Christmas Crafting

This year I had my first Christmas tree of my life and I am way too excited about it. :-)

Hubby was too good enough to buy me a small Christmas tree and a star. He hung the star in the front of the house. I was entrusted with decorating the tree. One day one, I tied some red satin ribbons onto it.

Next I made some pom-poms and hung it all around.

Then I cut out a small star and hung it.

Then wound some decorative gift paper (cut out in a string) around the tree.

Laid some small gift at the base of the tree.

And my tree was ready. All set for Christmas. :-)

Hooky Weekend

This weekend seemed pretty short and not that a great one. Reason - Hubby was working on Saturday also. So Saturday was a lazy day for me. But I was able to start up on a little bit of crochet again. Want to see what I have been doing?

I am planning to make a small square blanket or wrap out of these blue and white granny squares. I have been successful enough in making 9 granny squares through yesterday and today. It was really wonderful to have begun hooking again. But I have lost that speed I had. Now I am taking longer to hook up those grannies. Hopefully I will gain momentum over the coming days.

Excuse me for these grainy pics. I was too lazy to take out the camera and take the photos of my work. So just took it on my cellphone camera.

And, this is how my evenings look. Lovely right?

Colourful

It has been a long while since I really did anything crafty, and hence no updates here. So what is it that I am going to post here. Nothing, but some small colourful things in my everyday life. The lovely evenings...
My tomato plant bearing its fruits...
Flowers...



A friend I found among the pots....

But she was already dead. I loved her deep purple wings and yellow head. I have her on my shelf though the boys have asked me to throw her away. I could not bring my mind to throwing her away. Lovely things, however small, add lot of colours to our lives.

Abandoned

If you remember, in this post, I mentioned about planting french marigold seeds, shallots, and more. This was my first try at gardening. I was extremely delighted when they sprouted and pushed open the green lovely, tiny leaves. I used to spend a lot of time admiring their beauty. My efforts did show results. My tomatoes bore fruits, shallots sprouted out into longs tender leaves and the marigolds opened in full bloom. Perfect!

See the tomatoes first.

I was thrilled when I saw this tiniest bud on the plant one early morning. I could hardly contain myself. Started clicking!

I kept checking every now and then as the buds grew.

Then one day I noticed that the bud sepals were separating and I could see yellow from beneath.

The flower started to take shape.

And it was in full bloom. LOVELY!

Not long after that, the lovely flowers crumpled up and tiny green tomatoes began to appear everywhere.

They grew.

And grew bit more than this.

Oh! I totally forgot about my marigolds.

They had buds all over.

Slowly the bright golden or orange lovelies bloomed.

A particularly beautiful lady looked like this.

They were all cheerful and happy. I was super happy.

But then something happened. We shifted our house.

And as I mentioned here, we are now staying at hubby's cousin's place. So do you think I took along my lovely plants? NO. I was forced to leave them back there :-( My heart broke. I was too much obsessed with my plants. I really don't know if they are still alive. The new tenants would have somehow got rid of them. But, deep in my heart, I hope very badly that they are still alive and are being taken care of.

Literally Nothing

Yes, I am literally working on none of the crochet works now. Wondering why? Because we are shifting again :-( It is tedious. Everyday I stuff up things into small boxes and bags, keep adding items to list and keep crossing them out. We are shifting from the current house on Saturday. So there is just a day left and lot of things left to do. So I have no time for anything interesting than packing up.

Yesterday I took a small cardboard box and stuffed up all my crochet yarn, unfinished projects, and everything into it. Waiting eagerly to get settled at the new house and start all over again. I even dream of having a craft room for self :-) In the current house though we had a spare room, I never got the time to set up one. Let's see if I ll be successful at the new house.

So you may not see any of my crafty posts until I get settled and get time to take photographs. I really don't like any of the crafty posts without photos in it. But I ll definitely try to keep you posted if I am able to do something.

Non-crafty Weekend

Usually weekends are when I have lots of time to crochet. But last weekend was a rather different one for me. I must say that I didn't even lay my hands on the crochet hooks over the two days. The reason - we had family visiting. And it was REAL FUN!!! We all enjoyed to the core. Hubby's cousins and uncle visited us. The week was full of hanging outs, shopping, cooking, eating, exploring new cuisines and restaurants, all cuddling up on the beds and chatting till very late into the midnights and dozing off sometime in between. The week definitely left us all exhausted for a working Monday but the happiness was unexplainable. Now we are all back to our normal lives.

And I have started with my crochet again.

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend! :-)

More hooky stuff

I have not been posting since a while. But I was definitely not away from my hooky business. Just take a look at what I have been doing this while.

Well, you must have seen this yarn, in this post. Then I really had no idea what to make out of it. So any idea what this is?

Another scarf! May be I am getting obsessed with scarves. The reason, these are easy to make, fast, and with each one you can try out a new pattern. So, as making scarves are so addictive, I made another one also.

This time with two colours. The pattern was really quick and easy. See them together once again.

Then I hooked up something really quick and useful. These two coasters.

We are just two in the house. And so one for each of us :-) And I have started with something new! If it turns out successful, I'll let you know what it is ;-)

This is taking most of my time now. I have used the same stitch as in the blue scarf and the Big Pink Blanket.

So see you all later.

Squares and Rounds

Last weekend, I made a round crochet coaster and a mini table runner. Both were made from some left over yarn and just to do something pretty quick. This is how my small dining table looks now.
I made these 4 small granny squares, joined them, gave an edging, and it was ready.

It took me very less time; may be half an hour. So you see, it was pretty quick.

Now, this one was supposed to be the first of a set of coasters I intended to make.

Now it is for my small glass bottle holding my money plant.

Basic Crochet - Chains

There are many veteran 'crocheters' out there in the blogland who provide easy and quickly graspable demos on how to crochet. I am also planning to list out on my blog on how to do the basics of crochet, what I know. This is just to help anybody out there trying to start with crochet and also for me to refer at times. Will you believe if I said that I forgot how to crochet a granny square? Yes, I actually did. Last week, I had to give it a few tries until I got it right. That is when this idea of jotting down the basics struck.

So today we see how to do the basic chain stitches.

Step1: Make a slip knot and slide your hook in.

If you are not sure of how to make a slip knot, see the steps here.

Slip knots are used not only in crochet, but also in knitting and in our daily lives for tying up things as well. Learn it :-)

Step2: Yarn over the hook, and pull it through the loop.


You get the first chain.




Step3: Keep repeating step 2 until you reach the required number of chains.

There, you have a lot of chains to build your crochet on.

Happy Hooking! :-)

Something lovely again!

I worked up something over the weekend. And I'm almost totally in love with it.

Remember this combination? I had used it to make my cellphone pouch and key chain flower here.


Still wondering what it is? It's a lovely scarf!

I pestered hubby until he agreed to 'model' for the shoot ;-) You see, it's really nice when you have somebody to come in front of the camera when you hate the job!



I love the texture, stretchiness, and colours of the scarf. I have actually been fondling it ever since it's done. This is perhaps my one project which turned out exactly as I wanted it. I love the stitches and it's look again and again and AGAIN!!!