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 paintbox cushion

Oh my goodness! Where on earth did the last few weeks disappear to? I just don't seem to have had the time to fit in everything that needs to be done and I have certainly missed the time that I usually spend blogging and visiting all your lovely blogs too.

Although I have been really pushed for time, I have actually managed to fit in a little bit of crochet and have finally finished my woolly paintbox cushion. And I have to say that I am very pleased with it indeed!


I was a very good girl and for the very first time I actually blocked! I must confess that I have never blocked anything before and I was more than a little bit apprehensive about it. BUT blocking is good! It seems to totally transform the piece of crochet and actually makes it look more lovely than it did to start with and it feels so much softer too. I definitely recommend it and it is well worth the extra little bit of effort involved.

The woolly paintbox cushion was made using Lucy's Summer Garden Granny pattern and lots of yummy bright colours of Rowan Pure Wool DK surround by a lovely soft creamy colour ~ which really did bring out the bright colours beautifully. I didn't really want to crochet the back of the cushion cover this time, so I bought a really cheap fleecy blanket for less than a couple of pounds and made an envelope style backing for it ~ which actually worked out as well as I had hoped it would!

I'm off now to put the kettle on for a cup of tea and am going to sit for a while and play a little catch up with all of your lovely blogs. I hope to be here again very soon :O) xx

Monday Fun

Monday was the last day of the school holidays for us so we decided to try and pack in as much fun as we possibly could. We had arranged to spend the day with my very best friend who lives in the beautiful Scottish Borders and had all been looking forward to it for ~ what seemed like forever.

First stop was Ceramic Experience ~ my two small people had been excited about this for weeks and absolutely love this kind of thing.........they LOVE looking at all the little white ceramic figures and take ages choosing just the right thing to paint ~ this time it was a little hedgehog and a little dog. They LOVE rolling up their little sleeves and getting stuck in with all the colourful paints and brushes ~ there is usually lots and LOTS of paint on clothes and faces and arms but it is so much fun watching their little creations take shape.

Then there was a leisurely walk along the river Tweed ~ stopping every so often to throw in a stick or a stone ~ which sometimes seemed to me to be more like half a tree or a rock! Small boys and water ~ what is that all about?? They just can't help themselves!!

We stopped for a very tasty buffet style chinese lunch which went down a treat and then we made our way to Harestanes Visitor Centre which is just outside Jedburgh. I love everything about this place as there is just so much to see and do.

There are little thatched houses to be explored............


There are willow sculptures to be found............


And pretty gardens made with paper too..............

It was a lovely day out! A most enjoyable way to spend the last day of the holidays!

However ::

There were two very grumpy and tired children on Tuesday morning ~ very reluctant to go to back to school and now they are both on a BIG countdown to the Summer holidays!

I have to say though that I am somewhat enjoying the peace and quiet and the routine of getting back to normal. It is lovely to come home from the school run and to be able to sit quietly with a cup of tea and some crochet and indulge in a little ME time :O) xx

Japanese parcel

Look what I got in the post this morning!

A very beautifully wrapped parcel that has come all the way from Japan! Can you guess what it is? I'm sure that if you follow the very wonderful Lucy at Attic 24 then you should have absolutely no trouble at all in guessing what is inside the parcel!


Were you right? Yippee............ it's my very own copy of the beautifully illustrated Japanese book ~ Pretty Colour Crochet and Knit Goods ~ bought on Etsy from a seller called Pomadour 24. Now......... as it came all the way from Japan there is only one drawback and that is that the book itself is actually written in Japanese too! Fortunately for me all the patterns are also shown as diagrams and although I've never actually followed any crochet diagrams before I'm quite sure that it will be MUCH, MUCH easier to teach myself how to follow these crochet pattern diagrams that it will be for me to even begin to teach myself Japanese!!

As you will see from the photos I have busying myself this week by sewing in all the little end bits and joining up the granny squares on my colourful painbox cushion cover. I've nearly finished joining them all together now ~ I've just got to block it and then find something suitable to make the back of the cushion cover from. I usually just crochet the back of my cushion covers but this time I have another idea that I want to try out ~ I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it will actually work out just the way I want it to!


I have also been out and about in the garden ~ pottering a little and enjoying the spring sunshine ~ I've been planting some pots with geraniums, sweet williams, trailing lobelia and sweet peas which should hopefully provide me with lots of beautiful colours in a few of months time. Do you see the very lovely colourful flower pots that I bought myself? I just couldn't resist buying them when I saw them ~ they really do make a very lovely change from the boring old terracotta ones that we normally use and I am really looking forward to planting those little pots up too!

Hope that you all have a very lovely weekend :O) xxx

Easter weekend

A very Good Morning to you all today ~ I hope that you had a Happy Easter weekend.


We spent Easter Sunday down in the very lovely seaside town of North Berwick visiting my Mum. The weather has been very kind to us this Eastery weekend and we decide to work up an appetite for lunch by going for a bracing stroll along the beach and believe me, it was very blustery and very bracing indeed! Don't be fooled by the weather in the beachy photograph ~ silly old me forgot to take the camera so this picture was taken on a much brighter day last year.

Yesterday the weather took a bit of a turn for the worse and it became very windy and very rainy indeed. We decided to have one of those very lazy, staying in our pyjamas kind of days and lounged about and ate lots of chocolate eggs and drank vast amounts of tea. A wonderfully satisfying way to spend a day I must say!


In between all the tea drinking and chocolate eating I also managed to find the time to sit with my feet up and do a little crocheting. I have now finished making all the colourful little granny squares that I need to make my woolly paintbox cushion. As you can see I have still got to sew in the little end bits and then join all the squares together but I'm quite sure that it won't take me too long to do that.


There's a very busy week ahead with two small children to keep entertained ~ in ways that hopefully won't involve spending too much money. Although with a trip to the cinema planned that will pretty much blow the entertainment budget in one go!!

I hope that you enjoy the rest of your Eastery break and that you have a fun filled time whatever you may be doing :O) xx

Happy Easter

Just popping in to wish you all a very Happy Easter ~ I hope that you all have a very lovely Easter weekend.

Enjoy your chocolate Easter eggs and TRY not to indulge too much........... although I somehow think that in this house it will definitely prove to be much easier said than done!! :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