Boos Mummy

 As usual time has flown by here in Yorkshire. One minute we're gearing up for Christmas and before I know it Easter half term has arrived and the kids are at home. Since January I've been busy with different crafting projects. One thing I wanted to make myself was a book cover for a notebook that I could use for all my craft projects and ideas.  My husband bought me the Charles Dickens kit from Bothy Threads for Christmas so I couldn't resist starting that on New Years. It didn't take me long to do at all in the long winter evenings.  I had so much fun stitching this even if I had to use the aida that came in the kit as none of my favourite fabrics were the right size (I couldn't be bothered to wait for some to arrive as I wanted to start it straight away!) I also took part in an online workshop with Ellie Hipkin who is an amazing textile mixed media artist. After spending a lot of time walking up and down our local fields I wanted to capture some of it on fabric. ...

 Take a Stitch Tuesday this month has some well known stitches in it. I've used some of them over the years as border stitches and over joins on crazy quilting. The weather in March has been very unusual. We started off the month with dreary skies and heavy winds before it suddenly changed to wonderful blue skies, the sun shining and the flowers starting to pop through the ground. Yesterday on the last day in March we even hit 21° it felt absolutely wonderful...of course today being the 1st April and a bank holiday weekend here in the UK we're back to grey skies and drizzle 🙄 So here is my slice of pie for March.... Week 9 - Couching Week 10 - Chevron Stitch Week 11 - French Knots Week 12 - Cretan Stitch

 The stitches for this months Take a Stitch Tuesday had a couple of my old favourites... Feather Stitch and Herringbone.  The herringbone I've used a lot over the years in things like leaves, it just fits so well into the shapes and contours. Feather stitch is great for crazy quilting, it goes over the 2 pieces of fabric amazingly and also looks wonderful as greenery in scenic pieces or as seaweed, sea grass in ocean projects. However the weather for February has definitely been either very wet or snow and ice. To put that into my TAST I wanted colours that represented the mud, the snow, the wet fields and paths that I've trodden as I take my allowed daily walk whilst in lockdown. After coming home one morning and taking off my very muddy wellington boots I dug out my threads. Seeing the tracks from the tractor and peoples footprints in the very muddy field had given me an idea for the Feather Stitch.  I decided that I had to have a representation of that for this month. ...

 Another year means another Take a Stitch Tuesday which is run by Sharon Boggon over at Pintangle. I'll admit here and now that last year my TAST totally fell apart, with everything that went on from March I just didn't have the time or the incentive. Having 3 teenagers suddenly doing schoolwork from home and then a husband being furloughed and being off work for weeks wasn't exactly helpful for relaxing needlecraft! This year I thought I'd do something different, I wanted something that wasn't exactly a picture as I've done previously but something that I could just do a few stitches each week and it would be a journey through the year. In the crochet world people have been doing a lot of temperature blankets and I thought something similar but on a much much smaller scale would be just the thing. I decided that each month would be done in colours relating to the weather here in Yorkshire during that month. January has been easy as it's been chilly, grey, r...

Whoo hoo, my first finish of 2020 😃  My Sweet Pea blanket is all done and being used as well.  It's been a joy to crochet this blanket during the cold and wet weather we've had.  It's the first Attic24 blanket I've done but will definitely not be the last. All done and in use by DH who's recovering from an operation Parts 1-6, just the border to do now Parts 1-5 Loving the feel of the wool and my new crochet hook Parts 1-4 Look at those colours, so cheerful in this dull and wet winter Parts 1-3 Parts 1 & 2 Part 1 - colours don't look as vibrant as in real life Just starting - couldn't find my stitch markers so safety pins from the first aid box had to do All my Sweet Pea blanket wools in a lovely bag from the Wool Warehouse

I've had a pretty busy Christmas, not all of it good, but I have cracked on with my crocheting every chance I had and managed to get quite a few rows done on my sweet pea blanket. In fact it's feeling like a proper blanket on my legs now as I work on it!  Best thing about making these blankets during the cold spells is that they keep me warm so I can work longer 😃 Part 2 completed on the 22nd December before it all went downhill. Part 3 completed on 24th December...not a lot of sleep going on in our house! Part 4 completed on Saturday 28th December - seriously needed to relax and it's amazing what you can do at 5am in a morning when everyone else is in bed! I am so pleased with how this is turning out, once you get into the flow of the pattern it's so easy. Must admit I'm eyeing up the next one much to the kids disgust...apparently we have enough blankets now!  Think if it turns cold again I'll turn the heating thermostat...

I couldn't resist and ordered the wool for the Attic 24 Sweet Pea Blanket CAL   Thankfully Lucy from Attic 24 teamed up with The Wool Warehouse  so we could buy her crochet-along colours already in a pack - saves so much time and searching! I can't recommend The Wool Warehouse enough, never had bad service from them. This time whilst I was ordering my pc crashed, when it came back up the order said pending but nothing was in my basket. A quick phone call to the company and a lovely lady sorted it all out for me. A couple of days later and the postman was knocking on the door with my wool...  15 balls of wonderful soft wool all in a handy bag to store them and my WIP. I did do a tension sample using a 5mm hook for my starting chain then swapping to a 4mm hook as it's the recommended one for this wool. (I use a 5mm most of the time but I was itching to use my new soft handled 4mm.)  I love how the Trellis Stripe pattern works up. Part 1 has all the inf...

After making our daughter's crocheted blanket I decided that it was time I made one for myself. After seeing some amazing wool on Wool Warehouse I found a corner to corner blanket that I liked the look of and I thought would work well in the particular shades I'd chosen. The wool I chose is Stylecraft Batik Swirl in the Highland colours. I loved the blue and purple colours mixed.  The pattern I used was free from the Yarn Inspirations website. Click here to get the pattern yourself. It's a very easy pattern to follow and once I got into the flow of crocheting it off I went. There is also a video if you prefer, just click here . There are lots of videos showing you how to do the corner to corner but I've always used Bella Coco as my go-to crochet tutorial when I've needed to. Anyway, I ordered 3 of the Highland Batik Swirl in the understanding that after 1.5 balls I'd then stop increasing and start decreasing. I was amazed how fast it grew... By ...

I was sat bored one afternoon looking at some wool I'd found in the bottom of my wardrobe and decided I'd like to learn how to crochet. Now I've tried numerous times over the years and failed but that was before YouTube. I didn't want to learn how to do the fantastically detailed blankets but a simple granny square one for our daughter. A lot of video watching later (wow there are some horrendous tutorials out there!) and I finally found someone who made it all make sense to me. The name of the channel is Bella Coco  and after watching her tutorial on granny squares   I picked up the wool and off I went. I did go wrong a few times on my first couple but before long I was whizzing along without the video and had completed my first 8...this was where it got interesting. My 11yr old daughter Darcy had been watching me playing around with some old pink wool and suddenly decided she wanted a blanket making out of these squares but she wanted the colour around a cent...

Sometimes when you're working on a big project it feels like you hardly make any progress no matter how long you stitch for. I was feeling like that on my Once Upon a Time , during the summer it felt like I'd stitched on it for hours but nothing looked any different.   At the beginning of October I decided to take a photo of how it looked and then not take another one until the very end. The difference shocked me.  I'm stitching this a bit differently to how I normally do. I bought some easy count 28ct fabric and am stitching 1 strand over 1. Now as the whole stitch area fits onto my scroll rods I decided to try out doing one colour at a time. I started with the colour with the least amount of stitches and then worked up. By the way I use my tablet and the app ezPDF reader pro to not only find the stitches but mark off where I've done. It's a lot easier on large projects and this is the first time I've gone solely to the app and not had a paper and pen ba...