Month: February 2014

Introducing the Whirly Catherine Wheel Cushion!

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I’ve made a few crochet cushion covers recently but they’re all been gifts for other people, and as lovely as it is to give them away, I quite fancied having one all for myself! Once I finished my star ripple blanket, I found I had quite a lot of yarn left, especially in Cream and Aster (blue). I thought I’d seen a pattern in one of my crochet magazines that used a fan stitch, but when I went looking for it I couldn’t find it.

Hmmm.

There’ always the possibility that I imagined it existed at all, or more likely that it wasn’t a pattern for a cushion but for something else and I just thought it would make a good cushion.

Double hmmm.

But then I thought of the Catherine Wheel stitch that makes up part of my stripey blanket WIP, and I came up with…

Whirly Catherine Wheel cushion!

The Whirly Catherine Wheel cushion!

As I didn’t have a cushion pattern to work to, the sensible thing to do would have been to make a swatch so that I could work out precisely how many pattern repeats to do to fit my cushion. Continue reading →

Vintage and crafty shopping

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I love a good rummage through the goodies at charity shops, and I’ve been meaning to do a post about some of the gems I’ve found already this year.

My number one absolute favourite thing I’ve found has been sitting in a cardboard box in my kitchen for a couple of weeks now, but today I got it out and used it for the first time. And here it is! (Or part of it anyway…)

Colclough bone china cup, saucer and tea plate in pretty rosebud pattern

Colclough bone china cup, saucer and tea plate in pretty rosebud pattern – plus a tea towel that just happened to match! The flowery tea cosy is one of my favourite improvised crochet creations.

I picked up this beautiful tea set consisting of six cups, saucers, side plates and one larger serving plate for the princely sum of… wait for it… £6.50!

I couldn’t believe it! Continue reading →

Blankets, socks, and me vs my stash

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Spring still seems to be a long way off, what with flooding, gale force winds, hail, and talk of snow later in the week. Nevertheless the urge to spring clean our flat has hit early, which is odd because some years it’s never hit at all! First order of business was organising my ever expanding yarn stash. I tend towards hoarding lots of small amounts of interesting looking yarn (as opposed to amounts sufficient to make larger items like jumpers or cardigans), which make it difficult to keep the collection tidy; so to solve this problem I’ve started storing similar yarns together in zip-lock bags. It’s not a perfect system, but at least it stops everything unwinding and getting tangled into one giant rat’s nest!

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Craft fair, bunting, cute and smelly (in a good way!) little owls, WIP and socks.

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Suddenly it’s Wednesday and I still haven’t updated my blog! I can’t blame it all on recovering from the Briar Patch craft fair on Saturday, although I was exhausted after spending the day chatting away with both customers and fellow stallholders. A steady stream of compliments more than made up for the slow sales, and it was a fantastic opportunity to network with other creative people locally. There’s not a lot of crochet at this particular craft fair, and what there is is mostly hats and scarves, so my stuff really stood out. I was lucky to be given an extra table to fill at no additional cost due to a last minute reshuffle by the organiser!

2014-02-01 10.02.18

2014-02-01 10.03.31

Continue reading →