Tarting Up The Sideboard.

Hello all you lovely people, I can't believe it's two weeks since I last posted! lots of busy and quite stressful things going on here at the moment and not a second to spare but I always try to make time to crochet every single day it's such a great stress buster don't you think? it's usually not until the evening I can sit with my my favourite hook and just crochet away and let all the stresses of the day melt away while creating something lovely. This time it's doilies.....

I needed something for the top of my sideboard, it has just been repaired after the workman had damaged it when doing the work in my house after the burst pipe.  There was a huge scratch almost from one end to the other, I complained and they took it away and made it look like new again even though they had it for almost two months! I think they had forgotten about it. Anyways I was pleased with the result and decide it deserved not one but three new doilies to sit atop...

I really enjoyed making these thank you Pradeepa from the Lazy Hobbyhopper for the lovely free pattern 

 The first doily is made up of 24 squares, I've had these pretty squares  pinned on my pinterest  for ages and was just waiting for the right project to try them, they were perfect for this you can find the free pattern here

I used King Cole Dk smooth which I have had in my stash for ages, this is an acrylic yarn but looks like cotton, it splits easily but not so much that it's impossible to use.  I love the colour choices and the lovely sheen it gives to finished projects.  I chose colours to match the flowers and owls that I had previously made for the metal art,  Raspberry, Olive, Rose and Damson.

The flower pattern was taken from the book 100 Hundred Flowers to Knit and Crochet by Lesley Stanfield. 

You can find the pattern for Odele and Oyah the owls here

Have a great weekend 😊

A Nice Surprise.

Even though I knit and crochet none stop my stash never seems to go down, although I have been making preemie items lately and they don't take much yarn at all

I needed to see it diminishing so that's why making those birds nests was so satisfying it served a double purpose, help the birds AND bust a significant amount of stash, so that done I got thinking what next? What can I do with these little balls of yarn and there, out of the cobwebby recesses of my brain something stirred,... my Scrappy Blanket! I had been adding to it now and then but it was ages since I had worked on it in fact I had quite forgotten about it, It took me a while to remember where I had put it and drag it out of it's hiding place.

When I pulled it out of the bag I was reminded just how pretty it was....

how can you not feel cheered when you see all of those lovely colours playing so nicely together.  I couldn't wait to get back into it and finish it off.  Then I had a thought maybe it would be a good idea to actually measure it first just to see how much more work it needed.

I laid it carefully on the bed and measured it and discovered to my surprise that it was almost the right size already, all it needed was a border to make it a 4' x 6' single sized blanket.

To be honest I didn't know whether to be sad or glad because I had fired myself up to work on it and it was all done already.

I know that regular readers of my blog will remember me starting this blanket but if anyone hasn't seen it before or if anyone wants a reminder of how it's made read my Totally Scrappy Blanket post to see how it's done and best of all there's no ends to weave in yay! 

This blanket has been pulled this way and that and so far none of the knots or joins have come undone so I will be using this method again.

I added a border of 
one round dc (sc US), 
one round htr (hdtr US), 
one round dc (sc US), 
one round 3 ch, miss 2 dc (sc US), ss into next dc (sc US) and there you have it.

One scrappy blanket all done and dusted after two short years weighing in at 900 grams.

This Blanket will be donated to Operation Orphan.😊