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.

What a difference a day makes

Yesterday I was depressed, moody at the end of my tether. The house was untidy and I didn't care. I got up late and I didn't care. The ironing wasn't done and I didn't care. Today I got up and the SUN was shining. No warmth in it of course but that didn't matter it was there up in the sky bright and yellow and shining. I felt alive once again. Ready to conquer the world (well the hoovering anyway) The downside was the sun showed up my dirty windows. Ah well there is always a snag to anything good.

Today I went to water aerobics and our group had arranged for this little bluff. I would pretend it was my retirement party in February and issue invitations. We told everyone on the quiet (or thought we had!) that it was really the instructor's mother who is also in our class and is 60 in February. I pretended to give out the invites with instructions to open them later. Her daughter had even printed up different ones for her mother and aunt so that they too would get an invite. Then one dozy old bat opened hers and said in a loud voice who is this on here. Of course the person whose surprise it was supposed to be said "Hey that's me why I am I on your invite" Her daughter was so upset and annoyed. She had gone to all the trouble to try to keep it all a secret and this dozy bat let the cat out of the bag so it's all been spoiled now. I said to her did you not hear what we said "Don't open it until later?" She said Oh I thought you said there was a voucher in there. How can you make what we said into that. I think she needs her ears testing and a check for senility!

The photos of Kath's sweater didn't come out all that well as it was an extremely dull day when I took them. Hard to photograph black in the gloom. I should have re-done them today when the sun was shining but I have been out most of the day. I was right about the raglan shaping. I tried my hardest to match the ribbing up but am not really satisfied with the way it has turned out. It's no-where near as neat as I would have liked it to be, seems a little lumpy in parts. Next time I will work decreases within a plain stitch at the raglan edge to make it neater and easier to stitch together.

I have knitted one side and half of the other side of an adult sized version of the doubled sided ear flap hat that I made for the babies. Hopefully I will finish it off tonight although I am pretty rubbish at embroidery and she wants it putting on the hat. Thankfully the other hat is for a male and he doesn't want embroidery on his.

I found out today that my niece ordered 2 books for me and that one was out of stock and will arrive later so I am looking forward to seeing what the post will bring for me. I thought I was only getting the one that I got a couple of days ago so it's a nice surprise. My wish list on Amazon has both knit and crochet books on it and a couple of sock books so it will be a surprise to see what arrives. I also have a voucher for £10 to spend with them but will wait until the other book arrives to spend it. I don't want to duplicate a book. I love craft books. I take them to bed and have a good read as when they first arrive I tend to just look at the photos and ohh and ahh but never actually read the "how to" instructions. I like to browse the patterns through before I buy yarn and then find there is an instruction I am not familiar with or it's on circular needles which I cannot get to grips with due to my inability to knit without one needle firmly secured under my armpit. My sets of 5 needles are sock sized so would be useless for a garment.

The sun must have shone on my washer as well. I decided to try it out with a load today and thought that if it didn't spin the wet out at least I could peg it out for a drip on the line. The washer behaved perfectly and the washing was clean and spun. All I can think of is that my washer doesn't like being told to perform part of a task ( I just asked it to spin a hand washed sweater) and will only work a full cycle. Either way I am relieved it is working as I really didn't relish another expense when I have 2 birthday presents to buy before the end of the month.

It's corned beef hash with dumplings and red cabbage tonight for dinner. I haven't made that for such a long time and so am really looking forward to it, I find it so hard to diet when the weather is cold. I can't seem to drum up any enthusiasm for a salad until the weather gets a bit warmer.