Stash busting and missing

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I finished the scrap yarn hexagon blanket that I started ages ago. I used the hexagon pattern from here and gave it a simple border using hdc stitches worked into the back loops. I love the way it turned out. 

 

I used all sorts of yarn in this. Some were fingering weight and some heavy worsted weight, but mostly DK weight.

Though I managed to use up hundreds of tiny leftover balls of yarn I still had a lot more, so I started another stash buster and it is almost complete. Images in another post but just a sneak peek here...

I noticed only today that my last post was exactly two months ago. I have been neglecting my blog and Instagram lately but I do have a reason for it. We have moved house again, this time to our own. On top of that my computer broke down, actually the computer broke down even before we moved, so I have been using a laptop and it took me forever to get used to it. I'm still not able to type fast on a laptop as I used to using a desktop. So now that I have somewhat settled in my new routine I hope to blog more frequently.

Though I'm happy to have moved out of our previous home (I felt that house was bad luck for me), I do miss a few things.

I miss the greenery there. There were many huge trees close to our house and it was very relaxing to watch the birds and squirrels that lived there. Here there are only houses, people and vehicles. I miss those birds and squirrels who were not only bold enough to venture inside our house but also felt safe enough to build a nest. Unfortunately we moved out before the squirrel babies came.

We also had an open courtyard, so it was free entry for pigeons. Sometimes they were fun to watch and sometimes they annoyed us by pooping everywhere. 

I really don't know how many eggs were laid and how many chicks were hatched there. There was always a pair rearing a baby or two. 

Finally it was heartbreaking to say goodbye to these two sweet doggos. They live on the streets and befriended us. Almost everyday they came to visit us. If the front door was closed they'll bang on the door to be let in. 

Black was a sweet girl, shy and timid, at the same time very alert and watchful.  Brown was very playful and naughty and a heavy sleeper. Once he lays his head down to sleep nothing will bother him, not food, not stranger, not even an earthquake. From the look of those two sitting together in the last image you might think that they are best buddies, but no, they are enemies who can't stand one another. They used to be okay with each other initially but the black started feeling jealous when Brownie too started to visit us regularly. (Initially it was only Blacky). So she refused to let him in while she was in the house. This led to a fight between both of them and from then on Blacky will not enter the house if Brownie was inside. Blacky had such an attitude. 

I hope these babies make new friends and live peacefully. We cannot have pets for various reasons, otherwise I would happily bring them both home. I miss them a lot.

Crochet baby dress with bolero - new pattern

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Hi, this is going to be a hurried post to introduce my new pattern. I should have done it few days earlier but some unexpected incidents happened to cause the delay. My dear father-in-law fell down and broke his hips and after being hospitalized for about 5 days lost his life. Every year we visited our parents (my husband's and mine) around the middle of May but this year our vacation got delayed by a couple of weeks because of my son's extra classes. Had we left earlier as usual we would have had a chance to see him alive. He was such a kind soul and would be missed a lot.

This pretty baby dress with bolero pattern is now available in all my shops. I used sport weight/baby weight yarn with size D/3.25 mm and size E/3.5 mm crochet hooks. The pattern includes instructions for 4 sizes - 3 to 6 months, 6 to 12 months, 12 to 18 months and 18 to 24 months. As almost always the pattern includes photos. You can find the pattern in my Etsy, Ravelry and webstore.

You can purchase it from here and get a discount of 20%

Me and my son are packing our bags and getting away the day after tomorrow, my husband has already left. Right now it is 45 degree Celsius here and I can't wait to escape the heat. Fortunately temperature down south is much more tolerable than here. My next update will be in July. Until then you all have fun and keep crocheting! Bye!   

Some progress and some losses

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Hi everybody, I hope you are all staying warm. I have been reading about the polar vortex in USA and watching all the crazy freezing mid-air videos and feeling thankful for having comparatively warmer weather here, but here too it has been unusually chilly for the past week or so. 

Two weeks ago we had hailstorm and these are the hail stones.

I frogged the cardigan that I showed you here. I was not happy with the way it turned out. It didn't look good on me. So I unravelled the whole thing and it has now become a simple raglan sleeved pullover which I'm wearing right now. The yarn is a bit scratchy but it does keep me warm although I made the sleeves a little shorter than intended. So I might have to lengthen them but that it for a later date. I'm done with it for now.

I have made some progress with the doll house. The living room is almost done and I'll be starting the kitchen soon.

This is the living room. I'm making everything from scratch. The house is made of cardboard. I used popsicle sticks for the floor. I'm using scrapbook paper for the walls and thin cardboard for the panels all glued to cardstocks. These will finally be glued to the cardboard. I made the staircase out of mdf sheets and giant reed canes. These are similar to bamboo. My husband and son brought these from a field nearby. 

For the brick fireplace and stone hearth I used egg cartons. I'm starting from the lower floor and will be working my way up. There will be an upper floor and attic. 

