My second Crochet Project is complete - A Scarf for Xmas for my Girl

The colour that looks blue in the pic is actually a dark purple  (I just noticed I have a little trimming to do in the tassel department too lol)

 
Wow can you believe it,,,,,I actually managed to finish a project in 11 days from start to finish lol I am amazed.  Now I know I won't ever win any speed races with my crochet but it gives me something constructive to do while I am watching TV with Hubby at night time.

I don't know if it is my age or what it is but lately I feel the need to be always "doing" something.  I can't just sit and watch TV I have to be occupying my brain at the same time.  Even riding in the car, I feel that I need to do something, I have trouble just sitting idle lol.

I love the way crochet seems to grow quite quickly.  I taught myself to knit a few years ago but I found that since I was quite slow at it, it just didn't seem to progress very fast and I got bored with the project before I was even half way through it.  Crochet on the other hand, well I think crochet ROCKS!!!!  I love how even me as a beginner can get things done fairly quickly.  At the end of each session you can see progress and to me that is amazing!

This scarf is from a pattern out of my Art of Crochet collection.  I made it with wool left over from my recent blanket.  They are colours that my stepdaughter, Miss12 loves so I have decided that this will go towards her Christmas or possibly her birthday present list.  I hope she likes it!!

My Very First Crochet Reveal Session - My Granny Square Rug is now complete!!!

As you can see it is far from being bed sized but perfect for DVD watching and snuggling on the lounge!

 
I can't believe it,,,,,it is finally finished.  After teaching myself to Crochet using "The Art of Crochet" series, I have finally finished my very first rug.  As you can see it isn't one for the bed, it is one for those cold nights, snuggled up on the lounge watching DVDs.  My Hubby has claimed it as his own despite the kind of girly colours of pink and purple in it lol (but hey he keeps seeing he is Sensitive New Age Guy lol so it fits).  Hubby's only complaint is that it is now getting warmer weather and he won't get to really use it until next winter,,,,oh well.

I wanted to make it nice and bright to add a little pizazz to those cold winter days

This rug has taken me, I think, about 6 months to complete.  When I started I was a complete newbie to granny squares and they would take me a good half hour or so to do.  By the end of this rug though, I was able to whip a granny square out within about 10 minutes,,,huge improvement!  I enjoyed making the granny squares, the bit I really hated was the joining together of them all!  This took me quite a while as I just wanted it over and done with and some weeks I simply couldn't bring myself to do any work on it lol.  Once I got it done though, I found a renewed interest in it as I began my outer edge.

I would like to say a big thank you to Lucy at Attic24 for her great tutorial on Granny Blanket Edging.  It made the rug come together nicely.  If you haven't visited Lucy's blog before, and you enjoy crochet or for that matter just love bright bursts of colourful photographs I urge you to have peek at her blog.  She has inspired me in so many ways.  When I finished this on the weekend, I excitedly said to Hubby "Wow now I can have my Tah-Dah Moment".....he just looked at me and said "Your what???".  I just laughed and said "Nevermind, its a Lucy thing".  As you can guess the conversation went on with the usual, "who is Lucy?" and in the end I showed him her blog.  He didn't quite have the same appreciation for it as I do but hey its a girly kind of thing!

This rug has given me a confidence boost and I have already started on my next project.  My next crochet project is going to be a scarf for Miss12 for next winter.  (Yes, I know lol, I am going from a rug, back to the basicness of a scarf,,,,,,,but I wanted to make a few things that I can get through a little quicker!)

I have decided I am just going to work through my  "Art of Crochet" magazines making each of the things I have flagged (believe me there are many, many items lol, I am only  up to magazine 60, so half way through the collection and I think I must have flagged at least 100 items that I would like to make!).  I love the patterns in these magazines as they are written in simple terms that beginners can understand.  Normally I don't like the weekly collectable magazines as I think they are very expensive for what they are, but I am really enjoying this collection and I know that I will get alot of use out of it so I have made it my little treat each week.

Okay back to the housework,,,,,,this house is a bomb site!!!

Finally its coming together...... Crochet rocks!!!

Well you may remember a while ago I showed you a stack of crocheted granny squares of various colours.  It has been slow going, I don't get a lot of time to sit and crochet, so nothing gets done in a speedy kind of fashion.  But I wanted to show you just a sneak peek of where I am at with my Granny Square Blanket.

