New Year ~ New Yarn

Is it really the 6th of January already? Where on earth does the time go to? As usual, I am a lot later than most of you in making an appearance in blogland this year ~ but none the less I'm here now to wish you all a very Happy New Year ~ I hope that 2011 is a good one for you :O)

I don't usually tend to make myself New Year resolutions because being the terribly unorganised person that I am I never, ever stick to them ~ so really there is no point! However, I have been looking back over my little bloggy space for last year and noticed a distinct lack of posts!! Only 24 posts in a whole year!! How rubbish is that?? It really is a wonder that I have any of you lovely readers left!! So ...........what I am actually trying to say is that I WILL try harder to post a bit more often this year, and more importantly, I WILL try harder to finish some lovely crafty things so that I actually have something to post about!!


A New Year just has to have some New Yarn ~ or so I told myself!! And isn't this lovely lot absolutely gorgeous? I decided to buy myself a little yarny present and opted for this collection of Rico creative cotton and to tell you the truth I can't wait to get started with it. I love the brightness of the colours ~ they are just begging to made into something bright and cheery ~ I'm not quite sure what that something is yet, but I will let you know as soon as I have decided.

Right..........I think I can hear the kettle calling to me, so it must be time for a cup of tea and perhaps a little bit of pondering over some Rico creativity.

See you all soon :O)xxx

Ups and downs

I'm just popping by to say Hello to you all and to let you know that I am still very much alive and kicking! I've just not had much time recently or indeed the motivation to have anything decent to blog about!


Thank you all so much for your lovely comments about my woolly paintbox cushion. I am so glad that you liked it and I did love reading all your wonderful comments about it ~ it really did cheer me UP alot ~ xxxx

I have been UP to my eyes in the end of year accounts for the wonderful charity that I do some voluntary work for. Rummaging around in piles of receipts and invoices and calculating and then recalculating ~ I think that I am finally getting somewhere though, and hope to have some kind of report done for the AGM which is happening very soon. Much too soon for my liking!


Earlier on in the week I had a little bit of a panic to myself ~ a little bit of a disaster....! No matter how hard I looked I just could not find my favourite and trusty metal hook. I decided that I needed to tidy out my crochet bag ~ which was a very necessary and very much avoided task ~ and do you know what? I found it hiding at the very bottom of the bag with all the scrappy little bits of wool that I keep 'just in case' I might need them again. I'm sure that you will all know how that is!!



Now that the little hooky stick has resurfaced again I really do want to get going with my summer garden granny squares ~ I desperately want to finish the little summer garden throw that I seem to have working on for ages. I have told myself that there are no more projects to be started until this WIP has been finished and as an added incentive to get it finished I have promised myself a new batch of Lucy inspired yarn once it's done. Better start crocheting quick then!!

I'm looking forward to catching up with you all sometime next week and I hope that everyone has a very lovely weekend :O) xx

Woolly paint

At the beginning of the week I was playing around with my little metal hooky stick and some very lovely colourful woolly stuff. I was supposed to be busying myself making a few more summer garden granny squares with some green grassy borders but somehow I got a little side tracked along the way.


I started making my flowery circles with creamy coloured middles and instead of surrounding them with their grassy borders I decided that I would play about with the colours a little bit. For some reason those little creamy circles surrounded by the bright colours reminded me a bit of an artists paint palette or paintbox ~ I'm not sure why!

It then set me thinking that for all of us like minded crocheters out there that a crochet hook is very similar indeed to a paint brush and that the colourful woolly stuff is a little bit like the paint. I was very pleasantly surprised at just how different the same little granny square could look just by using different colours.


Little summer flowers surrounded by their greeny grassy borders::

And a completely different look here altogether ~ a rather colourful creamy concoction ::

All this playing about with different colours just reminded me of what a wonderful medium that hook and yarn are. I can definitely see a colourful woolly paintbox cushion cover being made from these colourful little granny squares too ~ just the right kind of cushiony loveliness to brighten up my comfy settee.

Think it must be time now for a cup of tea and maybe a biscuit or two ~ I hope that you all have a very lovely weekend and look forward to catching up with all your blogs next week :O) xx

Waiting.....

Why didn't anybody tell me that this house selling malarkey was such hard work?



I have to admit that I am beginning to think that the bright pink FOR SALE sign that is very prominently sticking out from the middle of the garden hedge is invisible!

Our little house has been up for sale for 3 months now and so far there has been almost no interest in it at all. I suppose that on hindsight putting it on the market at the end of October was probably not the best timing ~ with Christmas and a new year looming ahead ~ but I just can't stand all the waiting about that is involved!

We thought that it would be a good idea to have our viewing by appointment and also to have open viewing on a Sunday afternoon. Sunday mornings involve running about like mad people doing all manner of household chores imaginable ~ washing, ironing, cleaning, dusting, hoovering, hiding things in cupboards etc......... And then Sunday afternoon we sit about WAITING for prospective buyers to knock on the door. We sit and we WAIT and we WAIT and so far not one person has viewed the house on a Sunday.

The estate agents phoned us on Monday morning to arrange a viewing for last night ~ and we got ourselves all excited ~ only to get another phone call from the estate agents to say that the viewing had been cancelled :o(

Now it's back to playing the WAITING game again!


