Happy Weekend

This weekend has been so lazy, slow and relaxing.  Nothing planned, in fact I haven't left the house at all. Sometimes that is just blissful, pottering about enjoying home comforts :)

Yesterday I crocheted for hours and hours and hours and hours. And hours. Everyone else seemed happy doing their own thing so I just left them all to it and caught up on some TV I'd recorded and spent a happy hooky morning. And afternoon. And evening.

The postman obviously knew I was about to run out of Stylecraft Special DK Pomegranate at lunchtime and very kindly delived my wool order in the nick of time. I love how Wool Warehouse package their wool deliveries in these sort of organza bags, such a nice touch.

I know you're thinking I couldn't possibly need more wool, and really you are right. I usually buy acrylic as it's so affordable and practical, but I'd really like to use something more luxurious for some scarves come winter. Trouble is, I just can't justify buying a load all at once. So, to ease the pain, often when I buy a few balls of acrylic I sneak in a ball of delicious cashmerino. My favourite is the Baby Cashmere Merino Silk DK by Sublime. Oooooooh it is SO sublime, it's like stroking a cloud. I'm going for pastels with this collection as I can't get my head round vibrant and silky-soft together. I've a couple of balls of Rowan Pure Wool DK in there too but its quite scratchy by comparison. Cushion covers perhaps.

And while we're on the subject of wool, my lovely lovely crafty friend KC (she doesn't have a sunshine band though) has just come back from a fortnight in Tasmania. As you do. I missed her loads, she is my craft and coffee buddy, and a real shoulder for me to offload onto about stresses with Little Man. She works with children with special needs, a lot of them are autistic so she really understands. Plus our friendship goes way back about 15 years, as my husband and I used to work with her husband, and now all our children go to school together. Anyway, as I said she's just back from Tasmania. (She went with 2 old Uni friends of hers, and didn't take husband or children. Wow!) And bless her sweet sweet heart, she brought me back a present....... some wool of course! Oh my heart leapt with joy! Joy that I have SUCH a Dear Friend, joy that she thought of me at all, and joy that the present was wool. She knows me so well. It's some lovely Alpaca Wool from the Tasmanian Wool centre. Its colours are a really lovely earthy winter palette so I'll be saving it for some gloves or maybe a hat later in the year :)

KC also took loads of wonderful craft-related pictures on her trip, and if she has time, she'll do a guest post here on emerald cottage so she can share her photos with you all :)

Today everyone was quite happy to stay at home, and in the afternoon Little Miss did some baking, She made these biscuits all by herself, I only did the in and out of the oven part. I wasn't even in the kitchen when she was weighing, measuring, rubbing in and so on. Not bad for a 10 year old :) (There were a lot more biscuits but they didn't last long enough to photograph)....

Later we sat round the table doing some colouring. During the Easter holidays we had bought some bargain pound-shop-type-of-shop-felt-tips - £3 for 100 pens, and they're pretty good.  I was kind of expecting them to be a bit rubbish. Look at that range of colours ....

We've got a couple of these amazing colour-by-number books that we bought in Florida last year.  The girls stayed colouring for about an hour, but I was sat there another hour on my own. Very therapeutic :) I love the mosaic style appearance of the resulting picture. I'm brazenly showing off my picture here. The girls didn't finish theirs. No staying power, children these days.

Now. As you know I'm a crocheter, I can knit too, but I always find it slower, and less forgiving in terms of mistakes. But I've had a bit of a knitting itch lately that I need to scratch. I also have some sock yarn that I bought by accident (I know, I know) so I'm going to join in on a Sockalong (such a fab name) with WinwickMum Christine (http://winwickmum.blogspot.co.uk/p/sockalong.html). I had to dig out the bag of knitting needles that my Mum gave me last time I was back home.

My Mum was an amazing knitter but doesn't do it any more at all now really. I think she may have done a knitting needle cull before she gave me her bag, I'm sure she had way more than these. Look how oranised she is, keeping the packs. The wooden ones were magazine freebies in case you're wondering. So I set aside some sock knitting stuff so I'll be ready to start on May 3rd. I think that is sock yarn ? Is it ? Anyone ?? 

One last little job that I did today was button sorting. Gosh if colouring-in is therapeutic then I don't know how to describe button-sorting. Mesmerising ? Soporific ? I find it sooooo relaxing. What is that ? Why is fiddling around with teeny bits of flat plastic or wood sooooo satisfying? I'd found these little spice jars in the charity shop, they were just so cute, and seemed like a full set as there were 8 of them, so I had to buy them really. No really, I did. Thery didn't even smell that spicy. I already had a perfectly good set of random mustard/pickle/jam jars, but they Didn't Match Each Other. And we all know how I don't really do random. And yes, I also already had a perfectly good button tin that even has pictures of buttons on it for heavens sake. But look, I HAD to buy these jars. I mean they were for charity. Look ..... see ?

I hope you all had relaxing weekends too :)

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