Thursday 26 November 2009

Rainbow Birdie


The sun is shining here in my little part of the world today which makes a lovely change after all the very stormy, windy and rainy weather that we have had over the past couple of weeks. I don't know about you ~ but it always makes me feel much brighter and happier when the sun is shining.


Today I thought that I would show you all my Rainbow Birdie that I made from another pattern from the very lovely Lucy over at Attic 24. I loved these little Birdie decorations the very minute that Lucy showed them on her blog and knew that I would just have to make one. However, I very stupidly thought that it would be plain sailing and very easy to do ~ BUT I had never crocheted a circle before and I ended up frogging it twice before I was happy with the shape for the little Birdie body. I'm not sure what I was doing wrong but no matter how hard I tried my circle would just not lie flat!


Taking my inspiration from my lovely stash of Rainbow coloured Rowan Pure Wool DK I tried to include all the colours of the rainbow ~ Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet.


I know that some of you will have already had a sneaky peak at my little rainbow coloured birdie over on Flickr and Ravelry but I am so pleased at how he eventually turned out that I just had to show him off here too! I think he looks very lovely indeed hanging on the holly tree in the winter sun.


There is also plenty of time left to enter my first Bloggy Birthday Giveaway ~ I will leave it open until the end of November and then I will get my small people to pull names out of a hat to find out which lucky people will receive a Bloggy Birthday present from little old me! All you have to do to enter is leave me a comment on either this post or my Bloggy Birthday post.

Tomorrow I am going shopping in Edinburgh with my very lovely husband ~ just the two of us! How EXCITING is that! It really doesn't happen very often so I am really looking forward to it. It will be lovely just browsing around the shops and stopping for coffee and cake and a lovely lunch without small people being bored or hungry!!

I hope that you all have a very lovely weekend too :O)

Saturday 21 November 2009

Bloggy Birthday


Happy Bloggy Birthday to me....................

Today it is my Bloggy Birthday or Blogiversary ~ my little blog is one year old! I really can’t quite believe that I have been part of Blogland for one whole year ~ the time has gone by so very quickly and I have met some very lovely bloggy people along the way.

One of the many things that blogging has given me is the motivation to make lots of lovely things and also to try out things I wouldn’t normally have thought about making. The inspiration that comes from all you other lovely people is a very wonderful thing!


Now everyone knows that birthdays ~ even Bloggy Birthdays ~ need to have cake. Unfortunately all my baking things have been put into storage because we are trying to sell our house so bought cakes it had to be! ~ but they are still very chocolaty and very yummy indeed. I am going to celebrate my first Bloggy Birthday by putting my feet up and having a lovely cup of tea, a cake ~ or maybe 2 ~ and a little read at my new Country Living magazine too.


Bloggy birthdays also need to have presents so I bought myself a present of some lovely Rowan Pure Wool DK in some very pretty pink shades ~ I do have a little project lined up for this and all will be hopefully be revealed very soon.

As a way of saying a very BIG Thank You to all the lovely people who take the time to read my little blog there will also be presents for you too! I am not quite sure what these presents will be yet or even how many there will be either. I am also not promising that they will be handmade by me but they will definitely be something nice.

One of the most exciting things for me about having a blog is checking to see if anyone has left me any lovely comments. I just LOVE getting comments! The anticipation is sometimes just too much for me to cope with ~ I really must get out a bit more!! Anyway to be in with a chance of winning one of my Bloggy Birthday presents all you have to do is leave me a comment at the end of this post ~ I will leave it open until the end of November so that it gives you all plenty of time to be included in the giveaway.

I hope that you all have a very lovely weekend and I am looking forward to hopefully reading some of your lovely comments too :O)

Friday 13 November 2009

Garden Loveliness

Earlier on in the week I just happened to take a look out of the window and noticed how bare and wintery my back garden was looking. I decided to take myself outside for a closer look and noticed that although most of the flowers had stopped blooming there was in fact quite a lot of colour still around.


Beautifully vibrant red Wintery berries::


A pretty pink rose ::


Some very fragrant Rosemary ::


And some lovely Geranium leaves ~ with a few little red flowers still out.