Playing along with this game is the Raspberry Ripple scarf ~ which is patiently WAITING to be finished ~ it was supposed to be finished in time for Christmas but that just didn't happen!


Also playing along is this rather lovely pile of woolly colourfulness just WAITING for me to find some inspiration to turn it into some hooky goodness. But I'm not quite sure where my inspiration has gone right now as it seems to have got lost somewhere along the way too. Maybe I accidentally hid it in the cupboard when I was tidying up the house! :O)

Rainbow colours

Firstly I would like to say a very big THANK YOU to everyone who has been kind enough to send me Get Well wishes following my Stupidness last Thursday!

I am feeling a little better and although my head does still hurt quite a lot ~ which with 4 staples holding it together is to be expected ~ I am slowly starting to get back to normal. Although to say that I am beginning to PANIC about the removal of the aforementioned staples is a bit of an understatement! However, as I can’t keep them in my head for ever I will just have to grin and bear it and put up with the pain~ because I am very sure that there will definitely be pain involved somewhere!


Right that is enough panicking for the time being ~ let’s get ourselves back to these Rainbow colours.


A few weeks ago I signed up for a Rainbow Colour Swap and my lovely swap package from Juanita arrived on Friday just in time to cheer me up from my Stupidness! Inside the parcel was a very lovely little green bag which Juanita got on her travels in India and also a beautiful handmade green beaded bracelet which included a bead which she had handpicked from a street vendor in India too. I love the bracelet and am sure that I will wear it often! Thank you so much Juanita.


I also received another parcel at the weekend which was of the very lovely woolly kind. I LOVE it when these packages of wool arrive. I get so much enjoyment from just unpacking it and seeing what lovely colour combinations can be made. As you can see there are quite a few rainbowy colours in there and they will be just right for making more of the pretty flowery centres for my Summer Garden Granny Squares. There are just so many different colour combinations to be made that I find myself waking up at night just thinking about it!


I’m think that I am going to go now and put the kettle on and rest my sore little stapled head and I must say that I plan to put my feet up, drink tea and crochet for most of the afternoon :O)

Moving House

Arrgghh!!

Things have been very hectic around here for the last week or so! Earlier on in the year you may remember this post when we had decided to build an extension onto our house. However, following a week full of meetings with the bank and estate agents we have now decided that moving house would be a much better idea.

I have been under very strict instructions from my lovely husband that I must de clutter the house in order to get it ready to put up for sale. Who is he trying to kid? I am a hoarder at heart and find it very difficult to get rid of things ~ quite traumatic in fact!! I like to squirrel things away ‘just in case’ they may be useful later! However, I have been a good girl and have been sorting out and sending bags of stuff to charity shops and putting lots of things in the bin and although I hate to admit it, the house does look a lot better with less clutter.

We have been ~ or should I say my lovely husband has been ~ very busy ripping up carpets and doing lots of painting and the house is starting to look very lovely indeed. So lovely in fact, that if we really didn’t need some extra space I would be changing my mind about moving altogether!



Whilst my lovely husband was painting last weekend I was sent on a little shopping trip to buy some new lampshades and blinds and other bits and pieces to make the house look pretty. As this only took me a couple of hours and I had been sent out of the way for the whole day I decided to have a little look in the wool shop! It was only a little look and as you can see I only bought a few balls of that very lovely Rowan Pure Wool DK. At last I can now finish my colourful crochet cushion cover and have plans to maybe start on a blanket too :O)

Quiet House

My children went back to school in the middle of last week and I am now trying to get back into some sort of routine. I can’t believe how quickly seven and a half weeks of school holidays have just disappeared! The house seems so very quiet now and it’s funny how you miss all the chatting and laughing and noise of lots of children generally charging around the house causing mayhem!

However, now that they are back to school, my absolute favourite time of the day is just after I have come back from doing the school run in the morning. That is when I make myself something yummy for breakfast, along with a nice cup of tea, and I settle myself down to read a few chapters of whatever book I happen to have on the go ~ Blissful........


I can also now get back to doing some serious crocheting without the constant cries of ‘MUM’ every two minutes. I have nearly finished my Colourful Crochet Cushion Cover but disaster has struck and I have run out of my lovely Pier coloured Rowan DK Wool........ with only one round to go! The only good thing about running out of wool is that it gives me an excuse to go into Edinburgh for a bit of a woolly shopping spree ~ although I don't think that many of us need an excuse for woolly shopping! Do we? :O)

Woolly Goodies

I had a lovely weekend and hope that you all did too!

On Saturday morning the postie arrived with a lovely little parcel of woolly goodies from this lovely web site called Rowan Up Country. They have the most brilliant woolly shade cards and I had decided to order a couple of them for future planning of more woolly projects and future purchases of more lovely woolly packages.

I also treated myself to two more balls of the Rowan Pure DK Wool in Pier to complete the back of my colourful cushion cover which I made a start on last night.

I have got a very busy week ahead as I am doing a few extra shifts in the Library to cover for holidays and I have also got to get organised as we are going away for a few days holiday next weekend. Unfortunately I can see very little time for crochet and a lot of time being spent on washing,ironing and organising :O)