Ta-daaaaaa!

This is just a little peek of the back of it.  Hubby has claimed this as his (yes I know it has pink and purple in it but hey he wants it so who am I to argue lol).  I decided to do my joining in black just to give it a little bit of a manly colour somewhere in there lol.  I have two more rows to add on and then I have to join the horizontal rows.  The joining definitely hasn't been my favourite bit, it seems to be very slow going but hey, it is at least starting to resemble a rug now!!!  I am guessing at this pace it will take another week at least for me to get it finished in the joining area and then I am going to add more rows of granny square stitching around the outside to make it that bit bigger.  I was hoping to get it finished in time for Hubby to use it while the weather was still cool but oh well, a girl can't do everything right???

One of those weeks.....

The worst bit about being a parent would have to be the worry that comes with the job. 

Last week my Mr11 went off to his friend's house for the weekend.  His friend lives about 40 minutes away and therefore they only really get to catch up in the school holidays.  But the other weekend was the other boy's birthday and so they had organised a 2 night sleepover up at their house.  The first weekend it was planned for we had to cancel as Mr11 was sick at school on the Friday.  I wasn't sure if it was the start of gastro or something so I thought it best to cancel......needless to say he was only sick the one time!

We re-organised it for the weekend just gone.  Mr11 went up there Friday after school and then I get a phone call from the other boy's mum on Saturday afternoon saying that Mr11 had been sick twice and wanted to come home.  We got him home and he was sick a couple more times and I thought "Okay, he has a bug".  On Sunday morning he was brighter and we decided we would all go to Mr14's soccer game.  He started to look a little pale but said he was hungry, silly me had meant to pack some dry crackers for him to nibble but I forgot....the only thing available was plain potato chips so he had a few of those.....silly move!  We made it back home before he was sick again.  The strange part was that he was really bright in between the times he was sick, it was odd.  Monday he stayed home from school and I fed him bland types of food and just small amounts, he was sick a couple of times but only tiny little bits, he was keeping down most of his intake and was drinking well.  Tuesday saw him only sick twice, both times really small amounts and his food intake was up on the previous day.  Wednesday he was okay and bright as a button so Thursday he headed off to school.  At about 1.15 I got a phone call from the school saying that he had been sick.  I headed in to pick him up an he waltzed out of the sick room bright as a button.   He said he had felt sick as he had walked in to school that morning but felt fine after a few minutes.  Lunchtime came around and he felt off and didn't have more than 2 bites of his lunch.  He went out to play with a friend and was sick on the oval. 

I have an appointment for him on Monday with our family doctor (of course he isn't working between now and then!).  Mr11 doesn't want to see anyone else, but I did pop in and talk to a doctor this morning who advised me that is most likely a virus and since he is keeping most of his food down he will be okay.  My main concern is he has now missed basically a week of school and will now miss Monday as well as his appointment is in the middle of the day.

When he was 5 he had a very similar thing.  He was sick on and off for 4 months.  It was just so random the doctors kept putting it down to a virus, but then I noticed that he was losing weight.  It was gradual and I didn't notice it for quite a while.  In total he ended up losing 6kgs.  When I realised just how much he had lost I took him into the Children's Hospital who admitted him and put him in isolation as they were convinced that he was contagious.......this was after me explaining that this had been on and off for 4 months and no one else at home, in a house with 6 other kids (at the time) was sick.  So we were confined to a little room while they did blood tests, urine tests, you name it he had it.  They then decided that it wasn't contagious and he could venture into the play area.  He stopped throwing up for a full 24 hour period and they allowed him home.....I still didn't have any answers.  We went back for a follow up appointment and they decided to put a tube thing (sorry I can't recall exactly what it was) up his nose and down into his stomach which would attach to a box on the outside that would record what his stomach was up to for 24 hours.  This showed up nothing unusual and they then passed it off as "just one of those freaky things" and nothing more got done.  He never had another bout like this for 6 years,,,,until now.

I will hold off going to any other doctor now until Monday unless he gets worse.  I will just keep and eye on him and monitor his intake.  On Monday though I will be demanding to find an answer, we cannot go through 4 months of this again!  One time can be put down to a freak thing but twice???  Looking at him now you wouldn't think there was anything wrong, he is laughing and drinking and eating just like normal.

