Wednesday 14 September 2011

Carrots are good for your lips

Sorry I've not been blogging for a while. The Move is taking up an awful lot of my time and energy. We've started to move our stuff over to the new flat, so there's lots of Dismantling Furniture and Putting Things in Boxes going on.

Our old flat is gradually getting emptier. I'm going to miss it.

On a brighter note, look at these!



While I was in England my sister asked me if I could make her two lip balm holders that were nice and bright so she wouldn't lose them easily, and with something to attach them to her bags.

I'm gradually making my way through the remains of my Catania yarn stash, and I had just enough orange left to make a bea-u-ti-ful carrot lipbalm holder.  I reckoned that was already silly enough, so I made the other one a bit more conservative. I hope she'll like them.

You may have noticed a new little link up there on the top of the blog, to the right. I have given up on my online shop, to which there was no reaction, and instead I've started a blog in French, the language of the country I've lived in for more than half my life. It's still just in its early stages, with only two posts, but it's opening up a whole new world of French crafts and crochet. If any of you know any French speakers who may be interested, please do tell them about it. And if you know of any cool French crochet patterns, please let me know and I'll put a link up on the Crochetons! blog.

Friday 2 September 2011

What a week!

Well I've got quite a mixed bag of things to talk about as this week at last draws to an end!

We are still working hard on The Move, and yesterday we got the keys to the new flat. Yippee! I didn't think we would get them so soon. We're not yet ready to move in, but we're going to move our stuff over gradually. We also need to have a kitchen fitted and put shelves in the built-in wardrobes so it's a good job we have a few weeks to get it all done. There is an amazing number of administrative things to deal with too.

They do say moving is one of the most stressful things we do, coming just after death of a loved on and divorce in the list of stress-inducing situations. My problem now is what to do about the kitchen. Even though it is very small, my research on kitchen furniture leads to me to conclude that it's going to be quite an expensive investment.

On a more thrifty note, while continuing to tidy up today I came across a very soft, very big pillow that we don't use any more. It had been washed and kept in a plastic storage bag, but had a few stains so I decided to get rid. Just as I was packing it into a bag, I saw that the stuffing was 100% polyester, so a little voice inside my head said "maybe you should cut it open and see what state the polyester is, maybe you could use it". So off I went to get my scissors and snip, snip, cut it open and Oh Joy! The polyester filling was beautiful, in perfect condition and so soft! Just like the stuff I buy at three euros for a 250g bag. And there must have been at least 750g in that pillow. So now I have plenty of polyester stuffing, enough to keep me going for a while. And it didn't cost me a single centime.

To finish off, I just wanted to talk again about Ravelry. You know I really love it. But some things about it annoy me just a little bit. The way people charge ridiculous amounts of money for very simple patterns, for example. And then today I went to have a look at the patterns and there was one for amigurumi coloured crayons. Like little coloured pencils, in several different colours. My gut reaction was "what's the use of those?" I don't know about you, but a coloured pencil that you can't actually colour in with seems a bit silly to me. Am I being unfair or does anyone agree with me?