A long weekend

It's the August bank holiday weekend here in England (the Scots don't share this one with us), which means Monday off work for a lot of people, me included. It hasn't come too soon in my opinion, I tend to work all through the summer when others are taking their holidays, and I use my days in the spring and autumn instead. That makes for a long slog getting from week to week though, so I do look forward to this short working week. We haven't had a public holiday since the end of May this year, and don't get another until Christmas.

It's given me an extra day to just do very little. Normal weekends are not quite long enough to fully let my head unwind, but this does feel like a proper break from work. My job involves thinking for about 15 other people, planning and troubleshooting as well as customer service, so it's nice to only think about me for a while.

But as usual, I end up thinking of other people anyway! My mother-in-law hasn't had the best of summers, so while out shopping yesterday I decided to get a few small things to make a surprise package for her. When I got home, I decided I also needed a small bag to put the items in, and so set about making a Bag Of Sunshine:

 

I've been suffering a little bit of Festival Envy this weekend too, watching the Reading Festival on telly. I grew up in that town, and spent a few of my teenage summers either inside the festival or just hanging out on the outside meeting random people and generally enjoying the music and the atmosphere (back in the days when it was still a ROCK Festival). My daughter went for the first time when she was 12 (with her dad) and that spawned an equal appreciation of live music to rival mine. We are hoping to go and see Volbeat live in October together, but watching the kids at Reading this weekend made me yearn for the days of sun, beer and tunes in a field in Berkshire. I'm tool old and arthritic to camp over these days, but maybe next year Download for the day...

The downside to a bank holiday weekend is no mail on the Monday. As I've had the time to write, my husband will be getting a much longer letter than he's been used to recently, so no complaints from him! He generally doesn't complain but as I've worked a few very long days over the past month, I've been sending cards instead of proper letters. Now I can expand on some of the things I've just mentioned in passing, which stimulates conversation back from him too. He has also started writing short pieces for a blog on the nature he sees when he is working. It's a good discipline, one we both enjoy.

Sneak peek

I'm almost ready to put the first batch of commercial yarn up for sale on my Etsy shop, Hare's Moon Yarns, but I thought I'd give you guys a preview :)

It's wonderfully squishy and soft, a blend of merino and another unnamed wool.

I also made some aran-weight shetland yarn for a friend's birthday recently:

Pixies again

So how are those two pixies coming along, I hear you ask. Well, as luck would have it, Ariel and Tinder both wanted to show you their new clothes today so I had to get my camera out and catch them while the sun was behind a cloud....

This is Ariel.

                                                    A rear view of her jacket:
















Close up of the buttons at the front:

And this is Tinder

The sparkles on the red yarn show up well here. The yellow lace holes are worked in embroidery silk and a very small crochet hook.

Tieing holes together

Which actually might have made a better name for the Ravelry group I've started!

That's what this post is about. I've been a member of Ravelry for a while, it's a knitting and crochet resource website with about 1 million members worldwide, and a fabulous place for inspiration, patterns, materials, and general yarn-related chatter. There are a couple of prison-ish groups there, but nothing specifically for those with incarcerated loved ones. Until now :)

The group is called Ladies in Waiting drop in if you fancy a space where you can talk about your ups and downs, with prisons or  yarn crafts.

Smile!

Sometimes I make things for people and I really don't want to let them go once they are finished. This is one of those times, but I have to let this little chap go to his intended home because he is for a friend who is celebrating her 40th "30th" birthday in a couple of weeks. She wanted to go to Borneo and spend some time with the orangutans, but medical issues over the past year have meant that she can't go now. So I'm bringing the orangutan to her instead:

 

He's about 12 inches (body), made from acrylic Robin DK yarn and Patons Whisper yarn, my own pattern (that I probably could repeat but I didn't write it down as I went because I want him to be a one-off). He's currently sitting near to the computer and I can't help but smile every time I look at him, so hopefully he will have the same effect on my friend too.

Complicated family ties

Ours is not a normal family (define "normal" anyway), and we're not even a normal blended family as people like to refer to these days. We're really just a group of people, slowly expanding and tied together (losely for the most part, but some tightly and strongly) by blood and desire. We've got adoptions, second (and third) marriages, kids, step kids, grand kids, new partners, old partners and plenty of skeletons and ghosts as well.

