Sneaking A Bit of Crochet

Yes, I know that I said I would knit some more on Charlie's jacket. I did. I finished off the first sleeve. After that I succumbed to the call of the hook. I did try to resist but as I have absolutely no willpower at all (hence the sylph like body but that's another story) I gave in and started to crochet a matinee jacket.

It is another of Kay Jones patterns and as you can see it goes up to a child's size so it's a useful pattern as the girl babies grow older. As I am making this for a soon to arrive foster baby I am going to edge it with pale green so that at a pinch a little boy can wear it. I know it is a bit girly with the ties and the lacy pattern but a newborn can wear it. I might possibly just leave the ties off and fasten it with a button to make it more unisex. I will ask the foster Mum when I get to that stage.

I have just come back from a shopping trip up to the village. I cling to Ivy, my 4 wheeled shopping trolley, for stability and balance. She is called Ivy after the lady who gave it to me. It is rather battered but it does the job. Ivy, the person, used it up to getting worse at walking and she had to progress to an electric wheelchair. When she heard on Freecycle that I was asking if anyone had a spare trolley she kindly gave me her old one.It has been the best thing that I have ever got from Freecycle.Nowadays I don't have a car so although I look on Freecycle I don't get anything anymore as I cannot pick it up. I stay a member as sometimes I have things that I want to give away.

My freezer is full again as I am just not in the mood these days to prepare meals from scratch. I know that it is bad for me and no good for my figure but I do tend to take the easy route as far as food is concerned.

Time for a coffee and to put my feet up and find something non political to watch on the TV. I hate the requiems that they have after an election. They go over and over the same ground and I find it all so boring. What has happened cannot be changed so let's just get on with things. All the discussions in the world won't change anything.

Lacy Duster Coat

My friend Sue came today and pick up her Lacy Duster Coat ready for her to wear at her daughter's wedding.I hope to get more photos of it on the wedding day but I insisted that she tried it on for size today. I think that she is very pleased with it.

I have been plodding along with Charlie's jacket and have now finished off both fronts, the back and half of a sleeve. I will get there slowly but surely. I always make the bigger child's jacket first and then the smaller one seems to fly off the needles.

I have also started a crochet matinee coat using one of Kay Jones patterns. I will post some photos of that tomorrow. At the moment I have only made the back so not much to see.

I know what you mean Mattenylou. I have stopped making things for my great grand daughters as I never saw them wear anything that I made except for 2 hats that I made last year. I would rather give my work to someone who appreciates it. Some mothers don't want their babies in hand knits and yet other mothers love everything I make. I suppose it's all a matter of taste.

The teenager from next door has just come to show me her prom dress and her tan. She is wearing 5" heels and a sophisticated black dress. Gosh it just seems like two minutes since she was at junior school and here she is graduating from her senior school. She has had her hair and nails done so no doubt she will be driving the guys wild tonight. The effect was slightly marred by the goosepimples and the shivering that she was doing but the young don't want to wear a jacket.

I had a little furry visitor today. Next door's dog Poppy popped in to see me.The minute that she hears my back door open she is there. I haven't seen much of her over the winter months but now that the better weather is coming and I am pottering about outside hanging washing then no doubt she will be calling on me more often. She comes in and goes straight to the basket that Buster keeps his tennis balls in and chooses one to play with. I can never move that basket as it is communal dog property.

Crochet For Baby Girls

I love crocheting for baby girls. I love the fancy frilly items that today's mothers shun like the plague. Babies are tiny for such a short time so why not frill them up and dress them pretty for a while. I think that I am a frustrated mother of girls that I never had. All of my babies one present, and 3 lost early before birth, were all boys.

Maybe I should buy a baby reborn and dress it up. My son would really think that I had lost my marbles if I did that but I do love to crochet frilly pretty things.

I finished the little matinee. It is a Sirdar pattern 1901 and used less than 100 grams of 4ply. I think that although it is very pretty I would make it with solid trebles (UK) and not the filet crochet where newborns could so easily get their fingers tangled in.

The baby bonnet is from a pattern by Kay Jones 59.(www.creativecrochet.co.uk) I use a lot of her patterns as you have probably noticed. I think I have almost bought her complete range of baby patterns now. The pattern calls for DK to be used double so I used a 100 gram ball of white chunky that I had in stash and used it singly. The pink trimming was just oddments of pink that I had in stash. A very quick pattern to make. I made it today whilst watching daytime TV.

