My crafting week | All about the birds!

Meet Monty, Alice, Jack and Lily. Now safely gifted, I can share this year’s ’Teacher Gifts’.

Vertices Unite

One of my favourite makes so far this year has been the Vertice Unite shawl by Stephen West. In today’s post I thought I would share a little more about the project.

2018 Make Nine half year review

Oh my goodness, we are half way through the year. I’m not quite sure how that happened...
In today’s post I am going to share my 2018 Make Nine progress and look ahead to the projects I will work on during the latter half of my year to fill the grid of nine.

Hello...again!

It’s been a little while since I’ve sat down to write a blog post so this will be just a short-ish post to get me started again. Firstly, I just wanted to say a big thank you to those of you who have told me that you are missing my little blog - thank you! Back at the end of January I needed to take a little ‘blog holiday’ if that’s a thing and now, I am starting to feel the call of my blog coming back.

Whilst I was ‘blog-holidaying’ I was working away on lots of projects that I want to share with you over the coming months, I have some yarn and pattern reviews, a ‘recipe’ for children’s socks and much more that I want to share. I will also talk about a challenge I’ve set myself to tackle things that I have convinced myself I can’t do. If you follow me on Instagram you will have already seen a mini project bag and a pavlova!

If you’ve read this blog from the beginning you will know that I firmly believe crafting can play a big role in nurturing health and promoting well-being. This still remains a core part of me and my blog. But I also hope this little corner of the Internet is a practical place; sharing skills and knowledge, supporting and encouraging others in their crafting pursuits. If you have any ideas for content, or suggestions for collaborations, then please get in touch - I would love to hear from you.

Before I say goodbye for this post I just wanted to mention two things in case you haven’t come across them;

Summer Top CAL: My super lovely friend Fay from the Crochet Circle Podcast is hosting a friendly and relaxed CAL for folks making garments. It runs until 22nd July and all of the details are in the Crochet Circle Podcast Ravelry group. You can access all of the practical resources from the Back to School Sweater CAL here.

Skimming Stones MCAL or Mystery Crochet Along: I would be surprised if you hadn’t heard but The Crochet Project are starting their first MCAL next week - 20th. I love the work of Kat and Joanne and I’m excited to see what this new design will look like.

I will sign off here but I will be back soon (I promise!) with a look at my 2018 Make Nine projects, the progress I’ve made and what plans I have for the rest of the year.

Thanks for visiting and happy crafting! x

My knitting and crochet week

I am always curious to find out what other crafty friends are making. It is a great way to get inspiration and learn new things.

Tchaikovsky hat and mitts

I appear to have had a productive start to 2018 with three finished projects including the two that I am going to talk about today.

Book Review | Making Winter by Emma Mitchell

Back in November I visited Loop in London with some friends. One of the highlights of this beautiful shop for me was its window display by Emma Mitchell.

2018 knitting and crochet plans

Happy New Year! This post was meant to be all about my knitting and crochet goals and plans for 2018. I set some crafting goals in 2017 and they proved to be a helpful way of keeping me focused and on track as the year progressed.

My crochet and knitting year

We seem to have reached the end of the year surprisingly quickly; December passed in a flash and I'd blinked and Christmas had gone. Naturally at this time of year attention turns to goal setting and plans for the coming year. Before I do that on the blog I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the year just-gone. Rather than gamboling through a list of completed knitting and crochet projects I thought I'd look at the year in a different way - in the hope I can share some of my insights and learning from the year.

Christmas at Number 14

I planned to make this Christmas the most handmade, crafty Christmas ever, but life seldom goes to plan. I am spending December and early January wrapping up and leaving an organisation I've worked at for over 10 years - this is a good thing - but it has required me to recalibrate my handmade Christmas plans. It's not all out of the window and today I'll share some lovely festive crafty fun I've had so far this year.

Crochet baubles

Instagram is awash with crochet baubles this year so I am feeling very on-trend with this week's planned post! In today's post I will share details of the pattern I've been using, my yarn choice and some tips for getting a good result.

Yarn Review | Aire Valley DK

 If you follow me on Instagram you may have seen that I have a new design out in this month's Crochet Now (Issue 22).

Back to School Sweater CAL celebration!

What an amazing few months Tamara, Crafty Escapism  and I have had planning and running our Back to School Sweater CAL (crochetalong) and blog hop. We'll be closing the FO (finished objects) thread on Ravelry shortly and running the random number generator for prizes. As we write there are 53 gorgeous finished objects in there and/or tagged with #BackToSchoolSweaterCAL on Instagram. Seven makers have made two garments and two speedy makers have made three in the eight week period of the CAL from September 16th to November 17th. Incredible!

We've loved hanging out in the Ravelry chatter thread, kindly hosted by the wonderful Fay of the Crochet Circle Podcast, and over 50 of us have shared our garment making experiences together. We even had a frogging party where a fair few of us, Tamara and myself included, had to frog our garments to get them to fit correctly!  There have been over 400 super photos posted on Instagram with the hashtag #BackToSchoolSweaterCAL

Many participants have been making sweaters for the first time. We've had comments on how they now see themselves as garment makers as a result of taking part. We've also received lots of feedback about how useful the blog hop posts have been (details here just in case you missed it (Back to School Sweater CAL 2017). This has made the whole crochetalong so worthwhile for us, SO much better than just making our own garments by ourselves.

We'd like to say a huge thank you to all the bloggers who wrote a blog article (or two!) for us; JoJoTwinkletoes, The Crochet Project, Sam of SingASimpleMelody, Fay of the Crochet Circle Podcast and Knit It Hook It Craft It and Marta or MrsDaftSpaniel and for all the folk who have donated prizes; Marta, The Crochet Project, Fay, Rosina from Zeens and Roger, Yael from Emyahandmade and Lisa too. A special extra thank you goes to Fay for letting us host our CAL and FO thread in her Crochet Circle Podcast group.

And a huge thank you and congratulations to all the people who have taken part and made a wonderful handmade garment of their own!!! Let us know if you'd like to do it all over again next year!!?

Helen and Tamara x

Wool and me

For many of us, November equals Wovember, a celebration of all things wool online during the month of November. The theme of this year's Wovember is 'woolness - where wool meets wellness' - a subject close to my heart.

I wanted to share some thoughts today about what wool means to me...

5 quick crochet Christmas makes

Can we talk about Christmas yet?! The calendar has turned over to November so I'm sure many crafters will be starting to think, if they aren't already, about Christmas makes. Today I thought I'd share 5 quick tried and tested Christmas crochet projects with you.

New pattern out in Crochet Now

Latest issue of Crochet Now was published on Thursday with two of my designs in. On the front cover you can see the ripple hot water bottle covers and then within the issue you can find a matching pyjama case. In today's post I give you the inside story...

The Ruschia hat and me

I am smitten with everything about my current project - the design, pattern and yarn are all a delight.

A mini 'yarn crawl'

Last weekend I ventured up to London for a day with yarn-loving friends.

Bretonbone top

My Bretonbone top is finished!

Crafting podcasts

Today I am going to talk about the crafting podcast phenomenon, I'll think about what I'm looking for in a podcast and recommended some of my favourites.