What a lovely morning (and afternoon)! – January update

Hello lovely people. So we’re nearly at the end of January, so I thought it was high time for an update on what’s been going on!

Look! It’s the sun! I know it’s not going to last, but we’ve been having cold but very bright and lovely weather. It’s been cheering me up. I tend to feel that I can tolerate the cold as long as it’s not raining at the same time. And vice versa. I can handle one type of horrible weather, but get miserable with two. I’m inconsolable if you throw wind into the mix.

But I’m quite optimistic at the moment. It’s a chance to put on big jumpers and hats. It’s even a chance to put on sunglasses at the moment, as the sun is low and blinding. Not good for driving, not very warm either, but enough to give me a smidge more vitamin D than normal. It reminds me that spring is on the way, and who isn’t happy about that. It’s also keeping me upbeat and not overwhelmed with the crafting. Which is handy. There’s been a fair amount of planning going on behind the scenes.

Probably the biggest news is that Mr & Mrs Acrosstheroad are expecting! I’m overjoyed for them! It’ll be lovely to have another little one running about. Also I got to have an ‘I KNEW IT!’ moment. I hadn’t wanted to tempt fate by saying anything.. but I was so sure! It makes a change, usually it comes as a complete shock to me. Of course you know what this means. Lots of secret projects which are already underway! Baby Acrosstheroad is due in July, so I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until then, but oh so many ideas! I’m already finding it frustrating, I’d usually go to Mrs ATR to help with decisions!

I’ve also been living up to Himselfs nickname for me: Calamity Steph. I managed to hurt my back on Friday morning. Again an uneventful story. I bent over to pick something up, it wasn’t even heavy. But when I went to stand up, TWANG. I was rushing out the door at the time, so no time to asses, but I managed to walk (like a duck) to the station to have a prod about. No major damage, but it did mean I had to spend a 10 hour shift in agony. I always pick the worst times. Walking and particularly standing were difficult so I did as much sitting as possible. But every cloud has a silver lining. I had the weekend off and orders to take it easy. My productivity soared! I could almost get used to this getting old and creaky business.

There’s a SAL update coming this Sunday, so I’ll leave that for then. Shall we start with the temperature blanket?

I took the plunge and finally started joining my hexes. I’d never done a join as you go method before so it took some time to get into the swing of things. What took even longer was the ends. Yes, yes, I know I constantly moan about ends, but I really do hate them. I’ve made a vow to be better at them from now on however. I tried joining with them still attached and they just got in my way. It’s one thing when you’re only starting out, but it would be impossible when the blankets bigger. All ends will be complete before they are joined. No matter how much it annoys me. Anyway, it’s taking longer than expected to do all this joining. My original plan was to make everything up in the week and then do joining on my days off on the weekend. I might have to change this as I can see myself building up a huge backlog very quickly.

But what d’you think? Id decided against the brown around the outside obviously. It doesn’t look too washed out does it? Maybe it’ll all come into focus when I can start using more colours. I guess the problem with these is that you’ll never know until it’s finished.

Or maybe that’s the beauty of it. Isn’t that why I started one in the first place? I don’t know. We’ll see how it looks in December.

During my forced convalescence, I managed to make another hat. I’ll go into this is more detail in later posts, but here we are as proof of progress. I do find I’m rushing to get this cluster of projects finished so I can make the most use of them while we still have chilly weather. The scarf/snood/thing is next now that I know what yarn I have left to play with.

I’m imagining the pink hat as more of a ‘for best’ hat. This sounds ridiculous, but let me explain. Usually I’m rushing out the door and grabbing things from the banister as I go, just shoving them on any which way. I usually wear my hair up (and usually still wet from the shower) so the others are good because they cover my whole head, plus hair without having to worry about what it looks like underneath. I wanted to do something different with the last one so decided to make one that was smaller. This means unfortunately that it won’t hold my disorderly hair. Better to use it when I wear my hair down or ‘for best’ when I actually bother to look at a mirror before I leave.

And lastly the warm cocoon shrug. Bit of a wonky picture, but here we are. I love how this project just slots into my life. I can pick it up, and put it down again so easily. I don’t have to count, or think, or plan. Just keep going. That being said I am at that difficult middle stage where it just doesn’t seem to be growing. In fairness though I haven’t really been checking it for size. Laying it out flat, you can see it obviously has grown, but still a way to go.

I cant wait until its done and I can keep cosy in work rather than subjecting my colleagues to sauna heating conditions. While it’s easy to do, I’ve noticed that I’ve been getting sloppy. Must be careful to actually concentrate on it.

So consider yourself updated! Hopefully I’ll be lucky enough to have lots of time to keep crafting as much as I have been, but realistically I can see things getting busy with important life stuff, then I’ll be forcing myself to make time for it again. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

 

Much love xx