Cosy Catch up

Hello............ It's been quite a while since I last did a post about my 'Seaside Pebble' Cosy blanket, in fact the last one was here way back in September eek.

Well progress since then has been kind of slow, what with a relapse of my chronic illness, plus Christmas and then crafting for the local exhibition.

I've picked it up on and off thoughout the winter, adding a row here and there. 

The pattern if anyone's wondering is Lucy over at Attic24's Cosy Stripe, I started this make in the Autumn of 2014 joining in with Lucy Crochet Along, but due to my limited crochet time and poor energy levels, where most people finished there blankets well over a year ago mines turned into more of a endurance event..... 

but I'm still loving the soothing colours and sparkle of my seaside theme

As you can see I've been a bit naughty with the ends, not sewing them in as I go, but now I'm kinda loving them as they remind me so much of the sea, so I'm wondering if tassel's might be the way to go when I'm finished.

I'm a way off  that yet though, as I want my blanket to fit a double bed.

 Here's a update on the colours if you are following along

silver 111-112

cream 113-114

brown sparkle 115-116

white  117-118

blue sparkle 119-120

parchment 121-122

silver 123-124

white sparkle 125-126

cream 127-128

Happy Crafting

Linking up with Jennifers
Winter link party

Clare xx

This week

Hello..........

This week I enjoyed joining in with the World Wildlife Funds 'Earth hour' on Saturday evening it was lovely to turn off the lights and electrical appliances and spend a hour without, great to step away from the screens, this year I played my mandolin for a bit,

Then spent the rest of the hour relaxing, in the soothing darkness, with just a few candles burning.

It was lovely to watch the patterns cast by my butterfly candle.

For the last few weeks I have been trying to follow Dr Walhs diet, of eating 9 cups of fruit and veg a day, it's surprisingly hard to fit it all in, three cups of greens, three cups of colourful and three cups sulphurous veg.

In the hope it might improve some of my symptoms, my blood sugar levels seem to be happier for it, although so far I'm not feeling any better with my energy levels and pain.

This week I was skippy happy to discover this beauty in the summerhouse border, super frilly double daffodils

I also spent time earlier in the week re pinning my Springtime wreath ready for the Equinox last Sunday.  I love how ever year I add something new to the wreath so it's always slightly different.

It's been up all week waiting for the Easter decorations to join in.

Talking of which I finished putting them up today, a bit of a dizzy making job for me as standing with my arms above my head tends to make my POTS so much worse, so it took a while to hang up the eggs.

Here's a closer look at some of the decorations, the tiny crocheted pieces were a Easter gift from a friend, who got them from a very talented crafter me thinks. It was also good to see my Attic24 chicks again.

Happy Hoppy Easter

Clare xx

Bunny Bunting

Hello...... Just lately we've found ourselves over run with bunnies here at the summerhouse.........

First there was some cotton in cute Easter colours and a pattern from Mollie Makes ( sorry a Subscriber only one)

Then a yellow bunny appeared,  now this bunny made on a 5mm hook turned out to be a bit flopsy and a little too bunny holie for my liking.

So after dropping down to a 4mm hook, I was much happier with how my bunny looked

 and in the shake of a lambs    bunnies tail, bunny productions began.

As for those cute little Cotton tails I used some white pom poms

and before long they were breeding like, well rabbits !!!

Three pink bunnies.

Were joined by four more bunnies, now it turns out as in life no two bunnies are the same, and all cotton yarns are not created equal,  I used a few different brands of cotton from my stash,  the pink bunnies turned out a little larger and well the little green bunny was on the teeny side of tiny so much so I added a extra round to his body, to make him a little bigger, and in the process made him look a bit like a Space Hopper !!!

So now we have five little bunnies sitting in a row

Then six

Until finally there were seven little bunnies all present and correct and all that was left to do was to thread them onto some yarn

Ta-Dah

All ready to join in with our other Easter Decorations

Happy Hoppy Easter 

Clare xx

Log Cabin Cushion

Hello .......... I'm back with more adventures into the world of machine sewing, after my sewing machine one to one, I thought it was best to try and remember consolidate what I had learnt, I'm still pretty scared of my sewing machine

but playing with the pretty fabrics makes it so much better.  My original plan was to make a mini quilt to cover my craft basket, comprising of four 12 inch squares. I found this 'tutorial' on youtube and decided to go with log cabin squares.

