GUnit

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Annette / Soft Like Kittens

I’ve recently started attending the local weekly craft group GUnit (as in gee, you knit?, though apparently a confused hip hop fan or two has tried to join the facebook group, ha ha!) It was very nerve wracking the first time as I only knew two of the others over Twitter and hadn’t met anyone at all in real life, but it turns out they are all salty sweethearts. It’s really nice to have an activity out of the house, and to meet more crafty people who understand when I say things like “I couldn’t sleep last night because I was too busy thinking about yarn” :D

I’m saving up the ‘boring’ bits of my Hobbergobber Blanket to take to meetings. I’m currently at a stage that involves lots of loooooong rows of single crochet, and it’s not unpleasant, but doesn’t require any brainpower either, so it’s perfect for being social. I’ve got all of the motifs for the blanket done, and now I’m making some zig-zag stripes to separate the rows. There’s no point racing along on this project between meetings as I have a feeling I’m going to run out of the background colour before I’m finished and will have to order more from Webs, but it’ll be a few weeks before I can afford that. Especially considering I’ll have to add some other yarn to my order to make the shipping worthwhile. Oh no, being forced to buy yarn, what a hardship!

The stripes between each row will go beige-cream-colour-cream-beige, with a different colour for each one.

Yesterday Willow’s new habit of pulling chairs and boxes around in order to climb other furniture led to a tumble off a desk, and she skinned her elbow on the way down. I had to apply her very first band aid! As I did so I found myself thinking “oooh, this is what a mother does, I am doing a mothering thing”, which is a bit weird since I am a mother, and I do various mothering things pretty much all the time. I guess I’m still not entirely used to it. She’s been climbing back onto the same desk all day today. Sigh!

Hobbergobbling

Posted on November 4, 2011 by Annette / Soft Like Kittens

Willow has recovered from her cough (thank goodness!) but not before she gave it to me. I am a lot better now but there were a few miserable days in there, wheezing and rattling and coughing uncontrollably, so no wonder she was unhappy! Poor sausage. I feel so bad for her when she’s sick as we can’t really explain what’s going on, and her sleep really suffers.

Quiet times at home have given me the opportunity to craft a little more often. I’ve completed a couple more of my secret-squirrel gift knits, and also a few more squares on my Hobbergobber Blanket. It’s moving slowly as I only pick it up in between other projects, while I’m deciding what to make next or waiting for supplies to arrive, but I have enough now to have an idea how it will turn out.

It’s a very restrained palette, with only six colours plus the cream edging, but I think I’m getting enough variety in the combinations for a pleasing finished effect. No real idea how big it will be yet, I’ll keep making squares until I get near the end of my coloured yarns and then see how many there are. Perhaps 8×10, 8×11, 9×12, who can say :)

Hobbergobber Conundrum

Posted on June 12, 2011 by Annette / Soft Like Kittens

This is the start of the next blanket I’m crocheting. The colours were inspired by Willow, with her light brown hair, blue-grey eyes and sweet pink lips and cheeks. I am calling it my Hobbergobber – i.e. hobgoblin – Blanket in an attempt to make that sentiment a touch less mawkish (though you may still roll your eyes at me if you wish).

But now I’ve begun I have a conundrum. I cannot decide whether to edge and join the squares with a creamy, buttery neutral or a crisp, clean white! I made a couple of blocks with each and the choice still isn’t clear to me. The cream works well with the interior shades, but doesn’t offer a lot of contrast and the overall effect is quite yellowy and antiqued. The white is more modern and will provide a better showcase for the colours, but it’s not as soft and gentle.

Opinions very welcome!

I can put off the decision for quite a while and carry on making the inside of each block, but eventually it will have to be one or the other.

Finished African Flower blanket

Posted on May 31, 2011 by Annette / Soft Like Kittens

YAY! I finished my blanket! I’ve been working on this since February – I could probably have done it in a month if I didn’t keep changing my mind, running out of yarn and stopping for other projects but that’s fine, there’s no rush :)

It’s 102x122cm, with 70 (slightly modified) African Flower pattern hexagons and a 7 round border of dc and hdc. I’ve put all the technical details of the pattern and yarn on Ravelry.

