Freedom!

When your child passes her driving test it is both exciting and terrifying in equal measures. On the one hand you join in with the jumps for joy (metaphorically, this knee isn't jumping anywhere for a while) and on the other it hits you like a tonne of bricks that she'll be hurtling down dual carriageways all on her own. Eek.

Another thing that hits you square on is the hike in insurance from having a learner driver on your policy to having a new driver. An additional payment of £625 thank you very much.

Then, round about day three when she's exhausted all the local places she can go to just because she can, and even picked up her brother from school, she comes to you and asks for ideas for a day out. Oh boy. I come up with anything within half an hour's drive while she rolls her eyeballs and says things like 'I can drive you know' and 'it won't be an adventure if it's only up the road'. Eventually one of my forty minutes away suggestions goes down well and craftily that makes sure she is only 15 minutes away from my parents.

All this and she knows the story well that I jumped in my car the day after I passed my test and toured the West Country and Cornwall with a friend for two weeks. Thankfully she has no such ambitions...yet.

Wheat stitch shopper...

Urgh! I've managed to get sidetracked again! I really hope we get to take the caravan away for a weekend soon, I'll pack the CAL blanket and nothing else so that it gets done. The joining method instructions have been released and in a few days time so will the border.

Though who could resist the challenge of this shopping tote pattern? Not me. It's like a good crossword, it keeps my brain ticking over. It was fairly straightforward once the set up rows were complete. Front post trebles are always a bit fiddly to start off in the round, especially when you need to increase by doing two fptr's into each fptr. M says he totally agrees! I'm not sure whether it was the colour of this project or the complexity that caught his eye. He seems naturally drawn to anything in the orange spectrum. I seem to be naturally repelled by orangey things. I must have tried to convince myself that this recycled cotton yarn was a rustic terracotta when I bought it. It is a bit of a duller tone in real life but even so I had planned to make it up and then throw it in the washing machine with an indigo machine dye. Once finished I remembered some bag handles I bought in a Rome market a couple of years ago. I think they go with the terracotta and might also be sturdier than the crochet straps given in the pattern.

I'll have to call it my 'fancy shopper' since it's a lot fancier than my usual taste. Heck, it's colourful, patterned but not too girly thank goodness! I think they call this 'wheat stitch' which is rather nice since we have millions of acres of it growing in Lincolnshire right now.

The free pattern is by Lily Sugar 'n' Cream.

http://www.yarnspirations.com/patterns/rich-textures-tote-1.html

I used a recycled cotton Aran weight yarn (I've forgotten the brand name) and it used 130g.

Honeycomb hats...

I might as well be calling these cricket hats. Most of the work was done on arrival at two day long matches recently. One in Stoke on Trent and the other at Cleethorpes, both County under 15s although Jake seems far too tall for this age group now, at 6'3.

Red is a devil of a colour to photograph. It took a bit of shuffling my little table around to get the light right so that it wouldn't merge into one big lump of red with no definition. Limitations of an iPad camera too I guess.

Naturally I started the little red hat half way through the slog of the oatmeal one. I was curious to know how much quicker or less fiddly it would work up in a chunky yarn. The answer is, not much. The secret is too keep the slip stitches nice and loose. So, this is not a fast fabric to work up but well worth it for a hat because it provides a nice amount of stretch for a good moulded fit, not to mention a look that might not be obviously crochet to the untrained eye! In fact the knitted honeycomb stitch looks pretty similar.

I think there may well be more of these in my crocheting future. I'm now curious to play around with stitch counts between changes and some kind of honeycomb yellow yarn is just crying out to be made as a baby or toddler hat with a small crochet bumble bee attached!

My next step is to crochet another adult hat so that I can write down and share the pattern. Coincidentally this kind of stitch was also the pattern for the last Scheepjes CAL square, at least I think it's pretty much the same, I haven't started those yet. It seems I finally succumbed to the boredom of repetition even though each week is entirely different. Psychologically it's just more squares. I really need to work on my concentration span.

I used to wait until we took the caravan away for a long weekend or longer to get projects like that done and dusted. The trick was not having a yarn stash, crochet magazines and the Internet as distractions. Not to mention leisurely summer evenings (are we ever going to have those again?)

We've barely taken the caravan anywhere in the last two years which is something I'm trying to rectify. As the children have lost interest as they've grown up I'm in the process of emptying out all their 'junk'. Things like body boards, buckets and spades, balls of every type, kites, board games, plastic cricket sets, pop up goals, comedy films on DVD, books, boules, scooters, skateboards and probably much more once I get as far as the main under bed storage bunk. It's a wonder we ever had any room for the four of us with all that on board! I'm looking forward to creating a more minimalist interior which I will find a more relaxing 'get away' opportunity.

Rainy days and Monday's...

I haven't been watching the televised news and weather lately but I'm sensing that this British Summer must be heading for the record books as the wettest for some time. It is holding up our repair work on the workshop roof; every time M gets a free afternoon due to a job finishing earlier than expected (or someone not showing up for their court appearance) he comes home hoping to take the rotten old roof off and get started on attaching the new one. This can't be done in heavy rain.

M had a whole day free this week but the forecast was grim and the skies were dark and ominous, so we did the only sensible thing and headed for the coast! I mainly associate the seaside with winter walks with a dog, since that's what we used to do when we lived near the coast in Sussex. As a family I don't think we ever spent a day on a beach in the summer. I don't think I've ever spent such a wet day at the beach as our visit to Cleethorpes though! Oh wow, it was seriously chucking it down!

We found a quirky cafe for a large coffee while we waited for a break in the rain, the break didn't come. So we moved swiftly between charity shops while I picked up a few paperbacks. Finally a short break in the rain meant we could take advantage of the bargains that are only to be had in a town like Cleethorpes; dog beds for £4 each! Springer Spaniel sized too! I usually buy old woollen blankets from charity shops for them but these come with comfy padding and at £4 we can chuck them when they get too mucky.

Taking home a bundle of rock for the kids was essential even though they are now 15 and 18 years old. Also essential is eating a cone of chips under a chip shop canopy while it carries on chucking it down like there's no tomorrow. Although I was dressed for the weather, M wasn't so we had to miss out on the walk along the promenade. He thought I was joking when I suggested that. I wasn't. At least we laughed a lot. Something I very much needed to do.

So today, guess what? Yep, it's raining again! I have managed to mow the front and back lawns, cut the front hedge back so that we can get to the caravan more easily, jet wash the caravan (it was turning green) and get the mower, hedge trimmer and jet washer all back inside my shed before the heavens opened. My knee is in pretty bad shape now but it was worth it to actually get something done rather than putting it off because it might rain.

I feel I have earned the right to sit down and do a spot of crochet now. The blue/greyish square is the CAL week eleven design. Not a big fan. It seems kind of unstable and flimsy compared to the other squares but hopefully it will hold up to being sewn in with them. At least it is a fairly simple square and works up quickly. This is the unblocked one and I have another on the blocking board.

I'm still a bit restless with the blanket as my main crochet project every day so I've been dabbling with some new textures/stitches. I came across a photo of something that looked like honeycomb and decided to try and replicate it since the photo wasn't linked to a crochet site unfortunately. Eventually I googled likely names for this stitch and found some instructions under the search 'crocheted textured wave stitch'. It's just slip stitches and half trebles and a pattern repeat of four rows. I've started a hat using this stitch and the side to side method I used a lot for my batch of Christmas hats. It's fairly slow even in Aran weight yarn with a 5.5mm hook but worth it for something slightly different. If it turns out to be a good fit for an average adult head I will attempt to write the pattern down. It's about time I put some free patterns in my side bar!