Aaagghhhhhhhhhhh weeks like this I just hate being a parent and hate the worry that goes with it.  My brain is just running overtime thinking about everything he has eaten wondering if there is a trigger or something.  I just don't know!!!!!

On a lighter note, I decided to make up some more Christmas decorations for this year....this had been my plan for this week originally lol.....so far I have made just 1 and I couldn't put his Christmas ribbon on as I can't seem to find the red and green ribbons I know I have somewhere in this house lol.  Here he is....

Crochet Granny Squares - a burst of colour for my room

Some of you may remember my attempts at the "Art of Crochet" rug that I started.  I think I have made 17 squares so far.  Well I became disheartened because my squares were ending up all different sizes.  While I love learning new stitches etc I just got to the point where I wanted something I could do that would look "right" and I could make real progress rather than waiting for the next issue to come out.  So I have sidelined the "Art of Crochet" rug for the moment and have begun my own "Granny Square Blanket".

Granny Squares are quick and easy to make.  The pattern is super easy to follow even for a beginner like me.  I will continue to get the "Art of Crochet" magazines as I love the patterns that it provides.  I have so many of them flagged as potential items to make (too many in fact).  But for now, I will keep progressing with my blanket.  I find that I can get 2 squares done while watching a programme on TV with the kids each night before they go to bed.  While this will still take a long time to progress to a decent size blanket, it is progress that I can see grow a little each day.

The great part about Crochet, I am finding, is the portability of it.  I often take it in the car with me.  I went for a ride with Hubby last week up into the Adelaide Hills as he had to go and see a couple of customers.  I took along my pink wool and managed to finish 4 more squares.  Someone with more experience probably would have finished off about 10 in that time, but I felt pretty proud of myself with 4 little squares added to my pile.  Hubby is starting to call me Granny, taking my crochet everywhere but he has already stated that this blanket when finished will be his blanket......who's the Granpa now??? huh????? lol.  He has decided that my first attempt at doing things will become his, fair enough, I think, but I will wait to see his reaction when I try my hand at a lingerie bag or a scarf or beanie crocheted in pink purple and white or something like that lol.

ATTACK OF THE CROCHET BUG.......Art of Crochet Squares 3-16

I think I have discovered the problem with these installment type craft magazine things,,,,,such as "The Art of Crochet"....

.....the problem is that I get them in lots of 4 once a month.  I love pulling them apart and placing them in my folder.  I add a little sticky post it note on the pages of things I want to make (sadly lol, so far that has been at least 95% of the patterns!!) and dream about making them perfectly.  At this point the word perfectly is just a dream but hey, I've only just begun to learn lol!!  Anyway then comes the time to crochet and, me being me, when I am learning a new skill, I need total, and I mean TOTAL concentration.  So that requires me to wait until all the Little People of the house are tucked up in bed for the night so that I don't have the constant "Mum where is...." or "Mum can I have...", you know how it  is lol.

So sadly, my squares have taken time to develop, but just lately, as I have  mastered a few of the basic stitches and don't have to concentrate quite as hard, I have been churning out some squares.  Once again, they are less than perfect and this blanket isn't quite going to look like the one on the photo above but hey it will always be labelled  as the "blanket I learnt to crochet with".  I can see that due to tension issues etc I will have to crochet around a few squares to make them bigger as they have just ended up too small compared to a few that have grown to quite large proportions, but it will still be colourful nonetheless.

Here are my attempts at squares 3-16.....

As you can see by the photos some  are quite small. They measure about right according to what they are supposed to measure but sadly we have the larger ones such as cherry red one on the right that is very, and I mean VERY large in comparison.  Of course, being that sort of pattern I just couldn't stop when it reached the size of the other squares I had to keep going until the pattern was finished.  I am hoping I can stretch out some of the smaller ones a little bit to make up for it but oh well as I said I will just add little borders around the edge to even it all up a little.

 

Overall though I am quite enjoying my latest little hobby.  I particularly enjoy the granny squares as they are so quick to make up and I can see fast progress.  I enjoy the fact that crochet comes together so much faster than knitting, well for me at least lol.  Knitting seems to be very slow going for me, but crochet seems to happen and grow fast and I see results much quicker.

