It's Finally Finished ..

 the blanket which I started back in March. I don't think that it has ever taken me this long to complete a blanket. I know that my achy hand played a big part in slowing me down but it just seemed never ending.

 My husband prefers this blanket compared to any others I have made as do my mum and mother in law. My mum as already said that she would like one, to which I just groaned. I won't be rushing into another one like this just yet but I saw a pattern for a blanket made with crocheted hexagons the other day which I might try, if only I can remember where I saw it.

Something which was a lot faster to make were these fingerless cable mitts made with one of the patterns from the hand knitted things giveaway. I actually finished these at the end of last month and worn them on a little jaunt to Manchester with the family. This photo was taken on the train on the way there.

Everything In It's Place

At the end of last week my lovely husband made a shelf unit at work especially to house all my crafty stuff. It has come in very handy that he works with wood, he's made all the shelves and bookcases which are dotted about the house, plus a couple of rabbit hutches. It also helps that he works for a very nice boss who lets him buy the wood at cost, allows my husband stay behind at work to use the machines and then gives him a lift home in the van with what ever he has made.

The unit was assembled at the weekend and put in it's place on the landing ( the only available space in the house ) and I spend yesterday happily filling it and sorting through my crafty bits and bobs.

My box of ribbons looked more like a nest of snakes until it was tidied

Fabric and wool which was just stored in large bags was sorted out and put into plastic tubs

This chest of drawers has been on the landing for a while and has lovely deep drawers. It is used to store items used for parchment craft and paints but after having a quick look through at the weekend, quite a number of unfinished cross stitch and embroidering projects have crept in there so I shut the drawer up to sort through another day.

This bag has been hanging here for some time as well and contains crochet cottons.

 Now besides a large basket of threads and a bag of stuffing, which still reside in our bedroom, I think all my bits are together and not scattered throughout the house. I know the landing probably isn't the most ideal area in a house to store this kind of thing but I love that I can look at my things on the way up the stairs instead of a blank wall.

After sorting through a lot of my belonging over the weekend I've got the urge to go through the house and declutter. It may be a bit late for me to join in the 30 Day Declutter mentioned on A Thrifty Mrs blog and I may have a job on my hands trying to find 90 items due to having a big clear out at the beginning of October but I'm sure if I rope the boys in and I sort through the whole house, we can create some well needed space in time for Christmas.

The New Visitor

                                                                            

Today I tried out a new recipe using damsons as I still have bags of them in the freezer and need the space plus I think we have enough jam to last us a year. I made damson cobbler using this recipe. It looks OK but as I don't like damsons I'll have to wait for my food testers, my husband, dad and son to try it for their verdict on taste.

While I was tidying the kitchen I spied our new visitor. We have had a squirrel visit the garden every day for about a week. After living here for eight years and only seen one in the garden once before, I don't know why this one has become a bit of a regular visitor. Not that I mind, I went and bought some nuts for him so you would think he would let me take a few snaps in return but this chap doesn't hang about.  I've tried creeping up on it to take photos but I don't stand a chance,it's far too fast for me so today I ran upstairs to take one of it. He seems to be doing quite a bit of digging around in the borders so I wonder if he's hiding his food stash for over Winter.

Growing Up too Fast

Last week I enrolled Little L in one of our local pre schools. When I rang to enquire about places at the school, the woman sounded a bit shocked that I hadn't put her in a school already. As she has already turned three, she is one of the older children attending. This is mainly due to rules being changed for pre schools where children still in nappies can attend. The reason why Little L isn't already in a school is that she is going to be one of the youngest children in her school year and will be aged four for most of the year and I didn't want her to spend most of her toddler years in a pre school.

Anyway last week I took her for a session and stayed to make sure she was OK. She took her favourite doll, George, with her ( he goes everywhere ) which caused a bit of friction as some of the other children tried to take him off her but other than getting upset about that she was fine.

Today was the first time I left her and I think I was more upset than she was. We had come to an agreement that George was to stay at home and I was to look after him. I didn't know what to do when I got back home. I popped the telly on just to make some noise, made some biscuits and just watched the clock until it was time to collect her and time seemed to go extra slow this morning. One of the assistants said Little L settled in OK and joined in with more things on this session.

Here she is flat out with George after an exhausting morning.

Reusing Crayons

Yesterday on the Salamander Dreams blog Amy posted about recycling crayons. I've never tried this before and knew that Little L had lots of broken crayons in her pencil case. For the mould I just used a cake tin which I use for small cakes.

Now they won't get any marks for looks and I did chip them a bit removing them from the mould but Little L was pleased with her new crayons. I think these will be much better for her to hold due to the shape and less chance of her snapping them because they are quite chunky.

They are so quick and easy to make, I don't know why I haven't tried it before.

First Timer

Last night was Little L's first time trick or treating. It was also the first time we have put up our Halloween decorations since she was born as the boys have sort of grown out of it.  We didn't put them all out as she was frightened by some of the things, spiders and body parts mainly. Little L was so excited all day and had her costume ready first thing in the morning. Here she is in her Sully suit ( which was actually my youngest boy's first trick or treating outfit ).

She really enjoyed herself although there were a couple of houses that she didn't want to get to close to as she thought the Halloween decorations were too scary. One house had a life size animated figure by the door, that really scared her and she didn't stop talking about it all night. To be honest I wasn't that keen on it myself. As soon as we were home she started discussing what she would like to be next year, so far it's a werewolf.

Tutorial Sites

I have looked around the internet for tutorials of how to make this and that plus recipes for ages now, which is how I stumbled upon the world of blogging in the first place. I used to bookmark any tutorials which I liked the look of and if I found myself keep getting drawn back to the blog I'd follow it. Lately I've been looking more at tutorial sites, I could just click my way through all the categories for hours,oohing and ahhing at other peoples creations.

Craftgossip is the first one which took my fancy. Not only does it have absolutely tons of tutorials, they also do book/product reviews plus lots of giveaways. You can also submit your tutorial to be featured on Craftgossip.

Cut Out and Keep is a place for sharing tutorials which are put on the site and not through links. I like that anything which catches your eye can be favourited so you can use it at a later date.

I only stumbled across Freubelweb recently as I was curious as to where some of my blog traffic was coming from. After investigating, I found a lovely tutorial site and through the site found

diy:LIVLIG. As well as tutorials on here, there as lots of links for tutorials on other blogs. I only happened to find this one today so I know that I'll be doing alot of clicking yet to look at everything.

What are your favourite kind of sites or what keeps you looking through the wonderful world of blogs far longer than you intended to ?