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Friday, January 1, 2016

Happy New Year 2016

Wishing all my friends and family a happy and prosperous 2016

2015 ended on a quiet note here. Brenda had  a few friends over for a sleepover. It was a bit of a bittersweet night since they are all turning 18 in the next few months, and I am sure that next year they will not want to spend New Years at home. Life is definitely changing.  We didn't do much, just had pizza, chips etc and stayed up to watch the fireworks and have champagne at midnight. Having spent the last 5 New Years in Johannesburg I can definitely say that Durban has a lot more fireworks than Johburg. The girls of course, stayed up long after I went to bed, and Brenda only got up at midday.

Today was quiet, apart from a trip to the shops to exchange the scale that I bought yesterday that was not working.
I spent the day doing the obligatory reflecting on what I want to achieve for this year, as well as setting up my planner for the year. So, what I want to achieve for the year is:'

  • complete sky blanket 2016
  • eat healthier
  • read 50 books
  • plan my meals and make a concerted effort to keep some organisation in the freezer so that we actually eat what is in there!

The first square for sky blanket is complete. Partly cloudy - although it did seriously threaten to be stormy, but nothing came of it.

Wednesday, December 30, 2015

The one where I introduce my Sky blanket 2016

http://youlittlesewandsew.com/2015/11/sky-blanket-2016/
 
 
Until my early 20's I was mainly into wool crafts - knitting mostly, although I did do a little bit of crochet. I knitted anything - jerseys, blankets, toys for myself, friends, friends babies or really anybody who was prepared to accept them.
When my daughter was born you would have thought that I would have knitted loads for her. Sadly, for some reason I stopped knitting, and have only ever knitted her one jersey, when she was about 3. I don't know if it was that I was too busy or I just got burnt out, but for years I didn't knit/crochet at all.  I did still look at patterns and browse wool shops, but that was as far as it went.
After a few years I started scrapbooking and card making and approached this with the same obsession as I had the knitting in my youth. However, in time I felt the need to get back to my first love and started crocheting in 2013. Why crochet and not knitting? I think it is a little bit more portable and more forgiving in that if you drop a stitch you don't have to unravel the whole item. I have done a bit of knitting in the last few years, but mainly focused on the crochet
 
At the end of 2013 on instagram I heard of the Crochet mood  blanket 2014 where you do a square a day based on your mood. Although I had never had any luck with year long projects of any sort, this captured my imagination and I managed to more or less keep up and actually finish in January 2015, more or less on time. When 2015 came along I decided to do a sky blanket where you do a square/stripe based on the colour of the sky. I chose to do stripes and have really battled to keep up, although I have now managed to get up to date. This photo shows my progress up to Mid October,
 
 
 
Over the last few months I have been thinking about what I am going to do in 2016. One of the problems I found this year was that there were very few people doing a sky blanket and so there was none of the camaraderie that I had found in the mood blanket. One of my thoughts was to do a weather blanket, but with the mainly hot temperatures we have here, I was not sure if I would get much variety on a daily basis. Also, the traditional "hot" colours are not my favourite, I prefer the blues, pinks, lilacs etc to the reds and oranges.
A few weeks ago, I heard that there was going to be a Sky blanket 2016 running. This is being co-ordinated by You little sew and sew, Bug, Bird and Bee and The Boy and Me.
 
 
The basic principle is the same as my 2015 blanket. You crochet/knit/sew a stripe or block a day which reflects the colour of the sky. Initially I was a bit unsure as to whether I was going to do it again. I thought that I would get a bit bored, and also had been wanting to do the temperature blanket. However, after much thought and lots of stalking the facebook group I have decided to go ahead and join in for 2016.
 
Once I had decided to do it, the next thing was what form is it going to take. Well, I cant sew, so that is out. But was I going to knit or crochet and is it going to be squares or stripes. I have almost 100% decided on squares for a few reasons. Firstly, the boredom factor of doing the same thing for 2 years in a row. Secondly the rows makes a HUGE blanket. The mood blanket was a square a day and is just about double bed size. Thirdly, I did battle to complete a row each day, and got quite behind at times. Although, this was compounded by a very difficult year in other aspects of my life. However, 2016 has not started yet, so I still have time to change my mind!
 
Last years blankets was all blues and greys, but I decided to vary it a bit more this year. This is mainly due to inspiration from all the posts about this project. So, over the last week or so, I have been browsing the wool shops and come up with the following:

 

:
 
 
 
 
Clockwise from top left:
 
Elle family knit Coral - sunrise / sunset
 
Charity Apricot - sunrise/sunset
 
Charity Citrus - sunrise/sunset
 
Charity Banana - those hot, sunny, summer days
 
Charity Saxe - blue skies (still to decide how I will differentiate)
 
Lollipop Light blue - paler blue skies
 
Chick Seaborne - those days where there is a bit of everything
 
Elle kids birdie blue - partly cloudy
 
Charity white and then silver grey - overcast
 
Charity school grey - stormy, rainy
 
Charity printed Blue fin - those hot days which end up stormy
 
I did not originally have the apricot. I was not too sure about the orange, but it was the only reddy orange I could find, so I did a set of sample squares to see if I could live with the result and that was when I decided to add the apricot in. Also, I am a bit OCD and don't know if I could have lived with 11 colours lol.
 


 
 
The picture above makes the colours look slightly darker than they are, especially the school grey.
My squares will be 3 rounds of the above pattern, and I will do 19 rows of 19 squares with 5 rows of border.
 
If you would like to know more, pop over to My little sew and sew.

The one where I come back

Well, I am back. Having had no reliable internet at home for a couple of years I had totally given up on blogging. I had always been meaning to get back to it, but I find it tiresome to blog from my tab or phone. Posting is not too bad, but the blog maintenance just annoyed me and any post with more than one picture was beyond me, not too mention adding links.
So, what has changed now. Well, firstly the internet connection has been sorted out. We had a fixed line at home, but the box was outside our property. The box kept getting interfered with and then our line would go down. We eventually got fed up and cancelled the line, which left no internet for a while. We have since sorted this out and now have a wifi based connection, so shouldn't have any further problems.
Secondly, I have finally invested in a new laptop. So, with those two things sorted out, I am now technologically enabled enough to blog.
Lots of things have happened since my last blog and I am now busier than ever, but I hope to post more regularly. Although not having posted for nearly 2 years, that is not saying much!

Thursday, January 9, 2014

Daily snappers 9/365

I thought we had got rid of this face for at least 9 months, but it appears he is still around.

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Daily snappers 8/365

Deviated from the prompt to show you my mad cat asleep on top of Brenda's stationery inside a plastic packet!

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Daily snappers 7/365

Cloud - looks like we are in for a storm later.
Sent from my BlackBerry®

Daily snappers 6/365

I tried to post this yesterday but for some reason the picture wouldn't post. This plane took me straight home even if it was delayed by an hour.