Painting, veggies & crochet

I have so fallen in love with the new Simply Crochet magazine! Sister of the ever popular Mollie Makes magazine, it's filled to the brim with crochet, crochet, crochet. What makes it different from say the Interweave publications? Its absolute simplicity. None of the patterns are complicated or fiddly. It really doesn't feature anything new or anything particularly groundbreaking, but I just absolutely adore the simplicity of the items featured. Issue 1 had two patterns for blankets. The cover blanket and then a very simple granny square blanket. But what really stood out was the way they used colour and stripes, the placement of the blocks. And I absolutely LOVED the hugeness of the blocks. It just makes the entire blanket different.

Being of the stash-busting persuasion, I immediately grabbed my stash of Pure Gold DK, and luckily I had enough yarn in enough colours to do the blanket WITHOUT HAVING TO BUY MORE YARN. Score!

The blanket worked up incredibly quickly. I finished it in just two weeks. I also only worked in the evenings in front of the telly. Because it's such a simple pattern, your fingers just flow and fly in a very soothing rhythm. No concentration is necessary. Definitely my type of tv project. I initially thought I'd use it in our bedroom, but its simply not big enough. In all fairness, they did say it was made to fit a double bed. 

Our queen-size, extra-length bed is just too big. Maybe if I added some extra blocks it would've worked, but I really didn't want to mess with the layout of the pattern as I felt it was just perfect.

Phoebe is thrilled though. She's been cuddling under the blanket since it reached half size (I worked in the ends and sewed the blocks together as I finished them) and she said that of all the blankets I've ever made this is her favourite. So the blanket has been re-assigned as a tv room blanky.

Sunday marked the day when I finally felt 'This is my home'. Up to now, I've just kinda lived here. Not really fully invested, pottering around, but not making a major effort. I don't know if it's because we painted the games room (I hated that room) or if it's because I saw a pic of our old house. The new owners tiled the walls of my previously beautiful blood-red gallery guest toilet. Because of the height of our walls in our old house, I painted the guest toilet blood-red, and hung paintings from the ceiling to the floor. Guests loved it, and always referred to it as going to the Louvre. Lol. The new owners (despite going dilly over it when they came to view the house) decided that this little room will look better tiled. Be that as it may, that pic really made me realise that there's no going back, that house is not my home anymore, and I need to pull finger and really become fully invested in where we live now.

The red table used to be our old kitchen table. If this table could talk... It even had its own check in on Facebook and have been the site of many, many conversations and happy gatherings. It needed a special place. I have now placed it in the entrance hall as I want it to be the first thing visitors see when they arrive at our house. It still needs some stuff, and definitely some wow! paintings against the wall. Watch this space.

We finally got around to painting the horrible walls in the games room. I've been giving that room a wide berth since we moved in as I simply just couldn't face it. It was painted in a horrible caramel colour - which I could probably face if it wasn't covered in a million nails (how many pics did the previous owner have?) and it was dirty. They used a really bad quality paint, making it impossible to clean properly. Anyhoo, we painted it in the same shade as the rest of the entrance hall, and it looks soooooo much better now.

It still needs a lot of finishing touches, but Rome wasn't built in one day. I'm thinking some crochet cushions in a bright colour for a bit of pop, maybe one or two bucket chairs, and then I'm thinking of having a custom wall tattoo made for the space above the couch.

The soil quality (and weather!) is much better here than in Paarl. I've recently planted some tomatoes and am thrilled to announce that the first fruit (veg?) is showing up! Whoohooo!

My lettuce is doing really well too, and should be ready to be harvested probably within the next week or so! Yeah!

Happy hooking,

Bxx