Attic24

It's Cold Outside

 After an unbelievably mild Autumn, Winter has at last descended on us, bringing the first frost of the season to the landscape.

It's been quite a shock to find the air so suddenly crisp and cold, but it has felt delicious and fresh, and perfectly right for the time of year. I do love it when the weather plays nice and produces perfect, seasonal correctness for us to enjoy. 

All of us here at Attic24 are fighting germs at the moment, with Little B faring the worst. Our weekend was all about huddling and cuddling and taking it easy so nobody was really in the mood for going out and about (me included). However, late on Saturday morning when it was still cold and frosty, all of a sudden I felt an overwhelming need for fresh air.

I didn't go far, just to the park at the top of the hill to walk through the damp, cold winter woodland.

It was good to be out, to breathe in the fresh air and take in the earth and sky.... 

...gosh it was cold though! It was good to be back inside my Red Winter Coat, wrapped up warm and cosy.

Back at home, and I was glad of some warmth and rest. We've got some vanilla coffee pods in at the moment for our much loved Nespresso machine, the coffee smells divine, such a treat.

I baked bread on Saturday morning and as ever it was a perfectly lovely thing to do on a cold winter's day. The warmth of the oven, the aroma of the baking bread, and then the most delicious slices to devour for lunch (smashed up avocado and chopped cherry tomatoes sprinkled liberally with grated cheese, bubbled under the grill until melted and golden, mmmmm)

 Sunday was just as cold but without the wintry delight of crisp blue skies and sparkling frost. It was just freezing cold and wet, and not at all inviting outside. I was feeling a bit rubbish yesterday, so spent the entire day trying not to move about too much. Of course, I still had to take care of the Little People but luckily their requests were easy to fulfill. 

The sudden onset of cold winter weather and the invasion of germs gave us permission to spend Sunday in extreme loafing mode. We lit the fire early then got down to the important business of staying cosy and warm and kicking those pesky germs into touch. Little B has moved swiftly on from his recent domino obsession, replacing it with a Top Trumps obsession. Luckily I'm not required for this activity as I'm told it's a bOy ThInG, something which Little B and J engage in with much verbal commentary.

 

I took to the sofa for much of yesterday, wrapping myself up in a crochet double whammy - the caravan blanket (AKA The Granny Stripe) and the makings of my woolly poncho kept me super cosy. I'm nearing the end of my poncho now, and am pondering over what exactly to do when I get to the edge of The Edge. I sampled a few ideas yesterday but nothing quite worked out right, so hoping for some inspiration to land in my noggin very soon.

 

The room is filled with the scent of full blown hyacinth right now and I am the only one here who really likes it. Everyone else says it's disgusting, so I think I'll need to move the top-heavy blooms over to the fireplace then we don't have to inhale the scent as we eat. Aren't they stunning though? Such a treat to have indoors during the Winter months.

Well it's only two more weeks now until the schools finish for the Christmas holidays, I think perhaps it might nearly be time to deck the halls here at number 24.....have you done yours yet? I've got a reeeeeally cute new Crochet Decoration swinging around inside my Creative Mind, just as soon as I've finished making the border on my Cosy blanket, oh and edging my poncho, I'm going to be doing some festive hookery. Can't wait!

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Cosy Blanket CAL : Part 6

Hello Cosy CAL-ers, have you all had a good week? I'm currently doing battle with some resident germs so I've not been feeling the best, but at least it's given me the excuse to stay indoors this weekend and give myself some TLC. I have loved working on my cosy blanket this week, crocheting the last stripe yesterday and darning in the last of the ends this morning.

I've used my blanket for some serious snuggling this week (I've been on the sofa a fair bit in the evenings, tired out after some busy days and the business of killing germs). It has a satisfying weight to it now that it's become a fully fledged blanket, and the texture/feel of it is extremely pleasing I have to say. It really does live up to it's name and is already providing me with some much needed cosy comfort as we plummet into Winter here (it's been freeeeeezing this week!).

