Having a lovely time

I've had a lovely day and a half knitting teeny gorgeousness (and doing a bit of tidying and blog-catching up) and the knitting is all thanks to the lovely Julie.  So I don't know why I'm only showing you snippets as you will undoubtedly know what they are - but they are presents for friends and one may be reading this before she gets it (if you're there Bernie, don't tell the others!)  If you haven't made them yet then I strongly recommend them - they are highly addictive and so is the little extra element that Julie has recently added - lovely, lovely knitting :o)

I have also been doing a lot of running as I am trying to get ready for an organised 10k run at the end of next month.  I'm terrified and very tempted to pull out - which is why I'm telling you so that you will all encourage me to do it!  I can't run that far yet - but I can run/walk it in about an hour and a half so that's probably what I'll do - don't let me back out!

P.S I KNEW there was something else I wanted to say!  Is anyone going to the Country Living show on Saturday???

Presents

A belated Happy Mother's Day everyone!

This is my lovely haul from the Little Lockets (and Mr Locket too) - it's just a bit unfortunate that I wasn't organised enough to send my own Mum a card and present - although I did buy her 4 cards in an attempt to find one that was decent, and I planned to give her the exact same present as my sister although neither of us could work out how to get it to her (nothing too clever, just a book for her kindle).

Meanwhile I have been busy knitting presents for friends.........

A pair of Fetching mittens for Alison

and just-finished-today Broadripple socks for Kerry.

But my best present - to myself - was fitting into a pair of Dot's size 12 jeans yesterday!  Result :o)

Sometimes....

Sometimes helping choose sixth forms isn't all hard work!

It's not working

Mr Locket had confirmation yesterday that the firm he works for is going to close down soon.

He's an archaeologist.  Jobs like that don't come up very often.

The crochet and chocolate aren't working at making things feel better.

Especially as the crochet isn't working either.

I looked again at the joined together squares and compared them with my first blanket.  They are all wonky and distorted from the joining.

So I unravelled them all.

Then I decided that any way of joining them with their white edging was going to look squiffy.

So I unravelled all the edging as well.

They don't look like tiles anymore.

And I can't decide how I want to finish them.

Should they have a white granny border?

Should I edge them with the grey?

(these are just the squares I'd already made that had grey as their outer border - if I edged them there would be another round)

Should I just join them together as they are and then have a white border round the whole blanket?

Or should I just give up on it for a bit and go and knit some socks for my friend's birthday instead?  And drink wine.  And eat more chocolate.

10 things

1. Spending your lunchtime crocheting certainly brightens up the day at work 

2. It takes me 15 minutes to crochet each granny square and a full 6½ minutes to do the cream border.  I know. I've timed it. I'm pathetic. 

3. My sewing room was a mess. 

4. An hour spent out there tidying with Dot quickly sorted it.

5. There are pretty quilts to be finishing. 

6. And exciting new mini squares of fabric to play with but two weeks have passed since it was tidied and I haven't been out there once.

7. Selecting a sixth form for Dot isn't easy work. 

8. Joining these squares together isn't quite as neat as my other blanket but I like the way they look like tiles that have been grouted in place.

9. Choosing which colour to crochet next is a very pleasant and distracting past-time but it isn't quite taking the edge off worry about jobs and money today.

10. I've now lost 4 stone but I think I will be joining Fred in "chocolate day" after school - and we're not talking about Weightwatchers chocolate today - it's going to be the real deal.

Edited to add....

Sea glass blanket

I love sea glass and always search for it when I go to the beach.  I have found it in all shades of blue, turquoise and green along with the almost colourless pieces.  Unfortunately I'm not very good at looking after my treasures and could only find this meagre selection which doesn't really show the full range of colours - and once again my photographic skills have let me down.

When I was thinking about colours for my new crochet blanket I decided to go with colours that reminded me of my sea glass and raided three local wool shops to get my palette.

