Half Term and a Harty Crochet Hook

Not a lot of creativity of the crocheting kind has been happening on Planet Penny over the past week. It’s been half term and Higgins and I have been visited by our favourite little boys. (And a big one and we like him too, but he’s slightly less noisy!) In the middle of it all I was sent a lovely present and if you are wondering what a Harty crochet hook is, all will be revealed presently.

It’s been sooo cold and grey, and now they’ve all gone home Higgins is sulky and I’m feeling grumpy. Spring cannot come soon enough…

Higgins had such a lovely time having someone around who can do running. I have my good points as far they go from a doggy perspective, but I’m rubbish at running…

Boys also do interesting things with sticks…

…and dogs like that.

And the Harty hook? Well I had a message from the lovely Nicola via the Planet Penny Facebook Page saying she would like to give me one of her beautiful Harty crochet hooks, I just had to choose the style and size. That was the most difficult bit, there’s such a lovely selection which you can see on the Fleabubs Website.

I eventually chose this one…

And I had enough quiet moments to crochet up some little flowers…

…and finish the edging on my baby blanket to test it out. (Not a moment to soon as my new great-niece arrived a few days ago! )

I’ve not used a hook with a handle before and I really recommend it. Very much more comfortable to hold, especially if you are using a small hook as you don’t have to grip so hard. Thanks you so much Nicola!

I’ll leave you now so I can get back to the fire, the flowers and the hook but not before I leave you with a link to Handmade Harbour for Handmade Monday Linky. Do call in and see what everyone else has been up to.

See you again soon…

Mollie Makes and a Little Down Time

This was the week that I finally decided I wasn’t going to beat the bugs on my own and headed off to the doctor. So, with a large box of antibiotics and some concern from the doc that I’ve been overdoing things I’ve tried very hard to keep myself confined to the sofa. This was helped by Higgins’ favourite Post Lady arriving with my copy of Mollie Makes with a crochet project which looked right up my street.

I’ve been very focused lately on creating my own original ideas so it was nice to relax and enjoy someone else’s pattern! This garland has been devised exclusively for Mollie Makes by Emma Lamb and is very easy, and oh so pretty. I love Emma’s colour palette, very delicate and pretty and very much in the Mollie Makes style.

But I have lots of odds and ends of Planet Penny cotton in the Planet Penny palette so I’ve made my own interpretation of Emma’s garland…

Nothing delicate about this colour palette!

I thought it might be fun to try a little Mollie Makes styling for the photos…

I don’t know whether all that was strictly restful, but I am definitely on the mend now!

This is a perfect project for using up yarn from other projects, and I found the Planet Penny Cotton ideal. I’ve just been looking on line for approximate yarn prices and found that Debbie Bliss Cotton, 50g /84m is around £3.30 a ball and Rowan Cotton Glace 50g/115m is around £4.95 per ball. The Planet Penny Cotton packs are £36.50 per pack of 14 50g/125m balls making them just £2.60 per ball. I like it more than ever!

Spring is trying hard to arrive here in Norfolk, it was very nearly mild yesterday, and taking my camera out when Higgins and I go walking is essential. Otherwise I’d miss recording little sights like this…

…and yesterday’s evening sky…

And finally, I know some of you feel deprived if you don’t get your Higgins fix and he has been working very hard at being cute this week. (He needs to, he’s eaten the corners off yet another cushion!)

I’m joining in as usual with Handmade Monday over on Handmade Harbour which starts on this evening. I’m off to walk Higgins while the sun shines and I’ll be back soon….x

Keeping Mobile!

If last week’s post was all about the Hearts and Flowers Mobile, this week has just been about keeping mobile, full stop! Last Monday morning I was proceeding blamelessly down the road in my little car, an old faithful which has been in the family for years, and an elderly man pulled out of a side road straight into me. He confessed that he just didn’t see me. Neither of us was hurt, just shaken, and I thought I had got off lightly with a damaged bumper. Alas, an inspection at the garage discovered that all sorts of things had happened under the bonnet (you can tell I’m not terribly sure what happens under the bonnet!) and my car was deemed beyond economical repair.

