Stash Busting

Since I started reading about crochet on-line I've found a whole new vocabulary!

Stash is all the yarn I have.  And I have LOTS!

Lots of half balls, not quite enough to make anything and yet a bit too much to be added to my messy afghan project, (which is coming along slowly).

I've made myself a pact (mainly becasue I'm running out of storage room) that I won't buy any new yarn until I've used up some of the stuff I've got.  Hence there was the fancy yarns made into coffee plunger cosy's, and also in to scarves like this one:

And.... I've started to make a full sized granny square blanket! 

You'd have thought with my love of the granny square that I'd have made one ages ago, it's just that they are so BIG they need so much time, and yet if I ever want to buy yarn again I'm going to have to finish the squares.  I'm going for 6 x 7 to start with.   That's 42 squares, I've done 20 so far, almost half way there, and then it's the border and joining bit (phew!)

Wrapping a Plunger

I've been wrapping the coffee plunger

Before Christmas I bought some posh yarn that was lengths of different yarns all put together.  It was on sale and even then was pretty expensive, so on Monday I realised that I had lots of posh yarn in my stash,so I could make lengths, join then together and make my own fancy yarn... and voila!  I now have 6 big balls of posh yarns all for free! (Well not really free because I did buy them at some point...) 

The coffee pot wraps are like a tie - fat at one end and and skinny at the other, and wraps around the plunger and the skinny end tucks in kind of like a tie or scarf.   

I've given the pink one to the Australian Flood Relief shop on Etsy, who are raising money for the poor Australians caught up in all of the floods.

The Christmas Presents

Since everyone I was busy making presents for have now received them I can show off some of what I made :-)

About half of the slippers

 

Crocheted and felted bags

The feedback was good, hopefully they weren't just being polite :-)

Some lessons from my summer holidays...

I should have persevered with the Cotton for a market bag.

The prettier one I made with a regular yarn stretched all the way to the floor when I put my togs and beach towel into it! (I'll let you imagine what that one looked like)

I am not destined to make a cardigan or bolero

My first go at motifs together looks quite nice, and can either be a wrap or a table runner depending on how much more yarn there is :-)

It's easy to spend money at the races especially if you drink too much fizzy wine in the sun.

After spending a couple of days at the Stamford Plaza I now know I should be richer so that I can live like that more often

On my walk this morning I saw heaps of dragonflies - they are so pretty :-)