I've picked 12 colours - some so close to each other you can only just tell them apart and I'm using a mix of King Cole Merino and Sirdar Stylecraft from Ring a Rosie, Wendy Merino and Wendy Mode from Kemps, and some more King Cole Merino from the Knit Studio along with a few leftovers from my last blanket.

Some of the yarn is nicer than the others.  The Wendy Merino is so soft and lovely to use and the King Cole Merino is nice - and familiar as this is what I used in my other blanket - but I had to buy quite a few different makes to get the colour range.

I've been crocheting in every spare moment since Friday afternoon and have done 32 squares so far.  16 of them have their outer cream edging and the other 16 are waiting patiently for it!

I can't seem to show in my photos just how nice these colours look together.  I'm very happy with my little "tiles" - they almost remind me of Moroccan ceramic tiles.
Every Saturday morning Dot and I go to knitting group at Ring a Rosie, and every time we pop into Costa Coffee on the way there for a Skinny Cappuccino.  While we are standing in the queue we "select" all the cakes and biscuits and treats that we are going to have that day. 

We usually pick at least 6 each - and when the queue is longer we stand near the sandwiches and hot paninis and choose a range of them too.

As we are both on a diet and also trying to economise, we never actually buy anything to eat - but we enjoy the game :o)  Right now I could eat one of those lemon tarts in the middle of the photograph - yummy!

We share our coffee and eat some of the lovely biscuits that are provided at the wool shop instead and spend the morning knitting and crocheting with our lovely friends (while avoiding the camera!)

It is a really lovely Saturday morning ritual with Dot - and very occasionally Daisy too.  I just need to persuade Fred and Mr Locket to learn to knit and then it can be a full family affair!

The question of colour

Thank you all for your advice on my blanket - I decided to follow the majority opinion and go with the simple chain edge (which, if I'm honest, was exactly what I hoped people would say - I just didn't have the confidence to rip out all the scalloping without a bit of bloggy back-up)

 The blanket is now "blog finished" (i.e the front looks good!)

and very beautiful - if I'm allowed to say that myself?

But there is still the messy job of sewing all the threads in to do - I imagine I will be working on it for quite some time.

Now that I consider the blanket to be finished my thoughts naturally turned to what I wanted to crochet next and I lay in bed for ages last night thinking and thinking about colour choices.

Because colour preference is a truly personal thing isn't it?


When Julie blogged about her new crochet blanket project I was completely overwhelmed by her colour selection - I loved it and couldn't sleep one night for thinking about it - so I rushed to finish my blanket so I could start a  new one in these gorgeous, rich, autumnal colours.

Likewise, when I was reading Soulemama and seeing her knit with nubbly shades of brown, or reading Quinn's blog about her walnut hand-dyed sock yarn, I started craving some "brown" knitting of my own.

But now I'm actually doing it, I have to confess that it really just isn't "Me" - it's just not colourful and "happy" enough to get me excited.

These socks are rather over-bright and I was amused one night when I was working on them that I just couldn't have this quilt on my lap because it didn't go with my knitting!

I like this quilt but they're just not my colours again - and they don't really "go" with the rest of my house.

Therefore, much as I adore Julie's colour selection for her blanket, and really wish I was stylish enough to use them myself, I just have to accept that my natural palette is much brighter.

So my nocturnal cogitations came up with the idea of  "sea-glass" granny squares with the cream tile-like edging that Julie is putting on her blanket.  I'm not sure I can afford to invest in the necessary wool but I am looking forward to Saturday morning's Knit and Natter at my local wool shop so I can look to see what colours are available.  I'm thinking of something similar to Thomasina Tittlemouse's ripple blanket maybe.

Now to the important part of the post - letting you know who is the winner of my mini giveaway.........

I used a random number generator for numbers 1-20 and it chose 20, so Quinn, can you send me your address so I can send you a flower - do you have a colour preference (pink, red, turquoise or cream?)