Slow days and yarn bowls

This week has been rather boring, not had a lot to blog about.

Though this morning was interesting, but i'll get to that later.


A couple of weeks ago I ordered a yarn bowl from etsy. It was hand made, just for me.
It arrived a couple of days ago and I love it. Here's a picture taken by the crafter as mine just don't do it justice.



I love it. The hook is really well carved, doesn't snag the yarn at all. It glides out beautifully while preventing my yarn from escaping me. I've got it on the table next to my bed, and have been using it loads. I love not having to chase my yarn down everytime I stop working. Due to my recent joint problems, I find that I have to put my work down after only a few rows, and having to chase the ball down to put away my project after every short burst was getting really frustrating. Now, I can just fold the project up and put it down knowing my yarn is where it started.

It's a lovely colour and the hook is so cute. There's a range of colours and hooks available, so I chose my favourites and just love the bowl. I'm not quite sure how i've managed all these years without one.

Yarn bowls are a little costly as no company makes them, so they're all hand made by individuals. Most of the ones I've seen are either way too expensive, or have had so much decorative carving done to them that the shape of the bowl is distorted by the weakened clay. Generally they're also pre-made by the seller so you don't get to customise them. The seller I used lets you choose colour and hook, and can even add a message to the base. If you're looking for a yarn bowl i'd rally recommend checking her out. (littlewrenpottery.etsy.com)


I've been trying to find more blogs to follow since my previous post, but have been struggling to find ones which fit the feel of those I already follow. I love to read blogs which cover more than just their crafts and which cover a variety of crafts. If anyone can recommend some to me I'd be grateful. ^_^


So, as promised, This morning's tale...
Over night a very light rain created a layer of ice on our street. Our street, being a very steep hill, is really dangerous when icy.
So around 6am I head a loud bang, look out the window and there's a van up on the pavement opposite. A couple of minutes later, a 4x4 trying to drive up the street spins and crashes into the van.
Well, the 4x4 managed to move enough to park next to the van, and within half an hour two more cars have crashed into it.
Luckily all bar the initial crash were very low speed, only mild damage to the cars. Initial crash totalled the neighbour's garden wall though.

I'm getting a little sick of being stuck at home all week. Can't make it up and down the street safely to get out. I really can't wait for the weather to warm up, I miss being out and about on my scooter. I also need the weather to improve enough that I can safely get out to my drs to pick up a prescription. I've run out of meds and am really feeling it, but can't safely go get the script.


You may have noticed, I'm playing with the formatting of this post. I've added bold text and spacing to the start of each section, to help make it obvious that the topic has changed. Not sure I like it but I'm also not sure how else to do it as I don't want to break the flow of the post with headers for each section.

Award and cushion

As promised, here is today's post.

I received an award ^_^



It seems that there are some rules to awards, so here they are:

1. Add the award to your blog.
2. Thank the blogger who gave it to you.
3. Mention 7 random things about yourself.
4. List the rules.
5. Award to 15 bloggers.
6, Inform each one of those 15 by leaving a comment on their blog.

I was very surpised to discover I had been chosen to receive it.
I was given this aware by Joan, who has a blog just full of wonderful crochet projects. I especially love her recent armadillo, it's so cute.

Now, 7 random things about me.
First I guess would be that I'm a technique crafter, rather than someone who works to finished projects. I love making swatches of different styles with their individual textures. There's just something about playing with a stitch with no pressure to finish the item.

I'm also a terrible hoarder. It's part of my OCD. Unfortunately it means I will hoard anything, and often need help getting rid of all the random things cluttering my room.

Third interesting fact, I nearly always have a fan on. It can be the middle of winter and freezing cold out and not much warmer in, and my fan will be on. Often i'll be snuggled in bed with just my head out and my fan on. I just need to feel the air moving.

I'm slowly becoming bike mad. Just over a year ago I got a scooter and I'm in love with it. Riding with my visor open so I can feel the wind on my face is great, if terrible for my skin.

Ok, lets try to write the last 3 with less waffle.
I love rainbows. I know all the science behind them but still like to call them magic. I hope the wonder will never fade.

