Hello dear friends and readers :)
Welcome to this week's Finish for the Weekend :) Please see below for instructions on how to join in.
I'm sorry there was no post last Friday, I had nothing finished and nothing much to blog about either!

There have been a lot of storm systems about this week. What sort of name is "Brian" for a storm ?! (no offence to all the Brians out there) And who names these things anyway ? Over the water, in my homeland of Northern Ireland, it's been particularly stormy: lots of places closed down - schools, banks, parks - however I think they survived relatively unscathed. My Mum had a few of her garden pots blow over and smash, but thankfully no structural problems with her house.

Here in England just now it's a beautiful autumn day, and as I type the wind is still gusting ferociously through our garden, a great day to hang the washing out. I love this photo of near horizontal t-shirts.

So how's your week been ? Mine's been pretty good, nothing majorly exciting or anything, just a lovely balanced week of friends, coffee, chores and of course crochet.

For this week's finish I have a cute granny square bag made in a rather riotous Sirdar Click yarn.



I started this last year when we were driving up to Scotland to catch the ferry over to Northern Ireland at Easter. I had just had the dreadful news the night before that my Dad had died really quite suddenly, and then we had this 14 hour journey of hell to get through. I cried the whole way in the car, and then, as the traffic was so bad, we then missed the ferry. By the time we actually got on the ferry I was ready for sleep really, but in the absence of anywhere to lie down I did some crochet to keep me busy. All I could think to do was a granny square. I'd no idea what to use it for but I had to do something.

Whilst in NIreland I decided it was going to become a bag, so I crocheted another granny square the same size, and then also crocheted a strap. The strap was just around 7 stitches wide, and enough rows of dc to make it the right length for a cross-body bag.
These 3 bag-parts have been lying in my work basket for about 18 months now! It was time to finish it off properly.



I sewed the granny squares together on 3 sides, just normal sewing. I had thought about dc'ing them together but as this wool is quite chunky I thought a dc join would be too bulky. I then sewed on a gorgeous tomato-soup-red big button and crocheted a length of chains to make a button loop.

The final step was to line the bag. I'm not a massive orange fan so it was a good opportunity to use up this spotty orange fabric that had been in my stash for some time.

I used the sewing machine to sew the lining fabric sides together, and to hem the top, and then I hand-sewed the fabric inner to the crocheted outer. And ... ta-dah! A lovely sunny and bright granny square bag ....

It's another one of those projects where I just think to myself - why did I leave this so long ?? - because it only really took another hour or so of work to complete. Anyway, its done now, and I think I'm going to add it to my stockpile for craft fairs.

There may not be a FFTW post next week as I am going over to NIreland - just Little Tomboy and me - as its half-term holidays for us. We are leaving the teenagers here with Daddy, and a coupe of friends are joining us for a few days. I'm very much looking forward to going "home" and spending a few days just relaxing.


Happy half-term everyone!
Til next time,
Jillxxxxx


**************************************************

Welcome to Finish for the Weekend, a weekly chance to link up and share with the blogging community some of the projects you have completed this week. The only rule is that your post must be about an item you have finished this week, hopefully to help reduce some of those piles of UFO's!

Here's how to join in:

1. Write a blog post about your finished project.

2. Link back to Finish for the Weekend by adding this text as a link on your post:

http://emeraldcottage.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Finish%20for%20the%20Weekend

3. Publish your post

4. Link back from here to your post by clicking "Add Link" and adding your post's URL

5. Spread the bloggy love by visiting and commenting on the other Finish for the Weekend posts.

The Finish for the Weekend post will open for new links on a Friday at 12noon London time, and it will stay open until Monday at 12noon to allow for overseas bloggers to join in. These times may vary but I will do my best to keep it roughly the same. Looking forward to seeing all your posts !

Finish for the Weekend

Hello dear friends and readers!

Welcome to Finish for the Weekend, where we share finished projects this week in an effort to clear up those UFO's! Please see below for instructions on how to join in.

I hope you've had a good week. I haven't. I've had a bad tooth abscess which has knocked me for six all week. I've been to the emergency dentist twice, been on two loads of antibiotics, and even ended up at A&E for an IV dose of antibiotics. As I type its still extremely painful, and still got a bit of a lump on my cheek, it was about golf-ball sized, though I think its finally starting to go down a bit. So I've not done much except pop pills and sleep (or try to) all week.

