Crochet mood blanket update

I know that I am now about 6 months after the point when the blanket should have been finished. It is still not done but I have made some progress recently. I have now fully dismantled the blanket that I started last year. I took apart each square one at a time.

I stacked up the colours that I had sets of 10 squares each. All of these colours gave me a full set of 10 of each.

It was obviously the colours that I liked the least that I ended up with less squares of so I then started to make these up to the 10 squares of each to make the sets.

Almost there...

I did have 3 colours that I already had 11 squares from the original blanket.

Here's the full set of 10 of each of the original colours. I think I got to this point on about Saturday this weekend.

I worked out that there are 16 colours and 10 of each colour making 160 squares in total. I am not the best with this kind of maths but I know enough to have realised that this is not a square number. As the shapes that I am making are squares I think I would like to make the whole finished blanket square ideally,

I then tried to make an extra square of each colour. This worked out ok until I got to the white. I had used a lot of this in the "special" squares and therefore there wasn't quite enough left to make up the extra.

I therefore started to work out what numbers of squares that I would need to make a full blanket. 12 x 12 = 144 (I already have more squares than this and I don't really want to waste any that I have made) 13 x 13 = 169 (maybe...I would only need 9 of the extras that I have started to make and I am not sure how I would decide which 9) 13 x 14 = 183 (I would rather the blanket be square I think - definitely at this stage then this is what I think I want anyway) so 14 x 14 = 196. 

I wasn't totally sure how these figures would work. I know that I have 160 squares made for definite at the minute with all of the colours being even numbers as well. So this means that I will need another 36. I thought that this was probably too many to make out of the same 16 colours that I had used this far, especially as some of these were starting to run out meaning that there would not be even amounts of each. I was however saving a final 2 colours to use as edging and joining colours when I had started my original blanket. These were only chosen originally as, out of the random, mixed bags of colours that I had ordered, these were the only 2 where I received duplicates of the same colour. Now though, there is no reason why I can't include these in the main pattern of the blanket as well. I'm sure that with the way that these are being arranged, much more uniformly that they were in the mood blanket, I will still be left with enough of these for edging.

10 squares of each of these colours will get my total up to 180 out of the 196 squares that I need in total. I now have 18 colours in total and 16 additional squares to make. I know that I don't have enough left to do an additional white square as I have already tried this and ran out of white yarn so that's an easy decision made to get rid of this one as an additional colour. The other that I know I really disliked throughout the making of the original blanket was the beige/brown as well so also, easy decision I will remove this from my additional list. 11 squares of each colour all except these 2 and I will have the perfect number for a nice square blanket.

I set to work over the rest of this weekend and this evening. Whilst watching Disney movies on Sunday I was making enough pink and yellow squares to complete the whole set and making sure that there are now 11 of each colour, all expect the white and beige. Here is the full set finally completed. Woohoo! Yey!

I am really pleased with all of them and I think that they will look lovely when they are all arranged. I can't wait now to start planning the order that they will appear and working out what is the best way to join the squares. That's the only shame about having undone the original blanket, they were all joined as I went along and I had been fairly good an sewing in all of the ends as well. They all have to be undone and refinished to separate them so all of that hard work was undone. It will all be worth it in the end I think - I'm sure that a plain squares blanket will look a lot better in the long run. Just please wish me luck with all of the ends! A few at a time perhaps and I will get there.

I think that this was about the extent of this weekend really from a crafty point of view. Other than this I also finally managed to see and catch up with some mates and went out for a nice meal from a friend and her husband that I used to work with in my old job. The new job is still going well and I am still really enjoying it - this Monday I have to say is the most I can honestly say I have ever actually looked forward to going to work. Well, defniitely in an office at least. I hope you all have a good week too.

Some late night gardening and banana bread

This week I finally got around to changing jobs. I have been threatening to do this for a really long time but somehow have just never quite managed to do it before. There has always been some reason or another why staying put was just easier and safer than moving and therefore the most sensible thing to do.

