miss marie's miscellany

What are you doing here?

I've moved! Click here and you will be transported to my new home.

Then you can see more of this!

 

Time for a change

Oh dear, I seem to have been AWOL for quite some time, sorry that it's been rather silent and boring in these parts.  There's been a lot going on,  mostly work related and there's been nothing else for it but to knuckle down and get the job done. I think I needed a little break from blogging too, if I'm really honest; I felt a bit frazzled at Christmas and it took a little longer than I thought to get myself back on an even keel. Better now!

Anyway, I have decided to have a new start, new blog, new look, Please come and join me at  purpleshed.wordpress.com; it'll be great have your company!

 

 

 

Still here, just busy

Hello, it's ages since I popped my head round the door. Time seems to be flying by so fast this year, and I'm busy at work, with not much time for blogging at the moment unfortunately. There's been quite a lot of crochet going on......

Most of these are en route to a craft fair this week, or have already found homes with some lovely customers. It's been great to start selling a few more things - I make them because i like doing so, but it's even better when someone likes and wants to buy my creations. Very heartening!

Anyway, the house is a mess, the garden is covered in leaves and I have 101 things to do! I really should get on...see you soon!

Flower power

Much flowery hooking going on in these parts of late, I've been making lots of the ones I showed you in my last post. They just kept on multiplying till I had quite a stack of them. Enough for some floral decorating.........

Voila!

I used some of my stash of Scottish lambs wool in fuchsia pink and scarlet and used 2 different sizes of hook,  3.5 and 4,  just to give a small variety in the flowers; it's hardly noticeable, but I like the non-uniformity of size, much as you would get in a real garden.

i initially was going to make a long crocheted chain to join them together but it just didn't look right and the flowers were decidedly droopy........not good! So I threaded them onto some white cord and it's worked a treat; the flowers have their heads held high and they can be moved along the cord to wherever looks good and they stay put.....result.

I've put it in my Etsy and Foksy shop; please feel free to pop over there and take a look!

I really like this flower pattern, and wondered how it would look in some different colours?

I think they're all lovely, and the possibilities to use them in different projects are many..........so, yes, there will be lots more flowery items being made. Perfect for summer!

 

 

 

Daily snapshot:6

Today I take you into my purple shed for a look at what's happening in there.

A bit of a pink and red theme going on in there on the desk today, with a shades of pink granny square being helped along by a lovely glass of rose with my red iPod playing some mellow tunes! Also a bit of magazine reading going on, a new to me publication Mollie Makes, which I'll save to talk about once I've read it from cover to cover.

Daily snapshot:4

I have been adopted by a friendly cat who lives nearby. He pops in often for a nosey around my house!

February

It was quite hard to choose just one photo this month; should it be something crafty, something garden-related or to do with the advent of spring. In the end I decide to pick this photo, for the colour and the oncoming season which brings us such lovely flowers.

I'll be showing you my big green blanket later this week, it's turned out very nicely and is also very spring-themed......soon :-)

 

 

 

Shed surprise

You may recall a while back, I was dropping hints like bricks about a mysterious project; possibly a crafty space down at the end of the garden. Things were going well, until the snow started falling, and work had to stop for a while. But thankfully,  once the weather bucked up a bit, we got it done and I'm very happy to report that, barring a little cosmetic tweaking, I now have a little studio!!!

Would you like to come and take a look inside?

It started out as a humble garden shed, but it has been made lovely outside and in - lined, painted and floored, so it looks like.......

this! 

I have a nice new comfy chair to park myself on, next to my 'Keep Calm and Crochet on' poster, a table/desk, some crochet adornments and a cork board for inspiring images and so on.

Plenty of space to be filled up, I'll show you again when there is more to see.

This corner bookcase is made using 3 storage boxes from IKEA which I bought a couple of years ago. I glued them together with wood adhesive and hey presto, a neat little shelving unit for my books and bits and bobs, perfect for this petite space.

I can't believe I am posting a photo of the floor but it's so good I feel compelled to!

