A little piece of beauty

I love beautiful things. This may sound a bit 'dur' but I just love looking at them. I class a lot of wool and yarn as beautiful which I guess is why I have so much stashed away and sometimes just get some out to look at it. Um, yeah, anyway. One thing that is definitely beautiful is Cloisonne by Kaffe Fasset. The first six fabrics on this page are it in different colour combinations (they stock most of his fabrics - I've used them before and the service was pretty good). It is 'moss' that I am currently loving. I found some more crochet hooks the other day and found the pouch I bought in Philadelphia wasn't big enough for my collection. So obviously I needed a new one and I set to it straight away. This is what I have ended up with:

This is it folded in three. I haven't added a fastener yet as I'm not sure what to use. This is it unfolded.

You see, I even managed to get my beloved polka dots in there too! It is the cover though that I really love.

Isn't it just divine? I kept looking at the flowers and thinking they looked like jewels so I decided to accentuate that with beads. It's been ages since I embroidered with beads so I combined it with some quilting (I am still thinking about the Amish quilts I saw in the US and also the needle holder I made my SP recently. Actually I never posted a pic of that so more of that in a min.)

This is a detail of some beads. I just love looking at all the colours and feeling the texture caused by the beads and the quilting. It's one of those things where I do not care what anyone else thinks - I just think it's beautiful.

I said I did one for my pal and she's had it a few weeks now. I'm not on the list of people she reads so I think it's safe to post a few pics here. I did the same kind of thing with the outside except no beads.

This is a different Kaffe fabric from the Cotton Patch website (she prefers softer colours so would probably hate the one I've made myself!). Plus a bit of Louise Harding sari ribbon to tie it up. It was the inside I particularly liked on this one.

I embroidered the american needle sizes on the inside. This one is for circs so the loops are open at both ends.

Anyway. Because of this I haven't done much more on the cardi and I actually haven't done any knitting all week! This is where we were two days ago:

I had just done the armholes so decided to give it a whirl. I'm really not sure about the colours. But I've started so I'll finish.... The Pooch (this is him in a typical pose)...

... has just informed me that up til now he thought it was a tablecloth. This is despite me waving the picture of the girl wearing it under his nose every 5 seconds. Tsk. He has actually just done rather well this morning by joining me in a trip to drop off charity shop things to Lewisham followed by a trawl round the shops. He slightly blotted his copybook by buying me a doughnut, only for me to find it had the england flag in icing on it, but then it was a doughnut so no harm done really.

To keep things up to date I need to finish with,

• Tuesday: 0 hours
• Wednesday: 4 hours (was off work ill for these two days)
• Thursday: 5 hours
• Friday: 0 hours

Just me and my flies

My cold got worse yesterday and turned into another migrane so I came home early, regaining consciousness briefly between 8 and 10pm. Why the hell couldn't I sleep through that pitiful time as well? I had the window open because of the heat and all I could hear was 'ooooo' and 'ahhhhh' and 'goal' although that last one didn't happen often. Have spent today plugged into the beanbag. And this is where the flies come in.

There are flies, circling about a 40cm cube of air in the middle of this room. Or rather there were flies. About 5 of them. I say about as they are hard to count as they won't keep still. There are people out there who would be able to tell you why they occupy this small airspace so rigidly so I won't theorize here. At about 3 I was in the beanbag, as you do, dropping off in front of perry mason (this was one of those zen episodes of perry mason where perry himself does not actually appear). An hour later I stirred once more and there were no flies. Do you see where I'm going with this? How likely is it that all (approximately) 5 flies flew out of their airspace and into my mouth while I was zizzing?

It's all quite worrying. So to take my mind off that I have graphed Pooch's attendance record.

But I found I really wasn't happy with this graph.

Three years....three years studying physics and all I have left are my drawing-a-graph-in-excel-skills and this is the best I can do? Oh no no no! So I had a fiddle.

Art!

Just to keep my hand in I frogged and then did a bit more of the crochet cardi. It's looking rather impressive now though I say so myself. I also finished the hat AND did a couple of swatches to felt for the bag made out of the stuff my SP sent me. The hat is not quite the thing of beauty that Ruth produced as it looks more giant's causeway than pixie but I am still pretty chuffed with it. There would have been a picture but La Pooch has nicked off with the batteries again. That boy....

How have I contained my excitement this long?

