Square necessities

My wool stash was making feel guilty. Here was all this perfectly good pure wool that'd I'd probably never use. Then I remembered Wrap with Love, the not-for-profit organisation that takes knitted squares or whole wraps from volunteers and then sends completed blankets to people who need them.

So I'm knitting squares in between crocheting my own blanket. The project will take a while as I intend on making an entire wrap according to the pattern, but at least I'm on the right track.

Thinking of squares reminded of all the fabric squares I'd cut for some patchwork cushions I made a little while ago. Being a novice patchworker, I cut way too many patches and had spare squares spilling out of drawers. So these will go towards another cover for our outdoor bench.

I now haven't got a square to spare.

Here's the wrap-with-love pattern if anyone feels like putting their wool stash towards something genuinely useful.

Stitched up

Never again should I have trouble trying a new stitch for a crochet rug, thanks to the book I bought today. See the blue, white and yellow cushion in the pic in the background? I've been wanting to make that cushion for a while but it was just a prop as the pattern in that book was for the ripple blanket (which I did make and was easy to follow).

Thanks to my new book, though, I now know how to do it.

And lots of other repetitions too.

250 in fact - and all in lovely UK/Australian terminology. And all in both words and diagrams. I almost punched the air in the bookshop but pulled myself together just in time. The colour combinations are fairly attrocious but I'll forgive this otherwise seemingly perfect book. Basic Crochet Stitches, $30, from Kinokuniya. Can be found much cheaper online, if you're that way inclined, but I personally had to have it on the spot.

I should never have trouble crocheting a rug again. But, as James Bond once said, never say never. Or was it Justin Bieber? That doesn't bode well...

Chain reaction

No-one but me has been allowed to sit at the dining room table since yesterday afternoon. I camped here determined to crack a new-to-me chevron pattern as I really didn't want to make another ripple blanket.

So I sat. I translated Michelle's pattern into a diagram. I tested it out. I finally got it.

I now have two completed rows on the blanket, which means easy-peasy crochet-with-your-eyes-closed plain sailing from here on in.

For anyone attempting something like this for the first time, take heart that it's the first row where you crochet into the foundation chain that's the nightmare. When working on something that's more than 200 stitches (I'm not keen on little knee rugs - but that may change when I'm old enough to require a knee rug - so I tend to make them all wider) it's almost impossible not to go wrong somewhere, particularly as you have to manipulate the hook into each chain a certain way, making the links distortingly confusing, to ensure a smooth edge.

So I learnt to fudge it - as everything becomes clear on the second row and I made up for any mistakes there - not easy for a retentive personality like me. I feel cleansed.

No more posts on this project till it's finished (or, at the very least, more interesting to look at). Promise.

ps. Here's a great pic that demonstrates exactly where to put the hook when working into a foundation chain.

Crochet rage

When The Child saw these tweely named egg cosies, she stared. She was silent. She asked why eggs would need hats. She had a good point, I thought. This was the little project I mentioned last week. I didn't make them because I wanted any egg hats, just had the urge to crochet and wanted to try something new, and small.

Upside is I used 0.001 per cent of my wool stash - and we have egg hats - which could also be a downside...

What I cropped out of the top photo is the actual, proper crochet project that I posted about last Friday. Couldn't work out the chevron I wanted to make, as it wasn't a complete pattern, or the one I linked to as I don't understand how you can have a floating number of chains to begin with and I don't know how to get rid of any leftovers as suggested.

So I resorted to the ripple-blanket pattern that I've worked successfully from before. Thought I was clever enough to make it bigger than the pattern's 216+3 first chain row by adding the suggested multiples of 12+3 stitches. But either my maths was out or I mis-stitched somewhere as after two attempts, taking several hours each, I'm no further ahead. 216+12+3=231 doesn't it?

I need to go away and check my maths AGAIN - and translate the whole thing to a diagram so I can see what I'm doing wrong.

