On the needles : Purple leaf cushion.

This lovely purple leaf cushion is on my needles at the moment. The pattern is from the 26th December's issue of the 'Women's Weekly' UK.  Yes you heard me right, I'm in my 30's and I'm a closet Women's Weekly reader!!! Every Wednesday I sneak a peak at my Mum's copy, much the same as she used to sneak a peak at her mother copy and  I've discovered to my delight there are some great crafts and yarny makes lurking inside the pages.

So I saw the leafy cushion and loved it instantly, the colours and the leaves are just my cup of tea. Doesn't it look lovely nestled amongst the other cushions in the magazine. Just waiting to be knitted.  So I speedily sourced and ordered my yarn online and waited with anticipation for it's arrival. Parcels arriving by post are just the best!

 

 

So down to the knitty gritty 

I'm using Hayfield Bonus Aran -Purple Heather. The colour is divine it's a 400 gram ball and it's the biggest ball of yarn I've ever seen. It's so large, it didn't even fit it in my normal knitting bag, so as you can see I've had to put it in a very colourful beach bag, where it's looking very much at home.

For the leaves, I'm going to be using Sirdar Country Style DK in Feather Grey 400, Pansy 471 and Damson 604, I already adore the Damson colour and can't wait to get knitting with it.

I'm relatively new to knitting so I'm not sure how I'm going to get on when it comes to making the leaves.  I guess I'll worry about it when I get there, which will be a while as I not the fastest of knitters.  If it all goes horribly wrong and I can't figure it out, I can always just crochet some leaves.

That's all a way off yet though as first I have 114 rows of stocking stitch to complete, I'm currently on row 33, it's not the best shot of my owlie row counter, but if you look really closely ! the eyes do say 33, honest.

Sadly my crafting time is quite limited due to my ill health so I can only manage about 10 minutes of knitting a day, at my current pacing level.  I find it quite painful and tiring and after a bit I can really feel it in my neck, arms and shoulders, although I've found it helps with the pain and joint stiffness in my hands, so hay ho I guess it's swings and roundabouts.

So you'll have to bare with me for a bit, as I think it'll be a while before we get to the Ta-dah ! moment and my leaf cushion is complete.  I apologise for the above photo, it should be the other way round but for some reason blogger kept on putting it in portrait mode, who know why as it was shot in landscape, and nothing I do seems to want to change blogger's mind, but I guess that's life !

In other news just before I go I thought I'd show you that since my 'spring time' post of the other day, the first indoor mini iris has flowered.

Happy knitting

Clare x