But I was determined to have a finish to show you today. Its not a very exciting one I'm afraid. I made a cover for our remote-control box. How exciting.
We bought new sofas a couple of years ago, they are electronic recliners, and as such each side moves independently of the other. This means if anything (e.g. a remote control) falls down the gap between the sofa cushions, then it's lost under a heap of metalwork and is bloomin' awkward to get back. We needed a box hat was large and shallow because one of our remotes is super-sensitive and if you so much as breath on it, it starts up the playstation which then hums annoyingly. So we can't just chuck them all in a box because inevitably something sets it off. I found a shoebox lid to be just the right size.

And I decided to crochet a cover for it, as you do. So I started off in a nice soft grey to match the sofa. Well that was two years ago. Seriously, I have no staying power at all, its not a very big project and yet I still got distracted enough to put it to one side and work on something else. So we've had this slightly tatty shoe box lid lying around the front room for all that time holding the remotes.

Today I took one look at the shoebox lid and decided to finish off the cover for it. I wanted a nice inner to the box, so I cut a piece of cardboard (just from a cereal box), glued a piece of felt to one side of it to give it a bit of softness, then covered in this grey and turquoise fabric. I was going to get the sewing machine out but actually I decided that simply turning the edges under and hot-gluing them in place would be easier and probably neater.

The crochet starts off with a solid granny rectangle. I worked out the starting chain length by using the difference between the length and the width of the shoebox lid. I think. Well, it was 2 years ago. I can't remember what yarn the grey was, Stylecraft Special DK, in silver possibly. Anyway, I increased on every round until the rectangle was big enough to fit the base (ish), then stopped increasing to make the sides grow straight up instead of out flat.



After a bit I changed to a sort of duck-egg-green-blue, and as I started that bit just last week I can tell you that it is Paintbox DK in Washed Teal. I love these Paintbox yarns, so soft to work with.

And then it was a question of keeping going until it was big enough. I made the sides high enough so they could come up over the top and tuck down inside, to hide all the cardboard.



I used hot glue to attach the cover to the box, and put a really good blob of it into each corner to make sure it stayed neat.

And that's it. A really simple little make that should not have taken 2 years!

I'm super happy with how it turned out, far better than I hoped :)

And it would even make a rather nice little crochet-work-basket-cum-tray :) I see more of these in my future :)




Til next time,
Jillxxx

**************************************************

Welcome to Finish for the Weekend, a weekly chance to link up and share with the blogging community some of the projects you have completed this week. The only rule is that your post must be about an item you have finished this week, hopefully to help reduce some of those piles of UFO's!

Here's how to join in:

1. Write a blog post about your finished project.

2. Link back to Finish for the Weekend by adding this text as a link on your post:

http://emeraldcottage.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Finish%20for%20the%20Weekend

3. Publish your post

4. Link back from here to your post by clicking "Add Link" and adding your post's URL

5. Spread the bloggy love by visiting and commenting on the other Finish for the Weekend posts.

The Finish for the Weekend post will open for new links on a Friday at 12noon London time, and it will stay open until Monday at 12noon to allow for overseas bloggers to join in. These times may vary but I will do my best to keep it roughly the same. Looking forward to seeing all your posts !

Finish for the Weekend

Hello dear friends and readers!

Welcome to this week's Finish for the Weekend, if you fancy joining in, see below for instructions :)



Hope you have had a good week, mine's been the usual mayhem of children, school runs, and after-school activities. However, as I type it is Friday evening, Little Tomboy is out at football practice - MrEC takes her and gets a takeaway on the way home, so I can revel in the knowledge there are no more people to be driven anywhere by me, and no cooking to be done!

I've got the usual few projects on the go, including ...

- my ripple blanket

- a remote control box cover (yes I know is a bit random) - hoping it will be next week's FFTW.



- the now-a-bit-late Pink (purple) Zazzle scarf for my friend's 50th




(And no I don't deliberately colour code my crochet hooks to my projects! But it pleases me greatly when they match.)

- the now-very-late cross stitch for my cousin's wedding (which was in July - ah well she'll still love it I hope). Needs a bit of a gentle wash too though I think



- my mystery cross-stitch from this post - you can now see what the pinky blotches were ...




- a scarf which I think was called Traveller Scarf or something, I started it ages ago, and now can't remember what size hook I used, so had to guess when I did a bit of it the other night. As you can see from the photo, the greeny section is ruffling, so I guessed too high a hook. I could just leave it but OCD-me has to rip it back and repeat with a smaller hook. Bah.




