Crafting 28/365...

...knitting socks...

I started these socks, oh I don't know, about a year ago maybe, and well they had been abandoned. However last night I felt the urge to do some knitting, so I went upstairs rummaged through the many, many unfinished knitting and crochet projects and dug these out. Surprisingly I managed the whole bottom part (heel to toe) so who know maybe I'll have them finished in less than another 12 months!

Lilley Stitches...

Sorry I have been such an absent blogger of late, I do intend to be better, promise.

I've just popped in to let you know, I have finally set up my new shop!

xxx

Starting to rest and prepare...

As my due date draws nearer, I'm starting to finally realise what is happening! Yes it's true in approximately 3 weeks and 2 days I will be having a baby a real life little person to look after! As a result I probably won't be around that much over the following few weeks...I do seem to have a renewed energy recently, but it's more focused on cleaning and tidying and doing selfish things for myself! I may also be slower to respond to messages, I'll still be about checking in and reading other's blogs, I just may be a little more laid back and slow!

There are so many different feelings and emotions you go through when you are pregnant...it truly is as many will tell you a 'rollercoaster', if I tried to list them all it would take all day...but I'm happy to say that at the moment the main feeling I have is one of a calm, thoughtful, relaxful state.

I have a few pictures to share with you of yet another baby blanket!



It's still a work in progress, that like most things I'm working on slowly and thoughtfully. I'm using Rowan Calmer yarn (the website is down and the moment so I can't post a link) which is 90% cotton and 10% polyester, it's not the softest yarn in the world but it's quite thick and chunky (although that may partly be down to the stitch I'm using).

The stripey hoodie I posted about last week is so so close to completion now...all that's left is for me to stitch on some buttons. I'll post pictures of it in all it's glory when it is truly finished.

Happy Monday xxx

Making more baby things...

...and doing very little else.

I have become so incredibly lazy the last few days. I know it's down to being pregnant and all that jazz, but I still feel very very guilty about it. Johnny is lovely and tries to encourage me to do just nothing but sleep, but there is so much to do! Granted if the baby were to decide to make an appearance today he would have clothes to wear (all washed and folded and put away in size order!), a bed to sleep in (again all washed and ready to be made up), transportation (both in the form of wheels and seat - but not yet sling), nappies to wear, toys to play with (if he so desired), and a million other things he probably doesn't need. My hospital bag is packed (almost) due to the fact my mum and sister posted me one already made up, I think they were starting to worry I would never get round to sorting it out myself! So in fact there probably isn't all that much to do now...but I feel like there is!! I can't even think of anything off the top of my head, except perhaps little things like a bit of hoovering and clean the bathroom....but I still feel like every moment sat on the sofa watching terrible daytime television and crocheting is a wasted moment!

Well not entirely wasted as this was what I produced from yesterdays sofa lounging...

Approximately half a baby hoodie in red and white stripes...I love the colours and the style of the stripes, although Johnny is calling it the jester hoodie. I got the pattern from this book, that I bought a while ago. I seem to have altered the pattern slightly, unintentionally, but it still seems to be working out OK!

It calls for some duffel style buttons, so I'm planning on making some up out of polymer clay today for it...but I can't decide whether to have stripey red and white, or solid red and white alternately or just plain old red ones...

I have to go out today to post some items, which is wonderful, because it is so beautifully sunny and springlike, and it gives me an excuse to leave the house and enjoy it.

Happy Wednesday xxx

P.S. 4 weeks today til my due date!!

Chocolate and Baby Blankets...

I'm still working on a baby blanket a started a million years ago (well maybe not that long ago, but all the way back here anyway), I knitted up the squares, but well they are not the squarest of squares so I begun to edge them in crochet and then kind of forgot about them! That is until yesterday when Johnny said I was absolutely not allowed to begin on anything else for the baby until that blue blanket was finished! He can be such a meany sometimes. So anyway I continue to edge those squares I did.

All was going well until I discovered that I hadn't started out with white and two shades of blue, but an off-white creamy colour and 2 shades of blue!!! I was distraught but Johnny pulled me through my anguish and attempted to tell me it didn't matter...I'm still not sure it doesn't look a bit silly as the original creamy yarn used in the main blocks looks slightly yellow when positioned next to the more recently purchased white which lines the dark blue, but hey ho, these silly mistakes seem to happen more and more in my pregnant state!

They're still not attached to each other but they are ready to be!! Now only to decide how to do it and in what colour...that could well take another 3 months at least!!

On a completely unrelated note I made the most ridiculously chocolately chocolate cookies on Friday, they are amazing, but the fact that we still have some of the 12 I baked left just goes to show you how intensly chocolately they are!

They are from this book I picked up at a bargain price many years ago, I have made these triple chocolate cookies before but think I forgot how insanely rich they really are! The recipe calls for 90g of milk chocolate 90g of white chocolate and 300g of dark chocolate!!! I didn't even use that much, as I couldn't find any white chocolate that wasn't nestle I used 150g of milk chocolate and as 300g of dark chocolate just seemed crazy I only used 200g!

I indulged in them still warm with some hot chocolate and family tree investigating on Friday afternoon, and lovely it was indeed!

Happy Sunday all...I'm probably going to go and sleep a lot...after weeks of complete inability to sleep due to kicking, overheating and being purely uncomfortable, my body seems to have developed an ability to ignore all these things and has decided all I really need to do is sleep, it could sleep all day and all night if I let it. xxx

Some Zesty Baby Treats...

After the massive closing down sale of my favourite place to by yarn, a couple of months ago, I now have quite a large quantity of lovely expensive rowan yarn to use up. One of my favourite finds was a bag (10 balls in total) of the wonderful milk cotton in, the colour I have just discovered is called, "fruit salad" (I think I love it even more now!). I also have to share with you the fact that those 10 balls of yarn cost a grand total of £11.50!!