If the next attempt doesn't work, I'll either cry or begin the first of 25,000 egg hats.

Both patterns from the excellent book Vintage Crochet by Susan Cropper.

Blanket statement

I was at Morris and Sons yesterday sourcing some product for a freelance job. I promised myself that's all I would do and would not buy a single thing for myself. So I bought seven things instead (eight if you could a new crochet needle, which I don't). I love this merino wool. I used it to make a blanket for The Child, who loves to wrap it around her as it's so soft against the skin. Not cheap, but totally worth it.

Reason being I felt the urge for a big crochet project again. The sort of simple, medatative project that I can get lost in and not think too much about. I was thinking blanket.

First started getting twitchy fingers last weekend so ended up looking for projects that would eat into my wool stash. Found a quick one, which I'll reveal at a later date that both The Child and Husband thought hilarious, but it just didn't hit the spot. I wanted something I would love, not just get on with.

What I found was this 1939 painting, Train Landscape, by Eric Ravilious as published in Jane Brocket's book The Gentle Art of Domesticity. The colours were perfect, and I used it as inspiration for the palette of my now-in-progress chevron eyelet striped blanket.

Should be finished just in time for next summer.

Have a lovely weekend. x

ps. have started a pattern but if I don't like the look after a few rows, I may change to this one.

Wrapped up

Riding down the back lane on my bike I spied a pile of stuff a neighbour had put out for a council pickup. Of course, I slammed on the brakes and had a good look. Nothing worth getting off the bike for, apart from some pristine wire coathangers. Now I love wire coathangers - but only when wrapped in fabric - as they are perfect for sleeveless dresses and tops.

They take up no room in the wardrobe and clothes cling to them.

Pulled out my first ever ebay buy - the Sanderson fabric on the bottom - that I paid a silly price for, purely because I wasn't going to be outbid. The fabric duly arrived and was put in a cupboard. It's lovely, but too prettily flowery for my soft furnishings taste.

Not too pretty for wire coathangers, though. So I started cutting and covered one.

Only 9 more to go...

Instructions how to make these here.

Cushioning the blow

The Husband wrote a column for today's post. He worked away at it last night, diligently tapping away for a couple of hours. "Finished," he declared and handed me the laptop. "Um, you've actually written about this before," I had to tell him. "Some paragraphs are almost word for word." "Rubbish," he blustered. I showed him the published column in question. It all came flooding back to him...

The upside of this tale is that when he next launches into a story he's told before, I now have evidence that he has form in this area.

I wasn't quite ready to show the teatowel cushions I've been making, but that's life. The first one (top) I made last week after finding the rough linen teatowel at The Bay Tree. It was just the right size for an Ikea feathered cushion I have. The backing is some linen I picked up at Calico & Ivy (gorgeous texture, $70m, which is actually great value considering its 2.75m wide), which I made a simple pillowcase-style opening with.

The cushion I'll whip us this weekend will use up a white linen teatowel I bought at Toast when in London just over a year ago. I found it too thick for everyday use so only used it a few times. The backing I'll make from another linen teatowel I bought at Milton the Christmas holiday before last. The frill will make a natural opening in the middle of a square cushion, and I'll declare the prettiest side the front.

At least I'll have two new options to hit The Husband over the head with.

ps. for anyone unfamiliar with Toast, its a British label that does lovely online catalogues.

Have a lovely weekend. x

If you're reading this...
Kylie, I'm not actually old enough to know the cartoon Heckle and Jeckle intimately, I'll have you know! It was popular around the late 40s! But I have a reasonably good memory (unlike my husband) and remembered seeing it somewhere.

Ginger cheer

It was the annual fundraising gingerbread-house making event, where kids put together the houses and then decorate them to their little hearts' content. This year, one wise parent suggested we have the barbecue first to avoid all the lollies being eaten beforehand, which can leave the houses looking a little bare and the children a little unbearable. Clearly, The Child didn't have a problem this year.

