Remembrance Day

I know that I'm a little bit late really with this post but better late than never I guess.

This one isn't really one of my crafty things - this one comes courtesy of my hubby!

He decided that he was fed up of buying at least 3-4 paper poppies each year as they would inevitably either break or get lost etc. Instead, he would like to donate his £3-5 to the poppy appeal but make his own poppy that may last for the full 2 weeks that he wanted to wear it.

He took it upon himself to make a couple of poppies for me and him based on the paper poppy that we had already bought.

He raided my sewing box to find what he wanted to use to make them - black and red felt, some random black buttons off an old coat, and cotton to sew it all together.

The poppy shape was cut out in both red and black felt (the black only slightly bigger than the red) and these were sewn together with a visible black running stitch around the edge.

A button in the middle made the centre of the poppy.

And at the same time also attached the pin to the back so that the poppies could be worn.

Adam made two of these to start with (one for each of us) but his went down so well at work - there were a number of blokes who said that they liked it as it was much more substantial than the paper ones and not girly like some of the knitted or crocheted poppies that you see people wearing.

He offered to make a few people at work them for a small donation to the British Legion, which was ok to start with when it was only two or three. He made these first ones in one night but the more he made for people, the more people that saw them and the more people that wanted them.

A few nights it got a bit daft as there were a lot to make so I was roped in as his assistant.

We got a production line going and got through a few more between us.

They are all slightly different depending on the buttons that we had to put on each one. There were also a couple of slightly smaller ones made towards the end with some leftover felt that we had after cutting out the full size ones.

When they went into work for people to buy the poppies. Adam had typed up the poem "For the fallen" which contains the words of the eulogy and presented the poppies in bags with the card inside.

Each poppy was sold for between £3 and £5 - depending on people's chosen donation and all funds received were donated to the British Legion.

He raised £50 in total for the poppy appeal which the volunteers were very impressed and pleased with when he took this in to make his donation.

I think there will be more made for next year - when I've replaced the felt and buttons that have vanished from my sewing box!

If anyone would like to place their order early then please let me know by email on happyhenlowcrafts@gmail.com

Catch up of knitted squares

On Monday I wasn't too well. I was up most of the night being poorly so didn't go to work in the morning.

That was pretty horrible but let's just brush past that part shall we?

Once I was starting to feel slightly better and had made it downstairs to the sofa I actually ended up having quite a nice day.

I sat and watched all of the remaining episodes of the original Cold Feet that I have on DVD and did a bit of a catch up of the knitting project that I started my Mum L and shared with you in my last blog.

I finished off my second round of each colour so I now have 2 squares of each colour.

I think that this means that I am one ahead of Mum L now!! Although she's probably done more since I saw her a couple of weeks ago but at least this makes us just about even.

As I went through and added more colours to our completed pile, I started to think about what patterns they might be able to make so this seemed like the perfect opportunity to dedicate a double page spread in by BuJo to working it all out.

So far I have included the scrap of paper that was used on our girly day together to work out the pattern that we would each follow to get the same size squares at the dimensions that we thought would look nicest within the finished blanket.

Mum L has started knitting all of her colours in a pattern which does make sense to ensure that we get an even number of each so I think we will stick with this.

I have started to come up with a few combinations of what order we could put the squares in at the bottom of this page but until we get a few more to have a look at I find it hard to tell what it will look like. I have saved the whole page on the right so that we can fill all of the little squares with the colours of all of the squares that we have made once we decide that we have enough for a blanket.

This way we will really see what it is going to look like before it is all sewn together.

Hope you're all having a good week. Please check out my previous blog about the start of this project  if you haven't already read it as I think I forgot to share this one on social media. It may make what you have just read a lot more understandable!

I am feeling a lot better now. I hope you are all well.

Catch up with you again soon.