I’ve forgotten which insurance company used to trumpet that they don’t make a drama out of a crisis, but it certainly wasn’t ours! I won’t bore you with the tale of how many hoops they produced for us to leap through, even when it was established I was completely blameless. I’ll gloss over the gibbering frustration and cut to the happy ending which was that the lovely man in our local garage (we went to primary school together) produced an ideal replacement which ticks all the boxes, particularly of transporting my mum and her wheelchair. And in the nick of time as Tim has just headed off in his car which is about to spend a week in the car park at Luton Airport. (Not Tim you understand, just his car!) So I’m mobile again, and I’ve got a much better use for hoops than jumping through, as you will see…

We’re about to plunged back into Winter apparently. I saw a newspaper headline yesterday which screamed “48 HOURS OF SNOW HELL!!” some people can expect “UP TO 10CM!!!” That’s around 4 inches if you are reading this in the US, where by all accounts some of you are sitting under 4 FEET and more of the stuff. If you are, I’m thinking of you. I’m sure you are coping better than the UK where the default position seems to be of ‘making a drama out of a crisis’ again. SO embarrassing!

So that’s why I’m going back to earlier in the week when the sun shone and Higgins and I went out into the garden to spot signs of spring. The primroses are still looking good…

There was just the one violet…

…a solitary crocus..

..and of course, my favourite snowdrops…

I brought this piece of Spring indoors too…

A good use for a favourite cup which has been glued back together after an unfortunate incident with a tabby cat!

And those hoops we were jumping through ? Well, I’ve made another mobile, for the knitters this time. Remember the Christmas ornaments from Day Two of the Advent Calendar? I just loved the mini yarn balls and needles so much I wanted to use them again…

It would be perfect for hanging in a craft corner…

…and a great way of using yarn scraps. (It reminds me of the story of the old lady who had a box in her dresser labelled ‘Pieces of String To Short to be Useful’, I have bags of yarn like that!)

Tomorrow I am back to needlefelting, neglected for too long. I have a group of 14 ladies from or local W.I.S.E. group (Women In Search of Entertainment) I just hope I can entertain them with a needlefelting class…we are making hearts and I hope to have some pictures for my next post.

I’m linking up with Handmade Monday later today which you’ll find hosted by Wendy over on Handmade Harbour and…

I’ll be back soon, have a lovely week …x

Hearts and Flowers Mobile – The Reveal!

I can’t believe it’s taken me all week to get to the ‘big reveal’ for the Hearts and Flowers Mobile project I was working on last weekend. I’ve spent a lot of time keeping metaphorical plates spinning and I’m so glad I’ve got the routine of Handmade Monday to keep me ‘regular’, once a week at least! I think if I was asked to pick just one piece of advice to give to someone trying to get their head around blogging it would be make a routine, and stick to it. I know when I started out it was so easy to put off a post and then have so many photos, so many ideas that it would take a huge effort of will to sit down and turn it all into something potentially interesting to someone else. Right now the mid week post keeps getting put off because of ‘stuff’ getting in the way, but I’m hanging on the the weekend post for dear life until everything settles down a bit.

We’ve had all sorts of weather thrown at us in the UK over the past days, but I made the most of a brief mild spell to nip into the garden to see what was going on and found these…

…with a little help from my friend!

I love snowdrops. They look so delicate and yet brave the elements every year to let us know that Springtime will arrive, eventually…

There is an old rhyme which says…

The snowdrop, in purest white array,

First rears it’s head on Candlemas Day.

Candlemas Day falls on the 2nd February, so it must be true!

Back indoors though it was rather a struggle to photograph my Hearts and Flowers Mobile. Ideally I need a large blank space, a white corner of a room with no distracting background stuff going on. But I live in a very small cottage, my studio is packed with things and the mobile is just under a metre or 3 feet long so I hope you’ll bear with me…

I’ve used the garland pattern to make the hearts and flowers using the Planet Penny Cotton colours (the pattern and yarns are available from the Etsy shop). I’m very happy that it worked out exactly as I had pictured it, and that doesn’t happen very often!

It’s triggered another idea, so I hope I get time to make a start this week. My other ongoing project is building a website for our entry in this year’s Norfolk and Norwich Open Studios. This will be the third year that I and my friend Kit Calladine the printmaker will be taking part, but this time we are part of an art trail with six other local artists which is very exciting. Before long I will put a link to the website so you can find out all about us, and hopefully some of you may even pay us a visit!

And this also means I must return to the felting needle. I have a plan for a piece for the Taster Exhibition but it is very easy to have the image in your head for so long that you forget you haven’t actually made it yet!

So altogether I have quite a bit to keep me out of mischief , and I promise I won’t forget to call back here to tell you all about it!

Meanwhile, I shall leave you with a link to Handmade Harbour where after 6pm this evening (UK time) you will find lots of other busy crafters and makers taking part in Handmade Monday.

I’ll be back soon…x

No Time for Crochet Hearts!

