Just quickly, the winner is.......

Hello everyone! Just a quick post today, I am trying to use an iPad for this and it is frustrating me, I just deleted a whole long post I wrote and I can't put pictures on either!! Doh! We are having a little holiday this week, so I will be back in proper blogging mode next week. Anyway, just wanted to tell you who won my give away cushion cover, my boys devised a complicated mathematical formula and we came up with a number, 108, and this comment was the winner, I think I counted right, and it is Penelope from L is for Love ! Congratulations Penelope, I will be in touch when we get back home. Thank you so much to all you fabulous people who entered my giveaway, sorry I can't send you all something! Hello to all the new peeps who have found me recently,(and to all the ace old ones too!!) lovely to meet you all, and I hope to get out around blog land and visit you all too soon! Have a great week everyone, talk soon!

My creative space....more pin cushions...

My creative space today...............

I have been making more of these little pin cushions, they are quick and easy and have a really nice finish to them.  I think the colour combinations are endless and there are quite a few more that I want to try out.

I love playing around with the colours! 

I have got another idea for something a bit different for these pincushions, I am going to need a few more to see if it will work, but I'll show you the results of my playing soon.

They look a bit Japanese-y don't you think?

I have some fine baby wool that I am going to use and make some tiny ones too, so cute !

Have a great day!

Playing along over here  today.

We had a fun weekend......

 Sooooo.......

How's your weekend been?

It's been busy round my neck of the woods!

Yesterday we had a bit of a going away party for some friends of ours who are leaving the area, 10 adults and a heap of kids, lots of food and drink, chatting, laughing, some music, and a bit of pool sharking made for a pretty enjoyable evening!

This was after the first  Harvest Lunch at our Community Garden, and a basketball presentation afternoon, Gary took care of the basketball while I stayed home and cooked a few treats for the party, and tried to make the house presentable!

We dragged out our new summer chairs in all their colourful,stripey glory, it was a lovely afternoon weather wise so they had a good work out and were declared very comfortable!

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Had a wander round the garden today as well.....

 .....checked on the seeds I planted a week or 2 ago, and they are doing well, lovely little snow pea plants........

 .....climbing beans......

 .......and mesclun lettuce, as well as zucchinis, sweetcorn, tomatoes, sugar peas, capsicums.

My sunflowers have germinated well too, so there should be plenty of colour in the garden this summer if all things go to plan!  I sow my seeds in biodegradable pots that I can plant out pot and all, so there is no set back when they are planted into the the garden and I can grow them to a good size before transplanting.  It seems to work well for me, we usually have lots of great veg growing amongst all the weeds! Although I don't know how things will go this year with my roaming chickens scratching every where they go!

....a few more garden pics....the artichoke patch, looking good....

 .....and the raspberry row, high hopes for  a bumper crop this summer!

....poppies are full of buds, really great range of lovely colours this year, so happy !

....and round the front the blossom trees are  starting to look gorgeous

.....whites and deep pink of the flowering peach, my favourite I think!

Today was spent cleaning up the house after last night (washed a very tacky floor, yuk), and pottering in the garden, mum and dad visited with my aunt from the country, the boys generally mucked around, the eldest had work and the younger 2 were happy at home.

I am going to go and do a spot of crochet now, a good way to finish of a lovely weekend!

PS. Hello to all the new visitors to my blog, lots of you are coming from Lucy at attic24, so thanks Lucy for the referral, and great to meet you all!  Thanks for dropping by, I hope I don't bore you with all my mundane wafflings!

Have a lovely day!!

my creative space... pincushion

 So I was looking around blogdom, and came across these gorgeous pincushions here, and after a few little linkys found a great pattern here, and of course, I had to make one of my own straight away!!

 Isn't it cute?  Very easy to make, I am picturing an explosion of different coloured pincushions, or I might turn them into dangley decorations, I do so love hanging bits and pieces!..........

Yes, there will definitely be more of theses appearing around here.

On another note, would you look at the size of this egg that one of my poor girls squeezed out today!  The other eggs are all pretty big too, so you can see the difference!  Wonder if it's a one off, or going to become the new standard, haha! It must be all the free ranging they do through the vegie patch, they do take all the choice pickings.

Playing along with the others at Our Creative Spaces today.

Have a great day!

