While I think and muse and potter and walk and create and just be, time keeps on flowing by and my mind turns to the fact that soon – soon – we will be at the mid winter mark of the longest night and the light will begin to return my way.
I always miss the light the most when I am in winter. I don’t mind the cold, the wet, the sleet even. I mind the shortness of the days at both ends and I miss the feel of sunlight on my face. I don’t miss the heat. I quite like not having the energy sapping, robust glint of hot summer days. But I miss the hours the sun stays in the sky. Soon I tell myself, the season will peak, the world will turn and the sun will start to move back towards my hemisphere. I walked in mist this morning thinking these thoughts of waiting. And, as we exited the park and looked up to the hill ahead, the sun glinted off the windows of houses through the mist and made me a most delightful fairy tale castle of sparkling light to guide me on and make my waiting happy. Later, at home, I realised that only in this season can such a wonderfully serendipitous meeting of mist and light occur at 9 am. I appreciate the reminder to be okay with where I’m at!
But still I wait, and while I wait I hook. My Persian Squares blanket is close to being finished. Orlando has helped, oh such a lot!
He pretty much ensured every component of the blanket was pressed, whether I desired it to be or not.
As I write this one half of the blanket is draped over the back of a dining chair
It ought to be finished but I got sidetracked.
I made this
Now, here’s the story that goes with ‘this’. Do you want to hear it? (Err, come back – that was a rhetorical question folks!)
Back in the days when I was still intermittently going onto Facebook, I logged in and the first thing I saw was a picture of a crochet etui doll. At the same moment that I was falling in love with it, facebook did that thing it does and updated my feed in a tumbling rush of alternate posts and I lost her. I searched, wasted an hour of my life and didn’t ever see her again. Maybe that was the moment when I decided to quit social media (except for blogging). Any how, I searched around and had myriad conversations, but never found another etui doll. Maybe they aren’t called that any way – but I don’t know what else to call them. Then, one day, when searching through my stash of yarns for something else I found a bit of brown that said to me ‘I make doll!’ “Okay!” said I and gathered it up and off we went to Happy Hooking Land.
Now I have never made a crochet doll before, I have no clue how to make one. But undaunted I set to with hook and yarn and made a head, the rest just followed along. I also kept no notes of what I was doing, so now have no clue how I got from the first stitch to the last. But I do know what I’d do differently.
I also took no photos until I got to the final stage of face features placement. As you can see from that photo I used pearl headed pins to get an idea of placement and size – and grabbed the camera. I had my reading glasses on and when looking for a place to put them down, realised she was, among her many other talents, the perfect specs holder!
I’m just the teeniest bit in love with her
As you can see from the pockets close-ups she holds all things sewing and hooking related. There is more to come and her face to be finished – and a name to be given of course – any ideas? But this has to be the most fun thing I have made in forever!
So that is why the blanket hasn’t yet been finished. Nor this – which insists on photographing brighter and lighter than reality, but gives you an idea that at least some progress has been made…….
Finally, here’s Siddy in his posh winter gear to say “Hello!” or “Grrrrruff!” to you all, just in case you need that kind of puppy cheerfulness in your life…..
Thanks for coming by today, I love that you did!
I went back to playing with alcohol inks and ended up adding acrylics over one of them to see what happened 
Nothing went awry, so, emboldened, I kept playing – now I tried to see what would happen if I added blending solution to a brush and swept it across the inky coloured sky
Well that was interesting! Obviously a very light touch and brush-on-paper-always technique is required. More work is currently being undertaken 🙂
And then I sketched her onto 300gsm watercolour paper making sure she was the right size and that the pen I used wouldn’t bleed with alcohol inks.
I then coloured her and cut her out. And finally tried her out on the background
There’s a lot of work still to be done – but can you see where this is going?
The
This is how I crochet in the evenings – I quite often let You Tube play a random selection of videos while I’m working, they often choose to show me animals and Siddy always sits up and takes notice, much to the consternation of Orlando and myself who must consequently adjust our positions to accommodate any excitement or anxiety shown on behalf of the filmed animals……
It’s turning cold here now. Night falls early and morning arrives later. The heating is on and morning walks take longer to get ready for. Boots, coat, scarf, gloves, hat. Puppy. And off we go! No longer prepared to sit in the front garden and await our return, Orlando watches from the kitchen window. Lucky kitty!!
Next this one came, I’m thinking ‘Chocolate and Lemon Cream’ …….. Mmmmmmm! The deep brown fluted beads look black here – but that is just my terrible photography. It really looks good enough to eat – but please don’t Siddy!
Staying with the food related beading programme (Huh?) Did you have those orange flavoured chocolate balls when you were a kid? We called them Jaffas and the boys loved to roll them down the sloped floor at the weekend kids movie show when the serial opened with a replay that revealed the heart-stopping event ending last weeks episode was completely untrue and the hero hadn’t gone over the cliff on his horse, wagon or train. He had jumped clear at the last moment. I got fooled week after week! And of course we don’t call those sweets ‘Jaffas’ any more. Now they are Choc-Oranges – So this one is the ‘Choc-Orange’
I also made a pink catcher, but as you can’t eat that one, I’ll just pop it quietly into the shop. Next lot will probably all be shades of blue just to make me really happy.
I think this is the last time I’ll be able to show all the rows all at once – it’s starting to get quite big. Still, with the weather showing definite signs that winter is approaching fast it is nice to have this across my knee as I hook away.
The Contented Crafter 