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 Flower Corsages

As I am still sorting out the ribbons and buttons from the loft I haven't had much time for crocheting. I have just been making some little flower brooches for the raffle. I have ordered a book from Amazon about crochet and knitted flowers. I had seen the book at the last Knit Out and thought it was a good idea and then got an e voucher from filling in an online survey so I put it towards the book. It should arrive early next week. Then I can make some more brooches or corsages as I grandly called then in the title. The ones I have made so far have been adapted from free pattern that I found on the net. I think that I would rather wait to see the better ones in the book before I make any more.

Sorting through the boxes from my loft has brought back many memories as I keep coming across things that remind me of my parents. Happier times when we had the shops and everything in the world was rosy. Sad times when I remember the utter misery that I felt when I realised that I had no choice but to close the last shop.I felt that I had failed my parents by not being able to carry on financially with the shops after their hard work over the years.I had thought that I would be in the shops until I retired but some things are not meant to be. Things like divorce, having to remortgage the house, family illnesses, visits to nursing homes and subsequent deaths got in the way.

If I could have weathered the storm during the last knitting slump no doubt the credit crunch would have got me now. My bank manager refused me a loan on the grounds that I was an unsupported woman with commitments a thing he would never get away with saying now. Who knows which way my life would have turned out if I had been granted that loan to rescue the business that I had neglected during my Father's final battle with prostate cancer. We never know what life holds for us and it's probably as well. My mother always used to say that knitting would revive and be as big as it ever was. I am just sorry that she didn't live long enough to see her prediction come true. Sorry that I am not still in the family business to be part of it.It breaks my heart to try to search about in shops, that carry less than a quarter of my stock, for things that I stocked and now cannot find anywhere except online where the P&P costs more than the item.

The sun is shining and I will probably sit in the garden with my crochet for a while if it's warm enough. I have got the rest of the wool now for the crocheting that will form the mermaid tail for the calendar shoot so I will be doing a bit on that if I can remember where I am up to with the pattern as I started the first ball several weeks ago.Vicky called around today to deliver the rest of the wool for me but could not stay as she was off to the Trafford Centre.

First it's a spot of lunch and Loose Women on TV before I decide what to do next.