Just some squares

Yesturday I mentioned that I wasn't really in the mood during the last couple of days. It was not only about blogging, it was about everything including my craft work. So I stopped working on my current projects. They just didn't bring me the joy they used to... But I just can't sit on a sofa not doing anything, I need to be busy, otherwise I start to feel worried, annoyed, bored and so on and so far. That is why I grabbed some yarn leftowers for my charity crochet, found an easy pattern online and here I am - crocheting granny squares for two days allready.



The pattern is Bullseye Squares from Little Tin Bird. It is really easy and I like working on it.



This squares will be sent to the ladies in Russia who make charity blankets for orphanages. I mentioned them before in my blog and allready sent them a parcel with tiny knitted socks, crocheted hats and booties and a couple of bunnies.


Made 12 squares so far. Not shure if I will make the whole blanket or just send the squares, but that is how they look all together:



Not bad, yes?
Probably I would need about 80 squares to make the whole blanket, but this amount of work just scares me at the moment... So I will just continue crocheting the squares till i get complitely bored with them without thinking too much about the future.

How are you all doing? Hope your weekend is great :)
xx

52 Weeks of Happy (2/52)

I know, I'm a bit late this week, but I just wasn't in the mood for blogging. Or may be I just wasn't in the mood in generall that's why it was hard for me to pick the positive moments of the last week. But, as I've started this 52 week long project I decided that I still must concentrate and remember that good things. It helped, actually.
So here are this little happy things:

1. First was a big parcel from Latvia that my mum and dad sent us with lots of gifts. And there was a pile of yarn for me. I hope to turn it all into something beautiful :)



2. Second was a project bag/basket I made for myself. I was using some scraps of chunky yarn I had in my stash and finished it in two evenings.



Before I kept my project-on-the-go in a usual TESCO plastic bag, so now it's much better in a basket.
I will share the pattern of my basket here in a couple of days.

3. The third was Little Man's new game - he takes a flannel sheet and wraps into it with looks really cute and funny.



4. And the last thing was the little bonsai tree I got for Valentine's day.



I recieved plants as gifts before and they didn't last long. But this time I really feel responsible for this little one. Hope I cant treat him nice and he will live with us for years.

I love charity shops!

I really do. I would even write it like these: I LOVE LOVE charity shops. And not those ones that look nice and tidy, almost like normal shops, but those, where it's all a bit dusty, some things are hidden in the boxes under another ones and you need to search and dig to find the treasure. As those are the places where you can really find some treasures. Like once I found a little embroidery book from 1920-1930s, and then a knitting magazine from 1955 with our city view on the front cover.
This Saturday, as soon as my husband left to work I decided to treat myself with a new visit to my favourite charity shop, took Little Man and after a 20 minute walk we were there. And I'm sooo glad we came!
First of all I found two baby and toddler hat pattern brochures:



There are 3 designs in one and six in the other in different sizes. Perfect for my charity projects! And I just love old knitting, crochet and embroidery brochures, they feel retro. Guess how much did I pay for them? 20p each!

My next found treasure was an embroidery.



My mum and grandma do cross stitch and I know how much time does it take. Plus the money for all the materials. So when I saw the 50p price on this one I felt sad. Even the blank piece of canvas would cost more than that. So a person who put that price didn't evaluate someones hard work put into this embroidery. I just could not leave it there and had to take it home with us. I guess it could become a centre of a cushion cover for Little Man's room.

Then I found a book about different kinds of embroidery. Probably I will try something from it this year as one of my plans for 2013 was to make some embroidery.

And the last but the most awesome thing I found:



a huge bag of different yarns! It really is big! And can you see the price on the photo? It's £3! I was sooooo happy when I found this! So much yarn for my charity projects for babies!

Now you see why do I love charity shops so much. Sometimes they can make you happy for almost nothing.
So if you never tried them you should definitely do! Hope you'll find some awesome things for yourself!

xx

Infinity scarfs

After making a couple of infinity scarfs as gifts using a super easy video I accidently found on YouTube (you can find it here) I thought that I would like one for myself too, but as I've already made three scarfs using one and the same pattern I wanted something new. Well, you just get bored when using one and the same pattern again and again. So I made a little research on the Web to find some more interesting patterns. Sadly, there are not so many of them. Most infinity scarfs I found were just made using trebles in a round. But I wanted something more interesting, something really special and free. And finaly I found three free patterns I liked. Here they are:

1. Chunky circle scarf:

2. Blue infinity scarf:

3. Edie infinity scarf:

Now I only need to decide which one I like most. I allready have the yarn - James C. Brett Marble Chunky in shade 14, which is red and changes the colour a bit. Not shure which of this tree scafs would look better with this yarn...

Do you have any new projects in your mind?
Hope you do as it's allways fun and exciting to start something new.