So here is my blanket with ninety stripes, and quite simply I love it. I love the warmth of the colours, I love the simplicity of the pattern and I love the unexpected tactile nature of the crochet. It feels incredibly soft, warm and blankety!

I do apologise for the rather poor photo quality here (the light isn't great in my bedroom in the mornings as it's west facing), but I wanted to show you the scale of my blanket on a standard double bed. It measures 120 cm x 165 cm so just a little bit shorter than the ripple blankets I've made this year (they were 180cm long). I did ponder adding in some more rows (I've got roughly 25 g of each colour left) but have decided instead to leave it as it is. I've not made this blanket as a bed throw, it'll be used by me and the Little People downstairs, so the length of it just has to be right for that purpose. I'm only 5 foot 3 inches, so the length is fine for a shortie like me.

I am so tickled with this colour palette, it has been an absolute pleasure to play with these fifteen colours. They have worked well on so many levels, being warm and bright with just the right amount of rainbowyness. I really like that there is also something slightly earthy about the mix of colours too. Of course, this could just me linking them visually to the leaves, berries, flowers and seeds that inspired my colour choices, but anyhow, I don't really need to analyse the colours. It's enough to say that I just love the way they all look together and that they make me happy.

So here is part 6 of the Cosy blanket, rows 76-90.....

...working from the bottom upwards, as follows ::

76. Magenta

77. Spice

78. Copper

79. Meadow

80. Khaki

81. Petrol

82. Violet

83. Denim

84. Raspberry

85. Pale Rose

86. Camel

87. Gold

88. Lime

89. Grape

90. Claret

91. Petrol*

* I've just realised looking at this picture that I do need to add two more rows so that the pattern ends on a plain treble stripe to match rows 1&2. I'll add two more rows of Petrol before starting on the border.

Now then, it's time to scratch my head a bit and make some decisions about the border. The finishing off bit is always quite a hard part of blanket making, it can be quite tricky to get it right. There needs to be the right mix of colours, the right number of rows and just the right amount of simplicity/flounce to make it look absolutely finished. I've not yet decided exactly how to tackle the edge of the Cosy blanket, but I have decided that I'll be using four rows/colours....

....I've been having a little play and am favouring Copper as the first round/colour. Its the perfect mid-tone that should sit beautifully around the slightly wobbly edge, smoothing away those bumps without shouting about it's own colour credentials. I'll save the brighter tones for the outer edge, although really I'm not at all sure what to do yet and am hoping that inspiration will strike at some point this week!

Here are some links :

♥ Cosy Cal Part 1

♥ Cosy Cal Part 2

♥ Cosy Cal Part 3

♥ Cosy Cal Part 4

♥ Cosy Cal Part 5

♥ Cosy Stripe Pattern

♥ Cosy yarn pack

♥ Cosy CAL thread on Ravelry

I'll be back with Part 7 next week on Sunday 14th December, which will be all about the edge/border. Fingers crossed the weather cheers up so that I can photograph the border tutorial as I work on it this week....come on sunshine, show your pretty face!

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Crochet Christmas Card

Yesterday, I decided the time was right to begin working on an idea that has been gently bubbling away inside my Creative Mind for a few weeks now. As with many of my creative endeavours, I had already visualised the design and could see it very clearly in my mind. So clearly in fact, that all I needed to do was assemble some colourful oddments of merino yarn and get busy hooking.

Oooo look, I made an owl, hoot-hoot! This happy little chappy kind of hatched in front of my eyes and positively flew off my hook, he did not hang about (I think he really needed to get a life outside of the mess in my Creative Mind). Now before you ask, I have to confess that I didn't even touch a pen whilst making this owl (there wasn't time, he needed to fly!) and so there is no pattern here to share. However, there is a very large parliament of owl patterns which exist in cyberspace, loads and loads and loads of them. All you have to do is go to Google images and type in "crochet applique owl" and you will see what I mean. They are quite easy shapes to interpret in crochet, have a look at  Jacquie's fantastic tutorial if you fancy making yourself a cutesome, wide-eyed little owl.

