Lots to show you

You know, it's been quite a rubbish week at work - plenty to do but plenty to annoy and bug me too! I was very glad to get away on Friday! Fingers crossed for improvement next week...
But the crafty things at home have kept me sane!

I've been thinking about what I could say today and realised there are several things actually, so thought it wise to make a list, or I know I'd log off then remember something else!!  -

1. My shawl is finished, blocked and beautiful
2. My Tooty Harmony Blanket is coming along nicely
3. My p*a*t*t*e*r*n has been downloaded over 800 times!
4. My cosie is in the current issue
5. My blog has reached another magic number!!

Firstly then, my beautiful Leaf Edged Shawl is finished, blocked and oh so beautiful!!!!

The yarn is incredibly soft but then it would be as it's 70% merino & 30% nylon. I bought it from RingaRosieYarns in Blyth, Northumberland - a fabulous wool shop with a lovely owner and I can't wait to visit again!!
And the p*a*t*t*e*r*n is quite lovely too - I'll be making this again, possibly quite soon! Next time though, I'll work the short rows in the opposite direction, ie start with the longest row and get shorter, rather than start with the shortest and get longer. I might also work moss stitch instead of stocking stitch. Might.

My Tooty Harmony Blanket is growing nicely too. I tried to get Dad to take a photo of me holding it up but he couldn't manage to take a photo with my tablet. I think maybe his skin was too dry for the touch screen, or he thought he had to press and hold rather than tap the shutter button. So here's a pic I took of him holding it!!

I've made one or 2 changes to the colour recipe from Lucy of Attic24 that I'm following but they're very minor. I've worked just over 50 rows which measures nearly 20 inches long and it's about 50 inches wide. It's going to be BIG! Want another pic?

Speaking of my blanket, the  p*a*t*t*e*r*n for my original Tooty Stripey Blanket has now been downloaded from Ravelry over 800 times!! Woo Hoo!! A lady on Instagram says as soon as she's finished her current project, she will be giving it a try - I can't wait to see someone elses pictures!
(And please excuse the use of the **'s in  p*a*t*t*e*r*n - it does seem to have stopped the robots picking up the links to it, although I'm sure it won't be long before I see it on another website somewhere...)

Now for some exciting news!! Remember last week I said my prize for my Tea Cosie had arrived?? (A prize consisting of a very generous quantity of yarn that arrived on Monday.) Well, yesterday my subscription issue of Crochet Now  (issue 18) dropped through the letterbox and I settled down with a cup of coffee for a read in the afternoon and look what I saw -

OMG!!!!  There's my cosie lined up next to the other winners and it looks like I didn't just get a runner-up prize along with a lot of others like I thought after all but that I was very close to actually winning!! Wow!! Can you imagine the size of the grin on my face when I realised??!!
I'm really glad I made the effort to take part and not just because I won but because it supports such a worth while cause. I'm still trying to find another tea pot it will fit before I offer it to the local branch of Marie Curie. There's no point offering a tea cosie without a pot - and as I've discovered over the last 2 weeks, tea pots really are going out of fashion. The charity shops have had almost none. I'm so glad I stopped making them when I did... (Take a look at the Tea Cosie tab at the top of the page to see what I mean.)
And look at the winning cosie - isn't it just the most incredible cosie you've ever seen?? It's on a theme of a Mad Hatters Tea Party from Alice in Wonderland. Just STUNNING! I don't mind coming second to a cosie like that at all. The winner's prize (a lady called Lyndsay McFarlane) included having her design in the magazine but it's so complicated they're going to run it as a series on their blog instead. I'm quite tempted to make it myself!



And to finish today - and this is a really lovely way to round off a week of  crochet and knitting highlights after the crap at work  - I've just logged in to see this - 33,333 views of my little blog!! Yes, THIRTY THREE THOUSAND, THREE HUNDRED & THIRTY THREE!!! 


I do love a magic number don't you?? Til next time, T xXx

Leaf Edge Shawl

I spent a very pleasant hour winding my beautiful Wild Flower Merino wool from RingaRosie Yarns on Friday. First I spread out the skeins for a closer look to see if the colours were the same across both of them but I could see that one had more cream than the other - can you see what I mean in the bottom skein? That's not a problem at all, it just means I'll make sure I use both skeins at the same time and swap from one to the other every couple of rows.
I had great fun mixing it about like coloured spaghetti - it was almost a shame to have to wind it into balls!

I knitted a couple of tiny test pieces to see what it was like, first in moss stitch and it looked amazing! In fact, it looked so amazing I was very tempted to completely change what I had planned on making.

But luckily the stocking stitch piece also looked good!

I got started on my Leaf Edge Shawl almost straight away - after a little photo shoot!!

(I must admit, I'm really enjoying my little photo shoots!! Silly I know but very satisfying.)

This is part of the leaf edging. The pattern calls for 41 leaves, then you pick up 260 stitches along the top edge and work in short rows to form the crescent shaped shawl. I decided to actually make it on 4.5 mm needles, rather than 4 mm but I'm wondering know whether I should have stuck with the 4 mm??.... I've only made a dozen leaves so far, so I could unpick them and start again. They only take 10 minutes each so it wouldn't be a huge job.

If you want to keep up with its progress I'll be posting regular updates on Instagram and Ravelry. And if you'd like to make your own, then you'll need to download the free pattern from Ravelry.

I was also very naughty during the week and bought this -

I've been wanting to start a big blanket for a few weeks now and have decided to make my Tooty Stripey again but this time in an "adult" size and have opted top go with Lucy of Attic24's original colour pack of Stylecraft colours. There are 17 in total and she's currently using them to make a blanket with lots of multi coloured squares. The pattern is her "summer harmony blanket" .

I decided to trust her colour judgement and popped down to my local store to see if by chance they had all of them, before I ordered online. It took a bit of hunting on the part of the lovely assistant but she did indeed manage to find me all 17 colours!!

Some of them I have used before but a lot are new to me. Some I would never have chosen myself. But I trust Lucy's colour sense. Here they are, all laid out for a little photo shoot of their own - 

Naturally, I needed to try them out, so used the "random selection" method of grabbing colours and just using whatever came to hand first and produced these -

I don't think I'll be using that method of colour selection for my blanket!! I'll be following Lucy's carefully worked out colour recipe.

My working name for this blanket will be Tooty Harmony (what else??...) although I probably won't start it immediately as I think I'm going to get quite engrossed with my shawl!

That's all for today - it's going to be HOT again and I want ot get the shopping done while it's still bearable. I was up at 6.30am to colour my hair would you believe??! I had visions of streaks of sweaty dye running down my face if I did it later and I'd end up looking like a zebra!

Oh, and my P*a*t*t*3*r*n is just about ready, I just need to scan and upload it. I think I will put it on Ravelry rather than here, so I can see how often it's downloaded. I'll be adding a page of notes to the blog very soon with all the extra instructions you'll need, so keep an eye on the tabs at the top of the page.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend! T  xXx