"March winds......

Day 89 - Tuesday 30th March 2021

Some work on the new lounge cushion. I've crochet-joined the front to the back......

Day 88 - Monday 29th March 2021

Some creativity on this lovely website.

I've now archived the December 2020 blog to a page of its own.

......then I found a colourful Christmas-themed garland, and mirrored it to use as a border for the banner at the bottom of the page......

......and added links so that it can be accessed from the main blog page, and each of the other pages already archived. It can't be accessed from the main website menu - this is to keep the menu as clutter-free as possible, which is more user-friendly.

But there was just enough, with a bit left over for weaving in! So I breathed a sigh of relief and continued with the next colour. And that is a post for another day!

Day 85 - Friday 26th March 2021

I thought I'd head into the weekend with a proper old sort-out of my yarny WIPs. I have done some crochet today, but the main focus of today's creativity was to get some order into some of my creativity!

I got all my WIPs out and I have to confess at having been telling porkies - I didn't have a "WIPs bag", I had a few! You can't tell from the picture, but there are actually two of those great big flowery bags.

When I put them on the bed, the first thing that happened was that Joe shouted at me for having so much!

However, when I asked him to help me sort, he lay down and demonstrated that even though he has delightful toe beans, he has no thumbs!

The next step of course was to tidy it all away, but in a way which makes it accessible so that I can finish all the WIPs!

A couple of years ago, somebody gave me two lovely rattan baskets, and so I thought I would make use of those by putting all the WIPs into them.

There aren't many crochet WIPs, so they fitted nicely into one. The other one has the knitting WIPs, with the excess on top, but that's ok - they ARE all going to be finished soon! Haha.

Both baskets are now stored neatly in one corner of my craft room.

Day 84 - Thursday 25th March 2021

This lovely wedding dress customisation is the opposite to what I'm normally asked to do.

Usually brides want to have diamantés removed from straps and have lace as a replacement. This bride has bought a gown with a plain strap, and wants to add some bling!

These diamantés come ready attached in a line along a narrow strip of ribbon, so that needs to be stitched neatly along the length of the strap.

Day 83 - Wednesday 24th March 2021

I've been playing with Bob's lovely spinning wheel!

Bob tells me that apparently it's a good idea to practise 'spinning' with an actual ball of yarn before trying it out on some fleece.

This is so that you can get a feel for the tension, and develop your own rhythm. Also, you can see the twist in the yarn, so you tell how even it is, etc.

In this picture you can see the twist of the yarn. I'm quite pleased with how even it is so far, but I think I do need quite a lot more practice before I move on to the fleece.

Day 82 - Tuesday 23rd March 2021

More wedding dress creativity today.

One of the customisations we often get asked to do is to replace diamanté embellished straps with lace embellished ones - usually using whatever lace is on the gown.

Next I needed to cut apart the allocated motif, choosing small flower parts which could then be arranged into a suitable design along the length of the strap.

The final stage was to stitch the pieces in place, fine-tuning as necessary. The gown could then be pressed and quality controlled, ready to be shipped off to a hopefully excited bride!

......and this is the back view.

I really like this gown - it's one of my favourites.

My job today was to insert some boning into the sides and front seams of the bodice.

This involved taking the bodice off at the waistline, inserting the boning, attaching the bodice and skirt back together again, and finally hand-stitching the lace back around the waistline.

I really enjoyed doing this. I get a great deal of satisfaction in creating nice clean lines where the boning has gone in, and then replacing the lace exactly as it was to start with, so that you wouldn't know that an alteration had been done.

Day 79 - Saturday 20th March 2021

More cwtchy blanket!

I've done the first row, and most of the second, of the single crochet on the border. That is all!

Day 77 - Thursday 18th March 2021

Carrying on with the wool crochet cushion for my lounge.

I've finished the front.

Given that the centre of it is so lovely, I just continued with simple granny treble clusters in the jade yarn, and had enough red to put a single crochet border around it.

So I've started the back, using the red for the centre and then continuing with the jade. I'm just literally making a large granny square, and hopefully there will be enough red left to border the back with single crochet the same as the front, and then hopefully enough jade to put a picot or scalloped edging around the whole cushion.

This beautiful yarn (Jaeger Matchmaker) crochets up really quickly, so hopefully I can get this finished within the next week.

I have lots left of a few of the colours, and I think enough of the other colours to go around once more using single crochet for each colour. This will further add to the striped effect.

I started it some time ago, after finishing this throw, which is currently draped on a basket in the lounge. It was in the basket that I found the cushion and yarn.

I'm literally then going to just finish it off in treble clusters, as I think the centre of it is really nice and I don't really want to detract from that. Also, I just want to get it done to reduce my WIPs. Can you tell I'm itching to start something else? Haha.

So I then went around with granny treble clusters, using some of the red yarn......

Day 74 - Monday 15th March 2021

I've been rummaging around in my bag of WIPs again!

