Tuesday 30 October 2012

Anyone for a game?

I have a few plans for various Christmas gifts and I'm working on the gifts for the sisters exchange but there was one main project I've been working on that I wanted to share.

My dad and I play backgammon.  It's our main time just the two of us whenever I visit or they come to see us here.  I can't remember how old I was when I learned to play but we're talking about maybe twenty years on and off of fierce battles and trash talk.

So when thinking of what I can make dad for Christmas, I originally played with the idea of doing a blood donor theme (with the two hearts logo or something) but that wasn't going to be challenging enough!  Then I had a flash of inspiration and decided on this...



It's made of 24 strips in single crochet with the colour changes in the shape of the long triangles on the main board.  That was the tricky thing for me to figure out as I'm rubbish at doing colour changes but thankfully after a bit of practise, I got the hang of it!  Then 15 small circles in red and 15 in white for the pieces which were then stitched on.  The strips were crocheted together and I wanted a bit more width (so I could add a couple of dice) so in between the two sides, I added a row of cream granny squares.  I made two small squares in single crochets with some dots stitched on for dice (at the start of the game, each player throws one die each and the highest number wins the roll) and stitched those on.

Around the outside, I did a number of small black/dark grey squares to finish off the board and added a doubling die (set to 8 as an in-joke).

(I really should have taken photos as I went along, d'oh!)

The triangular cream/brown border is entirely made out of basic granny squares where I've changed colour frequently along the diagonal and arranged into this pattern.  Then finally, a granny strip border in cream, brown and blue.



This is intended for him when he sleeps on his chair and I was worried it wouldn't be long enough so I added more of a border in three shades of grey-it measures at approximately 5"2 length and 3"3 width.
It's taken 18 days to complete, approx 950g of yarn (acrylic) and the approximate cost for materials
£12-15.

So, here's the finished piece!



Really proud of how it turned out-it's right up there with the TARDIS blanket :-)

Monday 8 October 2012

Repairing the TARDIS...

You may remember ages ago my very first post was about the blanket I made for Myf's eighth birthday.  I started on it only 2 days after learning how to successfully make a basic granny square but at the time, I hand stitched the squares together with a tapestry needle.  This unfortunately hasn't held together all that well so now that the three big blankets are done, I decided to spend some time doing some repair and rejuvenating on it!

I went over it row by row and crocheted over every gap with single crochet-I also looked at the outer edge and decided just having the border of squares made it look a bit uneven-so I used some of the stash (dark blue with a sparkly thread and some of Myf's favourite shade of blue) and crocheted around the outside to create another border.  It looks much happier and now we have a much better photo of it (the old piccy on the first post was taken with a naff camera phone and came out looking weird)



Now the TARDIS is ready for anything...even a Welsh winter!

With that all out of the way, I really must work out what's I'm going to do for Christmas...must admit, I'm a bit stumped!

Birthday Mum!

Mum celebrated her 70th birthday a couple of weeks ago so Myf and I were hard at work making her presents.  I found some really lovely merino wool in gorgeous dark green so I turned to the 'Happy Hooker' book for the shawl pattern I've done a few times now-


It makes such a difference working with a decent quality wool-wish I could afford it more regularly-but until then, folks will have to make do with acrylic...this shawl came out really beautifully.
I also crafted a small brooch using some of the wire techniques I've been practising:

These plus some home baked goodies and a photo album were the bulk of the gifts but Myf wanted to make her Moogi a special present so we decided on a simple herb pillow.  Using a n embroidery frame, Myf did some lovely work and this was the final result before we stitched and stuffed:



All together:



Mum was thrilled with all her presents and hopefully will have them for many years to come!

Time to catch up!

I've had a few projects on the go and finally I can start posting about them!  I like to have photos of everything once they're done and to save time, I upload in batches hence the long gaps between posts.  But anyway, here's some of what I've been working on...


I completed the three blankets that my friend's boyfriend's aunt requested-

2 identical ones in shades of pink:

and one in shades of purple...



These were collected on Friday and she's very happy with them :-)