I have started knitting the second front of Charlie's cardigan but the trouble with me is that rather like a dieter having one bite of chocolate, and then wanting the whole bar, once I start to crochet I find it difficult to return to my knitting. I guess I have turned into a compulsive crocheter.

There was a forum on Ravelry about people who can't put down their crochet and keep on crocheting until the wee small hours ignoring everything else and I thought thank goodness I am not alone. Other people are out there who are exactly like me! For me crochet is like that good book that you can't put down until you have finished it. Sometimes I wish that I could slow down a bit and not be so frantic with everything that I make but once I start I want to see it finished as soon as possible.

I Should Be Knitting

I should be knitting really. I have only made the back and one front of Charlie's hooded jacket and still have Finlay's to make. Instead I got tempted away by a crochet pattern. It doesn't take much to tempt me away from knitting (especially beige) anyway. By the way there isn't a stitch mistake on the back of the jacket. I had a stitch pin marking where I had to start the neck shaping for the front and it loosened a stitch but thankfully it has flattened down again now.

I have started the Sirdar baby crochet pattern that Sylvia bought from Abakhan with some pale pink 4ply (possibly Sirdar Snuggly but as it is a part ball it has lost it's label somewhere along the way) It is working up quite pretty but I have the feeling that it will be quite holey and if I make it again then I will alter the bodice and sleeve pattern to something less meshy. I will decide once I have finished this one.

Yesterday I bought a Crochet Baby Surprise Jacket from Ravelry. I can't show you the photo as it arrived as a PDF and unfortunately I don't have a printer at this moment in time. I will have to buy another printer as I do prefer a hard copy of my patterns. Some of my friends prefer to store their patterns as PDF's but as I don't have a laptop then I would either have to write it out or keep dashing back into this room to read what I am doing next. A bit annoying if I am watching a programme on my TV which is in my main room. Somehow it just seems wrong to have a PC in the room where I am supposed to be relaxing. The PC used to be in the spare bedroom but I brought it downstairs into the dining room some time ago as I got fed up of going up and down the stairs everytime that I wanted to use it. The BSJ is done in Noro on the pattern but as it takes 3 balls there is no way that I will be using anything so expensive for a baby. I will just have to choose something similar but less expensive. It does need a striped kind of wool though to give the same effect as the pattern.

My GP rang me today for an update on the hospital situation and says he is going to bring up my case at the meeting that the GP's are having on Friday. He wants to know if any other patients have had similar experiences to mine as this is twice that it has happened to me. He said at least they have backdated you to March. He was going to ring the hospital again if they had put me to the bottom of the list.

I suppose that I had better do some knitting tonight instead of merely indulging myself with my crochet. I used to knit all of the time but just lately it has become a real chore to knit. I hope that it is a phase as some things do look better being knitted. Socks for example. I have quite a few skeins of sock wool waiting to be made into socks for the winter so I had better find my knitting mojo again soon. I have crocheted socks but they really aren't as comfortable underfoot as the knitted ones.

Coffee time and then the TV is calling to me. I am sure there is a programme on tonight that I have marked down to watch.

Lacy Duster Coat Finished

The Lacy Duster coat is finished well in time from my friend Sue to wear as Mother of the Bride later this month. It hasn't been properly blocked out as yet so it looks as if the fronts are longer than the back on the hanger. I will leave the proper blocking for Sue to do as my days of crawling over towels pinning out on the floor or my double bed are part of the past. The photos on here are just of the bottom pattern blocking. The coat pattern is one of Doris Chan's and is a free pattern. I gave the link a couple of days ago. I am not sure what the yarn is that I used as Sue brought it for me to crochet. It feels like a cotton crepe and as, like me, Sue is a lover of mill sales and unlabelled branded wool sales then it could be any brand. When I had a wool shop we used to get offered packs from the major spinners. If a batch was dyed slightly off colour to their shade card, spun slightly finer or slightly thicker then they would take off the labels and sell it as a Sale item. We were sworn to secrecy not to reveal whose brand it was but of course I used to say well it's very much like so and so.

