The Tale of the Giant Granny Square.

Yep...it's stash blanket time again! I've supplemented the by now, rather folorn-looking stash basket with a few balls of acrylic yarn.

 Stylecraft acrylic has some gorgeous jewel colours that I love (teal, violet and bright pink...hmmmm!)! I know, not everyone's a fan of the old synthetics but when you have a dribbly puppy and one heck of a messy (read: lazy) owner, it's quite good to have something super-washable. My favourite ripple blanket I made a while back was full of lovely cashwoolmerinoalpacamohair type content, but it's felted a teeny bit because I stuck it in the washing machine. (gasp!) Life's too short to stuff a mushroom and all that...at least it has, um, an 'interesting' chunky texture to it now...!

The blanket I'm working on now is a monster of a granny square. It started off okay, and I was enjoying it. Until about round 16 when I realised that each round was only going to get longer...and longer...! It's the trade-off for not having to sew squares together, though. I'll probably end up doing rows-within-rounds, changing colour every so often to stop me going spare! It's not grown a huge amount, despite 16+ rounds... It's the perfect Trixie size though:

And here she is proving that acrylic yarn is FUN!!11!!1! and rather delicious, too:

Maybe the lack of enthusiasm for the Biggest Granny Square in the World will spur me onto finishing the second Monkey sock...you never know!

Smashing!

I spent Sunday afternoon doing something absolutely *smashing* (hohoho)! I've been dabbling in mosaicking (that verb looks wrong...but it needs a K in there, right?). I've already accumulated a sizeable collection of blue and white shards found out and about on my walks, but I need a bit more. So I started on my huge collection of dust-catchers.

 Take one Royal Albert china cup and saucer. Apply hammer liberally to its backside (if you can bear to!), covering with an old towel and a plastic bag...

 I'm sure if you found its point of resonance you could hit a high note and smash it that way but my soprano days are over so the hammer has to do! It looks awfully destructive, doesn't it? But it was just sitting there on my shelf and I never got to see the pretty pattern - which is inside the cup. Presumably as some sort of surprise to spring on your guests whom you were having round for 'high tea'? Once they'd imbibed their cup of Earl Grey they found - but o! - a most beautifully delicate posy in their cup and said the 1920's high-society equivalent of "OMG! OMG!!". Oh I bet that was such fun to do in those days. Without television. Or the internet. Or the Wii. (Wii Surprise China Teacups. Ever played that?) (Aside: I just tried reading Virginia Woolf's diaries. Unreadable because she comes across as a snob of a woman. Most of the time she spent lamenting that there weren't any suitable 'Tea-Shops' in Manchester or anywhere else she visited Oooop Noorth. I wouldn't be surprised if that is why she put stones in her pockets and ran out to sea. The lack of tea-shops...)


A whole Sunday afternoon of this sort of thing:

...and I amassed quite a little collection. (yes, I know, she gets everywhere...it's unavoidable).

A word to the wise: it's good to follow health & safety rules when you're doing this kind of thing. I found this out to my cost. GLOVES next time woman!!

Apart from mucking about with pots, I put some YARNNNNN on the website too...go and have a look
here! See you in the shop soon :)

Monkeying around!

Astonishingly, I finished one of my Monkey socks! I loved knitting this. Although, according to addled brain, not quite enough to start the other one just yet, as is always the way...as per usual brain and hands wandered off into a crochet-stash-blanket reverie. No sign of them yet...(or the other sock for that matter).

Being the matching accessory type, I thought I'd team the solitary sock up with a different type of knitted monkey:

 The other accessory available for this wardrobe is, of course, this perfect Little Monkey:

 

Monkey-tastic! Now I just have to finish start that notorious Second Sock. I wonder how long the other sock will be in coming...what's the record, do you think?!

To finish up, here's an aptly-themed pop quiz, pop-pickers! Which band is this...?!

(it's all in the head-gear)...