Have a nice evening and see you all soon :)

52 Weeks of Happy (1/52)

If you haven't heard of 52 Weeks of Happy you can find more info here but basically the main idea is to post four pictures of the things that made you happy every week. I thought it's a good idea and something that really suits me as sometimes I feel depressed or sad for no reason and by making pictures of some happy moments I will be able to look back at this pictures and remember that there is no reason for being depressed.

Ok, let's start.

 Things that made me happy over the last week:

1. a pot holder and dish cloth that came to me long way from USA from my swap partner (I've participated in a pot holder swap on swap-bot.com)



2. Little Man started playing with a ring stacker.



He made this and brought it to show me. I was so proud and happy at that moment!

3. My narcissus. When my husband brought them I thought it's green onions ore something like that, as they were completely closed. Now they are opened to show me how beautiful they are - like little yellow suns on my window.



4. Some lovely crochet I was working on.



This had to be a baby blanket for a baby shower. Unfortunately I had to unravel almost all of it yesterday as I understood that I don't have enough yarn. But I still enjoyed the process, the colours and this picture. I will tell you a bit more about this blanket later as I going to put some rows of white between this colours and some white border.

Hope you had a great week too!

Little booties and some news about my patterns

You know, I'm really happy today. Despite the fact that the winter is back and a nice sunny day suddenly turned into a snow storm I'm sitting here and smiling. And I've got several reasons for that.
First of all, yesterday for the first time in my life I've posted a pattern to Ravelry. My tiny newborn socks. And today I've discovered that 47 complete strangers added it as a favourite and one lady already knitted a pair! Wow!
Then yesterday in the evening while Little Man was having a nap I translated the same pattern into Russian for the lovely ladies in Russia who knit and crochet charity blankets and clothes for children in Russian orphanages. Send it to one of them and she posted it into her blog so ladies could use the pattern for their charity projects. And again - almost 40 complete strangers re-posted it to their blogs.
Someone would say that 40 is not much and even 80 (if I would count all of them together) is not much too, but for me it means a lot. Really a lot. And first of all it is so important to me because I don't know this people and they don't know me, so they liked my pattern not because they like me and want to be nice and polite, but because they all like what I did. And it makes me feel happy and proud of myself.
The other thing that made me smile was a response from the lady from Canada who received my pot holder, that I crocheted for her participating in a Pot Holder Swap on swap-bot.com She loves it and it was nice to read how talented I am and how perfect the work and the colours are.

Today I finally packed everything for my charity package to Russia. Hoped to send it today, but had to stay at home because of the snow. Anyway, I promised to show you the booties I was making for orphanage babies. Here they are:



The yellow ones were made using a pattern found here which actually is not a pattern but a Japanese crochet chart (the chart itself can be found here ). It might look a bit confusing but after you figure out what they mean in the chart the booties turn out to be quite easy. I used 3mm crochet hook and some DK yarn and the finished size is about 3-6 months.



The blue ones are actually my favourite. For them I used a pattern I found on Pinterest but I had to modify it a bit as I just could not understand the pattern in the end. Little crocheted star pattern can be found here and I used 2mm crochet hook and a bit of 4ply for them.  For the booties I used 3.5 mm crochet hook, not 4.25 as in the pattern as I just didn't have one, and DK yarn leftovers. The size I was making was 6-9 months, but I ended up with a really tiny pair, 0-3 or even newborn size... Was it my crochet hook that changed the size so much?
But I still love them



Hope are doing great too :)
Have a nice evening!

Just chilling

Little Man is asleep, husband gone to work and I have some time to just quietly enjoy my coffee and reading.



I have a great book and an issue of Mollie Makes with me and I sit here in my quiet living room, chilling and slowly realizing how good this week actually was.

This week I've sent away quite a lot of packages for my swap partners as I joined Swap-bot and participated in a cotton square swap and a pot holder swap too. Plus I've sent some gifts to Latvia - for my granddad and my aunties on their Birthdays, and the infinity scarf I was showing you before is gone to Denmark to my sister.



When this huge pile was finally gone I felt much more relaxed. And in the same time I recieved two cotton square packs from my swap partners!



Well, that's a lot of squares! And there are three more packs to come, wich is great. What am I going to do with them?
From all the blue, green and purple squares I want to sew a Scottie Dog for Little Man's room. And I could make a bag for myself from all the red ones. Mmmm, sounds great.
I did some crochet for charity and need to send all of it next week to Russia. But I really enjoued the way of doing it - no rush, just relaxing with a crochet hook and some lovely yarn, enjoying every row I made. It's great in a comparrison with the last year when I was allways in a rush and knitting or crocheting not because I wanted, but because I needed to finish the projects.
Yesturday I had coffee with a good friend of mine and then finally, after a long time, went to the knitting club. So I was happy about my social life this week too.

How was your week? Hope you enjoyed it!