Granny Blanket - The Beginning!

 Hi Ya!

How are you doing?

I'm OK. January is never a good month, for anyone I think! I am so glad its almost over and that we are soon going to be seeing little signs of Spring! Ooohhh I can't wait!

I have been happily absorbed in some lovely bright colours of late. I find it really helps with those winter blues. I was so glad to receive my 'Lucy' wool bundle. It called the Lucy bundle as the little website I bought it from had been inundated with requests for the wool that Lucy from Attic 24 used in her gorgeous granny stripe blanket, so they made up a bundle with the exact wool and colours she used and it was an absolute bargain ( I got it at a sale price, it has since gone up, thanks to Mr.Taxman)

I have been so inspired by Lucy's blog. It is just so colourful and cheerful, and I just love her crochet projects.

I have mentioned her before when I checked her blog out on how to do the little crochet flowers and I whilst browsing through her blog I saw this lovely granny stripe blanket.

She was making hers for her caravan, and I thought what a fabulous idea!!

So I ordered the wool, and although at first I followed along with Lucy's tutorial and copied the colour sequence, soon I was off on my own random colour picking!

I have so enjoyed this project. More than any knitting project or sewing project I have ever done.

I've found my self, whizzing along the row, actually excited about the next row of colour! haha! how sad am I?!

I have just loved the process, and my whole family have all taken an interest, and enjoy seeing how far I've got along and what colours I've used.

My 'mittle' son (he cutely says 'Mittle' instead of 'Little') thinks its his blanket!!

So I thought I'd share some pics of it with you. since its all I've been doing craft wise of late!

Here's the wool. Aren't those colours just great??

and on top is the first two rows, which took a whole evening, as you have to start with a chain of 240!

 and then Double Crochet on every stitch. If you haven't counted right then you have to start over again! Fortunately I got it right the first time, since I added little yarn 'markers' to mark every 50 stitches.

Here's the first lovely row of granny stitches, three trebles, every second stitch.

Not as painstaking but, still took a long while.

This is how I am every evening, I have all my new wool in an old hamper,

so I put a cushion on it and use it as a footstool!!

I spent almost a whole two days crocheting as much as I could and here's the result.

This was taken Sunday before last.

Would you like to see how much I've done in 12 days since I started it???

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Here are the first 27 stripes (50+ rows)

Here it is laid on my kitchen floor!

a close up ( I love this shot!)

I could bore you with many more photo's from different angles and of different rows, I took far too many! haha! but I do just love it, I love the happy, cheerful colours and I can't wait to carry on with it most evenings.

Anyway, changing the subject, I wanted to share with you something my youngest made at playgroup. I found it so funny.

Here is his gingerbread man he made!!

It looks so evil!!! haha!

and it even appears to have a menacing little smirk too, if you look closely!

I really do need to get on with some card making, but crochet seems to have taken over my life!

Besides Hubby has got quite a bit of a crafting streak at the moment. For the past two days we've had cardboard and paper strewn across the dining room table. He has recently acquired a scaletric and is making a pit stop and garages for his cars. It is actually rather impressive, so I'll show some photos of it when he has finished.

I hope you are all well and happy

Take care

Em Xx

p.s I still haven't got any photos of my jazz evening!! I haven't forgotten!

Hello

Hello.

I'm finally got a chance to sit down and type. I've had a really hectic few weeks. But its all calmed down now, back to the normal routine of life, fresh new year.

The big thing in my life recently has been the concert my Hubby & I....I was going to say 'organised' but it was rather thrown together in the end!

Myself and 4 other friends sang for our congregation of friends and family. We wanted a 'jazz cafe' style event, something intimate, cosy, relaxed. We all sang songs by Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Etta James, Dean Martin, Bobby Darin, some show tunes, some musical songs (well, 2 from Les Mis.) and easy-listening ones like that.

We hired out our local village hall, which is a traditional 'vintage' hall, complete with manky curtains and creaky stage floorboards!
It was perfect!
I wanted something posh but cheap, not something easily done, but on the invitations we stated that it was formal attire only and pretty much everyone made the effort to get dressed up in there best frocks and suits. My hubby, I must say, looked so dashing and handsome in his tuxedo, esp when he loosened his bow tie and just had it hanging down. Mmm Mmm!!
I made it cheap by adding on the invite to bring ones own nibbles and wine, that way, all we supplied were the refreshments in the interval. It worked fantastically!

I wanted some nice subdued lighting, fortunately the hall has these sweet little lantern lights that are strung across the rafters, and once the main lights were off these had the lovely glowy effect I wanted, still I needed to pretty up the tables...there were lots of card tables so we covered those with old tablecloths supplied at the hall, and I had made some wineglass lampshades, a genius idea from veronica, (thank you again!) and all the little tables had these on and it just looked so romantic and quaint!

I hardly have any left now as our friends and family were so impressed with them that I ended up giving them out as keepsakes, but they were so simple and easy to make.

I also made my own versions too, with different vintage pictures I found from 'the graphic fairy'

On the larger tables at the back I had decorated some gorgeous blue glasses, popped in a tealight candle, and they looked rather beautiful too. So simple, but sooo effective!

To my surprise, Hubby wanted to help out in making these decorations and was happy to sit cutting the shade templates out for me, putting the ribbon on the glasses too, and even had a go of some napkin decoupage! although we did end up dropping that design as the print of the sheet music napkins I had got didn't match up and look right on the finished shade. however, I did make a shade for myself, with a Cath Kidston 'classic rose' patterned napkin and it is just so pretty! I'm keeping it in my bathroom!

Anyway, our Evening, (which was on Saturday 8th Jan) went so well, we've been asked to do it again! especially since many invited ones couldn't make it due to illness.
29 out of 95 couldn't make it as they had colds, virus' and flu. Its so prevalent at the moment.

My own little family have all had awful sickness bugs and then horrible colds. We've been fortunate to not have that awful swine flu, or any other flu as of yet.

Anyway, because I was so nervous and had such a busy brain on Saturday I forgot my camera, so I don't have any photo's of the actual evening, the hall, the stage etc to share with you, although a friend of mine took some and I've yet to see them. I can't wait, as i really was amazed at how good we got it to look!

As I was uploading photos from my camera, I also saw some cute pictures I'd forgotten about, my youngest son, painting his wooden kit car, I just love that concentration!

Only other things I have made I can't share with you yet, as they a gifts yet to be given!
oh.. except, I covered a seat cushion for my hall storage bench. I had such a troublesome time with it, just making it up as I went along, and made a 'pig's ear of it' as my Mum would say!

It looks ok here, but you do not want to see the mess I made underneath it! haha!!

My cat has adopted this as his new throne, so it is covered with his muddy little pawprints and hairs.

He normally lays right across it. He is a huge cat, and its rather a perfect size for him!
next to it, we have a nice little hall table we found, and on it at present is my orange roses, that I had on the stage on Saturday.
I wouldn't normally choose Orange, but the curtains in the hall were a dark orange colour, so these bright yellowy-orange roses stood out nicely on a white table. (a close up shot of them are at the beginning of post) but I am determined this year to be more colourful. To notice the colours around me and appreciate them, and be more colourful and 'daring' or experimental with colours in my crafts.

Anyway, that's all I have to share for now. I hope you are having a good start to your fresh new year. I'm slowly getting there, back into the swing of things.

I've got lost of new projects in mind that I can't wait to get started on next week, so I will be back when I have something to show!

Take Care Xx