Another swap, this time for bunny

and a little bit me

What an exiting parcel….

Mimle chins it because she has decided it is for her….

Notice the heart patterned paper.

Look, the cardboard box it came in is also a usable tunnel.

My swapping partner painted this lovely card of Mimle and my favorite flowers, so very thoughtful! And she is very talented. :)

Mimle is interested in what I am holding.

Busy chinning my gift, some lovely pink yarn. 

Mimle is reading our card. 

Inspecting my gifts to makes sure there are no evil corners on it.

We got some lovely hay cakes with chamomile, which were a huge hit! Some oxbow banana treats, which she loves, twigs (we were almost out, thank you!)

A funny wooden toy with dried apple on it. Mimle wanted to eat it all up in one go, but I was adamant and removed it mid eating.

Chocolate for me! (boyfriend is allowed a taste).

Yarn, oh, it is so soft! And pink. And it is even variegated and one is merino:O

This adorable ceramic bowl with a bunny.

Wooden floss keeper in the shape of a bunny and horse. (need to take a closeup photo of that).

Oh, and the card! We will frame it and treasure it always!

Here is the funny apple chew toy.

Mimle knows the saying, an apple a day keeps the doctor away, but she refuses to believe me when I say that saying does not apply to rabbits….

The hay cakes, Mimle was impatient, and I was slow in opening it.

NomNom

This is the box we use to put hay cakes in, and whenever she carries them out of the box we put them back in. 

Happy Valentines day chart

Or just a generic love one. 

Another early morning without internet made me feel a little desperate and after an hour playing CIV on the computer I decided to do something a bit more sensible. So I made a chart. I am hoping to do some more in the Valentines spirit in time for the big day. This is a good piece to use up all those scraps   of floss and you can pick your favorite part and just stitch some words into a card.

I haven't made any charts in a while so I may be a little rusty though.

This is how it will look.

And here are my selection of floss and chart.

Again, you can use my chart and make all the cross stitches you want, but please do not sell the chart or your finished piece.

My all that glitters swap

A little after Christmas I joined another swap, and I made two small things, a bookmark and a coaster. The name of the swap was "all that glitters" and the idea was to make something usable out of sparkly fabric and thread. I did not use only sparkly thread, because, well, it would look too Christmassy. Metallics come in a very limited palette all very dark and well, Christmassy. Unless you use a blending filament with your regular thread, but I did not have that at hand.

In fact, the bookmark only has regular thread on sparkly aida, but the angel coaster has sparkly aida, sparkly white wings and a gold halo and border. 

I liked them, and I hope my swap-partner did too, she got a small trinket box that glittered with some glittery buttons of butterflies in it too. She said she liked animals and girly things, so I think it fits. at least I hope it did.

The bookmark is from a Cross Stich Crasy issue 159 designed by Rhona Norrie.

The angel is the angels I have made for a while now, and I still love them, taken from  Christmas Cross Stitch Favorites Speial Issue (I am assuming 1) by Lucie Heaton.

I made her a card too.

Here is the gifts I put inside the swap, gifts where not required, but I thought I should put in something else in it since my finishing skills are not that great. The crochet snowflakes are handmade by me, as is the card. The glittery thing in the top left corner is a reflector so that cars see you when you walk about shaped like a star. The gifts were fairly inexpensive and easy to ship to another country.

I really hopes she like it.

Blanket me I'm done

All 120 squares are done, all the yarn ends tucked in. Needs blocking and I border, which I have started on… Two rows of white, but I am thinking it might need a thick white border. And maybe one row of pink in the middle, but I have yet to decide. I have five more balls of white yarn so I could just do my rows until finished.

And one day I want a blanket with a pretty frilly border too, but not this time.

Tomorrow I will have boyfriend help me with the measuremenst. Bunny was not that helpful. But she did like it, even if I had to bribe her to get a picture. Somewhere on that blanket is two small dried banana chips.

No net makes me

do some home decorating.

Since we bought this little nifty dresser I have had a desire to paint each drawer in a different colour, but what is nice about it as it is (or rather was) was that bunny could nibble on it and it would be completely safe, so I did a little compromise and painted just the nobs.

