Summer Challenge - Part Two

So maybe I was being a bit ambitious with a frame that size but I never did do things by halves. I started working with my lucet, 8 brown threads to make the thick first stem, which I separated into two sets of 4 but added two more green to each so I still had 6. I carried on, separating the threads and adding more in to make the various branches. I was going ok to start but as I started making more branches it got very tangled. Very, very tangled.

So I abandoned that idea! Not that I gave up completely, I just needed a re-think. I finally undid most of what I had done and started again. This time deciding to make the branches separately and sewing them on afterwards. However, I still kept the beginning as it was. It was only one bobbin to cope with and hardly any tangles.

I proceded making just the two main stems. While I was doing this, I was thinking of a a way to attach the new branches with out too many ends to sew in. I can do it when I crochet, why not with the lucet?

This is what I came up with -

I worked out how much thread I would need for the bit I was working on. No easy way, make it up, undo it and measure how much I used. It might seem a waste of time but as I was doing lots of bits the same, it saved time - and thread - in the long run. I measured the thread off, doubling the original measurement and putting a slip knot half way along.

Using a tapestry needle, I threaded it through the middle of the stem I wanted to attach it to. The slip knot provided a stop end.

I then used a steel crochet hook to pull two loops through, which I slipped over the lucet - and carried on as normal!

Here are the resulting stems. The loose ends will be used to sew the leaves and flowers on later.

I was actually quite pleased with myself until I went to Craft Club last week and found out that were are supposed to keep them relatively small. About 2'. It is well under 2' wide but........... So I cut it off at the bar across the middle. The way I have attached the jute thread meant that I could do it without having to redo the whole thing. It is now 2'6" and isn't going any smaller.

Did I mention my lucet?

I went to the NEC at the end of March, for the Hobbycrafts and Sewing for Pleasure exhibition. I haven't been to one of these for quite a few years so I was really looking forward to it.

Also, some local online friends were going as well. We had all booked on the same coach trip so I was doubly looking forward to it.

As always, it was mostly paper crafts and cross-stitch so I didn't even spend 1/3 of what I too with me. But I did get a few things.

One was this REALLY expensive ball of wool. If I had realised just how much it was, I probably wouldn't have. However, I didn't. Still, it is for a lovely pair of knitted fingerless gloves that I saw on Ravelry. I downloaded the pattern and a friend is going to knit them for me. I also got one of those 3-D butterfly punches that I have been fancying for a while and a corner rounder for card to go with my BIA.

And a lucet. I haven't seen one before and I was quite fascinated watching the demonstrater using it. I was also quite facinated with some of the things he was making with it. It is basically to make cords but he was doing all sorts. If you want to know more, go along to his site "The Lucet Company", he explains it all so much better than I can. I am no where as near as good as him yet, but I just couldn't resist making some Rainbow laces to match my earrings!

Summer Challenge

At our Craft and Lace Club, we decided it would be fun to have a "Summer Challenge". After some discussion the theme of "Summer" was decided upon as some wanted "Gardens" and some wanted "Seaside". Summer covers everything.

After some considerable thought, and changing my mind about 50 times, I decided to try to re-create the Clematis in my garden. After even more considerable thought, I decided to make the frame from bamboo and garden string. I wanted to make it look as realistic as possible. The canes I bought were about 4 foot long, so I decided to use the whole length. I lashed them together to make a frame. However, my dearest complained that I hadn't done it properly or tight enough, so I gave it to him to redo! I then spent the rest of Saturday afternoon and evening tying garden string with clove hitches to make a latice for the clematis to "climb" up.

I was ever so pleased with my creation and set to work designing the rest. I have decided to use my new lucet to make the stems.

Sofa, So Good!

Our sofa was old. I bought it 2nd hand just before I had Benjamin so it was well over 12 years. It was getting rather uncomfortable.

But the worst thing about the sofa was listening to Mark complain about it every time we used it!!!!!!

