Five on Friday

Hello dear friends and readers,

It's nearly the end of February, can you believe it. We had half-term here just over a week ago, and I went to NIreland for the week. I'll share more on that another time, but for today I am joining in with Five on Friday (hosted by my lovely friend Amy of Love Made My Home). I am sharing five things on my hook.....

1. A toy puppy for Little Tomboy .... his face is a bit wonky but that's just giving him more character I think ....

2. A unicorn head. It is going to be a unicorn, I promise, I know it looks like a weirdo frog ghost at the moment....

3. My autumn blanket. Still got around 15 squares to go so it might just get done for next autumn lol

4. This sort of inverse pineapple scarf ...... a from magazine pattern that caught my eye .....

5. And the start of my Scheepjes Hygge Cal .... (yes, another Cal)

Just a really quick one from me today folks, hope you all have a great weekend :)

Til next time,

Jill xxxxx

Hearts and flowers

Hello dear friends and readers :)

Just a quick post from me today, I took a small diversion from my various works-in-progress to make a little gift for a friend. It's her birthday and I know she has just redecorated her dining-room with a purple theme, so I wanted to give her something purpley for her birthday, and I wanted part of it to be handmade.

She is a huuuuge candle fan. Every time I go round to her house it smells divine, and she always says it's because she burns candles. Personally I do not trust myself with candles, having twice had near misses where I one time badly burned a wall when a candle fell against it, and another time the mat that a little candle-in-a-tin went on fire as the tin got too hot. Yikes. No nice smell is worth a house fire. Thankfully my friend is clearly much more candle-safe than me. I'd have loved to actually make her a candle, but just haven't had enough time - I got a load of candle-making bits for my birthday last year but haven't used them yet, I need to practice before I start making gifts for people. Maybe next year ....

I decided to stick to something a bit safer, and crocheted her a hanging heart. I'd seen this post of Lucy from Attic24's, which in turn references this post by BeaG on Flickr. You make two hearts then double-crochet them together and then stuff. Pretty straightforward. I also added a really simple little flower with a wooden button.

Such a simple little pattern that produces a really sweet little hanging heart. Hopefully my friend will love it, and maybe even in part because its hand-made.

I also decided to make her a card, I'm not very good at thinking of card designs, so I occasionally buy card-making magazines for inspiration. I found an old magazine with a kit comprising patterned card and some fun little sentiment greeting thingies, and sort of used one of their designs with a few small changes.

I used a white card blank from my card stash, bits and pieces from the magazine kit, and some sparkly gems for a bit of bling.

I'm giving her her present tomorrow morning so I hope she loves it :) I'll report back soon to let you know.

Til next time - be safe with those candles people!

Jillxxxxxx

Five on Friday

Hello dear friends and readers, gosh is it really the end of another week ? It must be time for another Five on Friday, hosted again by Amy over at Love Made My Home. This week I have a bit of a random selection, just stuff from my week (and a bit from the week before), nothing earth-shattering, but I hope you enjoy my photos and blurb anyway ....

1. Can you believe it's February already ? I normally hate January, definitely have that post-Christmas Blues type thing, but this year hasn't been as bad. I've no idea why, but I'm glad it's February, and I'm glad to be waking up feeling good. Having daffodils around always helps too, they just seem so fresh and new and bright, and full of hope and promise.

2. The weekend before last I entered an OCR - Obstacle Course Race - called Muscle Acre. And yes it definitely lived up to its name. Basically an OCR is a run but with lots of obstacles and lots and lots of mud and water. Here's an un-muddy photo of me before the race ...

It was the first OCR I'd done, and wowsers it was SUCH good fun! Completely exhausting, but tremendous fun. On the day of the race it was 0 degC, and the first obstacle was to climb in and out of a skip filled with cold water. So pretty much within the first 5 minutes we were soaking wet. The good thing about that is it makes you keep going as you'd get far too cold far too quick if you didn't. A bit further on we had to wade through muddy water that was waist deep with massive slabs of ice floating about on it. Can you see my lips turning blue - hypothermia is a risk - but I was sure just to keep moving.

(Don't worry about it saying Clare Sheppard below that photo, thats my friend who facebook'ed it!)

One comedy moment was when we had to crawl under a skip, I crawled in one end fine, but when I tried to crawl out the other end I couldn't make it through due to my boobs being too big LOL I had to reverse and go out the way I came in. There were lots of crawling type obstacles, a lot where you had to commando crawl, hence the boobs got very muddy ....

There were also a lot of climbing obstacles but with lots of mud around it was really hard to grip with my hands so I did a lot of hauling myself up and letting myself down by throwing my whole arm over the top. I didn't realise until after I'd had a shower just how many bruises I had ....

And then of course there's the medal and beanie that all finishers get. I've got a few running medals but have to say I really felt I'd earned this one!

3. Back to more sedentary pastimes - after reading this post of Amy's I decided to give sock-knitting a bash. Like Amy I'm following the sock-a-long by Christine who is also known as WinwickMum, but so far I've only got as far as doing a tension square. It's the first time I've ever knitted with 4-ply and I am loving it, I love how soft and light the resulting fabric is, and I can't wait to get going on an actual sock. 

And of course I had to jump the gun and buy some more sock yarn - which came with a free pattern sheet too. Can you see the sparkly bits in the pink one - glittery socks! How fabulous!

4. Another thing I want to share with you is some of Little Man's drawings. He's actually 13 now so not so little, so I think I need to start calling him Mr13 (nicking Meredith of Mereknits idea). Anyway despite not choosing Art as an option for GCSE, Mr13 is pretty artistic. We think he gets this from my Dad who was a pretty great artist (he was an architect), I'll share some of his pictures some time too. Anyway here are Mr13's drawings, they are in the Manga style which is a form of Japanese animation. Aren't they gorgeous ? I just adore the eyes.

5. I got a Fitbit for Christmas and am trying to hit 10,000 steps each day. And what better way than to go out on a dog-walk in the rain with Pixie and Little Tomboy. That's them this afternoon, a lovely end to the week.

They are best friends these two, always playing, running, and snuggling on the sofa. Sooo sweet.

That's it from me for today, hope you all have a lovely weekend,

Jillxo