I had to trow out some of my old paint as it was all hard and non-liquid and it was supposed to be wet. So I had to make do with these colours as these were the only ones that were still in liquid form. But I do think the dresser looks quite improved. And as I said to boyfriend, it is a nice inexpensive IKEA dresser, and we could always buy new nob thingies if we tire of colour.

And after my little morning experiment, the internet was back on and I could browse while watching netflix if I wanted to! :)

Snow keeps falling and blanketing me

Bunny had a little tummy ache yesterday and refused to eat. I stayed up with her all night and made sure she moved about and ate. And what could be better than her eating pellets out of her little ball. She gets exercise, fun and food all at once. She is now perfectly fine, but I could tell by her tiny poops that she had not been fine.

So I am struggling with my hours and slept all day yesterday and have been awake all night, fortunately I have lots of caffein so hopefully I can stay awake all day today. I have to keep busy because we have some housecleaning to do.

While I was playing night-time nurse I made some more squares.

And now joined together (not on the picture though, there is only 105). I have a whopping 110, only ten more to go! And then the border, yes, but almost done.

Look it doesn't fit the chair anymore….

I had to do a picture on the kitchen floor. I love that it looks like there is not much of a plan in the arranging of the squares, when actually after the first 20 squares I tried to plan things perfectly.

But when the weather keeps looking like this, snowing and cold I have a valid reason to stay inside and finish my blanket right? And watch Buffy, I am into season 6 and just saw the musical episode, very funny:)

Friday is in the air

Happy Friday. I am drinking something hot and eating candy from my birthday presents from a friend. Also my cousin gave me the lovely cake stand where my granny squares are currently residing. 

My blanket is nearing its end, I can see the light in the end of the tunnel. I have 18 squares left to crochet and seven to attach on one side and the other 15 on the other.

I will do the  Ravellenic Games this year, and will participate in the Wip Dancing and I will finish this blanket! 

I will take another picture tomorrow when there is some light and show you how big the blanket has gotten. Now I will go back to my tea, candy and Buffy, a good combo.

Bunny is hiding under the sofa hoping for more treats.

Miscalculated in Pink

So I have decided to make my blanket 120 squares, I have not decided in what fashion these new squares shall be linked, (well, I have decided on the join as you go method for joining, but that is not what I am talking about here. ) how long should it be or how wide. My blanket used to be 10x6 in my head, but now that I will increase the number I am thinking more like 15x8. But we will see. As of now there are 16 squares not fastened but finished, 60 are fastened and finished and so if my calculations are correct (which they certainly are not I reckon because math and me are arch enemies) there would be 44 squares left to make…. So we will see how far I get before I get too bored.

I am seeing numbers before my eyes now, not a very good sign, I am not very confident in my math so I hope boyfriend wakes up soon so that he can look it over. Yes, I am really that hopeless in math. 

But I will finish this blanket this year even if it kills me.

 Before:

After:

It looks a bit more like a proper blanket, on top of my old granny square blanket. (Which is bigger than it looks in this picture because it is draped behind the chair.)

I am still enjoying this project, I usually stop a project when it is not fun anymore and I sincerely hope I will love this until I am done with it. 

A Bookmark received

I got mail!

I looked in the mailbox this morning and got a surprise, I entered a swap and this was my spoilage. There was also another happy surprise because it had been snowing, lots of fluffy white sparkly snow. I felt very calm and happy, and it is still snowing. :)

My spoil was a lovely glittering bookmark, now I know how pesky those metallics can be so I feel very lucky that someone used so much time and effort into making me this and since I am strange and read more than one book at a time I am always in need of bookmarks. :) 

Your bright smile is like the sunshine

This is how far I have gotten on my pink granny square blanket. 40 squares done and 20 more to add, I am thinking it will turn out too small and I will regret not making it full size. That means I have to almost double the squares and make a border, so off to buy more of the white yarn tomorrow. I added some of the pink glitter yarn too. Luckily I still have some of the pink and purple left so there is not that much to buy and since the blanket is half assembled it will not look too bad with different colours on different places so it will hopefully not be too obvious that it was meant to be smaller.
This blanket will look so nice and cozy and in the end I am sure I would feel happy I did not rush it to get finished.

