3 Little Pigs - plus a few more

Hello and how are you all ? I am very well and have had a great week of crochet - more about that in a minute. Its a very rainy day here at ECHQ, I'm going walking with a friend later so I'm hoping it clears up. This week I've been enjoying these beautiful pink roses which are very appropriate for the crochet I've been doing as you will see shortly. I've been crocheting for a local charity, The Cowshed, who describe themselves as "a new charity which provides support to people of all backgrounds in a time of personal crisis".

The support they provide is largely by way of items of clothing, and they take donations of good, pre-loved clothes which are all washed and ironed by a team of volunteers who do an amazing job getting the clothes ready and displaying them beautifully for clients (who are referred to them) to come and choose from, and try on. They also provide toys for children at Christmas and have a wishlist which you can find here. I've decided this year to buy three items from the wishlist and buy less for my own three children as they already have so much.

The Cowshed also raise money by doing craft fairs, and they have a craft club which I've been to a couple of times and made bunting for stock for their stalls. Doesn't their stall look great ? I'm not in the photo by the way. Helping at their craft fairs is something I intend to do next year.

Anyway, onto the crochet! So I've been crocheting little pigs in blankets ...

Just look at him! How super-cute is he! My local crochet group, The Barkham Hookers, asked us to make these for the Cowshed so I set to and managed to get three out of the yarn which they had provided ...

These three have gone off to the Cowshed already, apparently they have lots of orders to fulfill. I then posted about them on facebook and have had orders for another 7! Luckily I had more pink yarn so I've been non-stop piggy-making all week, with a little production line going for things like noses and ears ...

Here they are, starting to take shape ...

I ran out of the Christmassy red and green yarn for the blankets but I think the purple and blue ones are just as nice ...

They've such funny little faces, I'm sure they each have their own little personality ...

The pattern is by A Right Good Hook and you can find it here on ravelry.

It was a great pattern to follow, very well written and no mistakes! Lots of fun to crochet, but I must say after doing 10 of them - yikes! - I am now looking forward to moving onto another project. 

Til next time, hope you all have some crafty fun,

Jillxo

Autumn Days

Mr EC and I were out walking the other day and he said to me "I'm sure there weren't this many acorns last year". "Don't be ridiculous" I said, "a tree will produce roughly the same amount each year" and suitably told off he said no more about it. Several days later whilst scrolling through facebook I noticed a post from a friend, talking about a "mast" year. Have you ever heard of this ? A mast year is when certain species of trees produce an unusually large amount of nuts or fruit, and this year is a mast year. You can read about it here, but basically it happens every few years, as a way for trees to ensure they produce more nuts than animals can eat, thereby ensuring their propagation and survival. It's also thought that due to the extreme heat during the summer this year, trees were under stress and a larger amount than usual of nuts has been produced, again to ensure their survival. I was really surprised to read about this, I've never heard of it before, so it turns out, much to my annoyance, that Mr EC was right. I was very magnanimous and did tell him though.

And actually, now I come to think of it when we are out walking Pixie, we are crunching our way through paths loaded with acorns, they are everywhere. Pixie is very camera shy. when my phone goes anywhere near her she looks away, the photo above is as good as it gets. She is super cute though.

We walked round our local nature reserve, Dinton Pastures, last week. There are a few lakes there, and we walked round the largest one, Black Swan Lake. No idea why its called that, there are no black swans - does such a thing even exist ? Clearly, as was evidenced by the mast year knowledge (or lack thereof), I am not to be trusted when it comes to nature-y things! There was plenty of other wildlife though ...

... and lots of beautiful tree-lined paths to explore ...

... the trees are glorious at this time of year with leaves in every shade ...

... we grabbed a quick coffee to have on the go ...

... and walked back via the activity centre ...

... bit too cold for anyone to be out boating though ...

Back home I took a quick wander round the garden. There are still some flowers blooming - are these a type of chrysanthemum ? Can anyone tell me ? They were planted by the previous owners of our house so I'm not sure. They are so pretty though ...

.. and this rose is still hanging on, just about ...

We even have some grapes growing! They're delicious!

... and the acer is looking fabulous ...

Back inside I've been progressing my Millenium cross stitch, and yesterday I finished the William Shakespeare motif. This only leaves 2 motifs to do, then some backstitching in the centre, and backstitched lettering to do round the central border, and it will be all done. I can see the end at the light of the tunnel now. It may even get done this year which would be amazing.