My finish for this week is another batch of heart keyrings.

Its a bit cheaty really as this was my Finish for the Weekend post a few weeks back, but as I said then, these have been in a basket in my craft room for the best part of 2 years waiting patiently to be finished.



I have been a Very Good Hooker though and forced myself to get these all completed.



Whether they end up as gifts or craft-fair items remains to be seen. For now I am happy just looking at them all stacked up, so pretty :)



Have a lovely weekend everyone,
Til next time,
Jillxxxx

**************************************************

Welcome to Finish for the Weekend, a weekly chance to link up and share with the blogging community some of the projects you have completed this week. The only rule is that your post must be about an item you have finished this week, hopefully to help reduce some of those piles of UFO's!

Here's how to join in:

1. Write a blog post about your finished project.

2. Link back to Finish for the Weekend by adding this text as a link on your post:

http://emeraldcottage.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Finish%20for%20the%20Weekend

3. Publish your post

4. Link back from here to your post by clicking "Add Link" and adding your post's URL

5. Spread the bloggy love by visiting and commenting on the other Finish for the Weekend posts.

The Finish for the Weekend post will open for new links on a Friday at 12noon London time, and it will stay open until Monday at 12noon to allow for overseas bloggers to join in. These times may vary but I will do my best to keep it roughly the same. Looking forward to seeing all your posts !

Finish for the Weekend

Hello dear friends and readers!

Welcome to this week's Finish for the Weekend, it would be lovely if some of you wanted to join in, see below for instructions :)

Sorry I'm a bit late this week, its been a busy couple of days. Anyway, here I am now with another Finished Object - hurray! I had a rummage around my abandoned projects drawer, and found half a ball of lovely red, white and blue Lily's Sugar N Cream cotton that I'd won in a giveaway a couple of years ago, and of which the other half had been hooked into a circle - what it was going to be I have no idea!

I decided just to add a couple more rounds and use it as a table-mat thingy on my kitchen table, it matches my spotty tablecloth quite well don't you think ?



It also goes well with my red "Juice" jug/vase which was a £1 bargain from the charity shop, I love how bright red it is, sort of a proper Red red if you know what I mean. (Just hope no-one ever tries to drink juice from it as I only ever use it as a vase - bleurgh)



There we go, looking lovely :)
What have you finished for the weekend ?



Til next time,
Jill xxxxx

**************************************************

Welcome to Finish for the Weekend, a weekly chance to link up and share with the blogging community some of the projects you have completed this week. The only rule is that your post must be about an item you have finished this week, hopefully to help reduce some of those piles of UFO's!

Here's how to join in:

1. Write a blog post about your finished project.

2. Link back to Finish for the Weekend by adding this text as a link on your post:

http://emeraldcottage.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Finish%20for%20the%20Weekend

3. Publish your post

4. Link back from here to your post by clicking "Add Link" and adding your post's URL

5. Spread the bloggy love by visiting and commenting on the other Finish for the Weekend posts.

The Finish for the Weekend post will open for new links on a Friday at 12noon London time, and it will stay open until Monday at 12noon to allow for overseas bloggers to join in. These time may vary but I will do my best to keep it roughly the same. Looking forward to seeing all your posts !

Finish for the Weekend

Hello dear friends and readers :)

Welcome to the first proper Finish for the Weekend. (Please see below for How it Works).

In last week's post I talked about my series of posts entitled "Finish for the Weekend". The idea is over the course of the week, to have finished up with an ongoing project, to post about that finish and link to your post here. Hopefully we will get to see lots of lovely finished objects, and posts to inspire us, and some of those UFO's will finally get completed. You can find the rules at the bottom of this post.

My finish this week is a little cross-stitch motif that I started about a year ago, I know this as I was working on it for my Mum's birthday, which is in November!

I liked the symmetry of this design, clearly that's my scientific brain at work. I was going to say scientific and orderly brain, but its not very orderly these days. Anyway I made it up into a simple card to give my Mum this year - better late than never. My Mum is not one for fussiness so I think (hope) she'll like this.

I also made another couple of cards while the papercraft stuff was still out.

I'm not sure about the organza bow on this one, a more opaque ribbon might have worked better. Ah well, as long as you try, you can only learn from your mistakes, am I right?

I think this next one is my favourite so far ....