This is a pile of knitting WIPs - I counted ten in all. Almost all of them are at the sewing up/finishing off stage, and as we've already established that this is the part about knitting which I dislike the most, it's safe to say that is WHY they're in the WIPs bag! This situation clearly couldn't continue indefinitely, and that is why I have been dipping in and out of the WIPs bag, determined to get stuff finished before I allow myself to start anything new!

Unfortunately, there are no patterns with any of these projects. I've clearly at some point decided to sort things out, and have put the patterns to one side, to put into a file or something. I'll need to find the patterns to be able to finish most of them off.

I actually blocked it ready for sewing up around four years ago. At the time I took this picture of the late, great Nala Cat, who decided at the time that it was a lovely place for a snooze! I couldn't not include this picture here. You're welcome!

Day 72 - Saturday 13th March 2021

Following on from stitching up the shoulders of my Neapolitan jumper, I've been stitching the sleeves into it.

I used a neat, small backstitch for this.....tight enough so that it won't fall apart, but not too tight, so as to pucker it.

This has left a nice, neat seam which itself will need steaming to flatten it and make it even neater.

However, that's for another day - there's only so much stitching up of knitwear a girl can face in one day!

After re-attaching the skirts to the bodice, I then needed to re-attach and secure all the pieces of loose appliqué which had needed to come off in order to take the gown apart to work with it.

This kind of stitching is very therapeutic and getting the placements correct really appeals to my need to pay attention to detail in my job.

The appliqué flowers are decorated with tiny sequins, which add to the overall sparkle of the gown. With the new sparkly layer it looks very much the fairytale gown and I'm sure that the bride is going to be delighted!

......photographs with rounded corners......

......and oval-shaped photographs.

Day 69 - Wednesday 10th March 2021

Now that my Neapolitan jumper has been blocked I can stitch it up!

Like a lot of knitters, stitching up is my least favourite part of any project, so I tend not to do it all in one go! I've started off with the shoulders.

This has left me with a nice neat, flat seam.

The next stage will be to join the sleeves to the main garment......but that's for another day!

I've been doing more archiving of my blog page.

Over the last few days I've been doing the same for the September, October, and November 2020 pages. All three pages have lovely autumnal backgrounds, and are each headed up with a photograph specific to that month.

There are plenty of links on the main blog page, and within the archived pages themselves to hop back and fore between all the pages!

Day 65 - Saturday 6th March 2021

A little more website creativity.

I've given the page a new banner picture across the top, and a new background - lovely summer sunflowers. I've also used some summer flowers across the bottom band of the page, and added a bit of a blurb about what a lovely month August was.

Day 64 - Friday 5th March 2021

More blocking - this time my Neapolitan three-coloured knitted jumper.

I used the same gentle method of blocking as I used yesterday with the yellow throw, so as not to squash the lovely fibres. I'm actually looking forward to stitching this one together now - that's something I never thought I'd hear myself say!

I blocked it on the ironing board, pinning out each section, and then using a piece of polycotton fabric to cover, before hovering over it and releasing steam with the iron, then finally gently patting on top with light hand pressure, then lifting the cloth, allowing the section to cool and moving onto the next section to repeat the process.

By relying on steam and gentle hand pressure, it means that the pattern of the item is spread out to show it off, yet still retaining the vibrancy and bounce of the yarn.

On the central parts of the throw I didn't need to use pins, as I was able to spread it gently over the ironing board in order to bring out the pattern for blocking.

This is a little chair which I have for my kitchen....and which Basil decided to sit on and look gowjus when I got it out to photograph it.

It's a chair which I really love, and it has sentimental value - it was in my childhood bedroom, and I'm not sure if either my father or my grandfather may have made it.

Day 62 - Wednesday 3rd March 2021

Slow but sure progress on my cwtchy blanket. I'm on the fifth of eight rows of half-trebles around the edge. Each round is now taking around an hour.....I estimate that I have about twenty hours of crochet left to do on it, then washing and blocking (as best as I can with such a large blanket), so it should be finished by about the end of March! Haha.

The basket where it was stored is covered with a lovely pure wool crocheted throw which I made a few years ago, and I obviously started the cushion to match it!

I also remember that I ran out of the red colour, and a couple of years ago, went in search at Wonderwool Wales to try and find a matching yarn, which I did very successfully!

Anyway, I shall continue with this cushion cover. I have no idea what pattern I was following, and have a feeling I might have been making it up as I went along, so I shall continue in the same vein.

I’ve set up a February page, so that I can move all the February creativity posts there, to cut down on loading times on the 365 Days of Creativity section of the main creative page, and also so that the page is not cluttered with too much history.

You can access it by clicking here, or by clicking the 'February' link further up this page.

I’ve also added links so that my website visitors can navigate between the main creative page, and the 365 Days of Creativity January and February pages.