Splash of colour.

A few days ago I finished a project that was really enjoyable. I decided to make a cat blanket, using scraps of yarn left over from other projects. The result was amazing. A rainbow of colours. Are cats colourblind, I wonder?  If that is the case, it may be a blessing, otherwise they might be dazzled.

I made approximately 100 little 2.5 x 2.5 granny squares, with a well known pattern (I see it all over Ravelry and other crochet sites), and double crocheted them together. The yarn I used was one of my favourites, Patons Sorbet. I think I have mentioned it before. It’s a cotton blend, aran weight (worsted weight for those who are in the States and Canada), and its good for things like bags or something that needs to be fairly thickish  or rugged, like a bathmat. So should be good for a pet blanket 🙂

I enjoyed making this so much, that I am now making something similar, though not for a cat. It’s so easy to pick up, do a few squares and put down again and makes my 50,000 stitch target for NaKnitMo, a breeze, (at least I think it will). I’m so proud of the girls who are doing this challenge, (actually, I think there is a male in there someone as well), but the totals some are racking up every day are incredible. For the rest of us, it’s just a chance to pick up unfinished projects and get them finished, make presents ready for christmas, and generally have a lot of fun. It’s surprising how quickly the stitch totals increase and several people have upped their targets already. I don’t think I will be doing that yet. I am managing to keep up with this blog for the NaBloPoMo, but haven’t done much for NaNoWriMo. I have been planning my plot, but not writing the book! Ah well, tomorrows another day.

High on catnip!

My lucky cats! They think it’s christmas already. I have made some catnip toys, with a view to making some more for christmas presents and swaps. of course the protypes have to be trialed, and thats where my cats score. I made two mice toys first, just plain brown in colour, nothing fancy. One of my cats played with one of them all afternoon, despite being nine years old. The toy is holding up well, given the viscious kicking, clawing and biting it’s been subjected to. The yarn was Patons Sorbet, which is aran weight, although many class it as chunky.

These two mice are the same but I varied the strings, doing a straight cgain for one, and a bouncy coli for the other. I don’t think one works any better than the other, but the bouncy one is quite good if the mouse is hung somewhere and the cat bats at it. Probably more interesting for the cat.

Having achieved a modicum of success with mice, I then decided to have a go at fish. These were not so successful, in that I should have stuck to the stronger cotton. I swapped over to a double knitting cotton, but its not really as strong or firm, so future toys will all be made in the aran cotton.However, you can mess around to your hearts content with colour and design, so it will be fun to do some more at a later date. The fish were made yesterday so qualify for the count in NanKnitMo, a meagre 1500 stitches, but they all count!

Countdown Fame

I haven’t posted for so long, I know, but I thought I’d tell you about my claim to fame. Jonathan, the creator of Infinite Countdown,has used my picture of a snowy landscape, ‘A Little Snow’ as a backdrop to his Winter Countdown. Thank you Jonathan 🙂 I love the idea of the countdown website. Jonathan is still working on it, but I think it will be great when finished. I’ve added the url to my links so that I can refer to it again…especially with Christmas around the corner. It’s always useful to know how much longer I have to get those presents made, (or bought, when I run out of time, as I nearly always do). My current countdown, which is a little more pressing is the NanoWriMo challenge, which begins on November 1st and lasts for the entire month. You need a month if you are going to write 50,000 words of novel. Perhaps Jonathan could add that one to the list of countdowns, as so many folk take part lol. Anyway, thank you for the honour Jonathan…it’s much appreciated.

Now look what I’ve got myself into!!

I never learn. I cannot resist a challenge. As if one wasn’t enough for November, I am now taking on another! A group has been set up in Ravelry which challenges us to work (knit or crochet) 30,000 stitches during the month of November. Luckily I knit quickly, so if the worst comes to the worst I will knit squares for a blanket or something, but I worked out that I need to knit or crochet for about an hour a day to reach the target. Or, 1000 stitches , of course.

The good thing about it is that I might be able to get a lot of Xmas pressies made, bags and socks, teddy bear clothes etc, and whilst I love writing it will be good to relax with some yarn. The other plus is that it is not crucial to reach and fulfil the challenge. We are doing it for fun, testing ourselves, but realising that its more fun to enjoy the journey, than to reach the end. Well, that’s how I view it anyway. I’m looking forward to it. I think it will be fun, and it will be good to see what everyone is doing and give encouragement to each other.