I can look out of the fairylighted window at the garden

while I get busy with the hook.......this is my  inaugural row of stitches!

And now I'm ready for many happy hours of craftiness

It's the next best thing to being out in the garden, and if I have the door ajar, I can hear all the sounds and smell the outdoor aromas as if I was sitting out in the open air, except that I am snug in my cosy space.

It's taken quite a while to get this little dream finished; cold weather does not love plaster and paint and there have been quite a few times recently when I've found the paint frozen solid in the tin!  Kind family and friends have given me lots of things, most notably the heater and the flooring  and helped me do a lot of the hard work, so I owe them a huge and heart-felt thank you. 

 I can't quite believe it has finally happened but when I look out of the window, I can see the fruits of a lot of scrimping and saving  and much hard graft. It has been well worth the wait too......I love my little shedstudio  :-)

 

 

Thoughts about a new year

The tree has been taken down, the decorations have been put away, everything wrapped up and boxed, and life is getting back to its normal routine. I always feel a bit mixed during the first week of January; I feel a bit sad that Christmas is over for another year, but I like the thought that a whole new year with new opportunities and exciting prospects is in front of me. After all the lovely eating, drinking and making merry at Christmas and New Year, it's good to get back to a less rich diet and feel a little more health-conscious. I don't make resolutions usually, I never can stick to them,  but after 2010's challenges, I thought I needed to set myself a few small aims and aspirations. But once I'd thought about what they might be, I knew that I had begun a change of heart and mind towards the end of last year. Plans are already afoot, the way forward has already started to change direction. So no resolution is really needed for 2011, I'm just going to do the best I can to carry on with the things already set in place, and to try to get some new projects up and running. This year is full of possibilities and I intent to make the most of whatever comes along in this year's journey. And it will all be blogged about here!

Have you made any resolutions?

 

 

 

 

Hooking Japanese style

Japanese crochet patterns, a recent  and happy discovery. One might think this is problematic, because of the language in which these are written. But the patterns are written in chart form ie there are symbols for each stitch to make a diagram of the finished article. If your Japanese is non-existent like mine, these chart patterns are great, there's no language barrier to understanding them. I first encountered charts in the book  100 Flowers to Knit and Crochet by Lesley Stanfield which everyone seemed to be buying a while back when I began crocheting. Many of the patterns in this are written in both chart and more traditional worded pattern form, (interesting to see the two versions side-by-side) and there is a glossary explaining the symbols used. I've dipped into this book a bit, but to be honest, as I was a novice when I bought this, I felt a little daunted by its intricacies; there was much looking but not much doing. 

Fast forward. to earlier this year, with much hooking under my belt, I feel able to cope with something a bit more challenging. I found a fantastic site called Rakuten, well worth a look, as there are some really lovely patterns to download - I think there must be hundreds of them, from simple motifs to delicate lacy cardigans, and even better, they're free. This is what you get, all nice and simple, a page with a chart and pic of the finished article.

 

A few people have enquired about the pattern for my mum's flower scarf, and I found that at this site - click here for the link to it.  

 

So the next natural progression was to buy a Japanese  book. I've seen some beautiful ones at various blogs I like reading, and had a tremendous attack of the 'wanties'! I did some clicking and purchasing on Ebay a couple of weeks ago (at this lovely Ebay store)  and a few days ago a parcel plopped on the doormat containing this.

 
 

The demon wanties have been calmed! What a treat inside, it's beautifully photographed and 'styled' as they say, and there are some very appealing designs, with lots of food for thought.

I particularly liked this design

 

Here's my version.

 

 
 
Cushion or blanket, I'm not sure yet, watch this space!

 

It really has added another dimension to my crochet knowledge finding these patterns and learning to read charts. The fact that they are totally visual has improved my ability to look at a picture of something crocheted, work out what stitches were used and try to devise a pattern myself.  And when using a chart, it's great to think it's possible to translate the characters and symbols into something pretty and colourful. A whole new world of projects to make and enjoy!