Week 10/11 hexagon a day challenge and other related yarny things

It's been another crazy couple of weeks. Last Monday saw me celebrate another birthday which still just keeps me from moving up an age bracket on surveys!
My birthday week was full of travel. I visited friends and stayed with the lovely Sam (my cousin) from the KnitRunDig podcast and went to the Knitting and Stitching Show with her on Wednesday and then on to another friend in North London.
The Knitting and Stitching Show was much improved to last year. Maybe having the West entrance of Olympia open helped separated the masses and also went straight into the yarn end of the show halls which were blissfully empty when we arrived. I purchased some needle felting roving and only a few skeins of yarn (most of which was Drops Delight) as I had been gifted a huge stash of yarn from Sam for my birthday. I am now trying to hide most of it from my eldest daughter who has decided that she rather likes making socks on a sock loom!

The spring blanket (which I shouldnt have started due to the enormous amounts of current wip) is growing well now and did travel with me down to London. I'm ahead of where the CAL currently is, but I've set myself my own deadline to have it completed by Easter.

The pattern is here if you're interested.

Even though I was travelling I still managed to keep up to date with my hexagons. I am sort of going through a bit of a wall with the project but even though my enthusiasm is less than it was at the start the reason for why I am doing it is very important and I will continue, even on the days where I feel less than inclined. I didnt get a chance to post a blog as of last week so here are weeks 10 and 11.

 Week 10

Week 11

The other project that has had some progress made in the past couple of weeks is the project that inspired the name of this blog. It has probably got to be the longest wip ever and I hope to goodness that I finish it this year. At last count I had 15 squares left to do, and about 523,972 ends left to sew in (possibly not quite that many, but I hate sewing in ends!)

The hat Boris had been sporting was also delivered to the new recipient who was thrilled. I'm hoping that the late order of a hat will mean that spring will now finally be sprung and we shall have no need for winter woolies for the foreseeable.

Finally, my craft room has had a bit of an overhaul. I bought lots of storage boxes from Ikea last week and set about organising everything into labelled boxes. I had 2 left over what I would call 'student' bookshelves, you know the ones, pine slats with very little in the way of design other than being functional. My fabulous partner has repurposed them into the supports for a sewing table for me and fixed an mdf top to them et voila! I shall aim to post pics when the craft room is fully sorted and looking lovely.

Thanks for reading x

Weeks 7,8 and 9

Oops! A couple of weeks have gone by since I last blogged. Life has been very busy!

I spent a week away staying with my friend and we knitted, crocheted, sewed and drank lots of booze together!! It was such a lovely break. My blanket didn't go with my, but the bag of scraps did. My friend also gave me some yarn scraps which I incorporated a different yarn into each new hexagon.

Since then the weather had taken a brief flirt with spring so I've been at the allotment trying to get some of the weeds under control that have come up during the winter and preparing the soil ready for planting. I've made huge progress and hope to find some time soon to upload photos to my other blog (see above for the tab leading to it).

Having promised myself that this was the year for finishing projects that were ongoing I found myself signing up to a CAL in a facebook group (yes, you can all facepalm!!) Though the project is due to run over 4 months in the group I am hoping that it will be either completed by the end of the month or that I can finish it in time for Easter and have worked it as a Lent project.

I'm not going to post individual pics of the hexagons for this blog as it will take forever and a day to upload them, so here's a look at the past 3 weeks work.

Week 7

Week 8

Week 9

Week 5 Hexagon a day project and mosaic blanket progress

Not missed a day yet!!

My youngest loves helping me pick out colours for each day and she seems to have a really good eye for putting together colours I wouldnt normally. They mostly seem to work, though I have had to veto a couple of choices.

I have a lot of other projects on the go at the moment. One of my definite 'I'm going to finish this this year' projects has had 4 more squares knitted for it recently. I started it in 2006 and have had problems finding a discontinued yarn. Fortunately Rowan have one very similar to that that I originally used. As it's intarsia work the difference in the yarn shouldn't be too noticeable, and I can mix and match where the squares with the new yarn go so that it's even less obvious.

