Harrogate - Post 2

I found this lovely little book late in the day. After thinking about it whilst exploring the rest of the hall, I went back to purchase it only to  find it was the last copy with no more due to be delivered until next February. Phew - would have been upset to miss out.
I fell in love with the penguin on the front - think it is the jumper that sells it. There are nativity characters and a herd of reindeer to make plus a turkey! There is something really quirky about the turkey and I feel the urge to knit one but not really sure why and what I will do with it. Meanwhile all these cute knits will have to wait until I have finished some other projects.

Harrogate 2017 - Post 1

This year I was quite restrained with my purchases at Harrogate - owing to the vast number of projects from previous visits and various other shopping expeditions that remain incomplete :-(
The above shows the knitting project I purchased - interesting pattern name - the Star Wars Shawl so named as it was knitted during a marathon event where the designer was watching all the Star Wars films! Perhaps I could do that to knit this too :-)

Summer Progress

Here is the second third of the temperature blanket. The above shows all but one day in May, then June, July and August. Note the really deep red  in June - the really hot days - we happened to be camping just prior to this! Still need to sew most of the ends in on this section - such a tedious task that I need to do it in the company of good friends, so I need more knitting and stitching get togethers.
Purchases from the Harrogate Knitting and Stitching Show coming up next.

Rudolph Progress

 A little bit of progress with the reindeer. I have had to unpick some as I managed to cross the stitches in the wrong direction - it seemed natural to turn the work around and stitch the names left to right rather than up and down and this is where the problem started. Soon spotted and all sorted (I think). Alas it won't be done this year, but something to look forward to next year.

Summer

Here is a little bit of spring/summer on what has been the coldest weekend this end of the year - some of us woke up to snow yesterday morning. The above squares are for May and June with a little bit of July - the really dark reds are around the time I was camping and boy was it hot out there.
I have promised myself that I will get this blog up to date and keep posting - lots to post in the near future.

A new Christmas Project

Time to start a new project and it seems the right time of year to do something Christmassy. Already had to unpick the left-hand reindeer's saddle as it was in the wrong place :-( Good progress being made but think there are not enough weeks left to get it done for this year.

Rudolph and Friends

A purchase from the Harrogate K&S Show last year. It's that time of year when you can start Christmas projects surely.

The Ends are in sight!

Here is the progress so far on the temperature blanket. I have changed how I join them together slightly between the bottom two rows of squares - hopefully it will not make much difference but it did seem like I was trying to join a longer piece to a shorter piece by about a square's width. But as it is my first crochet project, it is a learning curve so it doesn't and will not have to be perfect will it?

And here is the reverse - oh my, all those ends to sew in. Could be taking it along to the next knitting group where hopefully I will not notice the monotonous task whilst chatting and listening to the other ladies.

Wash Day

Fairly rubbish picture but you get the idea - this is the Nile and the fox picture from ages ago soaking in the suds - another step nearer to being hung on the wall.

The Last Picture

At long last here is the last individual picture from the Nile - just got to wash and get it framed now. Although I thought it was done, I did find a few odd stitches missing in the river itself and one or two other bits but a small amount of time whilst watching tv soon rectified this.

Almost there

One of the last Nile pictures - not many more left now. :-)

Another Nile Picture

 

Back to the Nile for another picture. This was one of the last ones to do and has been done for some time. I just need to  find a camera or batteries that will take decent photos so I can display some more pictures of the remaining bits.

January's Squares

Here is the progress from January until early February on the temperature blanket. Started to put the squares together in long strips otherwise leaving them to sort and piece together would become quite a slow task. Currently trying to join the strips together.

February's Squares

This little lot of granny squares are the February ones for my temperature blanket. They are made of three rounds - the first represents the minimum temperature, the second  the average, and the third the maximum temperature. The more blue the colder it was and the more green the warmer, with the bright green being warmer still.
I must admit to liking the cold weather but there was something exciting about doing the 2 squares with the bright green where it reached 14 and 13 degrees (20th and 21st if you are interested).
All this makes for a LOT of ends to sew in, especially if we have 3 different temperature ranges in a day - each colour represents 4 degrees in my blanket. It doesn't bear thinking about!
I must sew in as I go along, I must sew in as I go along, I must.......