On Tuesday, in honour of my last day at the job that I had held for 5 years I made and took in some banana bread. It's my mother-in-laws recipe and is always reliable to produce the same lovely flavours each time it's made. This time with the first batch (I made 2 to ensure that there was enough to go around to all of my colleagues) I forgot to add the eggs in the correct place in the recipe. I only realised just in time and added them right at the end. Both batches that we made turned out exactly the same which was a relief but also yet another good thing about this recipe.

They were lovely - I got plenty of compliments about them - 3 of these 4 went in the day and one of my best mates from work even asked for the recipe. The other was enjoyed today by all of the family when my Mum, Dad and Nan came over to visit & celebrate Father's Day.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my first few days in my new job. I feel like I have learnt more in those last 3 days than I did in the last 5 years in my old job. I am being given a lot more responsibility and asked to run a lot of projects to improve processes within the company. My ideas are already being taken on board and listened to. I think that this job will be a lot of hard work but all or my efforts this time will actually be worth it. I can't wait to get my teeth stuck in and to know enough to be able to start working on some of these things. My boss is even being really reasonable and helping with my long commute to work and back each day by letting me work hours that fit in around the traffic. I can honestly say that I am actually looking forward to going into work tomorrow morning which I think really has to be a first for a 9-5 day job.

Yesterday I was instructing all day so was pretty tired when I got home, especially coupled with a few days of early starts for my new job but it was still obviously the best idea to go out shopping for compost and plant pots so that we could plant out the herbs and the veggie plants that we had got to try and grow this summer! That's what we did anyway. We got a nice long pot for the herbs so that could go outside the front door and some grow bags to fill that and also to grow tomatoes, cucumbers and a strawberry plant in.

We are not sure if these will work but hopefully they will. Henlow should be very pleased if they do grow. I'm sure that he will probably end up with more tomatoes and strawberries than we do! We have also started to try and grow a green bean plant as well. We put this one in one of the tubs that we already had. They are all very much an experiment and therefore if they don't work it's not the end of the world. Hopefully we can learn why and do better with some plants next year.

The herbs don't look too bad in their long pot. They are a little wilt-y for now but hopefully they will pick up when the sun comes out on them over the next few days and they get a good amount of water. We did plant them at about 8pm last night so I guess we can't expect too much of them yet. Again these were just supermarket bought plants so if a few of them grow then that would be good, otherwise we might have to look elsewhere for some better plants to try and grow. They are already starting to look ever so slightly better than they did this morning when the photo was taken. Well I think they do anyway.

We have also planted a runner bean plant in a tub that we already have and we have 2 tomato plants in the grow bag nearest the fence and a strawberry and a cucumber plant in the other grow bag as well. 

Fingers crossed that they all start to grow and we can enjoy some lovely home grown veggies in a few weeks time. The tomatoes at the minute aren't looking too healthy but hopefully they will come back to fighting fitness shortly. We'll have to wait and see - as with all of them we will not be too upset if they don't make it as they are a bit of an experiment and we're not too sure what we are doing with them but it would be nice to have some of our own fresh veggies to eat. I love all of these kind of things straight off the plants when they are home grown. I am not sure how many will ever make it to any kind of cooking pot. They will have to get past both me and Henlow first!

Lovely weekend

This weekend (& second half of the week really) has been really lovely. Wednesday I had my exam - not great but now it's done. Wednesday evening I went to the cinema with one of my best mates which was lovely - it was great to catch up after a fairly long time of not seeing her. Lovely to have a great girly night out too - not done that for ages! Friday was another girly evening for me - so much for the promises I've made to my hubby that I would see him more after my exam was over - sorry! I went out with my mum - another fab evening - we met at a cocktail bar for a couple of drinks first then for lovely burgers at Annie burger shack and finally onto the theatre to watch Dirty Dancing. It was really good! I was amazed at how much they managed to stick to the script and story (and even scenery) of the film.

This weekend has been an awful lot of nothing really (after Friday night) but that has meant that I have had enough time to spend doing a lot of the things that I have wanted to do for a long time. Saturday morning I spent with my mum watching Dirty Dancing on DVD. we had to compare it to the show after all! The house is also now pretty. I have spotless from top to bottom - proper spring clean time always feels good.

