Tuesday 31 December 2013

A Year of Crafting

I've had a marvellous Christmas back in London and hope you all have as well!  With the new job taking up a lot of time, my crochet projects dwindled a great deal this year-but I am really proud of the things I did manage to make :-)  So here are some highlights :-)

As ever, there have been a few blankets:





Mostly little blankets but still an impressive number!

I've done some little gifts:






I finally made some 'Nanny Bags'




I have tried my hand at making a few more Christmas decorations but couldn't get a decent photo of them-I'm borrowing one from mummycat as she's taken a lovely pic of hers

I'm hoping Jess can take one of hers for me as well...

It's been a fun crochet year-I'm already planning my first blanket of 2014 (because it seems like ages since I made a proper size blanket)


Happy New Year everyone!

Monday 16 December 2013

Taking a walk down memory lane

Phew!  I'm mostly done where Christmas is concerned-I've been crocheting every spare second I get and today, amid piles of wrapping paper, all my family presents are finished, wrapped and posted, all Myf's stocking stuffers are wrapped and about 90% of my Christmas card list is done :-)  I will of course share what I've made but I want to avoid spoilers so it'll have to wait until after Christmas...

I'm finishing up a scarf for a local friend and I'm making a crocheted neck warmer for my Dad and I need to get Myf's main presents wrapped and at some point tidy this mess of a house up!

For my nieces crocheted presents, I wanted to go with something close to my heart.  My paternal grandmother died when I was very young, only around 6 years old and I have no real concrete memory of her.  I know she loved to sew and knit and when I was really tiny, she made three little bags-one for me and one for each of my sisters.

I had it safely tucked away for years as it's all I have from her but I came across it recently during a house sort out and realised that it wasn't knitted as I'd previously thought but crocheted!  And now that I have joined my sisters ranks in the crochet army, I wanted to attempt to figure out how she made them and replicate it to pass on to our next generation.  Turns out it was a very simple granny style she used that was easy to do, so with a couple of personal tweaks, here is what I came up with



I thought using buttons to make the initials would be cute-Myf didn't want any on hers but I'm so tempted to make myself an updated version of my Nanny bag (with buttons!) to carry around.  I've had so much fun making these-I think Nanny would love the fact that three of her grandchildren are avid crocheters-that's the best heirloom I could have :-)