The other change I may make to the pattern is not to swiss darn over all the squares that the pattern suggests should be. I'm undecided yet, but it's not something that needs a decision just now.

Here's the progress so far.

It's from Blankets and Throws to knit by Debbie Abrahams. The pattern is called Mosaic.

I started it before I really knew much about tension squares and each of my squares appears to be about 3cm larger than it should be!! Far too much completed to worry about that now, but it will hang almost to the floor on each side of the bed when fully completed hehe!!

Retro blanket

I started this project in October 2011 *blush*

I had completed quite a lot of it, but was finding difficult to get motivated to complete it as knitting in the cottons I was using was just proving painful. Never have I had so much crafter's tourettes as I did when it came to making this, primarily due to the yarn not the pattern; but it is finally FINISHED. Hooray!!

My youngest daughter is thrilled as it was made for her and she has been gently nagging me over the past couple of months that she would like it finished.

Part of my mission for 2014 was to complete some of the incomplete projects I have on the go, and this is the first one ticked off the list.

The blanket uses the blocks from the 'Retro' design in Debbie Abrahams 'more blankets and throws' - C&B crafts.

Week 4 hexagon project

It's been a tough week this week. I've been suffering horrible migraines and it has been challenging to do anything. They do however finally seem to be going which I am very thankful for.

This project has not suffered. Even though each hex has taken longer to do on the days I've not been feeling great, they have got done and it has been a real sense of achievement.

I'm surprised how quickly the month has gone. January usually drags for me, but maybe the mildness of the month has helped it to pass more quickly and I'm in no hurry to find myself in the depths of winter.

I've been joining as I'm going for this week, but I'm finding myself being less random with colour choices and so for the next week or so I'm going to join in rounds as I was the first couple of weeks. I've also let my youngest daughter choose the colours for tomorrows hex and that makes things a lot more random as she just picks colours she likes and places no emphasis on whether they 'go' or not!


Here's the week's progress.

Day 22

Day 23

Day 24

Day 25

Day 26

Day 27

Day 28

Weeks 1-4

Week 3 of the hexagon a day project

I am still really pleased with how this project is coming along. I look forward to creating the hexagon first thing every morning. As hoped it is helping to motivate me into a productive day and the timing couldnt be better as I have 10 ongoing commissions, eek!

There was a comment on twitter this morning after I posted the photo of all 3 completed weeks that said ' your hexagon's look like spring flowers very cheerful just what we all need on a grim foggy January morning '

Day 15

Day 16

Day 17

Day 18

Day 19

Day 20

Day 21

Week 3/52

Granny blanket is finished

I started working on this in about October. I had some squares left from another project and wanted to learn how to join them in a different way than I'd done before.

It was supposed to turn into a cushion cover, but I got a bit carried away going round and round, and then decided to keep going. After a while I got bored of going round and round, so made enough granny squares to make a large border and then have finished it with a couple of rounds of cream.

I looking forward to snuggling under it watching the telly of an evening and am thrilled how it looks in situ in the living room.

Sampler blanket project

I've had the book '200 crochet blocks for blankets, throws and afghans' by Jan Eaton for AGES!!

Last autumn I decided that I needed to expland my crochet repertoire of stitches and thought a sampler blanket using this book would be a great way to do this. I started in earnest and quickly made about 10 squares.

Work, real life and a multitude of other projects got in the way, until a couple of days ago when I decided that it was time to get going on this again.

I've chosen a palette of 4 colours from the Stylecraft range of yarn. I'm using Magenta, Clematis, Lavender and Violet.

To date I have completed 28 blocks. I've estimated to cover my kingsize bed I am going to require about 120 ish so I have a fair way left to go.

Some of the pics are not too good as my camera is not behaving properly, but here's some images to let you see where the work has got to.

      

     

     
    

     

    

Apologies if the photos are misaligned, but blogger is not behaving with them