do you mind if i knit

Brooches, tags, cards, and busy life.

Gosh! Where do I start?!

I know.

With a big thank you, that's a good place to start.

Thank you so much for all your lovely comments on my last post, they are appreciated ENORMOUSLY, really, really, they are. Hugely gigantically appreciated, thank you so much.

And next, I wanted to do my usual blog post last Friday, but I had to just keep my head down and carry on stoically with the commission I was working on, the deadline was Monday, (yesterday), and it was a race against time. I'll show you that piece another time.

Now that's done, I can breath more easily, it feels quite luxurious, to breath a little more easily, I suddenly have the misguided notion that I have all the time in the world. I don't have all the time in the world, but it feels like it compared to last week.

Before we went away on our weekend break a week or so ago (which I still haven't talked about because other things have got in the way), I made these three broches above, to commission. I love making these brooches. They're time consuming, but ever so satisfying to create. And sort of more-ish. I've started making another brooch, and that might be followed by different kinds of brooches, but I'm not sure yet. That's probably me just thinking aloud.

I've been putting a few things in my etsy shop today.

Some more brooches, different to the holly and berry brooches.

These are all crocheted, all different to each other, and all presented on hand painted cards.

And talking about cards, I've listed some tags in my shop too.

They are just adorable!

A set of five Christmas tags, to go with the Christmas cards I'm selling (I've just listed a pack of five Christmas cards too, as well as the pack of ten Christmas cards I already have for sale in my shop). There are only six sets of the Christmas tags available, so not many.

And a small number of sets of five tags to go with the greetings cards I also sell in my shop.

I've had a few people asking if I would sell tags, because when they've received something they've bought from me, they've loved the tag I send with the parcel. So I've got a small number printed, just to see how it goes really.

There is something lovely about these tags, just tiny versions of the images on the greetings cards. There's something very wonderful and covetable about their small size. They're like teeny weeny postcards.

I had a fun old time punching the holes, then puncing in the eyelets on each tag, then putting the string through! Still, I like little touches like this, I feel it makes them a little more special, especially having an eyelet rather than a plain hole to thread the string through. I love detail.

I should have put this blog post up a few weeks ago, but you know how it is, other things got in the way, so I thought I should put it up pronto, before it's too late and Christmas has passed.

Is there something I've left out? I can't think. No. I think that's it for today.

Oh yes, my etsy shop link is here (!)

Righty-ho, I'd better be off, things to do, things to make, doggies to cuddle, and tea to drink.

Cheerio!

Vanessa xxx

Scaggy me.

I'm sitting here in my scaggy pyjamas, feeling chipper that I actually FEEL the sense of being a bit yucky and disgusting in my illness pyjamas, because that means I'm getting better.

(I hope that does mean I'm on the road to recovery. I always find that a lack of interest in my personal hygiene only strikes when I'm ill, and feel so rough, that I just don't care I'm starting to get a bit smelly and don't want to shower or even take a bath.)

At least the boiler has been fixed and we now have hot water and heating. Yipee.

I always get a tremendous sense of how good life is when I stop being ill, it's a mixture of sweet relief and pure joy to no longer feel like a zombie.

Whilst I've been "reclining" in bed, I have been doing a little crochet, making some more of my (soon to be released pattern for a scarf design) scarves. I'm almost ready to start writing the pattern down.

Someone told me the other day that a good way of preventing illness is to stuff cloves of garlic in your mouth, store them in your cheeks, and suck on them.

A bit like a hamster.

Anyway, I know from past experience that I can get ahead of myself, and at the first sign of feeling better, leap back joyfully into a busy life, than wonder why I'm having a relapse and have to go back to bed with my tail between my legs.

First things first, a shower!

I hope you're all well? I'm sorry I've been a bit out of the loop recently, I hope things will get back to normal soon.

Love Vanessa xxx

 

Scarf Journey.

I've crocheted the same scarf design three times. Well almost three times, I'm on the third version of my pattern, (my Sarah London Scarf design), and I'm hoping it's third time lucky, and this will be the final version.

