Typecast

I thought July was a bit of a quiet month but when I looked back I realised that I'd been up to more than I thought.   My blog (in it's current format) has been in existence for 7 years.  In that time I've written 1269 blog posts (and then some, as I've deleted the odd one here and there) and have had almost 1.5 million visitors to the blog. It's nowhere near as much as many of my blogging peers but I'm pretty proud of my little corner of t'internet because:  this is the first ever blog post on here - From Young Mum To Young Grandparent In 17 Years this is my most viewed post - What Can We Learn From Dance Scenes In Movies this is the most popular recipe post - Minestrone Soup this is the best picture-heavy post - David Beckham's Tattoos this is the surprise success post - How A 15-Year Old Uses Social Media Deep stuff... Do you have any favourites or is there a particular blog post that sticks out in your memory? I'd love to know...

If you follow my twitter feed you'll see that it has recently been peppered with references to crochet and knitting. I have been trying out a little book that Black Sheep Wools sent to me.  It is part of a " Twenty To Make... " series and contains 20 different granny squares with 8 mini-projects and has really easy to follow instructions if you're a beginner like me.  As long as you can crochet a double and a treble stitch and have a bag of wool scraps (what hooker doesn't?) then you should be able to follow the patterns (instructions are given for the US hookers too).  Here's a couple of the granny squares I've done from the book compared to a traditional granny that I had already made.  They were loads easier than I thought they would be to complete and didn't take too much time. Crochet Granny Squares - £4.99 from Black Sheep Wools After completing my first crochet project - an afghan throw - I sold my third born,  bought more ya...

Back in October I was having a bit of a clear-out of all my crafting bits and pieces and found a few crochet hooks.  I'm not sure how I acquired them because I've never been able to crochet - it's the one craft that has always eluded me.  They might have been in the sewing box that I rescued from Mum's house after she died.  Crochet is becoming increasingly popular with lots of pop-up tutorial sessions, stitch and bitch classes and my IG/Twitter/Facebook feeds full of scrumptious pictures of projects that people had completed.  So knowing that I'm a kinesthetic learner I took to YouTube to try and teach myself.  I could do chains but then my rows back and forth ended up as unintentional triangles and I still didn't know how to do a square which everyone had said was easy peasy.  I felt as though I had failed miserably so returned to knitting. When on a visit to my mother-in-law's house about five weeks ago I saw that she was crocheting some squar...

I saw such a cool blog post the other day from " Clara Unravelled ".  In return for some kindness she received last year, she has decided to send something crafty (not a fox, I hope) to six random commenters on her blog post. What a fab idea! This totally fits in with my own personal ethos of "paying it forward".  Now that I have rediscovered my crafting mojo I can join in and send all the crap that I make  some crass-stitch ( not a typo ) or a small knitted project onto other people.  Do you want a bit of that?  I'm going to send something to Clara for coming up with such a fab idea and I'm going to send something to the first five   twenty people to comment on this post (please click through if you're reading elsewhere).  If I get more comments than that I may extend it, depending on how many fabulous (!) things I can make over the next few months.  If I know you well enough I may make something bespoke! If you are lined up to ...

I've been banging on about 'finding the crafter within' again recently and may have mentioned it a few times here * cough * Silent Sunday * ahem * Mother of Purl * cough * but, for once in my life, I've actually finished a few projects. I mentioned that the next one would be a BIG project as I'd seen the pattern for a poncho that looked a bit unusual ( no Clint Eastwood jokes, purleeeeeese ).  Because I am me, I decided to use needles and wool that I already had so I wasn't too sure how it would turn out.  What do you think? As I've changed the pattern slightly I'll tell you what I did. The yarn recommended (a tweedy, rough type yarn) wasn't available so I used double chunky because it was on offer at the market.  I only used one strand of wool instead of two as the original pattern suggests.  The make of the wool I used is Byzantium and I used 4 x 200g balls which cost £3.49 each.  I used size 8 needles and a 5mm cable...

I've been knitting for, like, FOREVER!  I turned a few heads on the maternity ward when I was eighteen years old and knocked out three matinee jackets in a week whilst I was kept in 'for observation' during my first pregnancy.  Before Christmas I was sent a "knit your own snowman" kit as a thank you from John Lewis for sharing their ' Making Of... ' video.  I promised myself that I would get it finished before Christmas Day... AND I DID! Well, I finished the knitting part of it. Then I realised I didn't have any toy stuffing. Then I had a drink and Christmas happened. Then I realised I had caught the knitting bug so I subscribed to a knitting magazine on my Nook HD . Then the market re-opened after Christmas and I took a trip to buy some toy stuffing and some wool and some needles. Then I finished the snowman properly (yay!) Then I made a hat from a pattern in one of the knitting magazines back copies. Then I realised I wanted to kn...