My first post of 2012 – Happy New(ish) Year to you!!

And the new pursuit??  After two years of putting it off, I finally got round to teaching myself to crochet last November.  And it’s definitely going to be my 2012 obsession.  After a couple of false starts, I got the knack, and was up ‘n’ running.  I am now officially addicted!

I can totally blame Lovely Laura for this, she taught herself to crochet at the beginning of last year, and her blog has been full of beautiful crocheted goodness ever since – and I’ve been full of ‘I want some of that’!  I didn’t think for a moment that I would get into it as much as Laura, but I seem to be headed that way.

After making lots of practice pieces, I decided to have a go at a scarf, for my mum for Christmas – I also decided to keep it a secret from her, which is why I didn’t blog about it til after Christmas.  She was delighted, both with the scarf and with the fact that I’d taken up crochet!  I didn’t get a picture of the finished item, but here it is as a work in progress:

I used a 100% cotton DK yarn (Wendy Supreme), it made a gorgeous weight scarf.  Rather tempted to make another for me.

I started off making granny squares, great for a beginner I think (and more about them in another post), but soon got distracted by the scarf.  And again by a lovely star pattern, I made a bunch of these,

with the intention of stringing them together to make a Christmas garland.  They’re still sitting in a pile,

waiting to be starched, I wonder if that will actually happen before Christmas 2012???

Last but not least, I found some completely fab Star Wars crochet patterns via Pinterest (love me some Pinterest *happy sigh*), and couldn’t resist buying a couple to try.  I’ve made one so far.  Meet the cutest Yoda ever!

Isn’t he adorable?  The boys love him too, very happy to have found something crochet-related that appeals to them!  The patterns are by Lucy Ravenscar and are for sale on Etsy here.  I also bought a Darth Vader pattern, I might just do that this weekend.

I have more crochet show ‘n’ tell, so come back soon.  Right, time for a cuppa and some hooking…….

The Cocoa Daisy Fall Crop took place a couple of weekends ago (I know, I know, I’m a bit behind!), and it was well up to its usual standard of hilarity and nonsense, with just a little scrapping thrown in for good measure .  I only managed 3 out of the 20 amazing challenges set for us over the weekend, but I was very happy with those 3, here they are:

A sketch challenge:

A challenge to machine-sew on a page (you can barely see my sewing LOL, but it’s there on the yellow cardstock):

And a challenge to use labels in some way:

Big thanks to the lovely Daisy Divas who worked hard behind the scenes to make it all happen .

I’m only just starting to feel better after a bit of a tummy bug, which lasted all last week, eugh!  Not too bad, but it kept me off work a couple of days, I just want it to disappear now.  I need to be well as everything is ramping up for Christmas, the playgroup nativity in particular – it’s going to be cute!  I haven’t got very far with present shopping either, although I’ve made a reasonable start and it’s not even December – believe me, that is good going for me!

So, onwards and upwards.  There’s a large ironing pile with my name on it, I feel an ironing-while-watching-a-film session coming on……….

TFL! xx

Yay, a rare girly-pink page!  Thank heavens for my niece, otherwise the more feminine elements of my stash would go relatively unused .  I know in principle you should be able to scrap the boys with any colours, but I just can’t make it happen – boys need boy-colours, in my head!

I used last week’s Creative Scrappers sketch:

And my page:

I wanted to record how I don’t get to spend a lot of time with my adorable niece, we meet up 2-3 times a year, but she totally gets the family connection, and  seems so comfortable with me regardless.  She followed me everywhere when we went to stay in August, it was so cute.  This is us at the zoo, I love her so much!

This was one of those pages where I really wasn’t sure about it most of the way through, I didn’t like how it was coming together.  Then suddenly, as I added the finishing touches, I decided I quite liked it after all!  I used (of course) a Cocoa Daisy kit, August’s I think.

In other news……erm, there isn’t any .  We’ve had a wonderfully lazy relaxing half-term holiday, pretty much watching TV and eating cakes.  Bliss.  Drinks with the village girls tonight, and all we need to do this weekend is find Sam a Halloween outfit for Monday.  That I can cope with .

xx

Another sketch challenge done, this time from Sketchy Thursdays, I love the sketch this week:

And my version:

My boys ready to start the new school year this September .  There is never any fuss about going back after any holiday, they are always very happy to go.

I was quite pleased with the title letters on this page, they are ‘naked’ Thickers, bare chipboard, and I painted them with Dirty Martini Glimmer Glam, they’ve come up lovely and sparkly, shame you can’t see it on the pic!

Thanks for looking

xx

I’ve scrapped a page with what I think might be my all-time favourite Cocoa Daisy kit.  I swooned pretty much as soon as I opened the October box, before I’d even seen the full contents!  I’m in love with the autumnal colour scheme, and every paper is what I would class as very ‘usable’ (I admit I find some papers a tad challenging…..).

Having called it an autumnal kit, I chose a summer pic to scrap!  But the colours just fit:

I used last week’s Pencil Lines sketch, haven’t done one of these in ages.  The sketch (and spotlight feature) is from my lovely Cocoa Daisy friend Anna, great sketch thank you!

The honeycomb stamp is just fab, I can see it’s going to be very versatile.  I used gesso to stamp with here, it came out really well, I dry-brushed some too.

Not a lot of journaling needed on this one, the title and photo say it all.  Paul took an amazing series of these photos while we were on our summer holiday, every single one is gorgeous, it was hard to pick just  one out.

Scrapping this today cheered me up a bit, after having to pull out of a scrappy day with friends yesterday .  A terrible night’s sleep and bad sinus pain kept me from seeing Lis, Sue and Steph, I was gutted but it was the right thing to do.  Looking forward to seeing the results of their creativity .

xx