Hello! I thought I’d start with cheery daffodils ‘cos I’m going to moan…only a bit, but I’ve had so little time to be creative this week, and all I really want to do is make more crochet hearts because I have a cunning plan! I had a flash of inspiration last week, sourced the very thing I wanted on line and when the box arrived I thought yessss…that’ll do the trick and life piled in behind and filled up all my available minutes.

So, darn…and other, more colourful expletives. However I’m not going to spoil the whole thing by rushing it, or giving the game away so you’ll have to wait until later in the week I’m afraid!

One thing I did do was to redisplay the Hearts and Crochet Garland. I wanted to put it on the dresser to instil a little Spring like colour to cheer things up so I carefully divided it into two pieces. I’m happy with the way it works…

…and it’s most decidedly cheerful!

A complete change in the weather means we’ve swapped the snow and grey clouds for this…

…but losing the snow so quickly means this…

and also…

…but there were a few places where Higgins could walk rather than swim…

He came back and parked himself on his favourite look out post, he does prefer to admire the great outdoors from the comfort of an armchair I’m afraid!

Thinking of crochet hearts got me digging around in the archives, back to last February in fact, when I made this for the dresser…

I never did write a pattern for the whole piece, but the pattern for the crochet hearts you can find here if you are thinking ahead to Valentines Day.

I’ll leave you now to get back to the crochet but in the meantime do call over to Handmade Harbour to check out the Handmade Monday links. Lots of busy crafters making beautiful things! Don’t forget, you can join me on Facebook, Pinterest or Twitter!

See you soon…x

Crochet Hearts and Snowy Weather

Four pm and the first flakes of a promised band of snow have started to fall as the light fades. Higgins hasn’t been beyond the garden today because there’s so much ice about and I’m paranoid about slipping over, damaging myself and not being able to walk, drive and generally take care of my immediate responsibilities, namely my Mum, Henry and Higgins. Snowy roads I can cope with, ice? No!

So I’ve been going a little stir crazy this week what with treacherous conditions and antisocial germs. I can’t imagine what it would be like without being able to reach outside my own little orbit and communicate in cyberspace. It’s not like I haven’t been busy, it’s just a bit solitary round here.

Yesterday’s walk was very bracing. Higgins has a new coat, just the same as the last one – red is definitely his colour – but a size larger. You may have noticed the one he’s been wearing is rather Pooh Bearish, snug and a little too short. I’ve been saving this one for the snowy weather, and it was perfect, reaching all the way down to keep his rump cosy! I think he liked it too because he ran all the way out…

…all the way around the fields…

…and back home again!

Not the most attractive angle, but you try getting in front of him!

It’s been extremely busy in the garden. I’ve put an assortment bird feeders just outside the glazed garden door and it’s been fascinating to watch the birds flocking to feed. The house sparrows who live in the roof, the robin, a colourful assortment of finches, several blackbirds, blue tits, a thrush and a fieldfare. I had suspended a wrinkly apple in the bush out of reach of a greedy dog, and there was quite a lot of kerfuffle as the fieldfare wrestled it to the ground, and then proceeded to demolish it whilst beating off any other bird that dared to come within pecking distance. It was mainly the blackbird!

This morning the blackbird had decided to fight back and had eaten quite a bit of apple before the field fare turned up with a couple of chums. The area round the garden door is a mass of bird prints and scuffles now, and I’m nearly out of apples!

I’ve had to abandon the studio this week alas, the snow on the skylights made it too dark, and it seemed silly to heat it as well as the house, what with all the to-ing and fro-ing and opening doors and letting in cold air so I’ve been crocheting in front of the fire quite a bit.

It might be snowy outside but February and St Valentines Day is just around the corner so I’ve been revisiting my Hearts and Flowers Garland Pattern which is one of my favourites.

It’s quite versatile, the little hearts are pretty on their own…

…and the flowers are simple to make, are a great way to use up short lengths of yarn and make a simple but beautiful decoration on a polystyrene ring…

I’ve attached clasps on individual hearts too, they look pretty on a key ring or as a bag charm…

If you like the look of these you might be interested in the current Giveaway on the Planet Penny Face Book Page which is a sample pack of all the Planet Penny Cotton yarns with a crochet hook and the Hearts and Flowers Garland Pattern. It’s running until tomorrow morning so you still have time to join in!

I’ll leave you with the usual link to Handmade Harbour where there is a special Handmade Monday Linky running to celebrate the 100th Handmade Monday post. There will be lots of goodies to win during the week too, so do pay a visit and find out all about it.

Wherever you are, have a lovely week, and I’ll be back soon…x