African flowers

My progress on my one a day project has been slow.  This is partly due to being busy doing other life stuff, and also cause I've been doing other crochet projects.

To get a bit of motivtion, I've pulled out a pillow fill I had in my cupboard, that is a perfect size for my african flower pillow. I've pinned it on, and am slowly joining up african flowers.

I've propped it up on my piano so you can see my progress so far....

I'm linking up with all the other one a day projects on Gingerbread Girls blog. You must go and check out some of them, maybe you'll find the inspiration for your next crafty work.

Right now

Right now I'm...

:: loving being on leave from work for school holidays

:: planning activities and adventures with my daughter (think rollerskating, circus workshop and craft)

:: missing chocolate and sweet tea (as I'm challenging myself to eat no sugar in July)

:: watching Whip It for the first time, an awesome chick flick

:: flagging patterns in my many knitting and crochet books for A 2nd Year of Projects

:: packing snow clothes for our day trip to the snow (and little one's first EVER snow experience), think snowmen making, snowball fights and tobogganing.

:: mapping out my planned jaunt to Bendigo, to include op-shopping and a visit to Bendigo Woollen Mills factory...and some serious yarn buying

:: joining up my 43 african flowers into a pillow like this

What are you doing right now?

I'm linking in with gingerbread girl.

African flowers

I'm loving doing my hexagons and posting a pic on instagram each day. 

37 hexagons done, maybe around 15 more to go. The challenge will be joining them all into a square pillow shape. I've sort of worked out in my head how to go about it, hopefully it's as easy as I think it will be!

I'm linking in with Gingerbread Girls one-a-day meme and the lovely one-a-day projects. Cheerio!



One a day tally

Having just come back from my holidays and being in the middle of university exams - I've made no progress on my African flower hexagons.  When on holidays, I only took with me my knitting WIP, and my crochet hooks.  I didn't want to be lugging around a bag of wool.

I was about three days into my holidays when I made a whirlwind visit to Spotlight - to buy some wool for my new crochet project.

 
I've been banging on about wanting to start crocheting a new blanket - so now its a giant granny square blanket.

Travelling in a car for hours, relaxing at our holiday cottage, and having cups of tea with my nonna provided me with lots of time to crochet.

This is where I'm up to - 26 rounds.  This will be my second one-a-day project.  My intention is to do one round each day.  Some how I lost the dark green wool ball in my travels. It's now replaced so I can get back at it.

My original intention was for this blanket to be our couch blanket.  But it may end up being a present for someone. I will see how I feel about it once completed.

I'm also working on some Christmas decorations.  Last year I did some of those lovely bauble decorations from Attic24.  I loved making them, and intend on doing some more this year too.

Have you got any Christmas projects planned?

Please have a look at some of the other one-a-day projects over at Gingerbread Girl. I'm looking forward to seeing how much progress everyones made while I've been off-line on holidays.

Cheerio!

Whirling - one a day week 3

This week has been a whirl – a birthday party dinner at my place, a fly in visit from my father, planting tomato and basil seedlings, studying for my university exams,  preparing for our holiday trip…and a bit of crocheting and knitting!

As a result I've been a very slack blogger - only lurking on other people's blogs, and not blogging myself.  Me bad!

I’ve got the hang of join as you go method for the African flowers.  I used this blog tutorial as a guide.  I’m now at the point where I’m crocheting a new African flower and joining it up – and ignoring those in my pile as the colours are not quite right at this point.  They should be ok for the reverse side.

I made sure to take this photo during morning daylight – making it a bit better on the colours.

Its two more sleeps until we fly off to Perth to visit my family.  Having an Italian heritage - I have a very, very large extended family over there.  My hubby always finds it a bit overwelming! There's going to be a big bbq for my father's 60th birthday with amazing food.  My daughter is the only grandchild and great grandchild - so she will be completely spoilt and the centre of attention, the best way to be.

We will be travelling down to Margaret River, staying in a mud brick cottage in a middle of the bush - for a mini holiday on our own. For those of you who aren't familiar with Margaret River - it's a relatively small town with amazing beaches, beautiful forests, great winerys and lovely food.

Pop on over to Gingerbread Girls blog to have a look at the other one a day projects.

Cheerio.

One-a-day tally

Ok, I'm up to 26 african hexagon flowers - only 5 this week, but I have joined some up.

The colours don't quite show up right when taking photos at night - oh well.

I'm pretty happy with the black yarn surrounding the hexagons.  My plan is for them to be a pillow for my lounge - which is black colour. This is a pillow on flickr that I'm using as a model.  Have a look at the granny strip pillow next to it...how awesome is that?

Make sure you check out some of the other blogs doing one-a-day...there are some really diverse crochet and knitting projects going on.

I'll leave you with a yarn bombing story in my city....the yarn bombers are fighting back!  See how many bad puns you can spot in the story.

Cheerio.

One a day - week 1

Tuesday tallies...I'm up to hexagon 21 for my one a day project.  I started doing one a day on Saturday - adding 3 to my growing pile.  Doing one a day is exactly what I need to get me working on this project that's been left, abandoned in my work basket.  It's African hexagon flowers.  I love making them but got distracted by other things - other craft and day to day life. I'm hoping to have the project finished in a couple of weeks.  My  next step will be to start joining as I go.

Here's my nice little stack of hexagons.

And all of them in their colourful beauty...the bottom three are those I've done since crocheting one a day.

My plan is to join them up into a rectangular pillow or maybe a hexagon.  I'm still searching blogs and flickr for some pillow inspiration.

Head over to Gingerbread Girl to find more one a day projects.  Some are now complete!

One a day project

Gingerbread Girl has put together a new ravelry group - One a Day - to help to tackle a big project.  The idea is that by doing one piece - a granny square or a row - each day, the project will get completed.  More info about it is on Gingerbread Girls blog.

I've jumped on board - as this will motivate me to get working on some WIP that are sitting around and not progressing.

The One a Day project I'm working on is my African Hexagon Flowers.  Apologies for the retro tablecloth - that detracts (or maybe distracts?) a bit from the flowers!

 

They've been sitting in my work basket for a couple of months now.  I'd done 17 hexagons and I need (I think) around 46.  My plan is to turn them into a pillow for our lounge room couch. I followed this tutorial  for the hexagons, but instead used a size 4 hook.

No success as yet on finding a pillow pattern or instructions, though I've found some lovely photos on flickr of rectangular, square and hexagon shaped pillows that will be a good reference.

Progress - 19 hexagons done, 27 to go.

My other WIP - the knitted shrug (mini cardigan) for my daughter - is now progressing well.  If you recall - I had completed around 2/3rds of it - and lost it...somewhere.  Over the weekend I had a conference I had to attend - where I had to sit and listen to a lot of speakers.  A perfect opportunity to do some knitting.  I got a few strange and admiring looks - it was NOT the sort of place one normally does knitting.  But, it means I'm now a third of the way through...good progress.  

Have you ever done your craft in some strange places?  It's a first for me.

OK.  I'm off now to check out and see what some of my favourite bloggers are up to before bed time.  Cheerio.