One of her friends, a budding graphic designer, methodically separated his licorice allsorts to create a tiled roof. Another, who had some dodgy advice from his architect mother, had a wall breach. No matter. Every single one looked fantastic when wrapped in cellophane and a big red bow.

The weather was kind, the food was good and we walked home content we'd had a lovely evening and made a collective contribution to a charity.

Sometimes, all feels right with the world.

Gingerbread kits from here.

I heart Christmas

I wanted some slightly padded hearts to tie onto Christmas presents this year, but didn't want to involve the sewing machine as wanted to curl up on the couch at night under a blanket, thanks to the coldest start to summer in 50 years.

So, during the day, I traced a large heart-shaped biscuit cutter onto two pieces of fabric, which I then cut out with pinking shears.

In the evening, I sewed around the edges with embroidery thread, leaving a gap at the top, into which I stuffed a few feathers from an old cushion insert. Slipped in a piece of ribbon, finished the stitching and then put buttons on either side so that the hearts are reversible.

The cards I made during the day, with bits and pieces I pulled out of the craft cupboard. Apart from the doiles. I picked up a pack of 250, made from biodegradable sugar cane pulp, for about $4 the other day at The Essential Ingredient. I see many an experimental doily project coming up.

The Child was inspired and now wants to make cards for her friends. I didn't expect her request to make variations of my doily card as her grandmother, my mother, is quite the doily abusing decorator and thought The Child had been scarred for life. When I sewed doilies onto a vintage blanket to hide a few holes, she thought I'd gone mad.

But she's come round. I have a convert.

Hallelujah.

A pinch and a punch

This is the advent calendar I made a few years back, using matchboxes and vintage wrapping paper, but the calendar we actually use is this one:

Reason being I like to have a mix of surprises for The Child to discover throughout the month and it was too hard to find little interesting inexpensive bits and pieces that would fit into matchboxes. Even chocolates were tricky. Pretty sure advent calendars weren't meant to be stressful.

Happy first day of summer.

Blooming marvellous

The Friend Who Knows About Bees also knows about growing stuff. So when he asked me if I'd planted tomatoes yet and said, "oh", when I told him I hadn't I knew that I'd left it too late. Sure enough, a quick check revealed that tomatoes take between 3-5 months to grow from seed. Since summer officially starts tomorrow, I decided to take some shorts cuts and bought some biggish seedlings from the nursery.

Faced with an abundance of varieties, each one claiming super power such as "Australia's favourite", "Easiest to Grow", "Heirloom Variety" "Masses of Fruit & Sweet Flavour", I decided to have a crack at most of them.

At the very least, I'll see which ones suit the urban mini-farm best (if at all). Last year, I tried growing some in pots and they were the flouriest things I'd ever tasted. Hoping for better luck this year.

Something that's been growing very successfully are the crochet flowers from the pattern I posted a few weeks back. Megan, who must have one of the most stylish caravans travelling around Australia at the moment, sent me this pic of her successful woolly garden.

My tomatoes probably won't get quite as much sun but hopefully they too will bloom as easily as Megan's.

It's a wrap

Now that my birthday has been had, I can start thinking about Christmas. And there's nothing that makes me think Christmas more than a visit to one of my favourite shops, The Bay Tree in Woollahra.

While essentially a kitchenware shop, The Bay Tree really is much more. It always has a beautiful selection of decorations and stationery and today I came home with the music-sheet wrapping paper, $4.95, along with the tin heart, $5.95, the post-it notes, $10.95, plus a teatowel, not shown, as I am unable to walk out of The Bay Tree without one. I have post-its stuck to many books, magazines, recipes, etc, and I don't want bits of fluoro ugliness sticking out of beautiful books. Particularly yucky on magazine tearsheets and other bits of loveliness on my desk. I may not have solved world hunger here, but the general irkiness of post-it notes is a small thing that's been bothering me for some time.