The plan was to decorate the front room before buying a new one but we just couldn't wait. On February 24th, we ordered a nice new corner unit from Argos. They told us it wasn't in stock but did we know about their 28 day delivery promise?

So, there we are, expecting our new sofa withing 28 days. Incidentally, the payment came off the credit card almost immediately.

Just before the 28 days was up we checked our delivery status online. It said we would have a call to arrange delivery by March 29th. So much for a 28 day delivery promise.

On March 27th we had a call to say our order had been delayed annd was expected in the warehouse by April 18th.

So I phoned them. No, they don't deliver on Sundays but they do work on Sundays so we should have a call to arrange delivery for the following week.

"But what about the 28 day delivery promise?"
"That only applies if the item is in stock."
"So its a load of bunkam?"
"No, its not a load of bunkam but........"
"Yes, ok."

On April 7th we had a call to arrange delivery. The first available slot was Saturday April 10th between 7 and 12 am. Well, I wasn't going to say "No", was I?

On the Friday we had a call to say it would be delivered between 8 and 9 am and we would get a call an hour beforehand.

So we didn't get up, thinking that an hour was more than enough time to get ourselves organised when they rang. Yes, you know where this is going, don't you?

At 7.23 we had a call to say they would be here in 15 mins. That, by any stretch of the imagination is not between 8 and 9 with an hours notice.

So not only did I have to get dressed and ready in less then 15 mins, I also had to put up with a very grumpy man who hadn't had his two cups of tea yet.

Still, it was worth it. The sofa is really comfy and I don't have to put up with the complaining any more.

However, I used to keep all my bits that I was working on down the side of the sofa. I can't do that any more. Mark has suggested that I get some sort of case to keep the stuff in that can go away when I am not using it. I quite fancy this. But I need to see how big it is first.

I can crochet a Rainbow

And so can you!

I has come to my attention that so many people out there can crochet but can not follow a pattern. This is the one that was featured in Scrapbook Inspirations in 2008.

With this in mind, I have adapted my free Rainbow Pattern over on Rainbow Valley to one that is just for those learning to read patterns. It really isn't that difficult when you know how!

Everything is coming up...

Violets!

I do love these little white ones. They are not so prolific as the common blues ones which took over my trough and choked everything else in there.

Here are some pretty little blues ones. Again, not the common ones. I think they may be cultivated ones but have no idea really as I was given them. I hope they are not going to spread too much otherwise they will have go. I only have my planter with limited space so can't have them taking over.

And this is a Black Viola which I bought at the end of last summer. It was in flower when I bought it so I am hoping that flowering this early means it will carry on all summer. It does look a bit darker than in the photo.

Finally, just a little something I planted this morning! These are some crocuses I crocheted for a Spring Challenge on one of my craft groups. I thought the garden was the best place to take photos of them!

And the Winners are........

I know you have been waiting with bated breath so I wrote down the names, put them in a bag and got my son to pull 3 out.

The Winners are - Jan, Julietk and Viola.

I will leave a message on your blog and you will need to contact me with your postal address and your preference. Use the "Ask me, I might" button in the left bar.

I will get them in the post Monday, provided I have your address.

Thank you to everybody who took part.

And don't forget, if you didn't win one, you can still buy the Egg Cosy Crochet Pattern from Rainbow Valley and make your own.

Nearly Easter

So I thought I would celebrate with a Give-away.

I have a carrier bag full of these characters. They don't all look like the ones in the photos, they are assorted colours and not all of the animals are there.

I have 3 to give away.

If you leave me a nice comment and a link on your blog, you can go in to a prize draw to win one.

If you don't win one, I am selling them at £1.50 each. If anybody wants any, email me.

Or you can buy the Egg Cosy Crochet Pattern from Rainbow Valley and make your own.

