Weekend Crafting

The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men... And Women

I've stated before that I would like to plan, and in fact often make plans. I just don't seem to be very good at it. This is not necessarily a problem and can lead to a lot of fun, it just means keeping an open mind.

For example, I had some nature based crafting planned for my mini-men this weekend. We went through the back garden to the garden gate, paused momentarily to hoist them over the fence after finding our landlord had put a new padlock on the garden gate (apparently my husband has a key) and stepped out into the fire break that separates our garden from a forest. Someone had helpfully dumped a pile of wood off cuts into this area (D'oh) and so in the interests of protecting our house from forest fire AND adding to our wood stockpile I gathered those into a bag I'd brought for our booty. At which point the heavens opened.

So I hoisted my 3 and 4 year back over the five foot fence, think sack of spuds, clambered over myself with minimal dignity and we legged it back through the now wet bushes into the house. Minus the goodies we'd gone out to find.




Our fall back plan was jam tarts so we spent a happy hour in a nice warm kitchen making several batches of strawberry and plum jam tarts, and lemon curd tarts making everything bar the filling from scratch.

Looped at the pub

Part two of my planned crafty weekend was to join my crochet group, Looped, at the pub for an afternoon of crocheting, woolly companionship and some liquid refreshment. This part went pretty much to plan.

My friend Ripple and I took ourselves off to the pub and got there to find a roaring open fire, squashy leather sofas and a group of ladies of all ages happily chatting as balls of yarn magically transformed into beanies, scarves, blankets and in Ripple's case a jumper for her husband.

The young bar staff seemed mildly bemused by this apparition but good humouredly so, keeping the fire roaring and supplying drinks and bar food on demand. As far as I could tell the drinks were not affecting anyone's ability to wrap yarn round a hook and I look forward to seeing these ladies again in a couple of weeks for crochet and a meal.

The Yarn Shop

The unexpected part came from my dissatisfaction with my ripple blanket. I love it, I do. I promised my 4 year old his choice of pattern and yarn. I showed him pictures of blankets and he chose Lucy of Attic24s ripple blanket. Because of his fixation on the colour green (its as aspergers thing) he went for the yarn with the most variations of green, plus a blue for me (explained here).

This yarn happened to be the cheapest in the shop. I tried to dissuade him but he was adamant and I'd promised! So I've been working on it not too unhappily until I got to the most recent colour which basically feels like twine in my fingers.

So Ripple and I were child free, and highly tempted by the proximity of Wondoflex, a good quality yarn shop. It closed at four so we dragged ourselves away from Looped, got lost in various imaginative ways and dashed through the door at 3:55pm.

Ripple was like a kid in a toy shop, it was her first time there. I scoped the place trying to find a combination of good quality, reasonable price and of course lots of green.



I found what I was looking for in Cleckheaton's Country 8ply, pure wool.

Ripple No.2

I got home, grappled with my conscience and decided that to keep my promise I had to give my mini-man the choice although I was fairly confident I would be starting a new ripple for him that evening, it was just so much softer.

No.

Response was "my brother will like that."




As you can see I did get to start a new ripple blanket. This is a mini one bug enough to cover a pillow. It's for his brother. Looks like I'll be grinning and bearing the cheap yarn for his.

Lesson learned, next time take him to a good wool shop to choose. And in the meantime, I have some lovely new yarn in my ever increasing stash.

Hope you had a lovely weekend and wishing you a happy Handmade Monday!

ClairLou