I've also starting playing with tags I bought there another time. I painted this one with white stripes and then added some glitter glue. Will look good I think on brown-paper packages finished with a strip of music paper and ribbon.

Now that I've got the wrapping under control, it's time to think about what's going to be wrapped. Much harder...

Wax works

Some friends and I got together the other evening to make soy candles in between eating dinner and glasses of wine. All supplies were ordered from here, apart from containers as we brought along our own.

I plucked two tealight jars I'd made that have been hanging on my deck for ages, along with an old Country Road ceramic pot and bits of glass. Others had teacups, great finds from the $2 shop, tins and other pieces of glass.

Now that we know how to do it smoothly, we're going to do it again. Much cheaper than buying candles, particularly if sharing the cost among a group. My lot here set me back $16, which includes wax, fragrance, wicks and delivery of supplies.

Sparkling good value.

How to recover a lampshade (tutorial)

I've just recovered an old frame with fabric for The Child's room. As far as classic proportions go, this one's too small for the stand, but, in this case, it was the look we were after.

The other one I made a while ago but have included to give you an indication of different shapes and trims.

Need to start with a frame. This is an old lampshade I bought for about 20c at a fete and stripped the old fabric and lining off.

Patchwork

I've long had plans to do a bit of quilting. Still do. At least I've made a start by making some patchwork cushions for the deck.

I've had the fabric put away for ages. So long in fact that I've gone off it for the bedroom and don't want a quilt made out of it, but I'm happy for four new cushion covers to brighten up the deck now that we're eating all our meals outside again.

As there were no hiccups along the way, these cushions have given me the confidence to actually try quilting rather than just buy the stuff you need and then putting it in a cupboard.

Decided to tone the cushions down a bit by backing with ticking.

Works for me.

Have a lovely weekend. x

Material world

Isn't this a great idea? If we didn't have plans to do stuff in the great outdoors this weekend, I'd definitely be taking a look. Snapped in the window of the reasonably new shop Follow in Cleveland St, Surry Hill (old Bird Textiles site), which is run by the pair behind the Finders Keepers markets so worth a look if you're in the area.

If I was a power blogger, I'd organise something similar online but since I'm not, I'll have to file the idea in the never-will-happen pile.

Speaking of fabrics, I know it's very naughty of Spotlight to be 'taking inspiration from' or, speaking plainly, ripping off Liberty prints, even to the point of the names - ie top is called Japan Tana Lawn Tonga, bottom is Japan Tana Lawn Navy - but at $14.95 a metre I found myself at the counter with rolls in hand.

The bottom fabric will become a second Japanese sack (which I'm now in love with, strangely) and the other a lampshade for The Child's room. I'll be covering a frame with it (what's called a soft lampshade in the biz) and will do a tutorial.

Lampshade is in the will-do-but-not-sure-when pile. Hopefully next week.

Crochet flower pattern

Here's how to make the flowers in yesterday's post.

Don't let my wonky drawing put you off - this flower is really easy to crochet. After the initial ring, there's only two rounds.

I've put the pattern into a diagram as I find them easier to follow, but here are the backup words (as drawing isn't one of my skills).

I'm using the UK/Australian terminology because, well, I'm Australian and that's what I know. The beauty of diagrams (despite mine being far from beautiful) is that symbols are universal so the stitches are the same to US readers, but they'll just call them by another name.

Start with a 6-chain ring, using slip-stitch to join.

Round 1
Chain 3 and then do a treble into the ring. (This is your first 'spoke').

Chain 5.

I've then joined two trebles together, which I think is called a 2-treble cluster*. Whatever it's called, doing it is easy. Here's instructions for the stitch in case I've got the name of it wrong.

Commence a treble stitch as normal, ie:

yarn over hook,
hook into ring drawing through stitch (3 stitches on hook);
yarn over hook, drawing through first two stitches on hook (2 stitches on hook)
- but don't complete the treble. Instead:

With the 2 stitches still on hook:
yarn over hook,
hook into ring, drawing through stitch (4 stitches on hook);
yarn over hook, drawing through first two stiches on hook (3 stitches on hook);
yarn over hook, pull through remaining 3 stitches.