Despite the fact that Johnny has some horrible aversion to orange as a colour, I have crocheted both a baby blanket and a baby hat, with the above yarn and I still have more than 5 balls left!!

I used a stitch I hadn't done before, with the blanket..it's very simple double crochet chain double crochet, putting double crochet into the gap where the chain below is, and I think it works really well as a baby blanket because it's nice and light. Then I just did a few rows of double crochet around the edge.

The hat I managed to knock up pretty quickly and easily (whilst delighting in watching Heston cook up incredible wonders!)...working completely out of my head...in about 20 minutes! The only pattern I had for a baby hat in crochet was done flat and then stitched together rather than in rounds, which seemed a bit silly to me, so I just used the basis of my oversized beanies, but made it much much smaller!!

I'm not really quite sure how big a new born baby's head is exactly and some of the hats I've bought for him look scarily huge, but I think I've got it close to right! We'll just have to wait and see I guess...5 weeks today!!

Happy Wednesday xx

Getting Ready...

Here are some shots of my preparations for my new shop...

And some more shots of my finished Little Multi-Coloured Houses embroidery hoop....

I've backed the hoop with some little houses fabric I've had forever in fear of using it because I love it so much!!

That's all for today...I must return to washing all the many many baby things I have been given...not quite sure how many sheets a baby needs...but I'm pretty sure I now most certainly have enough!! I've also been awake most of the night, the baby has taken to head butting me in the ribs, which wakes me up in quite a panic, so hopefully I'll be able to get a little more sleep before attempting any crafting today!

xx

Lilley Stitches....

Hello...
I just wanted to quickly share with you some stitching I did for the banner and avatar for my new shop.

I'm off into the lovely sunshine to make my way to the hospital for my last scan....that means the last time I see the baby until he is really here in the flesh!!

xx

Some completed corsages...

An update on yesterdays flowers...some of them at least...have now become corsages, ready to adorn a coat, a bag, a scarf...well anything you like really.

And, although not ready and open just yet I'm also in the process of setting up my new shop, LilleyStitches, I'm very excited about this new venture indeed.

I don't feel like I need to sacrifice my time spent on my other shops either because my making of buttons, beads, ninjas and the like mostly happens during the day when my beloved is at work whereas crochet and embroidery very much tends to be a sat on the sofa in the evening kind of endeavour.

And on that note I am off to make some buttons. xx

Flowers...

After a bit of a panicked trip to the hospital yesterday morning (everything was OK in the end) and a very bad nights sleep, I really didn't feel up to much, so I spent most (well maybe all) of the rest of the day under a blanket on the sofa doing some crochet.

And I whipped up these little lovelies...

I'm going to turn them all into corsages, in various colour combinations. After much pondering on the subject I also think I'm going to open a new etsy shop. I love all the colourfulness and silliness of the polymer clay objects I produce, but also really want to be able to produce nice high quality pieces of embroidery and crochet, although I do still do this at the moment, I'm not sure it really fits in with the rest of the items in my store. I find it quite difficult to get items to sit well amongst each other and think perhaps it's time to open a different more sophisticated (maybe) store as well.

I know it's going to be difficult to run and promote 2 separate stores, especially as I'm already selling on Folksy and dawanda as well, but I think it will be worth it in the end.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see!

Happy Tuesday xx

A Baby Blue Blanket...

As promised...here are some pictures of the (still very much in progress) baby blanket I've been knitting. I'm by no means an expert knitter, but I do really enjoy doing it as, a result this blanket will be incredibly simple, but well loved I hope.

I've been using Rowan Milk Cotton, I'm not really sure what inspired someone to make a yarn out of milk protein, but it is so so beautifully soft and light. I think it will make a really lovely summer blanket once it's finished, which is good because the chances of me finishing it before the summer are probably quite slim!

I'll keep you updated on the progress, now I must return to the making of many many more ninjas!!!

Socks in progress...

Since I have such little space for creating at the moment, I have been mostly knitting the last few weeks. It started with a blanket I will no doubt never ever finish, partly because I so rarely have the foresight to buy yarn in bulk and for that reason I found myself back in store to purchase more, but was quickly distracted by a large sale bucket that had sprung up since my last visit.

All the reduced yarn was at least 50% off and I found myself wandering around in a daze with armfulls of yarn I will no doubt ever put to good use. However I did purchase a single ball of this wonderful raspberry Rowan Calmer. I had a sock pattern knocking around that required the same yarn and had had success using last year so I thought it the perfect project.

Craft Room Mayhem!!

I started to sort through all my craft supplies last night and my oh my are there a lot!!
Way more than I ever realised I possessed!!
After gathering everything from all it's little nooks and crannys around the house this is what it looked like...
Argh!! Once I had got this far I just wanted to give up on everything and go watch T.V. But I soldiered on through it and actually really enjoyed putting everything together in an order which actually makes sense to me and hopefully will prove to be more inspiring.

So this is the almost finished result...

I mean there is still more to do, like get a table and some storage boxes, and set my sewing machine up!! Since I can remember I have been sewing on a glass coffee table in my lounge, it really isn't practical and if you go to fast the whole table shakes and acts as though it might smash into a thousand pieces at any moment!

There were many good outcomes to this sorting, the best probably being the amount of half finished work I have been building up over time, lots of which I had completely forgotten even existed. So hopefully now I might even finish some of these projects....

I also came across the first thing I ever crocheted, this, still not finished (!), stripey scarf...

I've spent the morning moving flower corsages from my old etsy shop to my new one....

More tidying and sorting for me and the rest of day.