An Award

I had this last week from Emma but, as usual, I am running around trying to do 50 things at once so I didn't get to post it. So, a bit belated, but "Diolch Emma"

The rules for accepting the award are:
1. Place the logo within your blog or post
2. Pass the award on to 12 bloggers
3. Link the nominees within the post
4. Let the nominees know they have received the award by commenting on their blog
5. Share the love and link to the person from whom you received the award

So here are my twelve nominees.

Buckinghams Palace - Truly Scrumptious - Woowork.com - Stamping Ground - Debs Cards - Vrons Blog - Scrap Happens Here - Juliet K - Debs Craft Blog - Happy Mum - Secret Corridor - A Crafting Journey

Enjoy Everybody!

And now down to business. I have been crocheting up a storm. I have been re-vamping the puppet patterns and, since having my cast off 4 weeks ago, I have almost done 5 of them. As there are 3 puppets in each pattern, that means I have crocheted 14 puppets. No, my maths isn't wrong - I did say almost.

I took some photos last weekend of some of them. I am not entirely happy with the photos, I will try again next weekend. I have to wait until the weekend as I need my son to model. However, having just checked the calendar, I might be able to do some tomorrow as he doesn't have an afters chool club and I should be finishing normal time.

I am quite pleased with myself and am more or less back to crocheting normally. The first couple of weeks my wrist ached rather a lot and Mark was telling me off for crocheting too much. However, I found the crocheting actually helped and, if I cam home from work with it aching, the gentle movement soothed a bit.

Also, I was told this by a AnnieAnna on Craft Forum

"Seriously - enjoy that crocheting. Did you know knitting, crocheting and handsewing is hypnotic. You put yourself into a sort of trance and your seratonin levels go up and you go dopely happy."

What other excuse could I possibly need?

March Calender

I am having a slight problem in uploading the calendar this month. For some reason I can't get the page to load so that I can upload the files.

And I really wanted to show off the beautiful lilies I had for Valentines Day. I couldn't take photos of them sooner as they all in bud when I had them, so had to wait for them to open. However, I am sure you will agree that they were well worth waiting for.

As always, I have made a "normal" screen and a wide screen version for you to enjoy. As soon as I can upload them, that it. When I do, they will be available from the usual link on the left.

a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFhiD29dXhCl0m9F8oaklNfCGreKOJ2YnWdB3BYw9iu7TmudxB72nNU2vk0T4FvvjgplR5eaGriCMRv5Kq8WB4bLABakAEu_-BSbbACKrOQVR_evkaxENrgCvED9U-sKNm11fHZA/s1600-h/March-2010-wide.jpg">

March 2nd - Finally uploaded. Enjoy!

Raining Cats and Dogs

Somebody sent me the link to this blog and I just had to share.

WooWork.co is the blog of an innovative young man called Howie Woo and his post "Raining Cats and Dogs" will definately make you smile. I hope he doesn't mind me borrowing his photo! I am off to look at the rest of his blog.

SEO-ing

I was under the impression that I was doing pretty well. After all, if you Google for Enfys, my site comes up on the first page. However, I suddenly realised that if you Google for all the other things that my site is about, it is no where to be seen despite the fact that Biz Information thinks it is worth £5,687.13

Suprisingly, my old pipex site is worth £952,709.74!!!! Anybody want to buy it?

Think of a web site like an old fashioned Ladybird book, the ones that have a picture on one side and words on the other. A child tells the story from the pictures where as an adult tells the story from the words. In the case of a website, we see the finished pretty page and Google reads the html coding which makes the page up.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It is about putting keywords into the coding of your website so that Google picks it up. It all sounds very complicated but it isn't really. There is lots of help out there, especially from Google themselves.

First of all, you need a Google account (and if you have a Blogspot blog you already have one) then you need to access Googles Webmaster Tools. Here you will find a wealth of information, all free and all aimed directly at helping you to improve your Google ratings.

They even provide a Free SEO Starter Guide to help you. Although, I have to confess, I splashed out on "How to get to No.1 in Google - in easy steps" as well.