And the reason I'm crocheting this scarf so many times? It's because I want to get the width just right to be snuggly, and I'm also trying to get the numbers of balls of yarn I'm using down to as few as possible, so it is as reasonably priced to make as I can get it.

I've put up patterns for crochet squares before, and the idea is that you run with that square as you please, but this time I plan to do a pattern that is for the entire garment from start to finish. Specifying yarn amounts, width, length, and how to.

Look, I'm wearing my Little Squares Scarf. The quick pattern and the step-by-step pattern is in my sidebar to the left, if you want to know how to crochet the squares and sew them together.

Hugo took these pictures on a windy beach last Sunday. There was a real nip in the air.

The day before, the sea was a wild mass of waves. People were standing on the promenade gazing at the sea. Crashing waves are mesmerising don't you think? I like watching them reach their highest point, and then topple over and break up. Fascinating.

If it's not raining, after walking the dogs on the beach, we like to have a coffee on the prom, and read the weekend paper. (I have to regularly remind myself just how fortunate I am to be able to write those words about coffee on the prom, overlooking the sea).

The dogs inevitable end up on our laps, looking like they are in the lap of luxury.

Ellie has perfected this look.

Tomorrow I'm off on a four hour train journey to London, for work, and also to stay with my sister and her family for about five days, so unfortunately I won't be able to do my blog post on Friday, I'm sorry about that. But I hope to be back here next Tuesday. Think of all that lovely knitting and crocheting time! Lovely!

Cheerio! And have a good week.

Vanessa xxx

Updating myself on Ravelry!

Hello! I've been updating my Ravelry page, it's about time too.

On Ravelry, I'm vanessahc, you can find me here.

And the page I've been updating is my projects page, which you can find here.

Have you heard of Ravelry? It's a remarkable place where you can find free patterns, buy patterns, store all your info about your own knitting, the possibilities go on and on, a world of possibilities.

I've never really got up to date on my page, and suddenly I felt it was time. I'm almost there, but it's near to midnight and I've run out of steam. I can not upload an-oth-er photo, not a single one.

Nighty-night then, and cheerio, see you on Friday. Love Vanessa xxx

Blue skies, bright mood.

That BRIGHT blue sky we had, this weekend just gone! GLORIOUS!

Joyous it was. It's a rare event to have two consecutive days of blazing sunshine in these parts, but we had it, we did, we did! When we have good weather, it's sometimes difficult to take it in. I always feel slightly desperate, because I don't know when it's going to end, I don't want the sun to stop shining. So despite having to work over the weekend, nothing was going to stop us going out and about, and enjoying ourselves a little.

That meant going to the beach with the doggies, and taking my crochet scarf to work on, when we stopped for a coffee after our stroll.

A little light beachcombing was inevitable, plus some examination of bird's foot prints, aren't they so delicate? I think they must be Seagull foot prints.

I like beachcombing, never tire of it ever. The whole process of observing makes every shell, pebble or bit of driftwood something to be marvelled at.

These pebbles are smoother than my hands I've just noticed.

I like to search for the smoothest, flattest pebbles I can find, preferably ones with a single line of white running through them. I've got a 'growing' collection of these pebbles, which I sometimes arrange on a flat surface, admiring their simple beauty.

On Saturday morning I woke up, opened the shutters, and lay in bed watching huge meringue-like clouds drift by. That whole day the sky was full of picture-book cotton wool clouds, ever so plump and fluffy. A blue sky with big woolly clouds gliding past has to be the nicest sort of sky, don't you think? A sky without a cloud, whilst pretty, is not as interesting as one peppered with drifts and puffs of cotton wool.

Yes, we made time for relaxing. Coffees on the promenade when the weather is good is a must.

This weekend was jam-packed with events in our town. The Slow Food Festival was on, and it was Open Doors day, where we got to access buildings and parts of the town the public don't normally get to see. The town is surrounded by Elizabethan walls, and there are tunnels under the walls that are usually shut off, so we did a little scurrying through tunnels, and up dead-end staircases, which was fun, I love a good explore.

One of the highlights of the food festival was seeing the piglets. Some very happy piggies, with their enormous mothers.