And the name of the challenge…what else could it be, but…  NaknitNo, (National Knitting Month) !!

 

Little blue beaded bag

I decided to use some beads to decorate my next creation. It’s a little blue crochet bag, draw-string, with ribbon and beads. I used complimentary coloured seed beads around the top to trim it and added some bigger filigree beads to the ribbon, to make it look slightly more eligant. It was made with crochet cotton…not sure what brand, as I lost the label, but it was a lovely 2ply worsted cotton to work with. I am thinking of making some more of these in christmas colours to stuff full of goodies, for gifts.

A Race Against time…

I am sadly neglecting all my other creative projects at the moment in a race against time, to finish my novel for NaNoWriMo. I need to write minimum of five thousand words a day, which I can do, providing I don’t get another migraine or something! My main problem is trying to stay awake! I have narcolepsy, and yesterday the sleepiness was overwhelming. I had to stop so many times, often just between paragraphs, get up and do something physical and then try again. I actually had four hour long naps throughout the day, and went to bed at 11.30pm still feeling shattered. However, it is encouraging too, because if I can do that much in a day, wordcount wise, then I should be ok for the remaining time.

Then, once Friday midnight comes, (and hopefully 50,000 words) regardless of whether the novel is finished, I will have to start thinking about christmas cards or else I won’t have them made in time. Another race against time?

Nano update.

Well, three quarters of the way through the month I have finally felt I could write again. Having been plagued by colds migraines and fibro pain I thought I’d had it as far as NanoWriMo was concerned. However, I’m on a roll, and have written over 8000 in the last two days. My plot is unfolding nicely and I’m adding all sorts of twists and turns as I go along which is making it much more interesting than I first thought. So, here’s to a weekend of writing!

To follow my progress, click here

Meanwhile, I am still experimenting with little boxes for the christmas tree. I have enlarged them slightly so that i can get a reasonable size gift in, like a handbag or mobile charm, or sweets etc. I will be trawling the shops later this week to see what little treasures I can find. I can’t believe that Christmas is almost here. there is so much do . I have only done about a dozen Christmas cards too. Nevermind. This week I need to concentrate on Nano, and then onwards I can think about Christmas.

Good luck to everyone else who is scribbling away for Nano.

Susie.

©DF2007

“The colour of my soul is iron-grey and sad bats wheel about the steeple of my dreams.”
 Claude Debussy  (French composer, 1862-1918)
 

Christmas Gift Projects.

Following on from the last topic…well christmas mainly, I have just started my first Flickr group, Christmas Gift projects – arts and crafts. This is the first group I have administered so it’s a bit of a learning curve. It will be good to see lots of ideas for homemade and handcrafted gifts . Some folk are very, very talented and it is a joy to see their work. Many of the artists are members of Etsy, but I am not ready for that. In fact, my work is so untidy, it will be a long time before I could sell anything on there, although I have sold earrrings on a famous online auction site(;

Anyway, it remains to be seen whether the group is a success. It will probably…not surprisingly, die after christmas, but can always be resurrected next year.

In the beginning…

there were note books and exercise books which became dotted with tiny marks and scrawls. Coloured lines, squiggles and bands marched across pages, and were presumably symptomatic of how I, as a baby / toddler was feeling. I don’t remember much about my art at that age, other than one piece of work which must have been done when I was four or five years old. It was Christmas, and we were staying, as we always did, with my grandmother, in a tiny hamlet, about thirty miles from home. My parents always arrived a few days after my brothers and myself, so I presume that on this occassion, we were being looked after because my Gran had gone to pick up my parents. Our babysitter was a young girl called Violet. I have no idea how old she was, but she was probably in her teens. Violet thought it would be a good idea if we did some mobiles that we could hang on the big christmas tree which stood in the hallway of Gran’s house. I don’t think I got the message about it being christmassy though, and set to work with crayons and paper, scissors and string and created …a duck! Perhaps we had talked about ducks or something. Anyway, I can see the finished product to this day, and it is the first artwork I can remember creating by myself. It looked something like this…

 

I was very proud of my duck, but I have no recollection as to whether it was hung on the tree, or anywhere else, or even if I took it home after Christmas. As a side note, I often wondered what happened to Violet. As a shy child, I thought she was wonderful. I hope she went on to have a good life.