There are quite a few basic things that you can do to improve your ratings. Make sure that each page has a unique page title and description. Use "proper" text for internal links, not just "Click here". Give your pictures relevant names and use "alt" text to give them a more accurate description. Remember, Google searches for pictures as well.

When you have done as much as you can with your site, you need to register it with Google. They will give you a code for the home page so that they can verify it is yours and when the process is complete, you can access loads of information about what Google thinks about your site.

Another thing you need to do is upload a Sitemap and tell Google it is there. This tells Google what pages are on your site and how important they are.

You can either spend ages typing out one of these yourself, or you can ask Sitemaps Pal to do it for you.

Another thing to do is to get lots of external links to your site. These links are one of the ways Google finds your site. Lots of relevant links help your rating. If anybody wants to link to mine, I won't say no.

Of course, the guide sets all of this out so much better than I can so I would highly recommend downloading a copy. And if you can afford the book, get that as well. It has loads more information in it than the Guide.

This brings me to something I have been thinking about for a while. A blog is one of the ways of getting external links to your site. I dont have any on here as it is against the rules of UK Scrappers.

After much consideration, I have decided to use my blog to help with the SEO of Rainbow Valley. This will means links to my site from here and, consequently, removing my blog from my siggy on UKS. I do have a few other things to do before I start the serious SEO of this blog though.

Like re-writing the Rainbow Afghan. This was the first pattern I wrote to sell. It was a very steep learning curve for me. As a result, it is not as user friendly as I would like it. One of the main queries I get is about the instructions for joining. So, I am going to add photo instructions to it.

Only a few days late.

After posting yesterday, I went out to the local market. I have been haunting it the last couple of weeks in the hope of getting some snowdrops.

I am very disappointed in the display in my planter. I only have two there - after all those ones I planted. I am wondering if they didn't like being moved from my old trough to my new planter.

I was in luck. She had loads of pots of them on her stall. I have always been told that snowdrops are better bought "in the green" than as bulbs, as bulbs are a very hit and miss affair. I bought five pots and came straight home and planted them. Of course, the other advantage of "in the green" is that you have instant results.

The ones in these pictures are ones that I had for my birthday last year. I planted these in a ceramic pot around the Holly Tree. They were in flower in the sun and looking lovely. This isn't the best photo but I had to use the compact with my left hand to take it.

As always, I have made both a normal and wide screen version so one of these photos is going to look right on your screen while the other looks weird!

And, as always, download from the normal link on the left.

4 more sleeps!!!!!!!!!!

I haven't blogged lately because I haven't really had much to say. Normally my blog is full of projects I have been working on and lots of pics. But I can't craft and I can't use my camera.

All that is going to change in 4 more sleeps!

The cast comes off and I should be back to normal. Ok, so I am not naive enough to think that I am going to be able to do everything exactly the same as I was before I broke it. I do appreciate that I am going to have to build the strength up in the wrist again.

However, that is not going to stop me having a decent shower. The family have been warned that I will be hogging the bathroom for at least an hour on Tuesday night.

With Easter looming on the horizon, I thought I would remind you of these. They are all free patterns available on Rainbow Valley. The Easter Eggs shown in the picture are made with thread. I have used three strands at a time and "thread painted" them.

Thread painting is a technique where you use more than one strand of thread or yarn and change one strand at a time. This produces a shaded effect rather than an abrupt colour change.

The Easter Chicks and Easter Bunnies are made from ordinary machine washable acrylic. You can make them in anything you want to for different sizes.

There are also the Easter Baskets. This pattern is not a free one but it is available to buy as an instant download. It contains the instructions for all three baskets.

This delightful pattern contains instructions for twelve different Egg Cosies. Again it is available to buy as an instant download. Unfortunately, I can not take any orders for actual items this year as I do not know how long it is going to take me to get back to crocheting normally. If anybody wants any, email me.

