Happy days!

This is Riley, curled up near Mollie after his long walk this morning, and guess what? His neck and back were as fluffy and soft as they were after his shower (with left over Ted Baker shower gel no less). Just when I thought there was no hope of walks without fox poo, and that my daily shower would always be with the dog. There's always tomorrow I guess!

Thanks to Thistlebear for our little chat yesterday about the crocheted cupcakes. I also learnt a new word; Kawaii. Where have I been? Such a useful word, especially in relation to amigurami. I also realised that I didn't post the pattern source; they are from this book...

I like the way the author has started off with the most simple designs and they get progressively more advanced. The cupcakes were near the beginning. You'll notice that I chose to do a simpler face as per some of the designs on the Internet. My felt pieces are temporarily out of reach (in a cupboard with a large pile of reclaimed timber in front of it). The book design is quite cute so I will probably get round to trying those out too... just as soon as the wood is turned into beautiful kitchen cupboards!

Free from cupcakes...

Gluten, dairy and sugar free cupcakes. If only the edible version existed! The somewhat unusual desire to finish off rather than start anew is still with me. I found these little fellows in one of my many wooden bowls just waiting for eyes, which obviously needed to fixed in place before stuffing and sewing up. The eyes are a long story, something to do with buying a bumper pack of fifty by mail order and misplacing them and having to locate them in our useless selection of craft shops (oh for a Hobbycraft nearby!). These eyes are not the ones I had in mind but they are close. I think they all need a cheerful red cherry on top don't you?

I must admit I don't usually enjoy making slightly pointless objects so I told myself these would be for a certain little boy as play food when he's a little bit older (he's not quite one yet). E and J loved the whole play food thing when they were small but that was well before I learnt how to crochet. I've seen whole cooked breakfasts in crochet so I could build up quite a selection. I definitely want to make Oreo's and Jammy Dodgers.

Other news involves fox poo. Oh boy. I'm at the end of my tether with Riley and fox poo. Every darn stinking day this week. We have this rule that they stay in the hard floor areas of the house by day and come into the living room in the evenings. It cuts down on dog hair (but probably not much). M thinks it's something close to barbaric not to let them through in the evening regardless of how dirty they are, which leaves me having a shower with the hound every day this week. I wouldn't mind if it was mud but warm water seems to intensify the aroma of fox poo somewhat and I can tell you, it's choking! Today we did our usual four mile route and he did manage to find every single fox poo on route so I had to give them a good run about in the deepest stream I could find. It worked a treat. M let them out again soon after this stream dunking and the little rascal came back coved from head to toe in... Guess what? Yep fox poo. Thankfully Harvey doesn't see the attraction or has worked out that it's linked to baths and showers. Riley takes no notice of tellings off and we clearly have a huge fox population in the fields round here so I can't see this problem going away. Maybe tile the living room and make plastic covers for the sofas?

The Red Arrows...

It's quite exciting having my own private air show on my afternoon dog walks. The Red Arrows are based a few miles away from us and usually practice twice a day. There are times when they are so incredibly low you feel you could wave to the pilots. Today they were using red smoke as well as white. They did all sorts of formations but this was the one I managed to get my iPod out in time for, shame about the power cables.

It was t shirt weather here today. The dogs were over excited. They usually give the stagnant ditches a miss but today they decided to investigate the green slime. I had to give them a prolonged period of time in the clean stream (see below). They still pong. They may even have to be bathed tonight.

Feeling old...

If there was ever a time to feel old, it's when your eldest goes to a concert and sends you an image like this from her phone with the accompanying words, 'this is the best'. Meaning, she's having a good time.

I'm almost reluctant to share here my dodgy history with live music, let's just say concerts were not high on my list of priorities when I was sixteen. Hence the last concert I went to was The Commodores with the folks when I was thirteen perhaps. I'm not sure I really hear the same as other people but it was certainly as loud as a jumbo jet taking off, which is the level it needs to be to come into my range. I thought it was pretty cool when one of them climbed onto a huge amp and jumped off it but that bit of info only produced a smirk from E when I told her. All Time Low are described as a pop punk group, though E disputes the pop part of that. She prefers to call all her favourite bands, rock groups and now she has seen every one of them in concert, lucky her. I just hope her hearing remains intact.

