Monthly Archives: June 2020

My lockdown blanket

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With all of the sorting out of my crafting stash and completing my works-in-progress, I am finding plenty of yarn ends.  So a few weeks ago I decided to make a lockdown rainbow blanket using up all the these left over bits.  I’ve gone for the simple treble crochet granny square pattern and I am trying to stick to the standard rainbow – Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet – with an addition of Grey and White at the end.

It’s been very therapeutic to do whilst watching my favourite TV shows – particularly The Repair Shop, Sewing Bee and Gardener’s World.  I’m hoping to make it large enough to use as a throw over my bed, so it’s going to take a while.

The problem with trying to stick to the rainbow format is making sure I have an equal number of balls of each colour.  I keep having to stop and go on a hunt for either red or range at the moment!  So I’m going through my WIP bag to finish off a project each time I run out of a colour.  Hopefully this will mean I can kill two birds with one stone, finishing off a WIP as well as using up the leftovers on my blanket.  It does appear that I don’t have much in the red category amongst my projects at present.  I suppose I’d better make a start on some Christmas projects!!

It’s been a lovely project to get out each evening while I’m catching up with myself.  I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the re-run of ‘Pride and Prejudice‘ (Is there really a better way to spend a mid-week evening than watching Colin Firth look smoulderingly at Jennifer Ehle, while crocheting a blanket to warm your legs up?!) Maybe a bar of chocolate and a glass of wine would be welcome additions, but not when I need to concentrate enough to keep the pattern going – I have a tendency to misplace stitches and have to unravel if there’s too much wine involved!!

There’s certainly plenty of work left in the this blanket, so I’m going to have to find another series to work along too – there seem to be fewer and fewer escapist programmes to watch these days.  Although I have got into Tess of the d’Urbevilles over on BBC4.

Any suggestions gratefully received.

Happy crafting

x

Work-in-Progress Progress!

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It’s three months (ish) since we went into lockdown and I have tried to get through the large bag of partly made projects I had hanging around back in March. Twenty items really is too many to have left so long, but I really am all about the knitting / crochet and not the stuffing and sewing.

Having finished the three lockdown lions a few weeks back, I have been steadily working through the other bags and boxes of pieces and my menagerie is growing once again.  Most of the creatures are from kits I’ve had from either Let’s Knit or LGC Knitting and Crochet magazines, and are great for making something a little out of my comfort zone or for little gifts for friends and family.  I have enjoyed making most of them.  I do find that sometimes the instructions can be a little vague – sew legs to body, for instance – so I do make a point of studying as many pictures of the finished articles as possible before committing to the final positions of limbs and features.

So, what have I managed to finish over the last few weeks then?

From LGC Knitting and Crochet magazine, I have made,

Amy the Donkey (design by Hannah Cooper)

Easter Bunny (design by Nicola Valiji)

Safari bear (design by Sarah Louise Read)

and a knitted chick (design by Sachiyo Ishii)

From the Let’s Knit kits, I chose

Sparkle-dash the unicorn (design by Steffi Hochfellner)

And I finally finished an Aldi, So crafty kit of a hippo.

I hope you like them as much as I do.

There is still a way to go, but the pile is steadily reducing which means there is more space in the living room – I actually found my sewing machine this week, which had been buried under two bags of yarn.  So there’s something else to do, hmmm, what to make next……..

Happy crafting

x

Lockdown Life

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These last few weeks I have been struggling with the whole lockdown.  Tempers have been running short across the household and don’t get me started on homeschooling an eleven-year-old!

I have been trying to separate home and crafting where possible, but this is equally challenging due to having completely lost my dedicated crafting space.  My husband is working from home and needed a quiet office space, so my craft room is now the office.

We have done a complete redecorate of the space and it has made a real difference.  The whole room feels so much larger and calmer (I have to admit it was rather chaotic).

It was quite a fun project to do, involving removing old nursery furniture (it’s amazing how quickly it was removed from the drive), as well as stripping textured wallpaper and all the associated sanding, filling and painting.  Whilst new plug sockets and painting were being completed by my husband, I’ve had the joy of sorting through all of my crafting materials and associated accumulations!

It’s all been plonked in the front room for what feels like weeks, while I work my way through it all.  I didn’t quite realise how much stuff I have.  It’s been quite interesting to see what’s been hidden in  old cupboards and I might find the opportunity to use some things again in the coming weeks / months.  I’m sure some things will come back into fashion – paper crimper anyone?

After the main papering and painting had been finished, we had a new carpet fitted – what a luxury – it’s over twelve years since we’ve had new flooring anywhere and this feels lovely underfoot.  I was then set free with a geometric paint pattern above the picture rail. I did some practice with tester pots first, just to check it would work!

It took longer than I thought it would and it was very nerve-wracking hoping the paint hadn’t run under any of the masking tape.  Plus the colour choice was different!  It all looked pretty rubbish with the orange masking tape.

The unveiling when quite well, I think.  There are a few little smudges but overall is looks OK to me (It certainly helps that it’s high up).

Since all the painting has been done, we had to wait for Ikea to open for the storage to finish everything off.  We took inspiration for the room from an Ikea Kallax image on their site, so plumped for the Kallax storage solution.  My daughter had fun deciding on the box / door / shelf / drawer arrangement.  It looks great and there is a lot more space to move around in there now.  I still haven’t managed to store everything in there and I’m not sure there is actually quite enough storage for all my bits and pieces – I certainly have more books and magazines than I thought!

Unfortunately, as lovely as the finished room is, there is little chance of me being able to make use of it as my husband is working from home for the foreseeable future.  So I will have to continue to content myself with card-making at the kitchen table and knitting / crochet in front of the television in the evenings (for now).

Happy crafting

x