Last weekend I also got some more little tunnels and hammocks made up for Mr10's pet rats.  They had finally all but destroyed the ones that I made last year, so with some left over fleecy material I made up some more for them.  They love them!!!  While I had my sewing machine out I also recycled a pair of Mr10's old camo pants which had a huge hole in the knee and turned them into shorts.  Of course because they had been sitting in his drawer so long before he bothered to tell me they had the hole in them, when I got him to try them on they no longer did up lol.  Oh well my other Mr10 with Autism will be able to wear them as he is alot smaller in the waist.  So they will be reused after all and I was left feeling quite proud of myself!!

Oh My,,,,,I think I need to show a little restraint.......am I a Craft pattern Hoarder??? lol

Oh boy, you won't believe how I filled in the hours last night........with Hubby away for work until tomorrow night and the kids snuggly tucked up in bed for the night, I sat on the lounge flicking channels.  Nothing took my interest so I decided to plug in the laptop and have a little internet surf.  I went onto Quicksales which is an Australian version of Ebay.  I thought I would just take a peek at some crafty things.  Oh man!  Big Mistake!!

I stumbled across a seller who has oodles and oodles of craft magazines and craft patterns up for sale.  I sat there for a good while adding things to my "wish list",,, the result was approx $450 worth of crafting goodies.  Today I have filtered through them all and been "tough" with myself and got it down to $185 worth.

Hubby would freak and I hate to think how much the postage would be on that lot!!  But I soooo want them lol.  I mean its not like I don't have anything here to do,,,,my last count of crafting want to dos was 280 odd items.  But I cannot quite literally get these books out of my head.  I might just show them to hubby when he comes home and see if he will let me at least get a few,,,,I know it is going to be so hard to choose just a few but I just have a severe case of the "I wants" right now!!!! lol

I so want to find the time to get back into my crafting like I used to be when my eldest son was a baby.  I always had some little thing on the go but now life just seems very hectic and time slips away too fast.

Have a lovely weekend everyone and I will let you know how my persuasion techniques pan out with Hubby lol

Chocolate cures everything right???? and Art of Crochet Square Number 3

This is what I bought this morning because I am sad.....

no not the biscuit barrel, the Lindt Chocolate Bunny.  I know it isn't easter any more but he was marked down to $1.37 in Coles and when I am feeling down in the dumps I often get tempted by chocolate.

Why am I feeling so sad?  Because Hubby has gone away for work, yet another spur of the moment thing that he had to do.  I hate it when he has to travel but even more so when he comes home from work one day saying he has to be gone by 5am the following morning.  So he left at 5am this morning to be able to catch a 6.15am flight to Queensland.  He will be back at about 6.30pm Saturday night.  I hate how companies just have no consideration for family life and don't seem to realise or quite frankly, even care just how much of an upheaval these spur of the moment trips make on a family.  Because of this trip he now misses seeing his kids who we were meant to have this weekend.  Yes we were only having them for Friday night this week due to Mother's Day on Sunday but he still misses out and most importantly his kids miss out.  Sadly we can't just "make up" the time due to the kind of relationship that his ex and him have.  Of course that puts the ex in a bad mood and so we all have to suffer the repurcussions for a long time.

So for the next 2 nights I will indulge myself with my Lindt chocolate bunny.  I never buy Lindt chocolate unless it is on special, so it is a once in a blue moon type of treat.  Will it make me feel better in the long run??  Probably not, but hey whats a girl to do????  He is kinda almost too cute to eat though with his little red bow and his bell don't you think?

As far as my crocheting goes, I am itching to start something "real" rather than just doing squares for a blanket that cannot possibly be finished until I receive all of the series of "Art of Crochet" but I am determined to catch up.  Here is my attempt at square number 3.....

I am quite pleased with my first ever granny square.  I have yet to pin out any of my squares yet and I suppose I probably should so they look "prettier" and neater lol but for the moment they are all just getting to know each other in my little bag they sit in.  Here is what this square is "supposed" to look like....

I don't think I did too bad with this one!!! lol

With hubby away I will most likely get quite a few more of them done over the next few days and will come and share some more.

But for now I am going to go and put a little water on my fruit trees and empty the cat litter tray (joy of joys!) and admire my bunny when I come back in....Happy Thursday everyone!