Taking a break from the big kit I worked on a really quick little design for Halloweeen ...

... I decided to make it into a card for Mr EC. The pattern is a free one that I found on pinterest.

Do you like my new Halloween mug above ? Isn't it so sweet ? I had a trawl through the cheapy shops - Poundland, Home Bargains etc - this morning for some Halloweeny bits to decorate our front room but I'll show you more of that another day!

Til next time, happy crafting,

Jillxx

Cross-stitch roundup

When I got home from Carcassonne my crojo was screaming at me to crochet: I've bought Lucy of Attic24's Fireside blanket pack, and I was desperate to get it out and get started. BUT before I went away I had started a Hallowe'en stitch-along and I was determined to get it finished and not leave it languishing in the ever -growing UFO pile. As you'll see from this blog post I have form when it comes to not-completing cross-stitches. I definitely suffer from startitis - starting shiny new projects before the previous one is complete. So this past week I've been a very good stitcher and carried on with the stitch-along - I had gotten behind on the holiday week so I had lots to catch up on. Its the "Cabinet of Curiosities" stitchalong by Alyssa Westhoek of Stitchonomy - she has a pattern club of which I am a member, and for $8 a month you get access to all her patterns, and then several times a year she runs a free stitchalong, one of which is the Cabinet of Curiosities. Alyssa releases a little image pattern every day over a month or so and then you end up with something like this ...

Don't you love it ?! Aren't the little picture so cute ?! Which is your favourite ? Mine has to be either the brain in a jar - such fun!  or the phoenix feathers. Some of them are a little hard to tell what they are - frogs legs and mandrake I'm looking at you here, but I think most of them are fairly obvious. This cross-stitch is going to be framed and given to my all-things-Hallowe'en-loving son for his birthday.

Finishing this gave me such a sense of achievement I decided to root through the UFO pile and finish some more. So next is this wedding cross-stitch which I did for my cousin's wedding 5 YEARS AGO! I'm a terrible person. I never gave it to them (obvs seeing as it was incomplete). All I had to finish was the bits and piece hanging off the back of the car so the end was really nearly in sight. However when I got it out of the cupboard I found to my horror it's got a massive stain on it !!!! Noooo!!!I have no idea what it is (tea maybe?) or how it got there but I'm fairly sure after 5 years it won't be coming out any time soon, so I've decided to stitch over it with some green to make it look like grass below the car. So this one isn't quite done yet (though I did finish the bits and pieces at the bottom).

Next we have another wedding one. This time for friends of ours who got married 3 years ago. Can you see a pattern emerging here ? Honestly, I put so much work into these then sort of fall at the last hurdle. No idea why, but its really annoying. Anyway, I discovered that this one is actually complete so all it needs is framing and then it can be gifted to the lucky (?) couple.

Now we have a slightly smaller one, and again I found this one to be complete. Its a picture of Dornoch Cathedral, a cathedral in the highlands of Scotland and actually where Madonna and Elon Musk got married (but not to each other!). It's for my Mum for her birthday - Dornoch is the place where we spent our childhood holidays. We used to go every year with some other families from England, Scotland and Northern Ireland - we only all knew each other from going to the same hotel in Dornoch every year. Every summer  spent 2 weeks there, from when I was 5 until I was about 30 and I stopped going. My parents kept going though for another 20 odd years, until my Dad passed away. It was great fun, in the group there were about 20 children and we had a blissful time playing golf and tennis, going to the beach, swimming, playing in the hotel gardens, it was wonderfully freeing, and I feel very blessed to have grown up with such memories. So Dornoch is very dear to our hearts. The cross-stitch, small as it is, is very definitely recognisable as Dornoch Cathedral, so I know my Mum will love it. Again it just needs framing. (All this framing is going to cost  small fortune!)

This next one is actually just for myself, and I spent a few happy hours finishing it off this week. It's just a Christmas sampler which I started a few years ago. When I dug it out I realised there wasn't really a huge amount left to do - just from the sort of house shape downwards wasn't done, but the top 2/3 was all complete. I'm not sure what I'll do with this one, maybe get it framed and hang it up just at Christmas when we decorate the house.

