I was travelling the whole of last week and was too busy. I literally had to take a break from all my crafty activities. I kept yearning to reach out to my hook and yarn. But yes, I did enjoy the break with my family. Now I am back in Bangalore, but there is a lot to catch upon. At the work front, lot of priority works to be completed, and at the home front, a week's laundry tops the list. My plants have grown and have started yielding, which means I have to give some time to them as well. 

So, my point is, hooking and crafting is gonna have to wait for some time. But I'll be back soon! :-) I do have some things that I had done before leaving. Photographing them is the left out step. Nowadays it gets dark by the time I reach home. So I am looking forward to the weekend to photograph them in natural ample of light.

See you soon! :-)

New Yarns

I did buy quite a lot of yarn over the past few weeks. I bought them from Raja Market and Commercial Street. Except for one or two, the rest are dull colors. I already started making the project using the Larksfoot stitch using these yarns. Out of the rest, I picked three colors for a new project. The colors are these.

I took this picture using my mobile and in insufficient light. So it doesn't do proper justice to the yarns. I fell in love with the purple yarn instantly. The green is actually a lighter shade. And the cream colored one on the right end is equally lovely.

I have started rolling these up. I am imagining some pointed ripples or some simple ripples. I do have a project in mind. Let me see how it goes. My hands are just itching to lay them on these lush lovely yarn.

Trying out something New

For the past so many months or probably years, I have been doing the same granny squares, rounds, and shell edgings. Maybe something different I tried was the Ripple blanket. When I did my yarn shopping few weeks back, I bought some really dull colors and had no clue what to do of it. I used a little bit of it for my Flower coasters. I rolled out the rest and kept thinking and thinking and thinking. I did not want to do a granny square again. Finally it dawned on me. I remembered having seen the Larksfoot stitch is some blogs long time back. I really don't remember where I saw it but remember that it had shades of red, pink, and cream.

I thought I will try out the Larksfoot stitch. I worked on the pattern and didn't get it initially. I kept drawing and drawing. I used some leftover yarn also and tried the pattern. After some tries and drawing, I finally got it right. I know, I could have just browsed it online. But wanted to try it totally from my side.And once I had the pattern set, I started stitching.

This picture was taken two weeks back. Now I have pretty well progressed on it. Don't know when I will complete it as I find really no time these days for craft :-(

Again something Floral

I am having busy weeks now, owing to work and household chores. In between I managed to sneak in a few stitches here and there. And the results are …..

Yes, floral coasters.

And no, I didn’t stop at making two.



I made whole two sets of four each. So eight all together.

I don’t have a written pattern. Just worked it out. Will share the pattern if I ever write or draw it J

Hand-Picked

Recently I joined an online community of crafters - ItsHandMade. There you can sell your handmade products. I came across it after a friend referred the site to me. First thing I like about the site was that it is very neat and organized.

I immediately put up a shop and uploaded two items for sale. I am not sure of the visitors or page ranking of the site. Though I haven't sold any yet, I have found some really cool crafty people.

And today, to my delight, I saw that my coaster is on the Handpicked page. No words to express my happiness.

See my coaster set at the left bottom corner?

Red and Blue

Recently I did some yarn shopping. I was not too happy with the colors though. I did not get many colors I had in mind. Still I did buy a bag full of yarn ;-)

Yesterday I took out the red and navy blue out of the lot and started making circles.

Ended them off with a shell edging.

Made a loop to it.

And here is what one looks like.

The other one is like this.

Place a small bowl on it and it looks cute.

The more you add, the cuter they look.

And yes, use them everyday (you can see it on the mug in the picture) :-)

Actually the writing on the mug reads as "Wish it was Sunday everyday." I always hope it was true! The mug was a gift from my Secret Angel in office an year back.

Making these coaster were addictive and super easy. What I particularly enjoyed was the Shell Edging. Add there was very little weaving in the loose ends involved or to be more precise I just had 2 loose ends to weave in. I used the weaving-in technique I blogged about earlier while I stitched. It did save me a couple of minutes and unnecessary yarn snipping.

Grassy-Lush Tablemat

Recently I came across this. Ever since I wanted to make something similar. Though there are instructions on how to make it, I headed over to the PlanetJune blog where I had seen this tutorial earlier. I had some green yarn left over from my Mini Green Blanket. When I started off I was not sure of the project. After some retries, I nailed it! And then there was no turning back!

It was super-easy and didn't take much time. I was able to complete it within a few hours. After all the loops were done, I cut through the loops and I loved every moment of it.

I love the lushness and softness.

The back is just some normal dc rows. I made this one variation from June's tutorial - June used SC stitches to turn over, I used DC stitches.

So I will be making more of these and in bigger sizes.