I have done some cross-stitching too, for a swap, so in a couple of weeks I can show it off.

I now it is not TECHNICALLY Tuesday tunes anymore,  but I forgot about this song, when we saw the preview I loved it and vowed to show it for my nest Tuesday Tunes, but well, life got in the way and when I accidentally saw it on youtube while making this post (I always listen to music I like when I type, I seem to make fewer mistakes that way and my sentences for some reason turns out much more coherent. )
Anyway I love the song, and the lyrics are so uplifting, the dance and video is cool also. But I am
 fan-girling here.

These past weeks I have been watching Buffy the Vampire slayer, and in general being nocturnal. 

The study in pink square...

blankets….

So this is how far I have gotten on one of my blankets. I bought lots of yarn to finish this one, and I had my mother buy yarn for the other one from the same place where I bought the last yarn so it matched. 

So here is a picture with the yarn I bought (not the yarn my mother bought, because that I don't have it yet).

I bought some more of the sparkly yarn I used in making those pretty star/snowflakes too, so that I can make a hundred more! (I counted 15 stars in one skein).

And the pink, purple and white is for the small granny blanket. I have already used up one of the whites which is why there is only one and a half of white in the picture. There will be two rows of white, and the last row is where I am using the "joining as you go" method by Lucy from the attic. And then some rows around in the pink, pale purple. I think it will look nice, but now that I have done two rows of white, I am contemplating if there should have been more than two, but that can't be helped now since I have sewn in the ends and one row is already finished. It will turn into a small lap blanket I guess. Or I can make some more squares…. I can always buy more yarn;)

This Year has me doing some yarn

I am making some patches in knitting and crocheting and it turned into this wonky blanket. Now all I need is some yarn to do the edges and it will be finished.

I especially have been loving the little white border and the blue crochet flower I inserted on top of some plain knitting.

I really like the effect and as the border was store bought (some twenty years ago, I think, I inherited it from family.) it was fast and easy to attach. I am definitely doing that again on another blanket some day. No actually I love the effect and I wish I had tiny crochet borders on all my skirts, dresses, pillows, everywhere.

Some of the yarn used is really old, some is from my grandmother, some from my friends grandmothers and some from my stash. The only yarn not from stash would be the border, but I did not have enough of one type or colour of yarn to do the border and it would look nicest with one colored border I think, so I have to buy and it will not be an all scrap/stash blanket as it was intended to be.

This has been my secret project for almost two years I think, and some of my friends have contributed, a lot. ;) Somewhere on it is a letter, I will add some more lettering. But that letter is hand-crochet by my cousin. But when we were washing and decluttering the place right after christmas I lost some of my hand crochet letters and I need my other cousin to do his again. 

But since there has been a whole week with me not showing anything and since this secret project is almost done I am showing it off. The recipient will most likely just get a picture of this before getting the blanket anyway. And I am thinking of letting her choose the colour of yarn in the border, so the secret is not so secret anymore.

Tomorrow I am going off to buy more yarn.

Both to finish this piece but also another two crochet blankets. Most likely a baby-blanket or lap blanket.

We will see how big it turns out when I am finished with it. I am actually loving it as it is in all pink, purple and white so I am thinking about keeping it. I am currently doing one border of white, which I am about halfway into when I ran out of yarn and another border of pink? maybe as I crochet them together and then another one or two rows of border in an undecided colour.

As I mentioned I was de-cluttering and I found some unfinished blankets, so now I am finishing off those (need more yarn first though) and then I will start something new I think.
The first picture is of some Alpaca yarn I had left and started some granny squares, I also used this as a learning tool in how to crochet together as I go joining method I learned from Lucy and her attic.

 Also I want to show off some knitting and crochet accessories I bought with my birthday money.

Here is my stash. Two bags for wip's and stash, the big one also has a matching scissor. One purple folder to put the recipe in with a elastic band to place where you are at, I think I can use it for all types of crafting.

A lot of bamboo knitting needles. Some crochet needles and one sheep to measure your knitting needles and one plain one so that I can have one in each bag. And a purple tape meazurer. Not a small stash,  but now I am ready for more knitting and crochet adventures!