We were looking at them, longing for a cuddle. Hugo did stroke one piglet, and said it was like touching silk.

And there was a stall selling handknitted items, made from Alpaca yarn. I forgot to photograph the delightful Alpacas, standing eyeing everyone up and looking soft and kissable. The owner says that some of them do give her kisses. I was mortified that all her yarn had sold out very quickly, and had to console myself with buying a pair of hand knitted fingerless gloves. They're very soft, and the colour is the most gorgeous slate grey. Apparently it's very difficult to breed Alpacas with a grey fleece, they mostly pop out of their mums in a white, brown, black or a mix of all of those colours. The grey is very covetable. My tag that accompanied my gloves explained the yarn used in my gloves comes from Kate (who is apparently a bit grumpy, despite her beautiful grey coat). The husband and wife who run Barnacre Alpacas were lovely. They give all their Alpacas names, and don't have more than fifty in their herd, so they have time for each animal.

Well, dear readers, I must be off, I've got things to do and things on the brew. See you on Wednesday. Love Vanessa xxx

A bit of knitting here, a bit of crochet there.

Hello! I had that frazzled Friday feeling, but as soon as I sat down to say hello to you, I felt invigorated, and lighter. Lovely, just how it should be, it's very easy to just let the pressure of work sit on and squash me. I feel like a soda bottle that has been shaken up, and the cap released, and a great big whoosh of "I'm just going to take a break" defiance has been released. It is so important to take good breaks isn't it?

I'm reaching the end of the illustrations for the mole book I've been working on for the past six months or so. There is a lot of pressure to have them all completed, so my time here is even more precious and welcome. It feels like I've re-painted most of the spreads in the book on this project. The finished picture books you see on shelves in shops and libraries can be the result of much constructing and de-constructing. I'm always relieved when I hear that great artists have to throw away work they've done, because then I don't feel it's just me being rubbish at what I do, by having to re-do art work.

I've been doing some colour swatches for the Sarah London crochet scarf pattern I'm working on for you. I can be very indecisive about colours, which might seem strange as I love colour, and use it quite boldly. It always takes on a huge importance.

It occurred to me when I was crocheting the multi-coloured swatch, that there are a lot of ends to sew in. The more rows using different colours, the more sewing in of ends there will be. It's the one drawback of this pattern which is fast to crochet, but slowed down by sewing in ends of a multitude of different colours. Making the scarf striped, with two rows of the same colour, makes for a lot less sewing in of ends. And I know how some people feel about sewing in ends.

I've familiarised myself with the pattern now, and can now get on with the step-by-step pattern for you. I know that some of you are interested in having the charts for the fair isle patterns I did in my dress, and that's also on my little list of things to do.

And here's my stripy dress! It's progressing from being a mini dress, to a comfortable just-below-the knee-length-so-I-don't-feel self-conscious-when-I-sit -down-dress.

I've gone from persevering with knitting this dress out of not wanting to waste the knitting I had already done, to "oh, I quite like this!"

The stripes have stopped me going bonkers with boredom when I work on this. And another thing, I'm training myself to not look at my knitting whilst working on it. I really, really want to be one of those knitters who can sit and read a book or watch t.v. whilst knitting, I think they're amazing, knitters who can do that. I'm learning the dark art of 'feeling' my way with it. I'd love to be able to knit 'continental' style, which is basically high speed knitting. When someone tried to teach me how to do it, every fibre of my being felt it was unnatural. I 'throw' my yarn, which is very ponderous and laborious, but I feel very at home with that style, and after all, it's not a race is it?

I'll be working to finish the mole book this weekend, but there will also be crochet and knitting time here-and-there. Definitely!

Oh, and those two colours I've gone for in the crochet scarf - I LOVE them, it's such a shame no computer monitor will ever show just how beautiful they are together. The orange is 'DK 100%wool in Bright Orange, number 290' by Biggan Design, and the other colour is 'Cashsoft Baby DK, Rowan RYC, in colour no.804'. These two colours together make my mouth water. 

Well I must be off now, things to do and all that. Cheerio, have a good weekend. Love Vanessa xxx

Alice's giveaway.