I don't belive there is an indigo stripe in the rainbow. I will argue this anyday. Whenever I craft a rainbow it will only have 6 colours.

Lastly, I would love to ride a horse over open hills. I think the sense of freedom and the beauty around would be amazing.

Right, now I have to give the award on to 15 bloggers. The only problem is that I don't currently follow 15 blogs. With the stress of uni work I never found the time to follow a lot of blogs before. It's something I hope to do now.
So, for now I will award those I can and will add to the list soon as I discover more of the wonderful blogs out there.

1. The random ramblings of celeena cree.
2. EssHaych.
3. The Garden Bell.
4. Fuzzy Thoughts.
5. Just Joan.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.


Onto cushions.

Here's a photo of my project so far,



It's a quarter of the finished piece. I have 5 more pattern repeats to finish this panel, then I have to make a second one and sew them together. It's made using the basketweave stitch. Good luck finding a set of instructions which actually make sense. When you know what you're doing it's so simple, but the written pattern is terrible.

Just a quick hello, and a ramble about cushions.

I'm trying to make blogging a regular activity so although i'm about to pop to bed I though I'd write a quick post, and then do the big post I need to write in the morning (Which probably means tomorrow afternoon, by standard definitions, 6am being my current bed time.)

My knee is still very painful at the moment but seems to be easing off. Hopefully it will be a bit better tomorrow so that I can go buy the beads I need to finish my project. I'm having to be so careful not to knock it and send beads everywhere as it would not only take forever to clean up, but forever to put back together.

Tomorrow i'll post a picture of my current crochet project. It's going to be a cushion when done. When I made my first cushion, which i'm so proud of I'm sure I'll take new photos and post here sometime, I planned to make a second one just like it. However that never happened and, as much as I love order and symmetry, I decided that I would hold off until another pattern inspired me.
The one i'm working on has a lovely texture. It's blue like the other one is but in a single solid shade while the other is stripes of many. I've made my mind up that the house of a crafter should not contain multiple cushions of one design but many showing different techniques and each having an individual texture.

Of course, that means that as some point I need to visit abakhan to buy a new insert as I gave away the other to a friend when I decided to abandon the second cushion plan. I think the best thing beside the textures of homemade cushions is the fact that I can have feather inserts. I adore them. The weight of a feather cushion and the fact that if it's getting flat you just fluff it up are two wonderful qualities all cushions should have.

Well, that's it for now. Special post planned for tomorrow. ^_^ see you then.

Pain and beading

I get the feeling the two are related.

All day I've barely been able to move my right leg due to the pain in the knee. Feels like some of the cartilage is caught and pulling when i try to move it. It's possibly a result of sitting cross legged for 30 mins last night.

I was aware that I was uncomfortable but at the same time, I was sooo close to finishing sorting my beads and my OCD was more powerful than the pain. I had a tub of 10,000 which needed sorting into 10 tubs. It felt great when I finished and could see them all sat in their individual colours.

I'm working on a design which contains 2809 beads. I think i need more of one type though so if my knee's up to it I'm off to hobby craft tomorrow. Hopefully when done, during the day you will be able to see the rainbow colours while the light is charging the glow in the dark beads so that at night you can still see the pattern but it will be in black.

Here's a picture of it currently. The yellow didn't come out very well using my iPod camera in this lighting, but it follows the same pattern as the rest.

Internet woes

My house has virgin media Internet, and we hate it. There are always problems with the connection.

Today we've been trying to upload a couple of files to YouTube.
My file got 8 hours in and was a whole 3% uploaded with a quote of 8 days remaining. So I gave up. My housemate loading a smaller file was still getting quoted 26 hours to upload it.

We ran the test of our upload at speedtest.net and have been getting an average of 0.06Mb/s when we should get up to 1Mb/s. We checked with our neighbours who also have virgin and their speed test comes up at 0.97Mb/s. So there has to be something wrong with our cable. We've checked the cables we can access and have even swapped out the one between the outside and our modem. We're hoping to get a response from virgin soon reference this.

So for now, no YouTube uploads :'(

Never again will I go with virgin. If we had another choice I'd swap out for a new company but the only line our house has is the virgin cable. Hopefully i'll have a better connection when I move later this year.