Speaking of my losses, I lost all my data. ALL except for a copy of my pdf patterns. I have this habit of saving everything in my external hard drive and keep nothing in my computer. I have had some bad experiences before where my computer crashed and I had to lose my data stored in the computer, so I always saved everything on an external hard drive. Though my husband insisted on retaining a copy in the computer as well I never did it and I also I didn't listen to my son who asked me to store everything online. Finally one day last week my external crashed and everything's gone, all my patterns, pattern photos, collection of ebooks, thousands of other stuff and above all almost 13 years' worth of photos! My husband says he'll give it to some expert and try to retrieve the data but I'm not sure. I can only hope. Even if everything is lost I hope we get back our personal photos atleast. I terribly regret not retaining a copy of everything elsewhere.

I showed you the baby pigeons in my last post. There were 3 babies, 2 outside the house on a window sill and one inside our house. Well, one of the 2 that were outside died yesterday. We used to watch them everyday as they grew up.

Few days ago we found one baby with an injured wing. The wound was bleeding and my husband brought him home and applied an antibiotic ointment and left him back in the nest. He was alright then, there was no more bleeding. A couple of days ago the other baby flew off and this one stayed in the nest. Even before the babies left the nest the mother had laid a couple of more eggs. I guess the mother pushed the baby out of the nest because we found him twice sitting on the stairs and put him back in the nest. 

On Saturday, my son found him outside our door and brought him in. He just walked around exploring the rooms and settled in one place. In the evening my husband put him back in the nest but within a couple of hours we found him again outside our door. So we brought him in and put him in a box beside our bed because we didn't want him to spend the cold night out in the stairs, but poor thing, we found him dead the next morning. Don't know what happened. May be we could have done something to save the poor thing. Feeling bad!  

Misty

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It was Wednesday afternoon on the last day of January. We had a relative visiting us and were having fish for lunch. We heard a meow outside the door and when we opened the door we found this black stray kitty standing out demanding to be fed fish. We gave him a few pieces, shooed him away and shut the door. Later when my husband was going out he found the kitty sitting on the stairs and brought it in.

 I don't know what he was thinking because we were against the idea of having pets at home, no, not because we don't like animals. Actually we all love animals and we even had some bunnies few years ago. So although my son keeps pestering us for a pet we always refused because we go on long vacation every year to visit our parents and having pets at home would make it difficult. Traveling long distances with pets is not an easy task and in our country traveling with a cat is almost impossible. Moreover my son used to have breathing troubles and he had some severe bouts of wheezing when we had the bunnies. 

So I don't know what my husband was thinking when he let the kitty in. It was a she and was about 4 or 5 months old. She was very friendly, not at all scared and she appeared to be used to human company. I tried to let her out many times but she outright refused to get out of the door. That night she chose to sleep in a chair next to our bed. Again we tried to let her out the next day and again she refused. Later she did go out a few times but always returned.

We named her Misty. We didn't have the heart to chase her out but I was worried that the cat would trigger my son's breathing problem. We didn't know what to do with her. She wouldn't leave us and we couldn't keep her. In the meantime one week had passed and we were still clueless. We didn't know anyone who was willing to adopt her. So I listed her on a couple of pet adoption sites and few people contacted us and two of them even made us wait a few days saying that they would take her but finally did not. Now it was about 3 weeks since she came to us. She became very attached to me and used to follow me around  house, even into the bathroom. If I don't let her in, she would wait for me outside the door. So adorable! Though she had a few favorite spots for her daytime naps she always slept at our feet at night.

Finally at the beginning of this month a young woman contacted us. She was willing to take Misty and we also felt that she was the right person. So 5 days ago we gave her off with a heavy heart. I never thought I would miss her so much and I even cried for the next 3 days. I am so tempted to call the young lady and ask her to give Misty back. I feel guilty that I abandoned the poor kitty who chose us as her owners or rather chose to own us. The next day after giving her away I had a dream that Misty found her way back and she was purring beside me trying to wake me up. Misty had been with us for only a month but it's going to take me a long time to get over her absence and I don't think I'll ever forget her. I hope Misty is very happy in her new home.

Moving to crochet, I finished the crescent shawl that I started last year, of course, it wouldn't have been possible without Misty's help.

She even helped me block it. Pattern soon. Have a great day!

My first knit scarf

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Hey everybody, popping in to say hello after a long time. Life got little busy with 2 birthdays and working on a new project. Anyhow I managed to finish my first knit scarf that I mentioned here. I had bought only 2 hanks of the thick and thin yarn and was unsure if it would be enough to make the scarf but luckily it was more than enough and I have a small ball leftover.

I really enjoyed making the scarf but even after blocking it the edges curl inwards and I don't know if it is because of the yarn or if blocking was not done right. I'm not going to block it again. I'll put it away for now. 

For my son's birthday earlier this month I made an ombre cake. It was a chocolate, coffee and vanilla layer cake with ombre frosting. I have a recipe journal where I try to keep a record of all the new recipes that I try. 

It's so much fun and I'm loving it. You too can try this method to keep a track on your kitchen adventures.  

Have a great day! 

