Star Garland (1)

I think I'm already in a full crochet swing :) Here is an update on my crocheted stars:

I'm planning to crochet a garland made of 15 stars but I may decide on a longer one if it comes out too short to my liking.  If it goes on the mantlepiece, 15 stars should do but if it goes on my Christmas tree, it needs to be much longer. I'll see about that :) So far I've crocheted 13 complete stars.

I crochet them using only 3 colours, cream and brown are organic cotton yarn called Sincere and since there's no red colour in the Sincere colour palette, I went for the red Lerke from Dale of Norway, half merino, half cotton mixture.

The yarn naturally curls up when it's knit or crocheted so when I've finished them, I'll have to do some steaming / ironing and blocking. It will be a new thing for me as Ive never blocked any knit or crocheted items before. I must read some theory about it.
My dear crocheting friends, if you happen to have any suggestions as for blocking, I'm all ears listening out there for you. 

Some shopping goodies: this is my recent buy from Lidl - a continental German supermarket. It made me really happy. They were selling these cotton yarns at about £3.49 per pack while it's usually a price for only one 50g yarn ball! It was a great bargain and I couldn't resist those Easter'y colours.  I hope the yarn will be pleasure to knit.

Also the knitting needles and crochet hooks were on offer for only £1.49 a piece! I took a piece of circular needles (something to try out in the future), 2 sets of cable needles (also something on my to-do-in-the-very-near-future list) and some nice girly crochet hooks of a very small size. Lovely! 

Thank you Lidle! :D

Somewhere between the stacks of my craft books I found this:

a crochet diary for 2014, freebie from one of the mags - not sure what I'm going to put in it yet - perhaps some urls to crochet tutorials or something :)

And finally, the books I've been in love recently:

I have mentioned buying Mollie Makes Crochet book before but some later after that I got myself another lovely book Hook, yarn and crochet by Ros Badger and Crochet step by step by Sally Harding from DK publishing house. I love all crafty books from DK! - they are always good books full of content and good advice as opposed to many with just waffling and pretty pictures. Oh! and I love this dotty cover - supa cute and just matches the whole girly-crochety-hand-made theme. All these 3 books give me a good crochet theory as well as some easy crochet projects. The star garland comes from Ros Badger's book.

A full weekend ahead. Yipeee! What are your (crafty) plans? Hope you all have a nice chillout.