January's Makes

Hazelnut Hot Choc

Hazelnut flavoured hot chocolate with lots of mini marshmallow. Mmmmmmm.

OK, enough with the drooling over my hot choc. Let’s get back to crafty suff. As I mentioned previously, I’ve been busy with my hooks making loads of squares.

I made my squares for my SIBOL Swap partner, as well as her little gift.

Jan/Feb 2012 SIBOL Swap

And I’ve been making squares for my Art of Crochet Throw. You can see my first lot in this post. Here are the next half dozen

I’m also in the process of making a lap blanket to send to SIBOL. I have a fair bit of old acrylic yarn dating back to the 80s. Different colours including black, which is perfect for this type of project. I know there are lots of yarn snobs out there but let me tell you that the acrylic available now, compared to the 1980s version in my stash, is like chalk and cheese. Quite literally, the old stuff would “squeak” whilst knitting or crocheting and was quite scratchy. Not so today with the likes of Stylecraft Special or King Cole Pricewise. Very soft and smooth to work with. I have some newer acrylic but not much. Something that I will have to remedy this year

Till next time. Keep warm. Wear something knitted!

As I mentioned in my last post I’ve been quite busy this month. I’ve been mainly doing crochet squares for my throw and various swaps. They’re not quite proper “makes” in the sense of completed projects, so I’m not too sure whether they would count for “A Monthly Makes”. However, I did make a little gift for my swap partner.

Lacy Crochet Hearts

It’s this that I’ve entered in January’s Monthly Makes. It’s a free pattern I found on Ravelry called Lacy Hearts by Daniela Herbertz.  They’re very easy to make. You could make them all one size and make a pretty garland with them. Just the thing for Valentine’s Day, or as I did, as hanging decorations.

I’m merely wishing you all a Happy Chinese New Year. It’s 4709 and the Year of the Dragon.  Yes I know I’m a little late as it was celebrated on 23 Jan. However, today, here in our local shopping centre, we had our annual Chinese New Year celebrations. For the past 8 years, the local Chinese community put on a special display to celebrate their New Year. There’s usually various martial arts displays performed by a local group of youngsters. And there’s a stall doing Chinese calligraphy and selling oriental goodies.

This culminates in the now popular “Lion Dance”. There are two lions and they dance around the shopping centre, accompanied by drums and cymbals, visiting the different outlets and wishing them prosperity for the coming year. I think the whole economy could do with some of that right now. As they go around they also collect donations for our local hospice St Luke’s. Participating shops leave a red envelope with cash at the entrance. As the Lion dances around it keeps an eye out for the red envelopes.

So while I was doing some shopping I took a few piccies on my iPhone.

They’re not brilliant shots as they were far away. I did hang around for a bit but they went in the opposite direction. So I gave up getting better shots and went and finished off my shopping. Lo and behold, I was justly rewarded. Upon walking through the mall, back to the bus station, the Lion was there. So, I put my grocery bags down and grabbed my phone.

Much better. Then I remembered my iPhone does video. So, here is my very first You Tube video. It’s not brilliant as there are shoppers walking around but you get the general idea.

Right Ho! I’m off to do some more crafty stuff. I’ve been rather busy lately hence the lack of blog posts. I will share what I’ve been up to very soon, I promise

Happy Crafting!!

I’ve only just found out from Hilary of Craft Blog UK. You can read her post by visiting here. It seems they want to get you to use the new Google+ Hang Out and Circles to keep in touch and build a community there. Anyhow, I’m following Hilary’s lead and have joined Bloglovin’. I’m not too sure how many blogs I follow are on there already. One thing for sure is that there are probably a whole host of wonderful crafty blogs waiting to be discovered. So if you’re already on Bloglovin’ why not join me on there.