I just love how much crafting knowledge and help this is to be found on youtube and it's usually my first port of call if I need help with something, I find it so much easier to follow a video clip than try and figure out what to do from a book.

Any road back to my square, I cut out the pieces for my log cabin patch as per the tutorial measuring and checking as I went, foggy brains are not the best for this, (so far I'm discovering sewing is much more of a accurate business than crochet.)

Once I had all the pieces cut I played around with the layout, at this point I was skippy happy with how it was looking, all the colours and patterns soooo pretty.  I did have a bit of a issues with getting it to fit, but hoped assumed that this was something to do with seam allowances, ( technical sewing stuff).

So it was time to thread up the machine and get sewing,

building up the block, just look how pretty it is....

It was all going really well until..........

Two of the pieces just didn't fit, I went back and checked the dimensions on the video tutorial and I had cut them as directed but for some reason it just wasn't working, so it's either me (highly likely) or somethings not quite right with measurements on the clip.

So what to do............. After a bit of head scratching and general scary sewing panic,

I opted to just leave them out of the block as the final piece fitted (well if you cut off the excess it did!!) so that's what I did.  The only problem was my block was now too small plus I very much doubted I'd be able to make three more to match for my mini quilt.

So what to do........

It was then that I remembered I had a 11 inch cushion pad, sitting waiting in the cupboard under the stairs, I'd ordered it by mistake when I made my ice cream cushion back in the summer, so now I just needed to figure out how to make a envelope cushion cover.

Which involved a bit of guess work but.....

Ta-Dah

I think it turned out OK.

Not perfect, but not too bad for a first attempt

So all well that ends well in the tale of the log cabin cushion.

Happy Crafting

Clare xx

Patchwork February

Hello.......... As ever I'm running behind with my patchwork post here's February in review.

A month mostly spent getting things finished off for the Craft Club exhibition, I did finally get to grips with my sewing machine, only two years on from when I bought it. !!! A little bit of art too, plus lots of pacing and resting up, I also finished a course of antivirals, which fingers crossed helped my energy levels improve a little until I finished them and crashed back down,  so we're going to try them for another month, thankfully with time the nasty side effects seem to be easing.

Out in the garden the bulbs were waking up and until the frost got them last summers geraniums were still going strong, we even still have strawberries growing.

After a year of planning and making our local crafts clubs exhibition went up in the local library, as you can see, there are a wide variety of crafts on display, crochet, sewing, painting and jewellery to name a few.

Here's a closer look at our group project that represents the seasons.

Well that about sums up February, crafting, resting up, eating clean with a bit of art thrown into the mix, some new crafts too in the form of paper cutting and machine sewing.

Happy Crafting

Clare xx

Five on a Friday - Lately

 Hello.......... Today I'm going to be joining in again with Amy's Five on a Friday link up, where I'm going to be sharing five things that have been going on lately, here at the Summerhouse.

The Summerhouse had been getting Spring ready with pretty Primroses and Polyanthus, I've never seen pastel pink Primroses before and just had to have some for the window boxes, mixing them in with white and these gorgeous purple ones.

A big thank you to my lovely sister for texting me a photo when she spotted them in the garden centre and kindly getting them and delivering them to me.

Lately I've been playing around with fabrics, after my Sewing machine starter course a few weeks ago I just couldn't wait to get started, they'll be a post all about this make soon.

As always there has been a little bit of crochet too, I'm really hoping to get my Seaside Pebble Cosy blanket finished sometime this Spring. I'll share a colour order update very soon.

Now as for all those crochet ends well I've been saving them up for about a year, to do a little experiment, I'm not sure if this is going to work, but I've put them into a bird feeder and I'm hoping the birds will use them for nesting materials.  I have no idea if this will work or not but I love the idea of the birds knitting there nests from my left over ends.

Last but not least, it's a yay for new craft materials, I couldn't resist this book and some merino when I spotted it on Amazon the other day, I'm looking forward to having a go at making some felt fairies, fingers crossed it's not to tricky.  So hopefully sometime soon, there will be a 'Something New' post all about my felt fairy adventures, I'm loving my new years resolution to try new crafts.

Well that's about it for now, have a fabulous weekend

Happy Crafting

Clare xx