PS Thank you so much for entering my little give away, and for all the lovely comments I have received about my cushion, you are all ace!! Think I might pop one of these little pin cushions in with it!

There is still heaps of time if you want to join in, just go here to check it out!

A little Ta Dah and a Thank You Give Away....

Hello everyone, it feels like ages since I last posted, computer time is in high demand at our place and I seem to be at the bottom of the pecking order!

Sooooo.....anyway, remember the little bit of stripey crochet I was making last week?  (Picture above if you don't know what I mean)......

Well, this is what I was making, a stripey cushion cover.

My husband is of the mind that cushions are extremely useless objects, but I disagree!  You can never have too many cushions I say!

Although this is the first crocheted one I have made, so there were a few teething problems to work out.

 I was going for a mini version of my stripey blanket, and used slightly simplified stitches 

(couldn't fit in a row of bobbles in this one, but I think a series of different stripey patterns would look good don't you?)

I used my Bendigo cotton for this as I think the colours all work well together and I thought it would be less likely to pill up than wool.

 I used some gorgeous green vintage buttons for the closure and I have to say I am pretty pleased with how they look.....it has worked out at about 45cm square....

..... this is the back side.....

.....and here you can see the nice contrast between the solid stripes on the back and the lacy rows on the front .....

So this is my retro-vintage inspired stripey cushion!!  What do you think? I think the stripes translate well to a smaller item and a group of these would look very cheery!

And I have decided that seeing as there has been quite a bit of interest in my stripey blanket, this little stripey cushion cover might be a good thing to use as my give away!!

I mentioned in an earlier post that I was going to do a give away as a thank you for all the lovely support you guys give me in my creative pursuits and to mark one year of blogging, so here it is!

If you would like to win my cushion cover and a few other little crafty treats, (to be shown at a later date, as I don't have them organised yet! haha!!) it is easy to enter. 

Just leave a comment and I will draw a winner in 2 weeks. 

It would be lovely if you could help me spread the word on your own blogs, but not an essential requirement.

So thank you very much for your interest in this little blog, and I hope you enter my give away!!

Have a great day!

mid week happenings......

 Hello!

What's been going on? 

My week has been hurtling along quite pleasantly, the eldest has had exams and has been on and off school at odd times, we had a basketball semi final ( grand final in a fortnight), orthodontist appointments, one kept and one forgotten (doh!), night tennis in perfect still weather and a few other things.

I have been trying to get back into some fitness and have started at the gym (again), it is surprising how much time this takes out of the day!  Must persevere though, got to fit into some bathers for summer!

Still got a bit of new crafting in too!

This is what I have started last night, I'm just showing you a sneak peak as I have something special in mind for this little scrap........I'll let you in on it soon!  Hopefully I will get cracking on it tonight and have more to show tomorrow!  

( as you can see I am still loving the stripe!)

On another note, I was having a little roam around blogland and came across this very interesting Advent Swap. I know Christmas is ages away, but I seem to find these fun things when sign ups are closed, so thought I would make an effort to get involved early.  It seems that a lot of people are only sending within the UK due to postage costs, so I thought it would be good to give all the Australian peeps the heads up so some of us might join in and send to each other!  Go have a look at it here if you are into swaps, it looks like a fun one. It's a lovely blog too, called Hookin with Laalaa.

Thank you so much for all the lovely comments recently, I really appreciate you all taking the time to say such nice things about my crochet, I am glad you all can enjoy my little colour trippings!

There are so many lovely, encouraging people out there, thank you so much for stopping by!!

A bit of colour for Sunday.....

Hello.

How are you?

It's been a while since posts, I really haven't had much to share, life has been quite routine and that's not the best fodder for blogging. Also got a bit of a weird comment on my last post that put me off a bit I think, and made me really ponder what I will blog about.....anyhoo, this is a nice general crochet post, so should be pretty safe!

I have nearly finished the stripey blanket, like lots of things it is taking a bit longer than I thought to finish off.  Every time I think I have made it big enough I put it on my bed to see how it looks and think maybe a couple more rows and it will just right!

I want to finish this one so I can get on with something new, so hopefully will be doing a ta dah in the next week or two.

Thought you might like a bit of a colour fix on this fine Sunday......

be warned, I have gone overboard with the photos, but I hope you enjoy!

This is the new bit I am doing at the moment.....I think it would make a nice edge pattern, what do you think?

Have a great day!