Persian Tiles throw | The Contented Crafter

Well my friends, March disappeared in a puff of smoke, snap, just like that and the first week of April has also hiked through pretty quickly.

I crocheted with my beautiful Corriedale Yarns and formed the first Persian Tile after a couple of false starts just getting the colour relationships right

dav

With one down fifteen to go, I decided to streamline things and am now forming four tiles at a time

If you read last weeks post you might remember I mentioned the colour of the pink yarn wasn’t showing properly – it looked red, here you see it actual shade – isn’t it stunning set alongside those blues!

I’ve been playing with my coloured pencils, my alcohol ink pens, distress inks and various other bits and pieces and making more cards. Having a stash of cards to meet all possible festive occasions, or just to send little notes to friends, is never a bad thing.

I worked on some I had started earlier and felt needed a bit more work – it’s important they look as finished as possible. These three are made using embossing folders and inks to achieve deeply textured, yet simple card fronts. I need to make more that are suitable for giving to the male of the species.

These next two are the same idea, just bigger. The textured background is inked and silhouettes made from die cuts added. A bit of bling and I have two A5 cards ready to go

dav

Using my Spectrum Noir colour pencils and Gamsol – which is a brand of odourless spirits – two more cards were produced. The Gamsol acts as a blending agent with the colours and also can be used to blur the lines slightly, softening the effect, though I’m not that sure that I like it personally

dav

dav

And this one, which like the last card above, was photographed in its cellophane jacket, hence the slightly blurred and muted aspect – sorry about that.

dav

Then I moved on to produce a couple of A6 size cards made with alcohol ink pens on Distress inked backgrounds

dav

Again a Distress Ink background with a die cut house. The girl is stamped and fussy cut and attached with foam dots slightly off-set from the background.

I’m enjoying the vibrancy of the alcohol ink pens and plan on doing more cards with them. Though really, I can’t say why I’m making all these cutesie girly cards – maybe I’m pining for my lost youth 🙂 (Where did I put him?) All I can say is it’s a good way to bring myself back into using these different mediums and finding my feet again so to speak. I’m hoping I’ll be feeling ready to make originals again soon.

If you have a favourite, I’d love to know.

And of course, we celebrated Siddy’s fourth birthday on the 4th day of the 4th month – most assuredly an auspicious occasion!

hdr

Thanks for coming by today, I love that you did!

There’s activity in the happy making room again … well, I shouldn’t say ‘again’ in some ways it didn’t really stop. I made lots of cards there for a bit, but forgot to take photos of any of them except this one, which kind of reminds me of Siddy and so I kept it

But there’s been some playing with beads going on

A few new light catchers are emerging – I’m playing with odd colour combinations to see what happens.

Also, somewhere along the line I had decided to make a concerted effort to rid myself, or at least make a serious dent in, the cupboard full of of left over and unused yarns that have been accumulated over the past two decades. I had been on the lookout for an idea or inspiration and then happened to mention it to Nana Cathy who sent me over to Coastal Crochet and voila! The perfect thing for me and, at just nine weeks behind, I caught up in two weeks. As you can see my yarn cupboard holds many different shades and hues of blue and even that green has a blue thread running through it – I have no clue how that grape colour got in there!

It’s a slow project, the designer Eleonora is adding just 4 or so rows every week, leaving plenty of time for other creative projects to continue too. Which is really good, because on arriving home from my Blogging Babes Reunion and collecting a bag of mail from my lovely neighbour I found it included two big letters.

One, from The Wool Company, contained a catalogue and a gift voucher and a note saying to do nothing until I received an explanatory letter….. and the other from my friend who blogs, Jan, over at The Snail of Happiness containing the explanatory letter and a ‘Persian Tiles’ crochet pattern

Jan explained she had seen a comment I had left on a mutual friends blog who was making the Persian Jewels blanket, that if I lived in the UK I’d be definitely buying that kit to make up and she decided that not living in the UK was no reason to not be able to make my own ……

You can see why I wax eloquent about the joys of blogging right? I am once again made speechless by the kindness, love and generosity heaped on my tiny head by fabulous people!! I sat in silence for a long time reading and rereading Jan’s letter and looking at the note from The Wool Company, then I packed it all up and drove off to my daughter’s place and showed her and we both sat in silence and revelled in the wonder of having wonderful friends, met purely through blogging.

A week passed by while I looked and considered colour options, eventually this is what I chose – it’s 100% NZ Corriedale wool, 8 ply from The Wool Company

Aren’t those just the best colours! Though that red hank is not red, it’s ‘Azalea’ a bright pink. There are seven different colours and as soon as I have finished wrangling those 200g hanks into giant balls I will begin to crochet my first square – I can’t wait to get it underway!

You know it is going to be mostly blue don’t you 🙂

Jan you are brilliant and thoughtful and kind and I am so happy to have you as a friend – thank you so much!!

And to finish, here’s a shot I took of Siddy and two of his favourite admirers having coffee a couple of weeks back – I wonder what they are talking about …..