And finally we have my ongoing project (excuse the creases!), which I may have blogged about before. This one is a real labour of love (and secretly I hate it a tiny bit ...). It's a Millenium cross-stitch which my Mum bought me for Christmas in the year of, yes, you guessed it, the millenium, back in 1999 (gosh that feels weird to write a year beginning with 19!). So I've been working on it, on and off, for 22 years! To be fair it has been packed in a box during two house moves and I've had 3 babies since then so life has had other priorities, but I dig it out every so often to work on it. I do feel now that the end is in sight. As you can see there are 16 little images and I've only got 3 left to do. So near yet so far!

Once this is finished its definitely getting framed and I might give it to my Mum for Christmas if I can finish it by then! We shall see!

So that's a roundup of my current cross-stitch progress. I still have a few incomplete ones but I shall leave those for another day.

Til next time, have some crafty fun,

Jillxxx

Carcassonne Crochet Retreat

During the first week of October I was lucky enough to go away on holidays to France on my own for a week. I say on my own but actually I was with my bestest oldest friend (we have known each other for 49 years!!!) and a group of 12 others on a lovely relaxing crochet retreat. The retreat, which was organised by Stitchtopia and run by the wonderful Lucy of Attic24 fame, took place in the beautiful city of Carcassonne in southern France.

We set off very early (I got up at 2:30am - yikes!) on a Monday morning and got off to a great start with bucks fizz for breakfast at the airport...

We met everybody at the departure gate and before long we were touching down in Toulouse to beautiful sunny weather. An hour or so on the coach and we were afforded our first view of beautiful Carcassonne...

... and yes it really does look like that - just WoW - a beautiful, historic, medieval, walled city perched on a hill surrounded by rolling green fields. (Well on a few sides anyway, there is also a newer area of town but we'll come to that later.) 

Entering the city is by way of a huge gate which would have had a portcullis and drawbridge, as there is a dry moat ...

Once inside the city, which is made up of lots of little winding roads and alleyways made of cobblestones, its very peaceful and quiet as there is no traffic (hence no traffic noise), and of course everywhere is safe for pedestrians. Everywhere you look there are little restaurants and boutique shops, its just so quaint and pretty.

Our hotel was actually inside the walled city so it was very handy for all the restaurants, and lovely and peaceful at night. We stayed for 6 days - 4 days of crochet (yippee!!!) and 2 days sight-seeing (with a little crochet added in of course!). During our crochet days we had workshops run by the lovely Lucy, who taught us about colour theory, and then gave us a wonderful pattern to follow for a cushion cover. We were challenged to be bold and brave with our colour choices, and to step outside of our comfort zones. And how lucky were we - we were each given a pack of Scheepjes minis to work with (photo nicked from Lucy as I was to excited and forgot to take one !) ...

Ooooh my! Amazing! Such gorgeous colours and such cute little balls, just such fun for messing about with and playing with colour. The front side of the cushion was a little experimental with some blending first of all ...

 

... and this soon grew into nearly a competed front cover ....

... it was wonderful to see how everybody else's cushion covers were so different despite working from the same palette...

... we added some little flowers to the middle of the front, here is mine completed ...

... to be honest I'm not wildly happy with it, too much orange maybe ? But here is the reverse and Oh My GoSh I LoVe It ...

I feel with the front I let myself overthink it whereas with the reverse I just went with the flow a bit and as a result it feels much more balanced. Or maybe its just that I love brights so much! Nevertheless the workshops were such fun, lots of lively chatter and laughter, and soooo good to spend time with like-minded people, and during down time we could relax in the sweet little hotel garden ...

We had a couple of days of sightseeing, and the old town of Carcassonne is so beautiful - I took a gazillion photos. One lunchtime we went for a tour of the chateau and ramparts - the walled part of the city consists of over 50 towers, and its possible to walk around the ramparts a fair way. 

We made it into the new area of town as well, and had a lovely afternoon shopping ...

... and we went on a little boat tour too ...

On our second sightseeing day we went to Lavantel to the Musee de Textiles .... 

... and we saw some fascinating spinning and weaving demonstrations ...

Over the week we had lots of lovely food and of course vino!

But all too soon it was time to go home again. Going back to the reality of laundry and cooking was a bit of a shock to the system, I can tell you! 

I've been a terrible blogger this year, but am hoping to get things started again with this post - so watch this space and next time I will have some crafty happenings for you.

Til next time, hope you have some crafty fun,

Jillxxx