Chirpy chirpy cheep cheep

I was wandering up the road to work last Friday when I heard a little whimpering sound coming from somewhere around my feet. Looking down, I saw this sorry little chap, lying lost and abandoned, half buried under a pile of leaves at the side of the road.

I picked him up, calmed him down and gave him a few sips of water, whereupon he snuggled down among the tissues in my coat pocket and slept for the rest of the day!

Once I got home again, and after a 'bath', he still didn't look too happy, huddled in his blanket feeling sorry for himself.

So, I handed him over to Miss Bertha to nurse back to health.

That did the trick - Miss Bertha is a wonder with the little ones! And before long little Chirpy was feeling much more himself and ready to join in all the regular monkey games.

And he rather enjoyed a little treat at the weekend with me and Iona!

007 is very protective of the little ones!

See you next time!

- Composed using BlogPress from my iPod & finished off on a pc!

Rainbows

Hi everyone!

We seem to be having a lot of rainbows around here at the moment, often very vivid double rainbows which I don’t remember seeing so much of before.

And then, I was lying on the kitchen floor last week with Niamh sitting on me, when I happened to look out the back door and see another rainbow curving around the edge of a cloud just overhead.

All these lovely rainbows have reinvigorated my love of rainbow crochet, so here are the pics of my current rainbow WIPs.

This first one is a prototype for something – I just love the shell pattern! And I love shell patterns in general – but has anyone come across a pattern for a circular shell? Or a shell-type granny square? Or am I going to have to work out my own?

And here’s my third time lucky blanket which is creeping along. I was taking this pic yesterday evening when I noticed a potential disaster right in the middle – was I going to have to frog it all over again?

See that? I’m not quite sure how this has happened - paranoid as I am, I usually leave lovely long yarn tails – so why is round 1 unravelling on its own?

Fortunately, I think I caught it just in time as only one of the round 2 treble clusters had lost its anchor.

I took a needle and some red yarn and ran the yarn around the bottom loops of all the treble clusters which were anchored in round 1.

Problem solved – phew!

See you next time!

Hairem Scarem

Remember the hairy things I was making back in July?

In the end there were 5 of them and over the last week or so, I've finally put them to their intended use.

Please welcome the coolest, newest rock group to hit blogland - Bearded Monkeys.

Featuring 007 and Titch on drums, on keyboard, Lily the Pink .....

... and Tipsy, and on guitar, Zero-X1 (alias Bluebeard the Monkey) and Captain Monkeypants!

They're currently wowing all the hippest venues around the house playing various smash hits and covers. Think 'Angels' by Robbie Williams but substitute the word 'Monkeys' for the Angels ..... I'm loving monkeys instead .....

Or ??? Anyone have any special requests for our Bearded Monkeys to perform?

Perhaps surprisingly, Miss Bertha has turned out to be one of their greatest fans...

In between gigs, the monkeys have taken to careering around the garden on 'their wheels' and discussing cookery!

Hairy Biker Monkeys (have you heard of the Hairy Bikers?)

I think they also have more hairy, geeky and intellectual ambitions too - I recently caught 007 and Zero-X1 huddled over a laptop arguing over the exact dimensions and definition of an Infinite Monkey Cage, or was it preferable to remain free Uncaged Monkeys?

I think they may be getting a tad confused - perhaps all that fresh air and exercise has been too much for them. Do they really think beards like those necessary to join the ranks of sexy science types like Simon Singh and Brian Cox?

- Composed using BlogPress from my iPod & finished off on a pc!


P.S. Anyone fancy a game of Words with Friends? I promise to be completely useless!

P.P.S. We have a new member of the monkey family - meet Chirpy next week!

Miss Bertha Buttons

Hi everybody,

Please let me introduce you to a friend, Miss Bertha Buttons.

She's been with us for a few weeks now, but insisted that I wait until she was properly presentable before introducing her to you.

You wouldn't believe how timid she was when we first met - why, you scarcely needed to look at her before her arms and legs would just drop off in a panic!