Hello! It's a BEAUTIFUL day here today, the birds are singing their little hearts out, Ellie and Douglas are sunbathing in that contented way doggies do, and everyone's happy!

I didn't do my usual Wednesday post because Hugo wasn't well yesterday, and I had to tend to him before he died. Actually, he really was in a lot of pain with blocked sinuses, not his usual cheerful self at all.

So I thought I'd pop in to say a quick hello, and also show you a lovely brooch I won in Alice's giveaway. Alice has a blog called "Crochet with Raymond" (Raymond is the most beautiful Siamese cat, who has huge amounts of charisma, you have to pop over and see his magnificence), you can find Alice's blog here. I'm actually a little bit, if not quite a lot, in love with Raymond (not to be revealed to small dog Douglas, he'd be insanely jealous).

Alice's rosette arrived beautifully wrapped, in this page from a map book. I love the way the ribbons coordinate with the spaghetti lines of the roads.

Alice wrote that the map book is treasured by her because the book originally belonged to a couple, who marked their journey's route on the map. How magical. And how generous of Alice to wrap my gift in it. This is one piece of wrapping paper that will never be thrown away, it will be stored away carefully, and treasured.

Much as I'd love to stay a while and chat, and show you the photos of my almost-finished fair isle dress, I have to get back to work. Although I don't smoke, I feel a little like I'm taking a naughty cigarette break, so I'd better slink off before I'm caught.

Lots of love to you all, Vanessa xxx

Assembling your rosette.

Now you've  knitted, or crocheted, the ruffle and ribbons from the pattern given, I'm now going to show you how to create the central round section of your rosette, and how to put your rosette together, so that you end up with a rosette like the one in the picture above.

I'm using my knitted rosette in this tutorial. This tutorial is also to be used for your making the middle part, and assembling your crocheted rosette.

The things you will need to do everything in this tutorial are:

Thick card (like that from a cardboard box)

Thinner card (like that from a cereal box)

Small amount of fabric to cover your circle, about 14cm by 14cm (I used the fabric from a pair of baby trousers I found in a charity shop, which are jersey fabric)

Scissors to cut your fabric

Scissors to cut your card

Compass to draw circles on the card and fabric

Glue (I used crafting glue, PVA glue)

Needle and thread to sew your fabric

Needle to sew up the knitted or crocheted ruffle and ribbons

Ruler

Pencil or pen

Safety pin or brooch back, so you can pin your rosette on to whatever you want to pin it to

Hole punch, or something that can create holes, so you can put your safety pin or brooch back through the thinner card easily

That's it! Now you can go straight on to assembling your rosette! Have fun!

Taking the ruffle part of the rosette you already made, start to sew up the ruffle like this: First, sew the end rows together, to complete your circle.

Using the same yarn you knit or crocheted with, fold each ridge back, to half way across the section you are folding thr ridge on to, and sew down, creating a fold. (I've used different coloured yarn, just so you can see what I'm doing).

Once sewn up, the ruffle should look like above.

(This is actually the back view above, turn it over, and have the other side as the front, I think it looks more like a proper ruffle).

Here you go, the front of the ruffle, above.

Now measure the diameter of the empty space, in the middle of your ruffle circle. You are doing this because I would like you to cut two little circles of cardboard, from your cardboard box. (The middle of my circle measures 5 cm, as you can see above).

I used a compass to draw the circles, made life so much easier when it came to cutting the circles.

I made two circles of card, purely to get a decent thickness, so that they lie level with the ruffle, creating a reasonably flat surface to attach the circles you'll make in a minute, that will sit on top of your ruffle circles.

You see what I mean above? Your two card circles, should be a similar thickness to the ruffle, because you will be sticking bigger circles to the front and back of these. 

Now you're going to make the bigger circle for the front of your rosette. Make the diameter of your circle 1.5 cm bigger than the circle sitting in the middle of your rosette, (the circles you just made).

You should now have two little circles, and one big circle.

Now glue your two smaller circles together, and then glue those onto the middle of the larger circle, as above.

Here's the side view of your three circles stuck together, above.

