A Cosy Granny

I've been using up my stash unpicking WIPs that I've fallen out with and having a general crochet tidy up.

The crochet rug was the first result of this new weird more organized approach to my crocheting life.  And this is the second.
Feeling the love once more for the granny square, I have just popped this one into my Felt store and am busy working on another with a very retro black border.
Will 2015 be another year of the Granny?

My first non granny square blanket

I found this pattern in an Inside Crochet mag, and it looked so pretty I decided to give it a go.
Normally I am put off by lots and lots and lots of motifs joined together, it all seems too hard and fiddly. I am glad I kept at it, so happy with the result, and I am unashamedly totally proud of myself for finishing it.
My mum bought me a great basket which sits next to my chair in the lounge, and leaving all the yarn and the blanket bits in it made a big difference to my motivation, it was harder to put away than a wee canvas bag :-) I had three other other projects on the go to which also helped me not to get bored:-D

Motifs and Meditation

You may already know that to counter my tendency towards impatience whilst sitting in traffic (and man has it been bad the past couple of weeks!) I crochet.  And so over the past 3 weeks my 'driving' time has resulted in 42 motifs which I've put together to make an afghan/blanket, I quite like the result, I'm calling it Flower Garden

I have mentioned before that my sister is an Ayurvedic practitioner and teacher.  Yesterday she encouraged me to go to a workshop with her to see a lady called Mother Maya.  And so yesterday morning saw me at a kind of commune in the North Shore of Auckland, in a room full of floor cushions with a load of people dressed like they should be in India, (picture the Beetles in their hippy stage with their guru and you wouldn't be too far off)

To say that I haven't had much success with my brief flirtation with meditation before might be a slight understatement (I tend to shuffle, jiggle, giggle, fall asleep or go deep into a fantasy world). And yet yesterday morning I not only meditated for 40 minutes, I enjoyed it and found it really peace-invoking (not sure if that's a real word!) Did the day change my life? Time will tell.  It certainly gave me another technique for inner harmony whilst in the traffic though :-)   

Another one bites the dust

Man, I'm on a role!

Finished - the Amazing Technicoloured GrannyGhan.  

Felt Shop

I've just about ran out of WIP's (okay, slight exaggeration.... I've made a bit of a dent in them anyway :-))

 

And whilst relaxing in the park  yesterday I made these wrist warmers/long fingerless gloves from some gorgeous wool I found whilst sorting through the WIPs.  It's amazing what's hiding in there!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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WIPs Whipped

I started this mosaic table before Christmas, it's an old dining table which we chopped the legs down.  Only after we'd chopped a couple of the legs did we realise they were Rimu (oops!).  

The mosaic is called 'Not' mainly because when I put the tiles on as complete tiles the men in the house thought it looked like a public loo, so I smashed the tiles so it's 'not' a public loo, and also of course because it's 'not' a pattern :-)

A GrannyGhan - finally completed this granny afghan (which I've popped into the Felt shop).  It's only taken me 7 months!
 
Man it feels great to have some finishes.

Crochet for the home....

...... and it's not even kitsch (well, much anyway)!

I'm a bit of a hoarder and keep any bit of yarn that is more than 30cm long. I started this blanket a month or so ago (this was the 4th attempt) and it's made up of all of my remnants.  

My nephew says it's "gangsta" which made me worry about being kidnapped by gunpoint whilst I was napping on the couch.  Or maybe it's like Arthur Dents towel and instead of being full of nutrients it has different drugs in it (not sure I want to risk sucking on it though!)  It's a kind of log cabin pattern that I made up as I went. Pretty 'gangsta' eh? :-)

We are renting quite a new house, which is something very different to what we've lived in before.  It's very warm for one!  And it's a little lacking in character, especially the kitchen which has all those lovely clean sterile lines with quite a bit of stainless steel.  So I crocheted some nice bright cotton dishcloths (yep they're almost granny squares I couldn't help it....).

They're working out really well, some soy cotton and some cotton cotton.  Apparently they last for ages too :-)