Fortunately a little minor surgery (and elastic) solved her 'little problem' and boosted her confidence for appearing in public. We were, unfortunately, unable to correct her squint. (ie. those eyes just refused to go on straight!)

She was especially delighted when I presented her with her new shawl, having a fondness for buttons and the colour purple.

She finds her shawl especially useful for her afternoon tea parties, where she takes full advantage of the opportunity to show it off.

She also now feels sufficiently at home with us to participate in Iona's games, in the role of 'Baby Bertha'.

However, her favourite is to play babysitter for Niamh's dolly.

And she is learning to be less offended by certain comments about 'Big Bertha' or 'Giant Bertha'. After all, she can't help the way she's made!

Bertha stands 11 inches tall from the tips of her feet to the top of her head. She was crocheted using Sirdar Squiggly super-chunky yarn and an 8mm hook, although a smaller hook would have been better.

- Composed mostly using BlogPress from my iPod with photos added later!

All change .....

Bit of chaos while I change my blog template around ......

Moments

A few of the highs and lows of my summer holiday over the last two weeks!




 

• Going home.

• Violas

 

• Wide open views and green fields

 

• Days out in the sunshine

      

• A walk by the river with my big boy.

   

• An old friend

   

• Doesn't everyone have somewhere like this where they spent idyllic childhood summer holidays?

 

• Harvest moon

 

• Quality time!

 And on the down side? 

• Little or no crafting time, so ended up getting myself all frustrated and fed up!
                         
• DH in a permanent bad mood - nobody can do anything right - grrr!

The Birthday Crown

If you remember, a few weeks ago, I showed a pic of some small granny squares. Well, they have now become this:

It was after I made the party hats, I was thinking about what to make for my Mum's birthday, and as an extension of the party hat thoughts, the idea of a crown popped into my head. The original idea was to crochet an inside and an outside for the crown and sandwich some crown shaped card in the middle. But, as I worked on it, I went off that idea as I thought it would be much nicer if the holes in the granny square were still open and see-through.

So, my next thought was to sugar starch it, which is what I’ve done. It was rather an experiment as the granny squares and triangles are made in random acrylic yarns and I’ve only sugar starched cotton before. I just wasn’t sure if the sugar starching would work so well in acrylic.

I do think the end result looked better in cotton, but it still looked good in acrylic too. The acrylic did take longer to dry, and even now that it’s completely dry, some of the squares still look as if they might be a bit damp. It did also take longer to dry – 4 days on the bucket followed by 2 days freestanding.

I had the bin from Alexander’s bedroom all lined up as a mould to dry the crown on but I completely forgot about the effects of gravity on sticky, wet, acrylic! I ended up tying the opposite points of the crown together across the top of the bucket to get them to stand up nicely – thank goodness that worked!

I do think the end result works very well and was very surprised and impressed when I originally took it off the bin. I deliberately tried to stick to jewel-toned yarns and the colours work well too.

This week I also finished the coasters I was making for my Mum’s birthday – finished weaving in the ends about half an hour before I gave them to her!

The coasters were made using this gorgeous pattern from the Yvestown blog which I’d been wanting to try for a while. While I do like the ones I've made, I really love the colours of Yvonne's - why do I never find any yarn in colours that gorgeous?

The accidental granny

Ummm, I have to confess that over the last week I accidentally started a new giant granny! Square this time rather than hexagonal.

I wanted to make a shawl/blanket for a toy I made recently and still have to share and I decided, as a bit of a stash buster, to use all the odd balls of lilacy-purpley yarn I have in my stash. The problem then, once I did that, was that it turned out too nice just to give to a toy and for playing with.

So it's my new, accidental, giant granny. The problem now is that I'm running pout of some shades of yarn. It's all been in my stash for years. Some of it are odd balls of stuff that came free with magazines, some of it I know what it is, some of it I don't. And given how old it is, it's highly unlikely I'll find anything that matches exactly. So I'm going to see what I can get hold of - some solid colours should be fairly straightforward, the varigated yarns won't be so easy. And then we'll see what happens.

I had a little play around to see what a blanket of my purple granny squares might look like.