Sunny day!

Wow! It was baking today! I threw open our sunlounge doors, dragged the two seater basket sofa outside, grabbed my book, crochet and tea... and had a pleasant, quiet morning while J was playing football, M watching and E winging her way back from London.

It was a rare opportunity to truly switch off and let Harvey and Riley be my ears. Riley hasn't been with us long enough to be used to sitting outside and he was rather twitchy, pricking his ears up at the slightest thing, well I assume so. Harvey was altogether more chilled, only letting me know when our neighbour had a visitor.

It probably won't last but I made the most of the sunshine and fresh air today. There were a hundred and one gardening jobs I could have done instead but as E would say 'YOLO'. When it got a bit too hot to sit in the sun (imagine saying this in March!) I came inside and did a bit of spring cleaning, moved a bit of furniture around, hoovered etc. Meanwhile Riley had clearly got used to the whole outside lounging about...

Hope you all had a pleasant sunny day, wherever you are. J :-)

Weekending...

Sometimes a day without plans just falls into place. A little wool winding, a few mugs of tea, a bit of finishing off here and a little casting on there...a long rambling walk, bringing two bedraggled pond stinking dogs home, more tea, diving into a box marked 'superchunky', a little more crochet...and finally a rustic stool made comfy and cosy...

It was a wing it and and see what happens kind of plan for the cover. I started by unravelling the skinny scarf that was my first ever knitting project. That's the natural colour in the centre with the blue running through it.

To create the change from top to sides I did just one cluster instead of two with a chain two between. Superchunky works up fast but also eats yarn fast too so I had to use up odds and ends as I went. It doesn't show up in these pics but there are five colours in this seat cover. One down three to go!

Off the hook... check mate shrug

If I could be bothered to look back over my posts I could probably find the start date of this project. It was some time before Christmas. I may even have had a romantic notion of actually wearing it to keep my shoulders warm over Christmas... a ridiculous idea because we always call our Christmas break with mum and dad and their log fire 'going to the Bahamas'.

Anyway, it became a WIP (shoved into a basket down beside the sofa) about two thirds of the way in due to the monotony of trebling up and down, a hundred trebles or so per row. Boring! Thankfully the motivation to finish it kicked in due to a few chilly mornings and voila! I cannot believe how quick it was to finish after that dang trebling was done.

I remember saying, in the original post, that I was not a shrug wearing kinda person. That is still true. It was the desire to throw on something sleeveless when I finally do sit down and crochet, read or watch a Western (I make no apologies for the latter). Sleeves annoy me, I find it much easier to crochet without. I already had a large ball of the denim shade for the main colour (jeans every day) and then limited myself to just the left over aran weight wools I already had of no less than 100gms. As it happened I couldn't see the colours actually working very well but I wanted it finished and I didn't want to buy any wool. Charcoal grey didn't appear to go very well with the main body colour and the navy looked a bit bright but somehow they seem to have blended.

I'm afraid Hilda, my lovely slimline model is in the attic for the time being and E is having a much needed Saturday morning lie in, so this photo will have to do. Take it from me, it looks better on a person than on a coat hanger!

I did modify the pattern to suit my needs. I stopped after eight rows of treble clusters, for the simple reason that I didn't want a gathering of 'collar' behind my neck, or too much extra fabric round the front for that matter. I tried it on after four rows and it wasn't enough and after eight it seemed just right, the pattern called for twelve rows. The pattern is featured in issue 11 of Simply Crochet, and it's by Kyoko Nakayoshi. I believe it's on Ravelry and it's called the Check Mate shrug. It's an incredibly easy make, even the sleeve ribbing was a complete breeze.