A week in the wind

Is it really August? Really and truly? After a week spent in Cornwall under grey skies and in freezing gales I'm not at all sure that it isn't actually March.

Ah well, the scenery certainly makes up for it
And the pretty fishing villages

It's just such a shame that it wasn't good weather for ice cream and lazing around.

Slow moving summer

The progress on the new ripple blanket has been slow to say the least. Some days I can only manage a stitch or two before I lose interest and revert to blobbing on the sofa. It is too warm to be using wool - it sticks to my hot hands and makes me itch. If it wasn't for the need to see the rainbow complete I would have no desire to crochet at all.


There is also a lack of urgency about this project compared my other monster ripple blanket. Maybe because I understand now that it is also about the making - I don't feel the frenzy to get it finished like I have in the past. It is an object that will be around for a long time. There is no need to get my knickers in a twist over it.

I have six more colours to go before I am back to the beginning. The yellows, oranges and reds that lead back into the bright coral pink I began with. As I thought I would be, I am so much happier with this arrangement - there is no escaping my obsessive compulsive colour ordering disorder!

An apology and an explanation

I know, I've been really lax, but in my defence we have had the in-laws here (hello!) and I've been busy working on the most enormous project that has taken me the entire year (although not every minute of every day - that would be insane!). Last September I mentioned to a teacher at the middle one's school that I thought it would be a lovely idea for there to be a feltmaking project that all the children could contribute to. After a bit of backwards and forwards chatting, we decided that each child (there are 270 of them!) would make a piece of felt and they would all be sewn together into a banner for the school hall. I offered my time, and away we went.

What started as a small idea became a monumental task, teaching children (aged 4 - 7) the basics of feltmaking, and encouraging them to rub a little harder, bash it a little harder, keep going, the meaner you are to the felt the better it is (they liked that one!). After three terms of this all the pieces needed to be trimmed and sewn into banners, which took about another two weeks.

Finally, this week, it went up on the wall in the school hall - just in time for the end of term, and it looks fantastic. The children are so proud of their work, and I am so proud of all of them. There were times when I felt that if I had to teach one more child to make felt I would scream, but (like childbirth) the bad memories are fading.


Although, when the reception teacher asked me to teach feltmaking to the new intake of children in september it all suddenly came flooding back!

Look what we've been eating

The theme for my Day2day this week was food. It was tempting to just take a picture of my supper every evening, but that would have been a cop-out. Instead I looked for things to photograph that wouldn't normally be noticed - those insignificant little moments of snacking or food preparation.

We even had some decent weather early in the week so I had a chance to photograph outdoors for the first time in goodness knows how long.

I'm sorry, but I just can't

I've tried, goodness knows I've tried. This isn't my first attempt. Those who know me from last year's Etsy retreat will have seen it all before. I just can't. mix. colours. Randomness makes me anxious; I can't relax without harmony - it is all just too distressing.


I got all the way through one set of colours (17 stripes!) with an increasing sense of the wrongness of it all, and then I had to rip it all out. There was nothing else I could do. The idea of spending the best part of a year (judging by my previous ripple marathon) making something that I just couldn't stand the sight of was too much for me. It had to go. The middle one helped with the frogging - she really loved seeing how the stitches came apart: "it's like magic Mummy!".
Then, I put the colours in a more harmonious order, and I have to agree - it is like magic!

Close up on the week

I've joined a new flickr group founded by the magnificent Abi. Called day2day, it's purpose is to find the beauty in the ordinary, and learn about your camera at the same time. This week I have been concentrating on using my new macro lens, and photographing from my collection of thread and yarn. I have really enjoyed playing with light, as well as experimenting with depth of field. Next week food, I think.

Summertime, and the cooking is easy

My favourite salad for my favourite time of year. So easy and quick to put together, even with the obligatory child helper.


Very little cooking and a little light opening of tins. Perfect.

Drum roll please...

I pulled a name out of a hat last night while in the Etsy UK friday night chat. Regular readers among you may recognise the hat from the last time I did this.


And the winner is.....


The wonderful Kezzaroo - goodies in the post to you.

Thanks for all the lovely comments everyone, I wish you could all have won.

And now I am one

I missed my blogiversary by a few days this week. It was on the 17th May, but I've been so busy with:

1. crafting
2. children
   
3. arsing around

that I forgot all about it. Oops.

As is traditional at these times, I will be holding a giveaway. Simply leave me a comment before the end of the day on Friday 23 May (midnight GMT) and I'll do the put-all-the-names-in-a-hat-and-pull-one-out thing. Just to make sure that this fulfills my need for external validation, tell me your favourite thing I have blogged about. The (possibly lucky, depending on your perspective) winner will get a little handmade something in the post.


And in case you don't believe me, here is proof of number 1 on the above list. A half-knitted clapotis. See - it's not all about the arsing around!

Where does the time go?

Number One was eight this week. I can't quite believe it - looking back it feels like 10 minutes since she was born. Apart from my grey hairs and wrinkles that is.

We took some friends to the cinema and then came home for a party tea (complete with cake she had decorated herself - where does she get that from I wonder!). The weather was perfect - just 4 days after the garden had been under 3 inches of snow they all ate ice cream outside.

Happy birthday my love.