I especially like the little button on the tag, this was purely to cover up a rogue black blob from my stamp, but actually it finishes it perfectly.
I like this card so much that I seriously think I will make a few more the same, I definitely have enough of the papers for another 5 or 6. I find the design stage takes the longest so I may as well capitalise on a good (well, good in my eyes) design.

I'll leave you today with the start of another cross-stitch. I couldn't look at the purple scarf any longer last night, and I opened a new little cross-stitch kit - naughty Jill. That's why I'm having to do these Finish for the Weekend posts, I keep starting new things. Oh well, its only a small kit, and the hoop then becomes the frame so once the stitching is done, the kit really is complete. Here it is ... can you tell what it is yet ?

Thats it from me, I hope some of you decide to join in with Finish for the Weekend :)
Til next time,
Jill

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Finish for the Weekend

Good evening and happy Friday to you :)
Are you all like me and have lots of unfinished bits and bobs lurking around ?Who fancies joining in with me on getting some of those UFO's done and dusted ? I'm going to call it "Finish for the Weekend".

I've got sooooo many UFO's, I've decided its time to take matters in hand and start completing some of them. Quite a lot are half-made blankets, honestly I am so fickle when it comes to these things, but I am going to try really hard to be a monogamous hooker from now on. As boring as that is. Yawn. I'd much rather flit about between projects, but then of course I miss out on the glory of a Finished Object. Aaaaargh the dilemma!

But no, I am going to try and be faithful to one crochet-love at a time. Well, actually its going to be 2 or 3: I need to be progressing blankets so I am currently working on a ripple one, which is my sort of do-a-mindless-row-every-so-often project:

Then there's my Pink Razzle Scarf (though mine is purple) for my friend's birthday next week. This is my bring-in-the-car-on-the-school-run project, and its also my watching-telly-at-night project. Its a bit complicated, but I've got the pattern in my head now, so I'm able to get through the rows at a reasonable pace without constantly referring to the pattern. Incidentally it's from a copy of the US crochet magazine "Interweave Crochet" which my husband's colleague's wife kindly sends over for me periodically :)

And then finally I'm going to try and have some small (or big I suppose) finishes to show you on a Friday. I have lots of half-finished granny squares, flowers, hearts, and dear only knows what else lying around, waiting to be made into something wonderful. So every Friday I'm going to do a post about a finish I've done this week. Hence "Finished for the Weekend".

It would be super lovely if anyone fancied joining in with me, so I'm not feeling all silly doing this on my own. I thought I could put up a "Finish for the Weekend" post on a Friday, with my finish, and then over the weekend other people could out their links on it to show what they've finished over the course of that week. I'd leave the link up til Monday morning so everyone has plenty of time to join in, you don't have to have finished on Friday, you can still be finishing on Sunday night! I'll only set up the link adding thing if people want to join in, so please do let me know.

So without further ado, here is this week's "Finish for the Weekend" .... you'll have noticed the photo of the heart key-rings at the top of this post, I started a whole bunch of these about 18 months ago to sell at a craft fair. They didn't get completed before the fair and they have sat in a basket waiting to be assembled for nearly 2 years!!!

There is a definite predominance of blue. I have no idea why. I decided to join each pair of hearts in a contrasting yarn, mainly to balance out the blue-ness of it all. I have a basket full of leftover balls of yarn and it's these leftovers that I use for projects this small. I'd love to show you a sweet picture of my little yarn-filled basket all full of lovely foofy balls of yarn, wound perfectly like the way they always are in pictures, and nestling amongst each other is a pleasing fashion. But I can't because my basket is a mess. Well, okay, here is a photo of the mess. I have dumped some small unused balls I found on the top, so that's hiding a bit of the mess anyway.

Anyway, here are some of the colours picked out for each pair of hearts - looking a bit more cheery now ....

I joined a pair of hearts together and did a row of UK double-crochet all the way around, stuffing lightly just before I closed up the last few stitches. Embellished with a little flower and button on the front, and a bead and a charm at the end. I love these little heart charms ....

I hung them on my Easter twiggy tree (yes I know Easter was months ago, don't judge me) and love how they look, little flashes of colour against the pale wall ....

I think I'll save these to give as gifts as I have no plans to do any more craft fairs at the moment. Although I suppose I might consider doing one nearer Christmas. I do still have another 12 or so to complete so I'll have to get rid of them somehow, even I don't need 15 keyrings l!

Til next time,

Jillxxx