And finally........

I have written an article about "Understanding Crochet Terms" which has been published on a new site, Dispense Info.

"Dispense info is an information resource for anyone who wants to research subjects and obtain valuable information from those who have expertise in their chosen fields whether that be arts, crafts, hobby or career." - Dispense Info

If you would like to contribute, pop along to the site to have a look.

Happy to be doing housework.

Is that sad or what!

But I actually managed to do some without it hurting. Not much, just enough to make it loo like somebody cares about the place.

I have learned that even though it may not actually hurt while I am doing it, it aches like mad in the evening. I haven't taken painkillers in nearly a week and I don't want to have to resort to them again because I have oer done things.

I tried crocheting left handed but it didn't work so I gave that up as a bad job.

I am getting better at using the mose left-handed. I have lost £1000's playing Solitaire Vegas Style. Just as well it isn't real.

Fortunately, I can still play Bingo one handed so my Boss has been happy for me to go to work. I did get a sick note just in case but didn't need it.

Another 25 days to go.

Not a Happy Bunny

Remember that sprained wrist?

Well, it isn't sprained, its broken.

After a week of pain that wasn't getting better, I went to see the doc. She sent me to get x-rayed at the local Minor Injuries Unit.

They told me that some of the ligaments had detached from the Radius and pulled flakes of bone off as well. They gave me a temporary splint to wear and told me to only take it off for washing. And they made me an appointment for Hinchingbrooke Fracture Clinc.

They told me it was fractured and now I have a plaster for nearly six weeks!

Its driving me loopy. I am so frustrated that I can't do anything and I keep forgetting and it hurts.

Snow Joke!

I have to tell you, I really hate snow!

I used to live by the seaside and we didn't get much. Now I live in the middle of the Cambs Fens and we get too much.

And to top it all, I slipped on some ice on the way to work last night and I think I have sprained my wrist. Of course, never having sprained anything before, I am not entirely sure about that!

And you know what that means, no crocheting! I think I might have to borrow some of my sons books to read.

However, the good news is that I have finished my 2010 printable calendar.

This year I have done the link a little differently so that you will never need to change it, I can just update the page automatically.

And having splashed out on that Mr Site package for my site this year, I know it will have a permanent home.

Also, the calendar is a little different to my usual style as well.

So here is wishing you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Merry Christmas!

I finally finished it!

And it is rather large which was why we had problems finding somewhere to hang it straight!!!!

I do need to double check some of the letters but, even if I get the pattern finished before Christmas, I doubt I will sell any as people will not have enough time to make it.

Still, it was never intended as a Christmas pattern. I just made the "Merry Christmas" to design some of the letters for the main pattern.

This was part of my display at the weekend. I didn't really expect to sell much but I was pleasantly surprised. It wasn't a fortune but it does mean a little less to bring home and stash back in the wardrobe. I am leaving the display up until Christmas and may get a few more sales. Also, we have invited other people from FenVAC to add theirs.

Its December!

And I am on time for once with the desktop calender. This is one of the photos I took on the weekend. There were loads of people there. The switching on of the lights is a very popular even in Chatteris. I was lucky enough to have permission to go up into the top floor of a building opposite to get these photos.

All I need to do now is to find some time to go out in the dark and take more photos of the lights and my X will be finished for my A-Z. Again, I have been ever so nice and made a wide screen version as well. I use a wide screen in work and have to admith that I hate the way it distorts everything. And while we are on the subject of December, the Advent Calendar is now active.

Go and see what treat is in store for you today!

Chatteris Lights

If you are in Chatteris there is lots going on this weekend.

The lights are being turned on so I plan to get the "X" for my A-Z. Ofcourse, Chatteris lights are always a big event and all the usual stuff like the funfair, FenVAC Open Studios and the Gables Christmas Bazaar are also planned.

And if you are not in Chatteris this weekend........

Why not??????????