One of the things I love most about blogging is that it makes you far more aware of your everyday surroundings and I was actually quite surprised at how beautiful these plants were. I suppose that what I learned was that if you take the time to look a little bit more closely at everything around you then there is beauty and pleasure to be found in even the simplest of things and that there is plenty of colour to be found if you look hard enough for it.

Right ............ moving onto an entirely different kind of garden now.


Summer Garden Granny Squares to be more precise. I have now finished the first block of my Summer Garden Granny blanket ~ and I am very happy with how it has turned out. As you can see it is still looking a bit bunched up and wrinkly and it definitely needs to be blocked but it lets you get the general idea though. That’s one down and only about 29 more blocks to make!! I can definitely see this one being a very long term project! I must say that I am absolutely amazed at the speed that some lovely bloggy people can produce beautiful blankets!!

Enjoy your weekend ....... I hope it’s a good one :O)

Tuesday 10 November 2009

Watery Ripple Scarf

Today is a big day for my Watery Ripple Scarf ~ because today is the day that it get’s it’s very own BiG Moment in blog land ~ a kind of show and tell if you like.


My Watery Ripple Scarf started out life as a test run of the very lovely Attic 24 Neat Ripple Pattern and it just evolved very easily into a scarf. I used Rowan Pure Wool Double knit in the following water inspired colours ::

Glacier 005

Pier 006

Marine 008


It was my very first time rippling and I really do have to say that once I got started I LOVED it. I did not, however, like trying to crochet in to the foundation chain for the first ripply row! That was really difficult and I am so very glad that I only had 31 chains to battle with! Maybe if I start now I might get the first row done for a ripple blanket this time next year! I may be missing something but I’m sure there must be an easier way to do it.

Anyway ~ here it is!


The BiG Moment for my Watery Ripple Scarf.............


I really do love my Watery Ripple Scarf and I really do LoVe the water inspired blues and greens too. It is also such a joy to wear and it had it’s very first outing into the big wide world this morning as I wore it for doing the school run and it kept me very warm and very cosy indeed :O)

Friday 6 November 2009

Crochet Mosiac

Hooray! I did it! I'm so excited about it too! ~ I have finally managed to make a photo mosaic and I have to say that I am very, very happy with it indeed :O)

I have admired these wonderful photographic creations that I have seen in other peoples blogs for such a long time and I have tried unsuccessfully several times to make one for myself. However, yesterday it seems that I finally cracked it!


I used a combination of Flickr and Bug Huge Labs and once you get the hang of it then it is fairly easy to do. It is lovely to have all my colourful October crochet projects in one image and I can definitely see myself making a few more of these lovely creations for future blog posts.

Right.......I really do have to go and do some yukky but very necessary household chores ~ laundry, dishes, cleaning, dusting, hoovering............. you all know how it is ~ the list is endless! Oh and I have to sew some pink elastic onto some ballet shoes for this afternoon too ~ these poor ballet shoes have been waiting for their elastics for a good few weeks now!

I hope that you all have a very lovely weekend :O)

Wednesday 4 November 2009

Wet Weekend


I am back ~ and I had a very lovely ~ but very WET weekend ~ in the beautiful Highlands of Scotland. The hotel was just as warm and friendly as I remembered and the picture of the Buachaille Etive Mor was taken just as we arrived from our bedroom window!

The weather was very typically Scottish and it rained for most of the weekend and rather unfortunately I discovered that my so called waterproof coat was not in fact very waterproof at all and I got absolutely soaked from head to toe!


Unfortunately because the weather was so wet there was not much chance to get as many photographs as I would have liked as the rain and cloud were coming down and blocking the view over the mountains.


The Autumnal colours were beautiful and the photographs do not really show the contrast between all the greens and browns and oranges but the scenery was spectacular.


The rainy weather didn’t stop us from enjoying ourselves and although we didn’t get very much walking done we did manage to visit Oban and Fort William and have a lovely lunch and stop a few times for tea and cake!


And I did find the time to crochet some greeny grassy borders around my flowery circles too!