Birthday Scorcher

Hello blog-peeps :) We've had a scorcher of a weekend here and I'm feeling ridiculously relaxed and happy. It's been my birthday and the weekend has been filled with all my favourite things - cards, presents, crochet, food, cappuccino, cake, sunshine and, last but not least - in fact most importantly - family.

The Little People were up, awake and raring to go, desperate to sing happy birthday, at 6am .... lovely as it was, 6am is still the middle of the night as far as I'm concerned .... but how can you say no ? I was allowed another 10 minutes of peace while they all scurried off with hubby and busied themselves in the kitchen. Little Miss came in, pinny on and notebook in hand, to take my order for breakfast ...

Another 10 minutes and they all appeared, one after another, singing Happy Birthday, bearing gifts, and delivering breakfast :)

Wow WoW WOW was I lucky - so many lovely presents...
.... 17 balls of yummy yarny deliciousness, the Lucy from Attic24 Stylecraft pack  ...

.... a set of Clover Amour crochet hooks ....

.... a flower-press - I've wanted one of these since I was 8 years old ....

... and this fabby book ....

I'm of the opinion you just can't have enough books. Of any sort, not just crochet. Well, maybe you can have Enough, but you definitely can Never have too many. I was after this book mainly for the pattern for this shawl that I'd seen on Chrissie's blog "Chrissie Crafts" here ...

... yes yes, bit of an extravagance to get the entire book for just one pattern, and a veeeery simple one at that, but there are worse vices to have, and as it turns out the book is FanTASTic. I reeeeeaaaaally wish I'd had this book about 18 months ago when I taught myself to crochet from books and the interweb. No single book or website seemed to have it all.

I think this book would have done the job though, and anyway its nice to have on my bookshelf - my very own copy in all its glossy glory  ...

And that still wasn't all. I've been saying that I would love to take better photos, and had at one stage mentioned a new camera, "for Christmas" I said. Well my lovely hubby, in his usual generous way gave me a new fancypants camera too .... aaaaah he is the best :)

As I mentioned it was roasting hot the last couple of days, so we decided to keep the celebrations simple and low-key. Little Tomboy learned to ride her bike this weekend, so we cycled (me and the older two), freewheeled/stumbled about (Little Tomboy) and ran after/supervised Little Tomboy (hubby) to our local Italian restaurant....

.... the restaurant has a lovely garden area and is right next to a great park ....

.... plenty to keep the Little People amused at the table ....

.... yummy food and drinks - cheers ....

.... a very civilised single candle in my tiramisu "Make a wish Mummy!" ....

.... a play in the park and then home via the californian poppies .... I'm sure they get brighter every day ....

I must confess to feeling veeeeery sleepy when we got home, wine in the afternoon does not a wide-awake Mummy make :) I may or may not have had a mini snooze ..... My mother-in-law "Grandma" came round later on with yet more pressies ... ooh goody !! The butterflies are the lid of a beautiful glass trinket box ...

.... and my friend dropped off a "voucher" for some "Fancy Cameras for Dummies" tuition from her photographer husband .... and some strawberry plants she'd planted up for me ....

.... squash and cake in the garden for dinner ....

.... and a sneaky cappuccino and Yet More Cake before bed ....

Long gone are the days when birthdays meant partying late into the night in a crowded pub, or even a couple of bottles of wine and a dvd with hubby in the evening, and probably a very fuzzy head the next day. No, these days a simple bike-ride, cheeky glass of vino, play in the park and squash and cake for tea is much more me, time spent with my lovely little family, making memories to treasure.   Bliss :)

Little Miss' Beautiful Bright Bag

A short while ago a dear friend of mine cleared out her attic and needed to re-home some yarn. Naturally I selflessly offered to take in the yarn and treat it as my own, how thoughtful of me. And that is how I came to have this pile of PINK yarn.     Wow is it PINK.     P-I-N-K     P--I--N--K

See what I mean ?

The PINK yarn, plus an old denim belt from Little Miss' jeans, was the inspiration for the Beautiful Bright Bag. I wanted a mini-project to make a change from making blankets, and it had to be something that would be finished quickly so I could get instant-hooky-satisfaction. The pink on its own was a bit much, even for Little Miss, so I played about a bit until I got this funky colour combo ....

I totally love this colour combination, I don't often feel 100% happy with my colour choices - I'm soooo indecisive, but this time I felt it was Just Right.
All the yarn is random double-knitting weight, from my stash, and I used a 5mm hook to work up a long rectangle of simple treble stripes (that's a UK treble). I think there were about 30 stitches in a row....

I turned the work at the end of each row, so the finished striped alternate between right side and wrong side. Otherwise the work would have all slanted to the left and ended up sort of parallelogram shaped, but of course I just wanted a rectangle. The stripes worked up really quickly, such a satisfying little project ....

After about 40 rows I decided the length was just right, and then I had to deal with the ends ....