Coastal Ripple Pack

For a number of years I have been reading blogs. One of them is attic24 written by Lucy and mostly about crochet. This lady makes some beautiful coloured things, particularly blankets. Apart from crafty stuff, some the photographs on her blog feature food, flowers and Yorkshire landscapes and are truly beautiful - and through her blog I have also found another blog that helps with getting your home organised - yes really(!).
One of the blankets that Lucy made was inspired by the sea and coast with a pack of wool being available to buy. Having admired this blanket for some time and thinking the colours might fill some of the gaps in my temperature blanket stash I purchased the pack. My plan is to make this blanket at some time by replacing the colours I use for the temperature blanket. The above photo shows the pack that arrived in a lovely bag and with a free pattern to crochet the Coastal Ripple blanket at some point in the future (I must admit it is tempting to start it, but I am not sure if my skills are up to it yet).

The First Crochet Project

About a year ago I found a crochet project online and having got a little bored of just doings lots of chain or going backwards and forwards practicing crochet stitches, I thought this might be a good project to hone my skills.
It is a temperature blanket. It consists of granny squares using different colours to represent the temperature for each day - so that means a whopping 365 squares to crochet. That should be good, regular practice if nothing else.
It was easy enough to find historical temperatures on the internet but I must have forgotten about the project or maybe I did decide to wait until this year.
So on New Year's Eve when younger people were out partying, I was at home with a glass of something and surfing the web looking at colours and eventually buying wool. That might not have been my best idea as some of the colours were not ideal when they arrived and there were gaps, but with another shopping spree a few weeks later, I had my range of colours sorted and lined up as above.
It might make more sense now looking at the colours as obviously the cool blues represent the cold temperatures and the reds the nice hot ones - watch it be a cold miserable summer this year! With the colours sorted and all lined up in order, I was ready to go.

Final Bakewell Purchase

This was the last item I bought at the Bakewell Wool Gathering - cute little fruit stitch markers - if I use them does that count as part of my 5 a day? Or is it 10 now - good grief! Not sure whether to keep these myself yet - I have some plain ones but they fall off the needles - or whether to gift them to some knitter. Decisions, decisions.
Need to download more photos before I can update the blog again. Not sure how many I have in the camera but certainly made some progress on projects this year :-)

Another Purchase

This was another purchase from the Bakewell Wool Gathering. It is alpaca wool and purchased from the lady who rears them. She learnt to crochet so she could make use of the yarn. With my beginner crochet skills at the time (miles of chain) she said that I could make a scarf purely from chain stitch, so based on that I purchased this wool. Still not started :-(
Looking at the stash of unstarted projects upstairs I really must stop buying stuff!

Shopping

Some months ago, October to be precise, I headed off early one Sunday morning to beat the crowds at the Bakewell Wool Gathering. And of course you have to buy - it would be rude not to - so here is purchase 1 of 3. Some beautiful wool/silk in 'my' colours. This was bought to knit a scarf which is finished and has been worn - photo of that to follow in another post.
I also bumped into some friends there, which was an added bonus and lovely to catch up with them.

Ta-Dah - Santa

I made this Father Christmas at a workshop at Buttons and Bows in Belper (sadly closed now) well over a year ago, but didn't quite finish it. I decided the sack was too plain and I wanted to put something on it like holly perhaps. In the end when I had some holiday from work to watch Wimbledon, I managed to finish it by adding a cross-stitch snowman to the sack - the sack fabric was ideal for doing cross-stitch.

Twiddlemitts - 3

Here is a Twiddlemitt before it is double-layered. Finished knitted length and stitched down the long side. Then it is pulled back into the tube to halve the length before stitching the ends together and decorating.

Twiddlemitts - 2

Here is another twiddlemitt. It might not be obvious from the picture but it is a double layered knitted tube and includes bits inside the tube to twiddle with as well as outside. This one I think had a pom-pom inside and would definitely have had a button or two on the inside. Just visible at the top is a bow - probably from an old cracker - you know, the sort of thing crafty types keep - just in case it has a use - well, yes they do - on twiddlemitts!

Twiddlemitts - 1

Quite some time ago now a friend told our knitting group about Twiddlemitts. These are given to dementia patients to use/play with as a means of occupying their hands and relaxing them. I am not really sure of all the benefits - there are probably much better websites out there that explaining that but the only real criteria we had was to attach items to the mitts that can be fiddled with.
I made a number of these last year, and dutifully photographed all/most of them but then seemed to forget my password for my gmail account and hence no blog postings for months.
So today as I was soooooo bored I decided to see if I could resurrect my account and lo and behold within minutes of trying 4 combinations of a password, I was in - so what were all the problems last year -the only excuse I can offer must be age!
So above the first of a series of twiddlemitts that were long since delivered.