African Flowers

African Flowers, a photo by lndyf9 on Flickr.

I didn't even know that these lovely motifs existed until just lately.  They are hugely popular in crochet Blogland and of course as soon as I saw them I had to have a go.  I have made several of these but they are a work in progress and probably will be for a while.  At this stage I'm not even sure what I will turn them into because I have a limited amount of this cotton.  Two balls of cream and one each of the other colours, so I plan to keep making them until the yarn runs out, only then will I know how many I have and what I should do with them.  Suggestions are very welcome of course. 

What shall I do with this?

Usually I see a pattern I like then decide on the wool but this time I  did it the other way round.  This wool which was in my stash caught my eye because of it's fresh shades I had two lovely big balls and I turned them into

A Hexagon shaped baby blanket

I decided to make a blanket in this shape just for a change and because I've never done one in this shape before so it was a bit of a challenge, I thought that it would be the ideal shape to wrap a little baby in.

A Crochet Jacket 

This is a favourite pattern of mine, I have made it several times, so quick and easy and it looks different each time depending on the type of yarn used, I think it looks lovely in these shades. the link for this pattern can be found here

A knitted slip over and the cutest sleeveless Preemie jacket

just to give an idea of the size, the slip over should fit a child of 2years.

 

A Beautiful Day

I sometimes forget what beauty I have on my own doorstep.  The actual town I live in can give absolutely no claims to beauty but just a few miles away is Durham Town. It took an outside visitor to shake me out of the daily grind and lethargy and show her some of the beauty spots close by.  Durham is well worth a visit and I have been there several times especially to visit the cathedral which I absolutely love, I feel a real sense of peace descend when I pass through it's doors.  This time was extra special because we were met by the sound of children's voices raised in song and we sat for a while and listened, their sweet voices followed us as we spent some time exploring the cathedral. 

From there we took a walk by the river, it was a beautiful day and I could have walked for ever watching the trees reflected in the unusually still waters of the Wear.

Mad about Butterflies

I know we all love butterflies but I have been going a little butterfly crazy just lately, I have been trying to find the perfect butterfly pattern and then I found inspiration here I had to make them in all sorts of colours and in all kinds of yarns.  These butterflies have a 3D effect so I sort of halved the pattern and after a lot of tweaking I came up with some flat ones too which I thought would look good as embellishments for all sorts of things.  

As you know I am trying to inject some new life into my poor tired summer house as mentioned here  so I decided to make a sort of butterfly decoration to hang in there, so here it is I love it and it's nice to look up at as I'm sitting there in my little hideaway and see these butterflies  perched prettily on the wall. 

As you can see the inside of the summerhouse is finished but I am thinking of making a crochet rag rug for in there. 

Inside the summerhouse