... a lot of ends ...

I added a border of 2 rows of double crochet, and scallops along the two short sides, folded the whole piece up in half and double-crocheted the sides together. The finished outer of the bag is about 6 inches wide, and 8 inches long (totally guessing here :) I didn't even use that much of the pink yarn in the end, but who cares ?!

There was some bright-pink-with-white-spots fabric in my stash, just right for the lining ...

 .... and the denim belt would be perfect for the strap ....

The lining was made from a long rectangle of the fabric. I hemmed along the top and bottom edges....

... then folded it in half, wrong side out, to make a shape the same size as the bag, and sewed up the two sides. Here you can see it right side out, but of course as its the lining and is going inside the bag, it should really be right side in ...

(the next lot of photos are taken in the evening and the light is rubbish -sorry) 

I decided to give the bag a simple button and loop fastening. The loop was just 3 strands of yarn plaited ...

I hand stitched the lining in ... can you see my stitches ? I tried reeeeally hard to make them teeny tiny ....

... then crocheted a couple of little flowers from my Sunflower book, and affixed them to the strap with buttons to match the big button on the front.

All that remained was to hand-sew the strap to the sides of the bag ...

And Ta-Daaa!!! One Beautiful Bright Bag.

I left it on the table overnight, and when Little Miss discovered it in the morning I heard her cry "Mummy! The bag! I love it! Its aMAZing !!!". A Beautiful Bright Bag for a Beautiful Bright girl :)

For the Love of Blog

I really want to share a Finished Project tonight, but irritatingly its Not Quite There, still got the finishing touches to do, you know, the prettifying bits. Much dithering and faffing later and I'm still no nearer choosing, and I decide to check out this Bloglovin thingymajingy that I've added to my blog but know nothing whatsoever about. Out comes the laptop, I log on to Bloglovin, it tells me to do a new post with this in it ....

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

So that's that done then, good-o. Boring bit over. May as well share some photos while I'm here ...

Wildflowers again ... what a stunner ...

Assembly ..... the Almost Finished Project...

A Welcome Sight .... new little planter thingy on my front doorstep ...

More Wildflowers .... I just can't stop myself ...

Birthday Anticipation .... a big squishy parcel arrived today addressed to hubby, I am really hoping it's one of Lucy's packs ....

and ... Almost There .... my son has his last day of exams tomorrow. Its been a long and tiring week for him (and me) but we're nearly there. Roll on tomorrow (Thursday) at 3pm. I've had a request for home-made pizza and lemon drizzle cake for tea to celebrate ... yummy :)

Dilly Dally Weekend

I was going to call this blog post Lazy Weekend, but Lazy didn't seem quite right, so I googled "lazy" which led to "dawdle" which in turn led to "dilly dally", which is a much better title don't you think ?

I don't know about you, but in our family every so often we need a weekend of nothing-special. This was one such weekend. Little Man has his first proper exams this coming week, he gets various bits of extra help due to his additional needs - he is on the autistic spectrum - but more than that he needs to be helped to stay calm and stress-free where possible. So the weekend was very low-key.

...  a quick top-up shop .....

....lots of laundry...

.... bit of sorting in my craft room ...

...... pottering about in the garden (between rain showers) ...

...... admiring the wildflowers growing down the road ...

... apparently they are Californian Poppies I am reliably informed (and verified by google :)....

I spent most non-pottering with Little Miss..... we did some cutting and sticking. We are building a Victorian House, I will share the journey with you when its complete :)

and whilst supervising her homework (she is most disgruntled that Little Man had none - due to his exams) I worked on a bag that she's requested ... LOVE these colours, they are eye-popping .....

Where were Little Man and Little Tomboy while all this was going on ?

Well, Little Tomboy is a gaming addict. Sigh. I try to fight it but its hard work, and this weekend, when calmness was priority, I let her play as much as she wanted. She was in seventh heaven and I barely saw her between mealtimes.

Little Man is also a gaming addict. Sigh again. Its much harder to restrict him though ... "everyone else gets to play more/every day/in the evening/on a school day" and he's right, most of them do. However, lately, and its come as an utter shock to me, he is now going out to play with his friends on his bike, or to the park, or play nerf gun fights (oh dear goodness the noise), without us (me) hovering nearby. His additional needs mean social interaction is difficult for him, but this last year he has developed so much in that area, it really is wonderful to see him come shouting (for he has two volume settings - none or full) - "Mum can I go out with my friends ?". Joy :D Pure joy, is how that makes me feel (aaaaah welling up here as I type - gulp). Pride and joy. He even managed to go swimming with his friends yesterday - albeit he got out early and got dressed without drying himself first (excellent, no need to wash the towel then lol) and bought himself a 10p bag of sweets (amazing restraint considering I'd given him five pounds) and phoned for us to pick him up early.

My Little Man is growing up and I'm so proud. May his week of exams go smoothly :)