Good Luck to William and Kate

I didn't actually plan on watching The Wedding today, but I seem to have found myself kind of  interested in the television coverage this morning, lovely to see all the people from around the globe that have made it to London to watch it first hand. What I do want to see is the dress, will she go for elegant simplicity or the more traditional lace and flounce of past royal brides, I love wedding dresses, something truely magical about a woman in her dress.
Just to add to the theme of the day a picture or three of my baby girl on her wedding day, her bouquet was originally mine from my wedding, I added a few more flowers to it to add a little length, and though you cannot see it there is a little silk frog hidden in there, I do not really know why but when I chose the flowers I saw him and couldn't resist.

I May Need To Change My Blog Title

I can't actually remember when I last knit, it seems like years ago, I have been seduced by speed over to  the hooky side. Like many of you I pop into attic24 to see the beautiful things there, Lucy has an eye for colour that I can only envy. I am also a member of the We Love Lucy group on Rav where I discovered that you could purchase a Lucy pack from several online retailers containing her choice of the Stylecraft Special DK needed for her Granny Stripes blanket. Naturally upon seeing the pack I promptly pressed the buy now button. For a very well priced acrylic yarn I am impressed with how it feels and looks and will definitely be puchasing more.

Anyhow, the hook has been in pretty much constant use this weekend, I have refrained from checking out the colour order that Lucy used on her blanket, trying to bring my own colour sense into it, if you know what I mean. (Harry) Lots of progress has been made, the blanket is a good five feet wide and is getting very warm to be under in this weather, (hasn't it been glorious) but I shall persevere in the name of art. 

                

I hope you have all had a fantastic Easter weekend with lots of lovely chocolate and been able to get the needles and hooks out at every opportunity.

Guess What I Was Doing.

A lovely little pile of ends, yes I spent most of the afternoon sewing in ends, don't you just love doing that. Those are not all of them either, I had put a whole load in the bin a little while before. It was worth it though, when you finally do the last one I always feel like dancing around singing a jaunty ditty to celebrate. I know I am so sad.
I must say a great big Thank You to my first ever follower Clare, I cannot tell you just how excited I was when I logged on and saw that you had clicked to follow me, I walked around with the biggest grin on my face for the rest of the day, I would have put the Chesire Cat to shame. It is the loveliest feeling when you know other people out there occasionally pop in and peruse the blog.
I love reading other peoples, I spend hours hopping from one to the other, I am not very good at leaving comments, I try to do it as much as I can, silly but I feel a bit shy about it, maybe others do to.

This is what all the ends came from, it is only acrylic stuff that I had laying around in my stash from the toys I occasionally knit for the grandkids. I have made this for my grandaughter, she loves to snuggle under a blanket when she watches the telly in the evening and when she first gets up, and I know she will love this as it has lots of pink in it, and she is definitely a pink girl, though she can be partial to a little purple sometimes.
Me, I am a blue person, any shade of blue does it for me, I live and I will die in blue jeans, I even wear them at work even though our uniform is black, I kind of get away with it.

Not New Needles and the Kindness of Strangers.

A couple of weeks ago I was looking through the knitting needles in one of the local charity shops, another customer came in and saw me rooting through them and asked if I knitted and would I like all her old knitting needles.

I picked them up yesterday, what a lovely lady she was, she offered me a cup of tea, which unfortunately I was unable to except (I was just off out), but we chatted for ten minutes or so and she has crochet hooks and odd balls of yarn tucked away somewhere which when she digs them out I am also welcome to. I did offer to buy the needles from her but she wouldn't hear of it, she was just happy to know that they were going to a new home to be loved and used. What a haul, there are over seventy pairs, and lots of odds, plus stitch holders, circulars and needle gauges (old sizing). I had a lovely time sorting through them yesterday. In the front of the picture are some lovely old bone needles, not sure I would actually knit with these they feel so delicate, I might give them a go eventually, but for now I am happy to just hold and admire them. I am getting quite a collection of old (or should they be called vintage) needles and patterns, the needles mostly live in a large glass cup where I can admire them constantly, Mr Roadside just shakes his head in bemusement, he just does not get why I get so excited over what he thinks of as pointy sticks and string, poor deluded man.

Happy Hooker

I have been truely side tracked by crochet, nothing to show you at the moment ( theres a surprise), but have been playing around for the last couple of weeks with the hooks, teaching myself how to read crochet patterns and charts. I had forgotten how quick crochet grows, but also just how much more yarn it uses than knitting.
I have a couple of granny square blankets on the go, and several flowers in different stages of progress, just fooling around with it really. I ordered a couple, oh alright three crochet books tonight along with some aluminium hooks, I do have a few hooks, mostly metal, a few plastic, some wood and one bone one. I mostly use the same size plastic one, with shaped handle, it feeds the yarn through really well, wooden ones tend to stick to the yarn, as do metal ones to some extent, so I figured I would treat myself to a complete set, and ali ones seem to rate quite well with other hookers, and they were half price, at only a tenner for the set I thought it would be rude not to.
No plans for the weekend, just chilling with wine and good food, oh, and maybe a little crochet.

Crochet

I haven't done any crochet for years, but last weekend I was looking through my stash and was wondering how on earth I was ever going to use any of it up at the moment. I needed to do something that produced results quickly, time is still a bit sparse at the moment so anything that can give me almost instant gratification is very welcome. Several of the other bloggers I follow have recently featured crochet and I love Granny Squares to distraction, apart from the fact that is all I can do as far as crochet goes is beside the point
I have never tried to read a crochet pattern or chart, but have found my copy of Happy Hooker and several crochet books I found in the charity shop last week, and I plan to spend the day having a little peruse of them and see if I can make any sense of them.

Here is my little pile of squares so far, I will more than likely make some sort of scarf with them, there is not enough yarn to make any kind of reasonable sized blanket with. Each one is about six inches square, and takes just under an hour to do, most are a single colour, but to use up the oddments of yarn where there is not enough to do one square I have a few multi coloured squares as well.

I went along to our local S & B this week, it has only been running a few weeks, but I had not had the chance to go along to one before this week, it was a very pleasant evening of chatting and knitting (and crochet). I helped a couple of the ladies with their crochet, mostly on how to hold the yarn and keeping the tension. There are quite a few beginners there and it is great to be able to pass on the crafts to newbies, I have tried recruiting several of the ladies in our various charity shops this week, loads of them used to knit but in their own words they have no-one to knit for, as I said, why can they not knit for themselves and there are many charitys out there who would be extremely grateful for knitted gifts.
While I was in one shop looking through their collection of knitting needles a lady asked if I knit, and when I answered in the affirmative she then offered me her collection of needles she no longer uses any more. I nearly snatched her hand off , she gave me her number and I will be ringing her later on, this lady has bone needles, I adore old bone knitting needles and am so excited. Off to study the mystery of crochet patterns now, hope everyone is having a lovely weekend.

I started this scarf for the Grandaughter quite a few weeks ago, last weekend I figured I would get it finished for her, can I find the damn pattern, can I hell. I wrote it out in one of my many notebooks, not just any notebook though, it was one I use for work, one of several. Guess I will have to do a full scale search later today.
Stop press, just went upstairs to get something else and there it is sat on the stairs with some other bits and pieces, Mr Roadside must have found it yesterday when he was tidying up, how good is that.
I found the pattern on another blog, unfortunately I cannot remember which one so I cannot tell you whose pattern it is, it is a nice easy one though.