Saturday, November 5, 2011

firsts and lasts

Here is the first item I made with the much sought after mustard (and blue and brown) wool. I made this cardigan last weekend. It took two train journeys and a couple of hours on the sofa. This is the third cardigan I have made with this pattern now and much as I would be very happy to start on another one today, I am going to make this my last crocheted cardigan, for a little while, at least. There are so many other things I want to make for the baby, starting with a pair of crocheted cowboy boots to go with this. Yee ha! Graham thinks a baby-sized balalaika is all we need to complete the outfit (huh!) but he is wrong. He'll know we need crocheted cowboy boots once he sees them.
Here's the cardigan with a bit more sunshine, which shows off the golden colour much better.

Yesterday I did my last pre-baby late shift at work where I had my first argument with a subtitling colleague. Not fun. I hate conflict :( But on the upside, I am so glad late shifts are over for me now. My work have been great over the last few months and made all my late shifts start and finish a little bit earlier, and also made sure that I wasn't doing too many in a row, but I was still finding them torture. I hate admitting that I can't do certain stuff very easily now that I'm pregnant, but I think I am ready to admit that I can't work until 10 o'clock at night any more. Since I am back to waking up at about 4am most days, it just doesn't give me enough sleep to be able to handle life.

Today (depending on when Graham gets back from getting his hair cut) we might be attempting our last pre-baby full-day charity shopping excursion and for the first time, I think, we are missing out part of our route. I am feeling the effects of pregnancy very much these days and have the lung capacity of an elderly gnat. The new and reduced route only misses out four charity shops (two of them usually not very good) and the chocolate cherry brownie shop (nooooooo!) but it cuts down the amount of walking we have to do by quite a lot. If we don't do this today, we are going to go to a few more local charity shops instead and reschedule the last great charity shop shebang for a couple of weeks' time. Graham (who has recently witnessed me not managing 30 minutes in the town centre and saw how much I struggled round the charity shops a couple of months back) is not convinced I am fit for the challenge, but our days out have been such a big part of our relationship over the last eight years and I am really determined to do it one last time while it's still just the two of us. I can do it!

And one last exciting first... I'm getting to pick the date for November's Day In The Life and I have decided to choose Thursday the 17th. No particular reason, really, other than that it's nicely in the middle of the month and I have my first antenatal class that day, which might (or might not) give me something interesting to say. Please spread the word and do join in if you can. I will post a little reminder nearer the time.

6 comments:

  1. Inspired by how easily you picked up crochet I decided to give it a go myself. I bought some needles and patterns on ebay a couple of weeks ago, scratched my head a bit and put it to the side. I might have to sign up for a class to get me started.
    Iris had a pair of crochet cowboy boots when she was teeny. They were amazing but I never got the nerve up to buy her a matching cowboy hat.

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  2. I did struggle and get frustrated to begin with and it's kind of off-putting that the hardest part of any crochet project is making the very first row. You should definitely persevere though because once you understand how a couple of basic stitches work it's really easy to build on that and pick up more stitches. I find videos much easier to follow than diagrams/instructions in books. There are loads of videos on Youtube just demonstrating how to individual stitches, so you should have a look there if something doesn't seem to be making sense. Will look forward to seeing what you make!

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  3. Oh that is fabulous :) Can you make a grown up version for me please???? Pretty please!

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  4. I was actually wondering about scaling this up... then I realised this was a crazy idea! But if I ever do go all mad crochet scientist, I will be sure to contact you with my price list ;)

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  5. Thank you :) I was 98% happy with the colour of the wool when it was still on the ball, but once I started using it, it just took on this lovely warm quality and was absolutely perfect. Like all the other projects I've made lately, this one's still waiting for buttons, but I'm thinking of using those traditional brown leather ones, you know the ones with the sort of criss-crossed strips? I'm sure I have some in my button stash somewhere!

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