around to getting it repaired as I won't be able to lift it onto the table for quite some time.

The tree in the photo is the holly bush that grew and grew. You can get some idea of it's size by looking at the garage roof which is to the right of the tree. Now perhaps you will see why it is creating such a nuisance to my Sky satellite signal.

The other photo shows my little regular morning visitor. He is quite bold and comes up to the window whilst I am in the chair you can see if you look carefully in the plant pot. Mr or Mrs Squirrel is under the spiky plant looking to see if there were any nuts buried in there. He/she is quite unfazed by my presence and comes right up to the window and looks at me.