Chuffed to bits

Oh my goodness, I'm so so so happy with my latest little project. Do you want to see??

How beautiful is that?? Can't tell you how pleased I am with him. So easy to make, making it up is hard but very rewarding when it starts to take shape. I want to make another now straight away. He needs company. Hubby wants to turn it into a door stop, which is a good idea but I objected on the grounds that I wanted to keep it clean. And he also needs a name. Thinking of Huw Happypotamus? Suggestions on a postcard please. 

Oh go on have another picture, just for luck! Lol Tx

It's been a while....

It most certainly had been a while since my last blogg. I've been pre occupied with various family 'things'. Both daughters have been sitting their exams in school. It hasn't been going well!! Lots of work in the 'Mum's taxi' department too! 

We've had some fab weather here in Somerset about a fortnight ago and I planted out a veggie patch, I've been titivating and generally getting down in the ground with that.

 Looking neat and tidy eh?

And the other thing is that I've returned to the gym last week after quite a long six week hiatus due to a poorly back. (Silly me tried lifting a 90kg boxed trampoline by myself, ouch). Sooo good to be back in the gym, managed a 5k run yesterday and oh spin classes I have missed you. Kettle bells tonight!! Woohoo

Elder daughter has decided to 'make some bunting for my room' which I initially thought was a 'mum could you...', but no she wanted to do it for herself. She bought her materials and fabrics, measured out her triangles with the precision of an A level maths student (OCD) and set her self up cutting away.

She's done very well, except for the small hiccup of the sewing machine breaking down after sewing only two triangles. She's been hand sewing since and doing a really good job.  She wants to come to the next crafting bee at the end of the month, AND she went out yesterday and bought the British sewing bee book! Gob smacked!! For years I've tried to get my girls into 'making'. 

Think I need a new sewing machine though. Oh poo, I've had that machine 10 years! 

So my crafty projects have had a little bit of a back seat this last two weeks, but there has been some progress. 

The 400 is doing well, it's about a third of the way put together now, reckon another week should break the back of it. However I've run out of cream stylecraft and my local wool shop in Cheddar have stopped selling stylecraft wool. Changed the whole range to Patons!! So now I've got to go and hunt down some stylecraft elsewhere, probably in Burnham-on-sea, there's 3 really good wool shops there. 

So I started a new project and I'm oh oh oh so excited! It going to take about a week. Here's a little sneaky peek.

Oooo what could it possible be???? Tx

2nd Crafting Bee event

We all had such fun on Saturday at the crafting bee that the next one is already booked! Hope to have more guests from local crafty business's and I will let you know who will be attending closer to the event. I look forward to seeing some of you very soon at the 2nd crafting bee!

The Crafty Cwtchers get together!

So yesterday (Saturday) we held a little get together in Pips local community centre in Pontnewynedd. We had a lovely kid free afternoon chatting about our various crafty like and crafty histories. But the absolute best thing was the sharing of skill!! Pip had five of us simultaneously making a heart. Something I've never been able to grasp until yesterday. There's clearly something wrong with me (twp in the head!)  as she made it so easy!!

And then Andrea from Black Mountain Fabrics, who came along to show us her 'fat quarters' took the time to show me how to make a fab raised flower square. Ever so slightly chuffed with my result! 

I did that!!!

So excited to learn something new (twice). Well the afternoon was a lovely success and Pip is going to repeat it again at the end of June. It was a gloriously sunny afternoon yesterday so maybe next time we could do it outside?? (Yeah right, this is Wales, rain for 40 day and 40 nights is considered the best summer ever!!!) Tx

Pip the teacher!

The lovely Gemma and Tracey xx

Nearly there, but here comes the hard bit!

Hmmm 432 square and round 3 complete!!! Wizzed through round 3! All my little squares look so cute all staked up in groups! Now comes the hard bit. I've got to start making it up, which I've only ever done using a needle. This pattern calls for it to be made up using a Double crochet to join the squares.....uncharted territory for me. I'm a bit nervous to say the least.....

400 Progress Report

It's going well, well I think it's going OK. I take my crochet bag with me to work or if I have to pick up the girls anywhere, cram in a quick bit of hooking here or there. It's a nice easy project. I started by doing one stack of colours at a time. But have done realised they it probably easier to do them in stages. Yesterday I did loads of the centre colour. When the bowl is full I'll add the second round in cream.

Think I need a bigger bowl. 2 more colours to add yet.

Well since I took this photo which was before I went on holiday there has been some significant progress with the 400. I added another two colours to the centre, a nice mellow yellow and a kind of purple grape colour. The bowl was piled high and looked fab and I forgot to take a photo, do'h. so Iv'e now started on round 2, which is putting the second colour on the centres to make them square. This is quite quick and  I'm probably about 2/3rds of the way through doing that now. My 2nd bowl is already full to overflowing so i'm definatley going to have to rethink my filing system shortly. Tx

OOOOO so pretty!

Back in March for Mothers Day my daughters went of to Wells to do some stealthy Mothers Day shopping. We don't go to Wells very often, why I have no idea as its a very nice quaint place, with a cobbled market square and individual shops, not so many chains. My elder daughter surprised me with a little button box from a shop there called Sew Vintage. Both my girls kept gushing on about how cute it was and that there were bowls and bowls of buttons everywhere. so one day about a fortnight ago I made the effort and drove the whole long 9 miles to Wells. (that was a little bit of sarcasm, in case you missed it).

It is a gorgeous shop and the lady there was lovely
 and very graciously let me take some photos to put on the blog. its a mixture of haberdashery, quilters paradise, some very nice rowan wools and buttons, buttons buttons galore!! I think my favourite thing though was the way they have lots and lots of old singer manual sewing machines everywhere. My Mam had one when we were little and she taught me to sew on it.





Post holiday blues

I've been on holiday recently, been to catch some sun and warmth in better climes than the UK. It's been so cold here for so long now, it's nearly a year since we had that minor heat wave. So my better half and I jetted of for some much needed vitmain D! and to recharge our batteries. It was our wedding anniversary while we were away as well and because of that we decided it would be our first holiday with out the girls, who were left in the capable hand of Nanna!

Nanna got a bit bored whilst she was 'babysitting' so she helped herself (with my blessing) to my 'lets get crafty magazine and wool pack that had come through the post. My Mam is a pretty handy crafty lady mind you, she's quite the seamstress having worked in various factories over the years, including a shoe factory when she was a teenager lol, and she passed that on to me as I'm pretty whizzy with a sewing machine. she's also always knitted and crochet and tried to teach me to knit when I was young with very limited success.  I have always been handy with needle and thread and have done loads of embroidery and cross stitch over the years which no one else in the family has tried. Mam is really chuffed that Pip and I are crocheting now though and she likes seeing what we're working on. Anyhow Nanna was looking after my girls whilst I was away and was armed with a pattern and wool and freebie bamboo needles and got clicking away....

How cool is that! Thank you Nanna xx

The thing with going on holiday though is that I didn't take my crochet with me, a complete break was needed as I tend to let things become an obsession and then that will be all I do...literally. It was a silly thing I know as my sister was surprised, but I think my husband had visions of me crocheting by the pool and was a bit embarrassed by it (and to be fair I did ban him from taking his blackberry!). I did look into whether  if I could get a crochet hook on a plane, apparently you can as long as it is a wooden one. Well now I'm back and can get stuck back in to my 400 blanket again, woohoo...Tx