April ATC swap and other stuff...

My mum and I are still swapping our monthly ATCs.  Mine is on the left with a stamp of Times Square that I bought in NYC last week (Shop called the Ink Pad I think).

Men's crochet cowl.  I finished one on the plane for my son and forgot to take a photo - hey Tom can you be my model and send me a photo please!

Happy Birthday Lex. Are you noticing a theme here - I had to use that stamp again.

As I spent my 60th birthday in New York I wasn't home to make a cake.  Little H helped me eat this on our sewing day - check out what we made on Cotton Confetti.

Keeping Warm

Tinkerbelle wouldn't go out until I made her a little path

We had quite a lot of snow

I finished this crochet house blanket - it has 9 house squares and a border.

The Princess and the Pea

Tinkerbelle is fast asleep, perched on a pile of boxes and bags ready for the loft (She climbs up the ladder steps).  She is under the Princess and the Pea wall hanging that my mum made when I was about 12 and I just thought it was a similiar thing!

Happy birthday Christine - here is a card made by Ruth Zanoni Rockell which I bought at the Cat Rescue charity shop in Keighley

Apparently New York is only 56 miles away - a rather appropriate poster just down the road here!! (at the corner of the road where my DDIL took a video)

February ATCs

I thought you were supposed to forget things as you got older - well my Mum reminded ME that I hadn't put a photo of our February ATCs on the blog...... here they are..... better late than never!

The theme was pan pastels and mine is on the left and Mum's on the right - I did like the paper tearing technique mum used for the hills

I have not been idle....

At the last beading meeting I finished these three bracelets....

..by putting the fastenings on them.

I was going to do some more of this peyote stitch flag, but didn't have the right beads with me

Tinkerbelle thought the bird food could be more interesting than her own....

I have spent the winter crocheting granny squares to make into a jumper.

there are about 120 so far.

The squares for the actual pattern were not granny squares, but these ones, which I decided were not all the same size and far too complicated to do whilst watching TV.

Tormenting Tinkerbelle

Can you just see outside the window a little wren on the fence (bottom left of the window)?  Tinkerbelle was watching out of the window and this little wren was looking at her and flitting from that fence to the other fence and on to the apple tree.  He kept it up for a good ten minutes!

Not a very clear photo of him, but he's in the apple tree now - all the time looking at Tinks in the window.  Actually there were two little wrens flitting about.

Mummy all the little birdies have gone now!

Altered tin made into a button box for a friend.

January is CROCHET month!

I am determined to get my stash of double knitting  yarn down to a sensible level before I buy any more!  So I decided that I should crochet pet blankets for the RSPCA.  Well here are my first three!

Tinkerbelle is learning how to crochet - she likes to help with the yarn

One of the girls at Crochet club was making something using long stitch crochet and I remembered I had a jumper pattern from many years ago made with this stitch and had a go on this little blankie.

I used lots of small balls of yarn for this blankie and a ball of green for around the edge.

Close up

This is my favourite - same stitch as the first one I showed you, it is apparently called spike stitch and there are tutorials on line.  I decided to used white (as I seemed to have a lot of white yarn) with a different colour for each other row.  I did approximately pastel and bright on alternate rows, with a white border.

close up

even closer... actually this is far too nice to be a pet blanket and I might keep it to snuggle under myself!

And I STILL have a lot of double knitting yarn left - watch this space!