A girly mum-in-law, daughter-in-law day

Yesterday I had a lovely mother-in-law, daughter-in-law day. The men were both out watching cricket so it left us both together to have a girly day. We weren't too sure what we were going to do for the whole day on our own but were sure that we would find some nice things to get up to.

My hubby had come up with a good idea that we could start to knit a blanket/throw together. if we both knit one square each week for about a year or so then we would have enough squares to sew together to make a lovely blanket/throw.

With this in mind, our first stop yesterday morning, after we'd eaten our breakfast, was Hobbycraft. We had a look around for quite a while - it was nice not to have any men with us huffing and puffing around while we were wandering. I think we looked down pretty much every single isle. It was great to just look at everything - some things we decided were really weird and we really didn't understand, while other things we could really imagine ourselves doing.

The only thing that we came out with though (other than a stamp from the bargain bin for me) was the yarn we would need to make our blanket. We chose 6 different colours - all fairly neutral on the theory that maybe one day this would become a blanket to be used in a babies room if/when me and the hubby decide that a family is something that we would like.

We took it in turns to pick the colours and went for these 6 different ones to give a nice variety (& they were on 3 for 2 so 6 each seemed to make sense!)

Once we had chosen the yarn that we were going to use we needed some thinking time so we went out for a lovely lunch. We shared some tear and share garlic bread to start - which we were mercilessly mocked for later in the day when the blokes got back in as we apparently really stank of garlic! it was amazing at the time! Then we both had a prawn and pea risotto, with sea bass and scallops on for our main. It was lovely but really really filling. I knew after id finished that I probably shouldn't have eaten all of mine but it was too nice to leave any.

We decided against pudding at the pub as we were both stuffed but that didn't mean that we wouldn't be hungry again a bit later. It seemed like the perfect excuse to go back to the house and do some baking after a little dog walk.

I am normally not too good with dogs but am getting better and find it a lot easier to be around them when they are a little less active than they could be. The easiest way to help with this was to wear him out. I therefore aided in this by helping him to get his stick and new prized possession all the way home!

I'm not sure how popular I was when we got back to pavements and he was still carrying it but hey - I thought it was funny! Between us we managed to not scratch or scrape any cars.

It was baking time when we got back. We made my favourite cake ever - Mum L's banana cake! I had donated some rather over-ripe bananas to the cause but the making was a joint effort.

While they baked - this gave us the perfect opportunity to have a look at patterns for ideas for our blanket. I had a look through Ravelry and found a few ideas for squares that we could do. As always I tended to like the plainer patterns and so I wasn't hugely interested in some of the highly intricate designs on offer.

The nicest that I found were a couple of variations on a moss stitch (knit 1, purl 1) so we both tried a sample square. Mum L tried a double moss stitch to start with however we thought that our blanket would be nicest with fairly small squares and therefore it didn't quite look right on this scale.

We have decided on a standard moss stitch for our squares. We needed an odd number of stitches on our needle - we worked out that 19 stitches will make our squares approx 3.5in each which seems a nice size.

This is the beginning of my first square

I like the way that the pattern is starting to form in this square and the size of it too (compared to my thigh!)

This is the way that our first 2 squares are looking

Fairly even - pretty much the same size. Hopefully this will work out well. We have both chosen a different colour this time and I think we will speak about what colour each of us is doing each week but it's not really a problem if we end up with a couple of the same colours together. We will have to decide what pattern we are going to sew them together in too before we can really see how this will turn out. I don't think it should matter if we end up with 2 squares that are the same colour next to each other. I think it will be nice anyway.

The final girly activity of the day was to paint our nails. I did Mum L's first in a nice coral colour. She usually wears red if any so I persuaded her to try something a little bit different. I went for a yellow that I have had for ages but never really worn as I wasn't sure how it would come out when it was on. I thought being such a light colour it would take loads of coats to make it look anything like it does in the bottle. We actually only did 2 coats and it covered pretty well. We both have pretty nails!

I hope you guys all had a lovely chilled out weekend as well and got to enjoy some time to do just what you want to do. Have a good week all and I'll see you again soon.