Now you're going to measure for the fabric that is going to cover the larger circle of card. Make sure the diameter of the circle of fabric is 1.5 cm bigger than the larger circle of card, because you want to be able to fold the fabric round the sides and to the underside of the card circle.

My circle of fabric, above, turned out a bit wobbly, but that's not a problem, it just needs to be able to wrap around the card circle, and be able to be sewn at the back.

(At this point, if you want to embroider a design, or letters, or whatever, onto this centre section of your rosette, now is the time to do it, before you stick your fabric onto your card circle).

Now glue your circle of fabric to the larger circle.

Thread your needle, and have the thread double, for strength. Now start sewing by gathering up the fabric as you go round, as I have above.

Once you've sewn all the way round, and pulled your thread firmly, it should look like above.

Turn the circle over, and you will see you have the front of the central section of your rosette finished.

Before you do the back section of your rosette, you need to sew on your ribbons.

Like above. Careful how you place your ribbons, they don't sit directly ontop of each other, they are staggered, so that both ribbons can be seen nicely.

Now you're ready to finish off your rosette.

With the central section you have made, in place, turn the whole rosette over, so the back is facing you.

Now measure a for a circle to cover the back of your rosette. It needs to be bigger than the larger front circle. I measured mine to be 2.5 cm bigger than the small central circle.

The card I used for this back circle is different to the card I used for the other circles, it's thinner. You could use the card from a cereal box, or for something a little smarter, you could buy some nice white card, or any other colour of course.

You also need to create an attachment for your safety pin. Using a hole puncher, I punched two holes into the same card I used for the circle to go on the back of the rosette. I punched the holes a small distance apart, then cut an oval shape round them, as above. I then placed the back of the safety pin through the two holes, as above.

Now glue the circle of card just cut, with a generous great big blob of glue, to the small circle in the centre of the rosette. Position your safety pin, and glue that in place.

You're finished! Well done! You have one complete rosette, ready to bestow on a special person! Have fun! Vanessa xxx

I can't do things by halves, I wish I could!

Hello, we've reached Friday haven't we................ and tonight I am going to spend the whole evening knitting, whilst watching t.v.

The whole evening, my derriere is going to be stuck to our sofa, and my needles are going to be clicking away.

Bliss.

The reason I feel I deserve to be ensconced on the sofa, is that I feel like doing something I don't have to do, something that doesn't have a deadline, and something that doesn't involve measuring, working out, changing a bit here, a bit there, and so on.

I last spoke to you on Wednesday, and I'd been working on the mystery project for Coats Crafts.

I then worked on it over Thursday and today too, and at precisely 5:45 p.m I finished sending off everything I've written and photographed for the project.

It feels really good to have got that finished. It's now out of my hands. Nessy at Coats Crafts is converting it all into pdf files, and getting it ready to go live on the site. I don't know when it will actually go live on the site, I have a feeling it might not be until April 1st, I'll let you know.

I really put my 'all' into these patterns I've done. There is a knitted version, and a crocheted version, so that everyone who knits or crochets can have a go at the pattern.

You might wonder why it all took so long, when you see the patterns.

I'm wondering myself! Everything has to be right, and I hope I got all my instructions right. It was trying to get it all right that took the time. Sizes, number of stitches, everything had to be spot on for the finished product to be convincing.

I would SO love to be able to reveal what it is I'm talking about, right here, right now! But I've agreed to let the Coats Crafts site have it for a month, before I can put up the patterns on my blog.

I had plans today, to take photos of my knitting, so you can see how it's getting on, but time and day light ran out, and so I'm having to re-cycle these photos you've seen before.

Still, they are bright and cheery.

Hugo isn't home from work yet, and I'm waiting for him with guilt in my thoughts.

You see I managed to eat the entire large bar of chocolate he left on the kitchen counter today. 

Bad me.

Foolish husband.

Well, I'm itching to retire to that sofa. I'll be back on Monday with photos galore. Have a lovely weekend. Toodle-pip. Love Vanessa xxx

P.s. There's a free pattern for a waistcoat on the Coats Crafts site, in the knitting section, that I thought looked quite interesting. You can see it here. Don't you think it looks a bit different?