I felt I had to put that rubbish about meringues first before being able to do justice to..... my second secret pal parcel! I am so spoiled! Such an amazing mix of colours too. Plus I really think my pal is trying to completely convert me to crochet.

Feast your eyes...

A crochet scarves book and another wicked crochet mag. I have only had a quick flick through these but this one immediately caught my eye:

Pooch does rather love his argyle patterns (they make him feel closer to the golf he feels he ought to play).

Then there is a gorgeous pink t-shirt.

I am a bit confused here though SP. B is for Byrne - sorted. Plus it says "soft as a grape" under the B which strikes me as particularly random and wonderful. But it also says it is official baseball wear and I am ashamed to say I just don't know which team it refers to. Should I know this? Am I just embarrassing myself?

And as if all this wasn't enough, look at this amazing stuff....

It is every different colour you can think of and....it felts! AND she sent me a hat and bag pattern with it and there is enough to make either. So now I am in a conundrum. Or I have one. I'm not sure right now how to use the word and I'm too excited to care. Do I frog the crochet cardi and go with the bag? Or frog the cardi and then redo it. Or stop starting other projects when I've already got about 20 on the go and finish the hat? I need guidance here folks - help me out.

On the Pooch front I have to revise Thursday to one full hour because I forgot we had lunch. So that is...

• Thursday (revised): 1 hour
• Sunday: 5 hours (I was tricked into eating there in the evening which is undoubtedly where the crochet went wrong)
• Monday (today): 0.1 hour.

That's right peeps...Pooch popped in for a quick 6 mins (I timed it so this tally could retain statistical validity) after I got back from work during half time of the 5pm game.

Poo - half an hour more cursed tidying before slumping in front of the really appalling yet addictive Rosemary and Thyme on TV. Such hammy acting although I always end up feeling sorry for Pam Ferris. At leat she pretends to be doing it a bit seriously where as that woman from that 70s thing about the self-sufficient people living next door to Margo and Jerry just mucks about being totally over the top all the time.

Um. I just critiqued Rosemary & Thyme? Wow. I really am willing to do anything to avoid the tidying. That's the problem with moving. You can't move a mess - you have to at least put it in a box first.

Mmmmmm

First the good bit: Who says I can't cook? When it comes to puddings I am unrivalled. I got a sudden urge for meringues this evening and found some suitable eggs. They're in the oven as I type!

Now the bad news: I have got this far with the crochet cardi I wasn't going to start til I'd finished the hat.

Thing is, it all started going wrong about round 4 and by this point I have 21 loops instead of 20. Peeps, I'm going to have to frog it. But, BUT it just goes to show. At least I know I can read a crochet pattern even if I'm not too good at the execution.

Warning, hat in progress

Why get up to look in a mirror when you've got a camera next to you on the sofa?

Pooch says it is my finest creation yet and I have to say I am rather pleased with it. I might finish it tonight although it's not exactly the weather for it. I love the design though and plan to have many more crochet spirals featuring in my future.

I know I said I would leave the squares afghan til the winter but... BUT. You see I've had £50 in my paypal account for a week and decided I would save it for woolfest but now of course I can't go and Tom is coming over next weekend and so...it kind of seemed like a little splurge at elann.com was in order. I bought the wool I'll need for the afghan - about 21 balls for about £30! The exchange rate just makes it madness to buy in the UK even if you do get stuck with the import tax. I know this is extremely disloyal and unpatriotic but there are still some things I *need* from the UK (Silkwood sock yarn I think...).

Breakfast this morning was a joy. None of that health nonsense about food colouring. Nobody does cerial quite like the americans. Look at these colours...

I am behind with my hour logging so here goes for the rest of this week:

• Thursday: 0.5 hours
• Friday: 0 hours
• Saturday: 7 hours (I went to Joe's for lunch and stayed crocheting my spirals for the first half of the 2pm game until I ran out of wool)

It's Sian's birthday next weekend so have been busily filling a box with goodies for her. When we were little Mum used something called "the good little pogie's prize" as a good conduct award for the week and it was always a higgledymix of little things rather than one big thing. I LOVE presents like that where there are lots of mini thngs and have always got Freddie ones like that. This one for Sian is like that too so I hope she likes it (and I know she's been reading this recently so am cunningly building up a bit of pre-birthday excitement!).