The Art of Crochet - Square Number 2

 Well here we are with Square number 2 in The Art of Crochet rug.  This one for some reason I found a little tricky to get right and I feel even now that I have finished it that something isn't quite right, but it is done lol.  There will be others similar to this to do so hopefully I can refine my skills in the Scallop Lace Square at some point further on.  The rug, for me at least, is a kind of practice piece.  For me, it will be the piece of work I can look back on and say "I started my crochet skills with this rug".

I love to learn new skills and for my family, we are just starting out really on the "Simple Life" style of living.  We have so far to go, but we have already come so far too.  Yes, my house still holds way too much clutter, but little by little we are getting rid of it.  I am trying to sell as much as I can but at the same time I am being realistic and only holding on to things for a limited amount of time.  If it doesn't sell online it goes to a charity shop.  Some things are just too bulky to warrant paying out large amounts for postage so logically the charities get those items.  Everything we buy gets scrutinised carefully, "do we really need it", "how much use will it get", and the myriad of questions that those living the simple life ask.  We certainly still have our wants but those wants are becoming less as we strive to live a more self sufficient lifestyle.

Yesterday I saw the front page of The Advertiser and it worried me.  It was talking about the power plant our near Port Augusta and how it would likely be closing down by about 2015 and how it supplies 40% or our State's power and now we would have to get power from Victoria etc.  Part of me sees this as possibly being time for us to make a move interstate.  We have talked about moving interstate and getting a country property, that is our dream, or maybe move back to Hubby's homeland of New Zealand.  One thing that causes us a problem is the fact that we are a blended family and we have two ex-partners and 6 kids between us that still need to see those ex-partners.  I do believe it may be time to seriously start to consider our options, I just don't know that SA will be the place to be in years to come, then again the world is changing, so where is the place to be in ten, twenty or thirty years time????

The Art of Crochet - Square Number 1

 
I remember seeing the Art of Crochet advertised on TV I think in the middle of last year.  It sparked my interest as I love crafty things and my "want" is to be able to try my hand at many different crafts.  I am severely lacking in time for craft but hey that doesn't stop a girl hoping and dreaming does it???

I guess I am what you could call a serial hoarder of recipes and craft project patterns that I stash away to try at some point.  Currently I am in the process of printing my recipe collection and am making each thing and using my family as guinea pigs to try out recipes that have caught my eye over the years.  The ones my family enjoy I put on my blog to share but also to keep a photo and the recipe itself in a place where it won't get lost or ruined etc.

My craft patterns are kept in our bookshelf just waiting to be utilised.  I have knitting patterns, crochet patterns, christmas decorations, quilting, decoupage, felting, clothing, you name it, it is probably on my shelf!  I am kinda embarrassed to admit it but I currently have over 200 things on my "want to make list" lol.  Other than the crochet patterns from "The Art of Crochet" which will be a growing collection I have put  a stop on my pattern hoarding for now.  I usually flag things with one of those little stick it labels when it is something that I really either think I can do or want to give it a go.  I will just go through one thing at a time, many of them I will probably change my mind on by the time I go to make them lol but hey who knows, I may just get there one day!!

Crochet was one thing that had always eluded me.  I admired the finished results but I just couldn't quite grasp how to do it lol.  So when I saw this advertised I knew that I just had to at least get the first one and give it a go.  Hubby convinced me to subscribe to it and then if I decided after the first few installments that I was just not cut out to crochet, we would then stop it.  So I subscribed and I must say I love it.  I normally cringe at the idea of subscribing to this sort of thing because lets face it, it is darn expensive.  But in this case I feel happy that it is money well spent as I absolutely adore the patterns that come with it and I have flagged the majority of them for me to attempt at some point in the future.  Currently I am up to issue 31, not of course in crocheting the squares, I am way behind in that lol, but that is how many issues I now have.  Which means there are still 89 left to go.  That is going to be ALOT of folders worth of patterns and many balls of wool lol.  Each week comes with the ball of wool for you to use to crochet that week's square which at the end of the series will be joined together to make the rug that is featured on the cover above.

To keep me honest and to ensure that I will in fact make use of this collection I have decided to put each finished square on my blog.  I am pretty happy with my efforts so far.  They aren't perfect by any means but I think for an absolute beginner they aren't too bad.

This was the square required for Booklet 1.

And here is my finished square,,,,this hasn't been pinned out yet.

I think I actually prefer crochet to knitting because it seems to come together so much faster.  I look forward to making many more items.