And the beat goes on

The Crafting 365 challenge continues. I hit a bit of a sticky patch there for a while around the new year, but things are picking up now. I'm finally getting round to tackling the huge pile of WIPs I have knocking around. It feels good to be finishing things for a change.

The end of an era

Ten months almost to the day.

1.8 kg (4 lbs) of yarn, equating to about 3.7 km (2 miles) in length.

16 colours with five repeats.

38,400 stitches in 160 rows.

And I'm done.

Mmmmm, coffee

I have a new coffee machine. It is spectacular, beautiful, and perfectly formed. It also makes incredibly good coffee. There is one small downside (well, two actually). Firstly, I have the shakes from drinking so much of the stuff. And, yes I know that I could drink decaff, and I HAVE BEEN, but I'm telling you now, without reservation, it makes. no. difference. It all gives me the shakes. Decaff is a conspiracy.

Oh, and secondly, I have lost a big old chunk of my social life. I can't go out for coffee with the other mums from school. I just can't bring myself to pay overinflated coffee shop prices for a drink that is crap in comparison to what I could make at home. OK, so I could get a peppermint tea or something, but then really, what's the point? In the days B.N. (before nespresso) I could quite happily sit in a cafe for hours, wittering away with my friends, (or at least until Golden Boy had thrown himself to the floor in desparation). Now I try to persuade them to come to my house. I don't even care about the extra washing up.

And, to make matters worse, I'm not even remotely concerned that there is no photo in this post. I might start getting worried about myself soon.

The heady scent of (temporary) freedom

Today I had a chance to get into town by myself for a few hours. I took it and ran. Off to Marylebone High Street, with a wander around here, here, and here; and a lovely breakfast of scrambled eggs and smoked salmon here. I did mean to take a photo before I had eaten it, but somehow my appetite got the better of me.


And who could fail to have their spirits lifted when eating next to a rooftop garden complete with daffodil-munching cow?

Perfect.

The promise of snow

I don't think that I can take my childrens' squealing excitement for much longer. The snow has been moving south down the country for the last 24 hours, getting closer and closer. The "when will it snow?" question has been getting more and more insistent.

I'm not ready to disappoint them with the knowledge that snow rarely comes to London. They are too young to have really noticed this for themselves, and televisiual representations of England in winter are all about the snow. And robins of course, always the robins. I might as well tell them that the tooth fairy doesn't really exist; it would shake them to the core.



I guess leaden skies and cold winds don't make such pretty images, although they are much more attractive when rendered in felt (if I ever get it finished).

Where have I been?

I know, I know, it's been ages. I'm sorry (kind of). As a small excuse, we were on the other side of the world for a while, here:

(pretty good, huh!)

And before that I was getting ready for craft fairs:


while simultaneously trying not to have a nervous breakdown from looking after three small children in the cold, dark and rainy English winter.

I'll try to do better in future, honest.

And a little bit more...

After my last post, I thought I would show you the progress on the mother of all ripple blankets. I have been working on this since May (admittedly on a slightly sporadic basis) and I am now 23 stripes from finishing. Each one takes about one and a half hours, so I make that a good 34 hours or so of solid crochet time. Then there is the sewing in of ends. Thanks to some
sage advice I received a while ago (on the no-end-in-sight ripple along) to crochet over the ends as I go, I only have about 50 loose bits of yarn to darn in. I wish I had asked sooner!


It is a lovely thing to work on - so satisfyingly heavy to sit under on winter evenings, and easy to pick up in the few unscheduled moments. It's not really portable any more though, so I can't work on it while out and about. Maybe I should get into sock knitting or something - that has to be the ultimate in take-it-with-you crafting.

Twice the fun, twice the work

I have finally finished these blankets as a present for a friend who is having boy/girl twins. OK, so she gave birth last week. I'm a little late. What you gonna do about it?

I wanted to make a gift that reflected the non identical, and yet twin, nature of the babies, and these blankets seemed the perfect thing. They are both worked in rainbow shades - one bright and one pastel. Now, I'm not one to suggest that there is anything in this gender stereotyping lark, but I do think the pastel one is especially pretty.

I have definitely got the rippling bug - these are numbers four and five, with another big bag of yarn waiting for number six. Of course, it would be nice to one day finish the monster of all crochet blankets. Preferably before next summer.

Drum roll please....

And the winner of the delurk and win contest is...


wait for it...


(yes, I used an actual HAT!)
wait for it...

(that says 'yump' by the way!)
email me at cnarunsky@aol.com with your address and I'll get something in the post to you!

Thanks for all your birthday wishes everyone!

No regrets?

It's my birthday this month, and I am turning 35, which is apparently the new 40 (or so I am told by women who don't want other people to notice their 40th birthday). As tends to happen around this time of year I have been taking stock, having a ponder, and generally feeling wistful. What better way to kick me up the backside than a birthday contest. A de-lurk and win contest. Leave a comment about anything you like, and I will put your name in a hat (ok, probably a bowl actually) and one of my lovely offspring will pick a random person to receive a parcel of some sort. Could be anything, but I can guarantee that at least something will have been handmade by me. The deadline for comments is the big day itself - the 13th of November.


And because I can't post without a picture (it's just wrong) I have to include this one of Golden Boy. Mama loves you!