Receiving the curious sniff from Monty.

I tried to wrap Willow up sweetly in it but she’s too old for that now, I had to wait until she was busy drinking her milk even to get her to sit near the blanket long enough for a photo. Oh well, she’s a busy girl, she’s got lots of baby business to do!

Blanket Cats

Posted on April 26, 2011 by Annette / Soft Like Kittens

My flower blanket is coming along. Last photo I posted had 19 joined hexagons, now I’ve got 37 joined hexagons and another 24 that just need their final round before being added on. 18 more once they’re done, and a border, and it will be finished.

The cats are already making use of it! A couple of nights ago I had the first four rounds laid on the table to assess the size and Monty had to get in on the action…

… then half an hour later his spot was taken by Pippin…

… and yesterday when the blanket was sitting on the couch Otto came in for a snuggle.

Here is Otto sleeping again, which has nothing to do with my blanket but look at his little face! He is keeping his nose warm!

We’ve had a busy Easter weekend (by our standards) and today was also quite full-on. I had to catch up with orders from the last few days, and I’d let the house slip a bit so there was lots of laundry to put away, scattered toys to corral, paperwork to sort, recycling to handle… it’s important to keep up with these little jobs because I find mess can throw me very easily into despair these days.

Things are sufficiently back in place now that I think I can justify some relaxation in bed before I go to sleep. I will read a little, then play some Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box on my DS.

That reminds me, must note down things I’ve bought recently…

I rented the Professor Layton game from the library, which cost $5. I’ll have it finished before it needs to go back, so that’s a pretty good deal. I loved the first game, and this one is very similar – point and click exploring with dozens and dozens of puzzles to solve. Plus the art style is beautiful, and I often find myself studying the screens in great detail.

A late night search on eBay last week found an inexpensive swift for yarn winding, and I couldn’t resist buying it, since so much of the yarn I like comes in hanks. It was ~$40 including postage, which is less than half the price I usually see. I don’t have a wool winder, but I think the swift will make hand winding much faster, and if it’s still frustrating there are often second hand ones for about $25 on TradeMe. (I wonder why swifts never seem to come up there? Weird. Maybe people just buy winders and sell them again because they’re awkward to use without a swift?)

I bought two pairs of socks from the supermarket because I had to throw out some old holey ones, I think they were $10 or $11. Thrilling stuff :)

Finally, I splashed out and chose some 5ml bottles of perfume oil from the Possets spring collection. There are a lot of niche perfumeries I like, but I can’t afford to keep up with them all, and Possets is both well priced and wearable so that’s where I tend to buy from. Five bottles come to ~$60 and qualify for free worldwide shipping, so it would be silly to buy less, right?!

My choices were:
Opulentia – Peach, carnation, crystal musk and ginger.
Silver Lavender – Sweet ‘silver’ base, lavender and sandalwood.
Terra Diurna – Strawberry, pinks, greenery and water.
Terra Incognita – Five black musks, pink pepper and black pepper.
The Great Actuary of Babylon – Black musk, copal incense, black cherry, cherry blossom and wood resin.

I’ll report back once they arrive… I’m really looking forward to the last two in particular, they sound deliciously dark and interesting. I should write some reviews of my current collection too, I used to do that as a matter of course and really enjoyed it. On the to-do list it goes!

African Flower blanket, the Second

Posted on April 16, 2011 by Annette / Soft Like Kittens

The new version of my African Flower blanket is coming along well!

It took a long time to decide what to do once I took the deep pink hexagons out. I tried lots of other colour combinations, but nothing looked quite right with the yellow. Yarn comes in a relatively limited number of shades, so sometimes it can be frustrating trying to make a combination that clicks! I had extra constraints in this case too, since I needed three shades that worked together to make each flower, and of course they needed to be flower-y colours.

After a dozen failed trials I changed tack and decided to experiment with using more texture instead. Adding an extra final row of alternating dc and FPtrc turned out to give a lovely raised effect, a little like knitted ribbing, but also reminiscent of the veins on leaves. Additional colours became unnecessary, and I am now working with just two yellow variations, the marigold-edged original and a lighter version with a creamy ivory centre.