Part of my idea was to give my owl his very own Christmas stocking. I drew out the basic stocking shape to use as a template, creating dinky little rows of colourful dc stripes to fit the shape on the paper.....

....the stocking came out a little bit thin and wobbly, but it does at least look like a sock type thing. I used my Jolly Holly pattern from three years ago to make some festive greenery, with some teeny little red berries (red yarn on a 3mm hook, chain 2, then 6 dc into 2nd ch from hook, sl st into 1st ch and fasten off).

The hardest thing of all was making the branch, I didn't just want it to be a plain brown shape, so I used three different browns to make stripes. It was fiddly changing colour so many times, and decreasing to make the pointy twigs at the end was tricky. Although not my best or neatest work, I think it turned out OK.

This morning at the studio, I started the glorious job of bringing the whole thing together. I used a sheet of blue felt for the background (a bit smaller than A4 size) and made a little string of felt bunting to hang along the top. I simply glued the small felt triangles in place, then made a line of stitching along the top using white yarn.

The rest of the crochet shapes (owl, stocking, holly leaves and berries) were stitched in place using sewing thread.

I absolutely love stitching, it is such a slow and gentle thing to be doing on a sunshiny morning with the radio playing and a cup of coffee to hand.

Pretty soon, everything was stitched in place. The owl had his feet sewn and his eyes popped in. The branch had grown it's leaves and berries and the stocking was tied with a small bow.

I was actually quite desperate to do more embroidery at this point (I was itching to stitch), but truthfully I couldn't think of anything to stitch! So I decided to leave it be and keep it simple, adding just one more little detail.....

.....a teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy little smattering of bling......

.....awwww!! The tiniest silver stars you ever did see! These stars are literally a couple of millimetres across and came in a very tiny tube as part of a Christmas glitter set. I simply sprinkled them onto the felt, no glue or anything as they only needed to be temporary for photographic purposes.

The stars really pleased me, they added just the right finishing touch. Luckily, the light today in my studio was fantastic and the sun was streaming in through the front window. So I set up my hooky picture and took a gazillion photos, just to be sure that I would end up with exactly the right sort of image.....

.....to make into a Christmas card. Ta-dah!

I'm pleased with the finished piece, I think it looks suitably homemade and not too perfect (the owl is a wee bit cross-eyed, but maybe he's just excited about his stocking).

I made my first woolly Christmas card two years ago, printing out the photographs at home and simply gluing them to folded white card. The finished Christmas cards were truly handmade in every sense of the word.

This year I've decided to splash out and have a go at using Moo.com to get some proper printed cards made. It's quite expensive to do this (they work out at just under £1 each), but oooo there is a heap load of pleasure coming my way when the cards drop through my letter box. I am SO excited to see what they look like all printed up, I'll show you when they arrive (only two days to wait!), yipppeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

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Early Winter Landscape

After pretty much a whole long week of low grey cloud, fog and damp drizzle, we woke up yesterday {Sunday} to the bliss of clear blue sky and sunshine. These bright sunshiny days are so precious at this time of year that it would've been criminal to stay indoors, so off we jolly well went, into the great Outdoors.

Oh.My.Goodness. It was just sooooo beautiful. The amazing colours, the unexpected warmth of the sun, the clarity of the light, it was absolutely magical. We walked slowly, ambling, chatting, taking it all in. We spent quite a bit of time at the water's edge where there is a small sandy beach and it is shallow enough to paddle. It was lovely to watch my three Little People play together, it doesn't happen often these days as LM (now 12 years old and as tall as me) is growing fond of his own space when we're at home. But when we're out and about, we get a glimpse of his still-young self and it is wonderful to observe. The larking about, the gentle teasing, the laughter, the fun. Thank goodness it is all still there between the three of them, and oh how I enjoyed it all yesterday as we walked around the water together.

I've shared this local walk a good number of times on my blog now, it's a favourite destination when all we want/need is a very short drive and one hour of fresh air, gentle exercise and amazing scenery. I absolutely LOVE to see how this walk of ours changes through the seasons, do take a quick look... {Spring} {Summer} {Winter}

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