Second spoke done.

Repeat the chain 5 and 2-treble cluster/puff stitch pattern until you have 6 spokes of the flower.
Join with a slip stitch.

Round 2
Chain 1 for some height.
Then working into the next space (bordered by the 5-chain loop)
double crochet;
half treble;
5 trebles;
half treble;
double crochet.

Do the same into the next space (ignoring the initial chain), and work your way around.

I've done two sets of petals here. four to go...

Join with a slip stitch.

Which is why I like diagrams. Too many words make the whole thing look complicated, when it's actually simple.

* The only reference I could find for this stitch was in a US book, which called it a puff stitch. None of my local or UK books listed it, but when there were three trebles involved, referred to it as a 3-treble cluster. Hence I'm guessing it's called a 2-treble cluster.

Flowers in the park

In the middle of a mini declutter on the weekend, I dropped what I was doing as had the unignorable urge to sort out the wool basket. Once the substantial balls had been tidied and put away, I was left with quite a pile of scraps. Scraps too pretty to throw out.

As I sat in the afternoon spring sun yesterday, I thought I could use them in place of garden twine to tie back plants and small branches for the fire come winter, so I unravelled them and popped them into an egg carton to keep them in order. A palette of green and blues (left over from my first ever granny-square rug) wouldn't look too mad in the garden, I thought. Or maybe it would. I didn't want to declutter the house and upclutter the garden.

Or I could crochet the scraps into flowers and use to decorate presents.

Very satisfying. Makes my fingers twitch wanting to make more.

Am yet to ask The Child if I'm allowed to take woolly egg carton to the annual Halloween picnic we have with friends in a local park and make more flowers this evening.

Suspect the little ghoul may say no as that would be just a bit too creepy...

Checked out

Red checks seemed to be jumping out at me in old magazines and books I'd been flicking through. Even ripped out an image of some cushions to put in one of my files. Then forgot all about it.

On a foray to Spotlight last week for some thread, I thought I'd check out the fabric. Not something I do all that often as I find Spotlight's combination of fluro lighting and fabric selection pretty uninspiring, bordering on depressing.

But then I spotted the big red cotton check. With no actual project in mind, I momentarily dithered before buying two metres I thought I'd cover an outdoor bench mattress with. When it came home, though, I decided I could also use a tablecloth and some cushions. Back to Spotlight for four more metres. Luckily, Spotlight's prices are much more appealing than its ambience.

Spent Saturday afternoon making the mattress cover and a tablecloth (which I'll actually use indoors) and will get around to making some cushions for the deck. Love sewing with large checks as cutting straight lines are easy and the fall of the tablecloth was measured by how many checks should hang over the edges. Didn't touch a tape measure all afternoon.

Will just need to be careful I don't use it all at the same time in one room. Don't want to be mistaken for a French bistro or Italian pizzeria.

NB. Apologies if anyone has had trouble trying to leave a comment. Seems to be some problem with blogger (now there's a surprise) at the moment.

What a galah

Time to reveal another treasure that arrived in Kylie's package: the vintage galah pillowcase.

I gave it the crochet-trim treatment last night (the dots I marked for placement - and ignored - haven't worn off yet - so fresh is the handiwork) and will be revealed to The Child when she gets home this afternoon. She loved the one I prepared earlier (link to instructions are on this post if you want to do the same) so I know this one will be claimed for her bed.

The Child insisted the-then-untrimmed pillowcase come to South West Rocks with us recently but knowing it was vintage asked, "You have washed this, haven't you, Mum?" "Yes, of course," I lied, and shoved it under her nose to inhale the washing-powder scent.

It was obvious Kylie had washed it recently, so figured it was a technical lie only.