I blocked the blanket once I had assembled the first three rounds (19 hexagons) to see how it looked flattened out, and I really love the result, it’s subtle but so pretty, and definitely worth all the effort to make it work! The shape I’m planning will require 79 hexagons in total, but I’ve already made all of the darker flowers, so the assembly seems to be flying along.

Additional Willow milestones: in the last couple of weeks (12.5 months) she has cut her 14th tooth and learned to wiggle backwards down stairs, and yesterday (13 months) she took a few lurching steps! It wasn’t exactly walking, but she did travel some horizontal distance on her feet. I think we’re very close.

Snuggling and Blankets

Posted on April 2, 2011 by Annette / Soft Like Kittens

Thank you so much for all the kind and supportive comments on my last entry. I know that the size of our family is something we don’t need to justify to anyone but trying to express these feelings coherently helps me a lot!

I’ve just put my beautiful baby to bed. Seeing her snuggled there warm and safe and sleepy is one of the most comforting experiences I know, and every night it makes me want to jump straight into bed myself :) She’s never been interested in co-sleeping but I hope that one day she will take her afternoon nap next to me, so I can watch her sleeping face as I drift off.

I’ve made 36 yellow African Flower motifs over the last couple of weeks, while waiting for the rest of the yarn for my new colour scheme to arrive. I had been planning on combining these with a paler yellow combination and some light pinks for the second attempt, but now I’ve made a few hexagons using the new yarn that arrived yesterday I’m not sure about them either! This project is driving me bananas! I’m going to make a handful more and try different arrangements before I join anything together, or start dreaming up a third plan.

For now, the stacks look rather handsome. And I WILL figure out how to make this work!

Monty on the beanbag, where he spends approximately 23 hours a day. The last hour is reserved for running, flailing and skittering about as though possessed. He is a cat of extremes! I feel a little bad because his tag is smaller in the cloud than Otto or Pippin, even though it’s just because Otto is new and Pippin runs away so darned much. They are all special in their own ways :)

African Flower Blanket update

Posted on March 12, 2011 by Annette / Soft Like Kittens

I’ve done three rounds of my African flower blanket. That’s only ~10% of it, but since I’m attaching the hexagons together as I go I couldn’t resist blocking this bit and previewing the finished effect:

Blocking is quite magical to me, here’s how it looked beforehand:

The colours, however, are not magical. The pinks are reading much darker than I had hoped, and the effect is getting a bit… er… fast food-y. I don’t much care for red and yellow together! So I’m going to add in a third colour flower for the next round, a lighter peach, and see if that helps – if not I might stop, turn this first bit into a cushion or something, and start again with different yarn. We will see.

Hello Otto!

Posted on February 16, 2011 by Annette / Soft Like Kittens

Otto is here!

I picked him up on Monday afternoon, after being so excited I could barely sit still all day :)

He’s such a lovely cat, happy to explore the house and already very friendly and affectionate with JSR and me, though of course things are a little trickier with Monty and Pippin. We’ve had lots of lashing tails and some growling, mostly from Monty, but no actual fights which is encouraging. I am sure they will all get used to each other soon.

I have been thinking of him as a light ginger cat, but according to his vet card he is “cameo” which I had to look up – an ivory undercoat with red tips, sounds about right, and very fancy. He’s also rather large. I may have to stop calling Pippin the Pippopotamus, and Monty looks like a silky handkerchief in the breeze in comparison. Hee!

In the last couple of days I’ve also started my next crochet blanket. This one is pushing out of my comfort zone with the bright colour choices, but I think I’m going to like the result.

Here’s the yarn, mostly Cascade 220 with a bit of Ella Rae Classics and Valley Yarns Goshen.

And here are the first couple of hexagons. I’m using the African Flower pattern, with some minor modifications. All of the hexes will be in these colour combinations, arranged in alternating rings – so a pink flower in the centre, surrounded by six yellow flowers, surrounded by twelve pink flowers, and so on.

I’ve got more details about the exact yarns and my pattern changes over on Ravelry for crochet enthusiasts :)

Soft Like Kittens

Idle life with yarn, cats and a small hu-man.

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