Photo Challenge – Shadow

I don’t really have anything yarn related to share with you today so I thought I would start the week with a photo.

I am very fond of including shadows in photographs, especially the dappled shadows you find under trees that look especially good along a path but I felt for this that I should chose something more specific.

Now a couple of years ago, late winter time when the leaves were off the trees, I was going to Crafty Coffee on a Friday and I noticed the shadow of a tree on the wall of a house and thought it would make an excellent subject for Monochrome Madness. I did not have my camera with me at the time but decided that I should take it with me the next week.

Now, to cut a long story short, it took a little while before a Friday morning was sunny and I had my camera with me but eventually I decided that it was getting to be now or never and took a photograph. It was not as sharp and clear as my first sight had been but I think you get the idea.

I do not have the original colour version available but this is what I produced for Monochrome Madness. Passing the other day, I think that the wall has been repainted so maybe in a few months time I may get a chance to get an even better photograph!

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Photo Challenge – Orderly

This is a photograph from when I had just bought my merchant’s chest. With time, I now have even more varieties of cotton thread and so although they are still arranged into bags of the same sort , they are no longer so ‘orderly’.

Similarly the draw with Stylecraft yarn in it, Not so good for this post because of the knitting needle case, now with balls of all sorts of different sizes, is much harder to keep in such a nice orderly fashion.

I expect you can see that I like to arrange balls in a rainbow order zig-zag.

Socks and a Blanket

This is all I have for you this morning, I am afraid.

Still doing less knitting and crochet than normal but have managed to do the small amount of knitting and crochet to finish the socks for my granddaughter and complete the main body of my Symmetrical Granny Ripple blanket.

I am going to add the pattern for the blanket to Ravelry when I have finished it but am not sure what to call it. My original Granny Ripple blanket is called “Soft Granny Ripple” though that name was not chosen by me but the lady who persuaded me to let her put it on Ravelry.

So here are the sock for my granddaughter. Short ones, as requested. The yarn is Regia (One of my favourite makes of sock yarn). Nothing much on the ball band. Colour 0525 which I have found on-line called Papillion. I think I must have picked it up in Hobbycraft as my other sock yarns seemed a bit dingy for a teenager.

And here is the body of my “sea and sand” colour blanket based on the four times fourteen rows that form almost half of the blanket I made for my daughter. 

Stylecraft Special DK in the following fourteen colours:-

White, silver, parchment, camel, mocha, turquoise, sherbet, aspen, teal, royal, bluebell, denim, aster, cloud blue.

As with my other sea and sand blanket, I am not going to fill in the ripples, but have not finally decided on the edging.

Photo Challenge – Beach

Given the recent inclement weather it is not the time to use the above topic as an excuse to go to the seaside.

So I looked through my archives and decided that this, though a recent photograph, is probably as good as any to share. One of the few photographs I have taken which aim to show the beach more than the sea.

So what might this be?

I have at last managed to finish these. Other things that might have been finished by now have been left but these were easy to do.

Within a few hours of taking the first photograph they had morphed into this which is half a cushion cover.

Wanting to make a Celtic Plaitwork type cushion cover in rainbow colours and preferring an even number of different colours for this sort of design I chose the following Stylecraft Special DK colours. Deciding to increase the number of colours from the standard seven ‘rainbow’ colours by adding a purple as a bridge between ‘violet’ and ‘red’.

Of course I had to spend time on my computer playing around with the colours to decide what exactly I wanted to do with them. This was the ‘original’, if you like, designbut I decided that it would be fun to create a cushion cover with this arrangement on one side and this variant on the other.

I have now squared off the first side which I was pleased to find came out about the size I had calculated and will now fit in making the strips for the other side in between my other projects which include edging my symmetrical granny ripple blanket, finishing off the socks for my granddaughter and making the hat I promised my daughter.

One thing this has shown me is that despite my doubts that such an arrangement could be used for a blanket. The woven strips do actually hold together pretty well, even before being edged, and so a blanket could be possible subject to various issues regarding colour(s) and length and thickness of strips.

Photo Challenge – Found

Not an easy subject this week but here is my offering.  I love the sea and standing on a beach but Southampton, although it is a port, is so given over to commerce that the nearest paddle and build a sand castle beach is quite a few miles away. So I am always a sucker for any thing like a beach when I am out and about.

In this case I was in London but the sight of a stretch of sand along by the river was really attractive and I was especially pleased to find this very worn piece of shell which made it seem even more beachlike.

The other side  is really smooth and lovely to hold, so I decided to keep it.

Just a peek!

My body keeps reminding me that it is still convalescent. Even my knee is not quite right. So I have not done as much crocheting as I would have liked.

So here is a quick peek at the knitted angel that I was in the middle of making when I fell over. And here it is next to the white and silver one. See more at – http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/three-small-angels

Photo Challenge – Sharp

Having made a mistake this morning, I have now reverted to something closer to what I originally had in mind. I liked that I actually appear in the photograph! so decided to settle for this.

Photo Challenge – Point

Wasn’t sure what to choose for this but since Sandra at Wild Daffodil had done sharp things I decided on this. You may remember seeing it before as it comes from one of my days in Dorset.

Lots of pointing here!

Monthly Montage – August

I shared both crochet and knitting this month. All about my three latest patterns on Ravelry: partly planned and partly because of the hiatus in actual crafting caused by my damaged elbow. So there was a crochet Celtic Hot Pad, Three Small knitted Angels and an updated version of my crocheted Real Snowflakes. I also shared quite a few photographs. Three for the Photo Challenge: Lane, Thrift and Fold. I missed out on Point as I was just beginning to cope with living life with only one hand! Lastly, I shared some photographs of Chichester, especially the cathedral, that I took on a visit last Autumn.