Yes, the weekend has been good. Busy but full of lovely activities and I enjoyed every single minute of it. On Saturday we ventured out in the morning for some shopping including my visit to a very nice craft shop - The Purple Butterfly shop in Daleside Garden Centre. I'm like a kid in a candy shop there and shouldn't be really let in there with my bank card. I always leave with a carrier bag full of goodies.
Then we were doing this...
We have had three reasons to celebrate - bf's stepmum's birthday from last Thursday, today's Father's Day and the oncoming BIG Birthday of bf's nan (just a brief intro to what's gonna happen in 2 weeks time!) We were lucky with the weather and managed to fit in with our bbq cooking between the fleeting showers. There was food galore and it was so nice to be together and share the meal.
Sunday was more shopping and driving around here and there. Again some more crafty shopping with some card stock bargain at HomeSense in Broughton. I haven't managed to do much crafting in the end (apart from putting a few cross stitches on my little project) over those two busy days but here is what I've been working on for the past few days: crochet flowers!
Another episode of my crochet self-teaching. I dug out the archival issue of Mollie makes and started working on my first crochet flowers learning to follow and interpret the crocheting instructions.
Currently working on a layered crochet flower...
Ready flowers went into a glassy storage jar :)
Crocheted flower progress - from the most wonky one to the more improved ones...Still plenty to learn and practise.
I think I'll practise crocheting those flowers a little more next week and then go back to learning the remaining two basic crochet stitches - double treble and triple treble so it will be back to making crochet swatches again :)
On Saturday morning a nice surprise happened to me - Margaret, a friend from facebook kindly offered to buy me this gorgeous Christmas quaker at an online shop in Canada. I received it as a gift and the custom gods spared me paying a tax on it too! So happy! THANK YOU SO MUCH Margaret! x x x
It's a big project but it's full of lovely motifs and surely won't be boring to stitch! I also love the Olde Worldie wording on it. I'm hoping to get started on it this year, before Christmas when I'm done with my Nordic stocking first. It's going to be my first quaker to stitch.
Erika's Knight's book inspired me to reach out for some Earthy natural colours so on Saturday I got myself a few cotton yarns to practise my crochet.
Finally, something that made me wonder. Not long ago I was a little shocked to find out that this simple 19cm x 19 cm card from WHSmiths with a few coloured letters and literally only 4 embellished 3d foam mounted letters costs as much as £4.99. Just a reflection: if an average card like this costs that much, how much should crafters charge for theirs then? Unique lovely hand-made cards when plenty of time and effort is spent on cutting, trimming, stamping, embossing and embellishing? £6? £7 to make it fair? And who is going to buy them at this price? Another of those dilemmas: hand-made or mass-made? What do you think? I'd love to hear from you about it.
Some of you during the last Hand-made Monday asked me to post the photos of the finished crochet bowl I blogged about before. Well, I've finished it and you will find it -
here.
Linking up to
Hand-made Monday tonight to do some blog hopping and see what others have been up to this week. Thanks for popping by and leaving a comment. Have a good week all! x x