I thought I never would, but I am.

Hello! Lovely, lovely, lovely to be back again after my short work-break.

The roughs were done and sent off, and it was your encouragement that kept me going, and I'm absolutely not just saying that to get in your good books. Hugo can testify that I was bowled over by all your encouraging words, kindness and sympathy. Infact, I kept on saying something to the effect of,  "I can't get over how kind everyone is with their comments". And I took your advice to take breaks, which helped a lot, usually I plough on through, but taking breaks made it a lot easier to keep going.

So it's out of my hands for the moment, until I start on the final art work. That's the time I can listen to as much Radio 4 as my heart desires, when I'm doing the painting bit, it feels very luxurious. Today I was working on a painting to go in the mock-up of the book I've been doing the roughs for, and I got to listen to the afternoon play on the radio.

Now I'm going to have to keep a straight face here, when I tell you about this play, and it's going to be difficult. I imagine it was quite difficult for the actors to keep a straight face when they were reading their parts.

The play was about a mother and son, and the son brings home a pet rabbit, much to his mother's horror. Things settle down, until the son suddenly discovers his crossword in the newspaper has been completed. His mother didn't finish it, the son didn't do it, so that only leaves one other living breathing body who could have done it. Yes, the rabbit, the rabbit completed the crossword.

Well, mother and son go to the Town Hall to report the situation, and a man at the town hall insists the rabbit has to go to school. So the rabbit is sent to school to go through the educational system. The rabbit doesn't like school, or the educational system, so he leaves the mother and son paw-written messages saying 'piss off'.

I'm not entirely sure why I carried on listening to this play, but I did, and in the end, with the rabbit under-performing at school, and threats of the rabbit going to do "work experience" at the local butchers, the son and his new girlfriend, (who just happened to be the rabbit's teacher), set the rabbit free in the park, which just happened to be populated by rabbits who had "escaped the system".

I'm wondering about the history of the person who wrote this radio play.

I was just telling Hugo about this play, and his responses were numerous. He now knows for sure that our boy dog, Douglas reads his car magazine, it's never in the place he left it, and the page is never at the page he left it.

And Douglas always wants to hop into the driver's seat of the car.

Anyway, Spring is here, and I know that for a fact, because the sun has been shining, and I saw two pigeons wobbling along behind another pigeon, looking very keen on her, whilst trying to puff themselves up at the same time as wobbling along.

Lovely sight that, two keen pigeons, slightly agitated and VERY attentive to the other pigeon, who was playing it very cool, but not too cool if you know what I mean.

And now, an explanation for the title for this post. I came across some things I'd been crocheting, then sort of abandoned, last week.

I picked them up, and shook my head disapprovingly at myself. "Tut-tut" I thought, unfinished projects. I don't know what's happened to me, but things are getting very relaxed around here lately. I always used to finish a project before starting the next one. (I used to iron my clothes). Those unfinished projects are all crocheted, as I've been swinging back towards knitting recently. Crochet is done so quickly, I started to worry I'd have mountains of crocheted blankets (even though I've actually only finished one crochet blanket).

Anyway, thought I'd show you some of my bits of unfinisheds, starting with the wire cup cake stand, full of little squares left over from my Little Squares Scarf. I may have enough left-over squares to do another scarf, but I'm thinking cushion cover. I did start on a cushion cover way-back-when, with these squares, but it is still at that start position.

See what I mean above? The squares above are the pattern for my little crochet squares, plus one row of single crochet around each edge, which makes them much firmer squares, and I thought, good and sturdy for a cushion cover. (Pattern for crochet squares in the left-hand sidebar).

And the crochet hearts? Well, something else I got obsessed by, then never finished, must do some more, then make them up into a garland.

To be honest, if I sound like I'm beating myself up about unfinished projects, I'm not at all, that would take the fun out of life, so I'm not worrying at all, they'll be finished when they're finished.

And talking of finishing, shriek! It's time for knitting, have to dash, love-you-and-leave-you and see you on Friday. Cheerio then. Love Vanessa xxx