Monster blankets and spidery cakes

Well, so far so good. We seem to be having a very happy half-term week off, although it would be nice if my daughter could manage to stay in bed beyond 6.15am!

The days have been full, with long dog walks, buying enormous new school shoes (size 9 for my boy!!), getting ready for Hallowe'en and treating myself to a couple of gorgeous new skirts because none of mine fit me any more. I cannot tell you how exciting it was to try on four skirts and have them all fit - five sizes smaller than before!

There's been no spinning, knitting or sewing but there has been oodles of crochet. The Flowers in the Snow was finished two days ago - after two years of lying neglected the last 80% of it was done in two days!

Naturally, whilst racing to finish this blanket my brain was already planning the next one. So, within minutes of sewing in the last end of Flowers in the Snow I had started the foundation chain for another crochet blanket. A Granny Stripe blanket using the tutorial from Lucy at Attic 24.

The idea is to use up all those leftover colours from previous crochetings. That's the idea. The reality involved a quick trip to the local wool shop for a ball or five of other colours that I felt I was lacking!

(this is day one - it's now four times as many rows longer)

It was supposed to be throw sized, to have by the sofa, but something happened and I may have forgotten to stop when doing that foundation row. The throw became a monster of a blanket big enough for our king-size bed. I've done 8164 treble crochet stitches and reckon I have at least four times that many still to go!

Minx has been busy in the kitchen baking for Hallowe'en. We decided against sweets for trick or treat this year and I gave MInx full reign with the food colouring, so we have bright blue cakes with bright green and black icing. Some small children will need scraping off the ceiling after eating these :o)

Happy Hallowe'en to all you trick or treaters out there :o)

xxx

p.s. have just realised stoopid blogger has been putting some of your comments into a folder awaiting moderation, so please don't think I've been ignoring you, I just hadn't realised you were there!

Rewind

Yet again it's been an age since I blogged but I finally got here.

Today we've finally broken up for half term and everyone's shattered. An eight week stint at school has left the children overtired and looking forward to a week of long and lazy get ups. I'm looking forward to getting down to some crafting, baking and putting my house in order.

There hasn't been a shortage of crafting since my last post. I went through a phase of casting on socks as if my life depended on it - six pairs in all and now all sitting in the WIP pile as my sock mojo has upped and left!
I did manage to start and finish these scrappy socks before the urge totally left me.

There's also been some spinning, although I've barely dented the ever-growing pile of fluff that seems to have found its way here!


A few days ago I had a text from Lucy Locket, telling me about some lovely crochet brooches she'd been making and before I knew what was happening I was hit by an immediate urge to break out the crochet hooks.

I've been planning to crochet one of these bags (Ravelry link) for months and even have everything ready to go. I'm inspired to crochet a granny blanket or another ripple blanket too.

However, there was something just sitting there all ready to be picked up.Something I started over two years ago and after the intiial euphoria and frenzy of hooking had worn off it sat there, marinating in a plastic crate and glaring at me every time I glanced at it. So, I rescued it from the indignity of the crate and for the past three days have been happily snuggled up each evening under it's cuddlyness.

A perfect project for chilly Autumn evenings and a real touch of summery colour to counteract the dull greyness outside the window. The original plan was to make this big enough for our king-size bed but I'm just not sure if I have the stamina to crochet that much!

I'm beginning to feel a need for some sewing too. I could do with a new skirt or two as the weight loss is ongoing and the wardrobe is in need of a boost and then there's the quilt top I need to finish. I really do need four of me to get it all done but I bet I'm not the only one to feel like that when it comes to all the making we want to do.

So, to help me make some headway I've decided to back away a little from things that take up too much of my time. Those things would be Ravelry and Facebook, where I spend far too long lurking around and achieving precisely nothing. It struck  me that if I really want to do more and make more I need to get off the computer and do and make instead.

Ironically, that means I may well be blogging more :o)