Sometimes it's hard to deal with. No, most of the time it is hard. But sometimes there are bright sparkly bits as well that make you feel like you are doing this for some purpose other than your own needs.

My ex-step-daughter-in-law-to-be (get your head round that one!) will very soon be having a baby girl. I am blessed that she keeps in touch with me - it would be so easy and convenient for her to not to, given the tenuous nature of our connection. So today I have finished a cot blanket for her and the baby in the purple and white colour combination she requested:

A finished off

Been working on this on and off for a few months. At my friend's memorial service in May, one of the ladies there gave some of us a skein of handspun yarn, all shades of purple, for us to make something in memory of Ciel. It couldn't really have been anything other than butterfly-related, but having decided on a thing to make, it has been a real trial of love and patience (something Ciel taught me while she was living and obviously intends to carry on with!).

While out on Saturday in Gloucester, I found some nice beads in a Sue Ryder chairty shop that I have re-used to finish off the mobile. The photos don't do the yarn any justice at all, but I'm happy with it all.

When is a duvet cover not a duvet cover?

When it's a bath mat!

My daughter had a duvet cover that has seen better days. The ribbon embroidery had started to come undone, there were bleach spots (no idea how they got there) and the fabric was worn in places. Since we try to recycle and reuse as much as possible, I decided to make a bath mat from the fabric instead of throwing the cover away.

I first removed the buttons. These go into my button tin. Every grandma should have a button tin. Kids can spend hours on a rainy afternoon sorting through old buttons, putting them into shape, size and colour groups and patterns.

Next I cut the duvet cover into very long lengths of fabric. Most people will tell you to make slits at 1 inch intervals along one edge of fabric and rip the pieces so that you get even-width lengths. You then have to sew the lengths together to make "yarn". This was going to be a very simple bath mat, so I decided just to cut on a gradual spiral, roughly 1 inch wide, until I got to the top of the duvet cover. Then I cut along the top edge so that I had 1 continuous length of fabric to work with. As the side seams would naturally unravel because I had cut through the stitching, I just tied knots in the fabric to secure the seam pieces.

Next I took the biggest crochet hook I own (9 mm I think) and made a magic loop. I made 8 single chain stitches, and then worked in the round, increasing regularly by working 2 stitches into one hole until I ran out of yarn. The inner rounds are single chain, and the outer rounds are trebles.



The finished bath mat is approximately 24 inches in diameter.

How hard can it be....

....to knit a butterfly?

I am having difficulty with the prototype that I am working on. I know how the body will be, and that's a simple crochet tube with a bit of shaping. But the wings refuse to come off the knitting needles the way they are in my head.

It is important to me to get this right, which is why I'm making a prototype first. The yarn for the real project is delicate and wont stand being unravelled by more than a few stitches. It is also important because it is my tribute to Ciel, with the yarn spun by Jo at Secret Spinner and gifted to a group of Ciel's friends in May. I don't expect this butterfly to be perfect - in fact, it shouldn't be perfect at all because it is handmade - but it should at least resemble what my mind's eye can see.

So I'm going to put it down for a while, carry on with one of my other projects, and come back to it later.

Amigurumi for the folks at work

Where I work, I'm supervisor to 4 very hard-working temps at the moment whose jobs have just been put out to internal staff only to apply for. We've been encouraging them as best we can with chocolate, cakes and sweeties, but during a conversation a couple of weeks ago I happened to mention that I can knit (or crochet) just about anything. This led to the temps suggesting various animals for me to make as a challenge.

Well, here are the results :)


Frog

Elephant

Seahorse

Sloth

None of the patterns were my own, all can be found on Ravelry.

Here be dragons

Just wanted to share this little chap that I made today. Sunny D will be on his way to my friend in Magnolia, Texas shortly.

Funding the journey - first items on display

Just a way-marker to direct your attention to the Funding the Journey section of this blog. The first items listed for sale are actually being sold with profits going to cancer charities in the UK. With 1 in 3 people in the UK likely to develop cancer at some time in their lives, it is a disease without mercy or bias that touches many people.

My family has been decimated by cancer. Both my parents, and many other relatives and friends have been taken by the disease over the years. Most recently, my dearest friend Ciel died in January this year after several years of fighting breast cancer. It is in her memory that these crochet Charity brooches have been made and will be sold.

Please do take a look.