Henlow has also been out today and we've had a first from him too. I know it doesn't seem like such a big deal really but I feel like a v proud mum today. We cleaned out his house while he had a good run around the front garden - it's always nice to see him really enjoying the fresh air and nice weather. But then when we did come back in we left his door out of the side of his house and for the first time ever, he walked straight back out again, along the hallway and back to the front door asking me to go back out in the sun again.

I know it sounds a little pathetic (ok, a lot!) but he's never climbed down from his house before - the furthest he's been is to put 1 foot out onto the door before. He's then got a bit scared before and gone back onto his mud. I'm not sure what it was today - maybe the new floor we had just put in was slightly different and a bit colder than he's used to or perhaps it was the prospect of the sun on the front lawn luring him out. Either way, I am really proud of him. Perhaps this will be the start of us being able to leave his door open while we are at work and letting him roam the hallway all day. This is what we had always planned for him to be able to do and is why we put his house out there. He is still just about small enough to fit under the sofa so the door to living room will have to remain shut for a while. I think we may otherwise find that we come home and he is in the corner all the way under the back corner of the sofa.

This was a little while ago - a few weeks ago - but the last time my mum and dad came over (this Friday was just my mum) he put some brackets on the wall for me so that my guitars could hang up in there and look pretty,. Let's face it, they don't really get used very often anyway - they may as well look nice while they are waiting to be used.

This is something that I have planned for when I have some time off. I have just been offered a new job - I start in a couple of weeks - and hopefully, due to the travelling distance and the fact that they offer a flexible working policy, I will hopefully be able to work 4 long days per week (most weeks) and then have a day off to do as I please. I have a nice long list of things that I can do with my time on these Friday's. One of which is to try to learn to play these again.

I have also been for a run yesterday (I've never done this before as it's not something that I have ever been very good at). It is something that I would like to keep up ever if this doesn't happen much more than once a week but hopefully eventually I might get to be ok at it.

There are a number of other things that I would like to do with the free time that I will hopefully be getting - at some point I will try to write up a list of these for you. A few of these are gifts so I won't be able to tell you about all of them but there are a number of things that I will be able to mention.

Speaking of gifts, I have got to the point of being really close to being finished with a big project that I have had on the go since January but that is a Christmas present for someone for next year.

This week has also been the start of a new month of the temperature based table runner that I am making. I have changed the ranges on some of the colours slightly (which I will tell you about in more detail at the end of the month) but it is looking very bright and colourful so far this month.

Life is really looking good at the minute. Happy weekend everyone and have a great summer - enjoy the lovely weather while it's here.

Ooh. Just one more thing. I had a feeling that I will really struggle to fill the time now in the evenings. Now that I have no college to be working on for a while, but I have managed to fill this week fairly weak really. I have been very lucky to have some lovely people to see. I think that I may have also found another solution for the next few weeks as well as we have started to watch Breaking Bad again. We watch the whole series' before and found it to be really good but we have just started to watch this again in the last couple of days. Now we've started again I'm sure it's going to be just as difficult as the first time to stop watching!

Crochet mood blanket update (May)

A couple of days late this month with my update, I'm sorry. I have been studying for an exam that I had this morning so no time over the last couple of days to blog about my crafts. I have still managed to keep up with my runner though and this month.

I managed to work out what was going wrong with it before to make it get wider - I had managed at some point to switch my hooks over so the one that I found with the runner was the next size up (4 instead of 3.5). I realised about half way through this month so I ripped back to about half way through April (the largest green strip I think was about where the error started) and have then re-done from there.

It's looking a lot more green for this month than it did from last month.

This month I am switching to high temperatures. Jan & Feb were lows, Mar - May mids and now we are ready for the next 3 months being high temperatures. Hopefully this will start to see some different and brighter colours coming through this month - after green we get yellow. This will be when we reach a high of 16 - 20.

I wonder if we will ever get this mini heat wave that we have been promised from today for a few days. At least I should be able to enjoy it now if we do get it (apart from when I am working) as I don't have college to be doing in an evening. I'm now really looking forward to the rest of the week - it feels like a real treat to not be studying is the main thing but I also am going to the cinema with a friend this evening as well as out for cocktails, burgers and to the theatre with my mum on Friday. Have a good one everyone and I'll be sure to blog again soon.