I will hopefully post photos of it being modelled later in the week. I won't try it on as I am several sizes larger than Sue and don't want to stretch it before the big day. If she picks it up this week I will attempt to make her model it but it could be a bit awkward if she arrives in her leather motor bike gear ;-) I have left threads hanging as I don't want to darn them in when the coat might need longer/shorter sleeves or a bit unravelled from the bottom.

I am back knitting the hooded cardigan for Charlie and have finished the back. I have cut a couple of inches off the finished length of it as it said 15" back length for a 2-3 yrs old but for 1-2 yrs it is only 12 1/2" When I saw Charlie on Sunday although he is quite a stocky child he isn't very tall. Neither are both of his parents so that isn't a surprise. He is only just two anyway. His birthday was yesterday.

I rang the hospital today to see if they had sorted out the mix up over my operation date. I was told that I am once again on the waiting list but they have only backdated it from March 10th and not Feb 12th when they received the fax from my GP.I asked if the list was still 15 weeks long and the secretary said Oh we have people on the list from January who haven't had their operations yet. I was holding off starting any more large projects but it sounds as if I will have plenty of time to make loads more stuff before I go in.

Today is sunny and a bit warmer than the weekend. I have washing blowing on the line but don't quite feel ready to sit out and crochet this afternoon. So far today I have had Jehovah's witnesses wanting to pray with me, the postman wanting to leave a parcel with me and an automated phone call asking me to consolidate my debt. As I don't have any debt then I just hang up but that means that they will continue to phone me as they do every other day. The message actually says - Don't hang up. As if I am going to sit here and listen to all the blurb for something that I don't need.If it was a human on the line at least I could tell them that I do not need their services but I am not listening to five minutes of blurb to press a button to choose options. I will just have to hope that by the hundredth call they will realize that I am not interested! I have telephone preferences and this screens most of the junk phone calls but anything coming from abroad cannot get stopped. Grrr

Progressing Slowly But Surely

As you can see the Lacy Duster coat is progressing slowly but surely. I have about another 10" to crochet. At the moment the bottom edge stitch is looking a little frilly but it will sort itself out after it has been blocked and hung on a hanger.

Charlie's new hooded jacket is also progressing slowly. The reason for the slowness is that I was at a Christening for most of the day yesterday.

My niece picked me up dressed in a summer dress and bolero type cardigan and was making fun of me dressed in my coat and my shawlette. After waiting outside the Church in the cold for a half hour before we could go into the church no-one was laughing at me then. The street that the Church is on has to be one of the coldest in my town as the sun never shines on the Church any more due to the planners allowing a multi storey apartment complex to be built right across the road from it. The street not only has no sunshine now it also is like standing in a wind tunnel. We all had to wait outside the Church for the Sunday Mass to finish before we could go in and it over ran.

Some guests at another baby's Christening were dressed in strapless flimsy dresses as if they were going to a Summer wedding and a few of their children were literally blue with the cold and shivering. Child abuse for the sake of fashion in my opinion. It wasn't a warm day even in the sun and to bring a child out without a cardigan or coat is just plain madness in my opinion. The Church wasn't that warm so they could not warm up once they finally got inside. I have been inside the Church several times for Weddings and Christenings and whilst it is a lovely Church it is always cold even in the middle of Summer.

Hopefully I will catch up with my knitting and crocheting tonight but now it's time for a warming cup of coffee and perhaps a sandwich for my lunch.

Saturday is a Bit of Knitting

I have started a bit of knitting so that I can knit and crochet alternately over the weekend. I have changed to the different crochet pattern that forms the bottom of the Lacy Duster but still got quite a bit to crochet before I reach the edge. Possibly 12-16". I will crochet some more before I measure it.

As I said yesterday I decided to knit a little to give my wrists a different action and have started the first of a couple of hooded jackets for Charlie and Finlay. I am using Sirdar pattern 1914 and Sirdar Breeze which is a cotton mix. Obviously I won't have them finished for the christening or Charlie's birthday which is why I crocheted the sweaters so that I would have a gift for them on the day.

Quite an uneventful day so far. The sun is shining but it is still quite cold. I do wish that the summer would arrive and bring some warmth to the days. Beverooni has got snow so it makes me feel a wimp for complaining about it merely being cold over here. I am sure that I was born in the wrong country. I think the stork diverted from somewhere warm and dropped me in the UK by mistake. .