Drawing in alphabetical order

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A is for ...

B is for ...

Right now I don't have anything related to crochet to show you, so I let you peek into my sketch book. I bought this sketchbook in June 2015 and so far I have done only 10 other drawings excluding the alphabetical series. I think I'll become an old lady by the time I reach "Z"

I have changed my shops' name to  TLH Patterns (abbreviation for the lazy hobbyhopper) and I am now in the process of updating the patterns. It's going to take a long time to update all the patterns in all my 3 shops but anyway I'm enjoying it.

That's all for now. Have a nice day!  

Learning to knit

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One day last week when I was very bored and didn't feel like crocheting I picked up the only pair of knitting needles that I had and started to teach myself to knit. I have been having this pair since my college days. They are size 10 needles and were birthday gifts from my friends who obviously didn't know the difference between crocheting and knitting. I remember receiving two pairs but I am not sure. I have only one now. It took me just one afternoon to learn how to knit and purl. I also learnt how to bind off but I did that only once, it was a bit frustrating. 

 On a sleepless night last week I was thinking about my online business. Last year was not a great one for me business wise, at the same I wouldn't call it a bad one too. I thought I should make a few changes. I am thinking of giving it a new name, I have already done that twice and I'm not sure if Etsy would allow me to do it again. If they do I'll change the name. I was also thinking of combining both my Etsy shops into one but I don't know if I would really want to do that. I will be revising the rates and removing or updating those patterns which have very few or no sales. I have already started rewriting a few patterns. All these changes would be gradual and will take some time. Only when I am done with all the old patterns I'm going to start with anything new. I already have a couple of patterns which are almost done but I think that would have to wait. 

Allfreecrochetafghanpatterns has again selected this blog as one of the top blogs of 2016. It's because of you readers and thank you all so much. 

Still I don't know how to bring my blog list back to the sidebar. It shows in the blogger layout but it does not appear in the sidebar. I'm still trying to figure it out.

Have a nice day!

Hi...

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A big HELLO to all of you! I am back from my vacation, actually I was back by the 1st of this month itself but it took me so long to manage a post because I am still finding it difficult to get back to my regular blogging mood. I feel so disconnected as if I don't belong here. Hopefully I'll get over it soon.

I don't have any crochet makes to show you but I purchased a set of colourful crochet hooks and some yarns online. Love the glossy colours of the hooks though I haven't had a chance to try any of them.

And a new mug to hold all my hooks...

That's it for now. I'll come back soon with something worthwhile to show. Have a great week! 

Crochet and books

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One of my most favourite places in Delhi is the Darya Ganj Sunday Book Market. Darya Ganj is a part of old Delhi and is near the Red Fort. It's a weekly market held only on Sundays on the street pavements. You can find all sorts of books here, both old and new, at unbelievably low prices as low as Rupees 10 which is roughly 25 cents. 

I love books though nowadays I don't read as much as I used to. Crochet is taking up most of my time. Still we go there now and then when the weather is agreeable. I buy books only from here as I don't prefer spending too much on new ones. Since the books don't come with a fixed price you need good bargaining skills. Some sellers even offer discount sales like pick any for rupees 10, 20, or 50. If you are lucky you'll find some really good books in very good condition at these sales. 

Source

Source

Last Sunday my husband and I went there. When we started from home the weather was pleasant but when we reached there it became very hot. I wasn't able to stay there for more than half an hour. It was becoming unbearably hot and I was forced to turn back midway. Still I was able to lay my hands on 3 classics each for Rupees 50 (less than a dollar), a couple of books on flowers and nature, also for Rupees 50 each. One is Field Guide to Wild Flowers of Britain by Readers Digest and the other one is Nature Diary by Janet Marsh. I bought these two books just for their beautiful illustrations. For my car crazy son I bought a book on cars. Altogether for 6 books I paid Rupees 300 which is less than 5 dollars. 

The above two are from Wild Flowers of Britain by Readers Digest and the ones you see below are from Janet Marsh's Nature Diary.

Lot of crocheting also happened last week. I am working on a scarf right now. 

The textured ripple blanket is progressing very well.

Wish you all a very happy weekend!

Colour burst crochet table topper

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This post is long overdue, very long. I finished this table topper a day before Christmas. I started it on a whim. I didn't have any need for a new table topper but I wanted something for myself and I wanted it to be very colourful.

I didn't have any particular pattern in mind. I just picked up some random colours and went ahead crocheting round after round and stopped when I got bored. Now, I don't know if I should call it an incomplete project because it is not big enough for my round coffee table and I am not interested in adding any more rounds.

I may add a few more rounds in white or any other single color but it is definitely not going to happen any time soon.

Beautiful roses, aren't they? 

Last week was a special one for me with my wedding anniversary and birthday just a couple of days apart. Hubby gifted me something which I had been wishing for for quite some time.  

A sewing machine!

I have never used a sewing machine before and I am looking forward to learning some basic sewing projects.

Shared with Today's flower
Weekend Flowers - Tina's PicStory


Have a lovely day!