Ribbon flower

In the last week or so, I have been bombarded by sewing/craft inspiration. It started with WestyWrites writing a couple of posts about digging out her sewing machine and trying out some new projects (which you can read here and here). Then I realised that the Great British Sewing Bee is back on, so I promptly downloaded the current episodes in iPlayer to catch up on.

All this caught up with me yesterday whilst I was having a lazy Sunday evening in front of the TV. Out came the ribbons and buttons box...

The result: a slightly wonky but rather charming flower.

I made something!

I've had several days that involved a lot of sitting around and waiting. My solution: crochet! I got completely carried away and ended up with a buff and matching mitten/wrist-warmer-things. All my own design too :)

It's the first project in ages that I've actually finished. Partly due to having lots of spare time and partly because it was so quick and easy.

Now I've started with a shrug for ballet classes, based on this simple design on Crochet Spot.

Have you made anything recently?

Christmas crochet experiment

It all started with a Christmas jumper competition at work. I had no ambitions to win, but felt the need to take part so I bought a fairly innocuous snowman jumper:

Jumper from Next

Then I spotted this superb snowflakes pattern on the lovely Attic 24 website. I quickly got to experimenting with various scraps of wool...

I laid them out and roughly stitched them in place (in the hope that they will be easily removed afterwards!).

Pretty jumper in the course of less than two hours. Am ready to rock it at work!

PS - on the subject of snowflakes, here is the group picture from my ballet adventures the other week. I didn't get it in time to put in the original post:

Official beautiful photographs

We had such a wonderful day and it's been difficult to sift through the photos to choose our favourites. Rather than sharing the posed formals or pictures of us talking to people you've never met, I've picked out some more details of our day.

Enjoy :)

Heirloom bracelet - my something old.

Quiet Christmas

I hope you had a lovely, relaxing and family-filled Christmas.

Ours was particularly quiet and relaxing - you can tell by the number of times I've painted my nails!

I've also had time to get stuck into a jigsaw puzzle. It will (eventually) depict three zebras in the Savannah...

Those stripes are driving me mad! But then I guess that's what puzzles are for...

Next on my list of relaxing, non-work activities is to pick up my slightly-ignored crochet ripple blanket and get on with a few more stripes. I'm afraid it hasn't seen much love for the last couple of months.

Wishing you a fabulous New Year!

A late catch up

What's been going on in the world of RainStorm? Well...

I've been trying out some new ballet classes and have been managing to get to two a week since term began. This has also involved some serious flexibility work as my inability to lift my leg high or bend my back is starting to be a real issue.

The ripple-y blanket is trundling along nicely - it's a great way of keeping my hands busy whilst watching TV and really helps me to relax after a long work day.

I have been enjoying cooking and baking. However these activities have suddenly found themselves unexpectedly curtailed as my oven has stopped working!

I even dragged myself out for a (very short) run one evening last week. That was a shock to the system!

Downton Abbey - over the summer, I watched the DVDs of seasons 1 and 2. I became totally hooked; and now series 3 is on and I am glued to it! Pure genius TV.

What has been keeping you busy?

A summer well spent

Summer has gone :( We had our traditionally beautiful weather for the first week of September, but now the forecasts are full of dropping temperatures, rainshowers and high winds.


It was a great summer - I managed to make the most of the nice weather and enjoyed a range of different activities. How did my summer ambitions go?

1) To get surfing again - achieved! On one of my favourite beaches in Hendaye.

2) Do 3 ballet classes in one week - achieved! And I'm now planning to make two classes a week my regular timetable - not easy to do around my other commitments.

3) Spend some quality time working on my Spanish - partly done. I did use every opportunity on holiday to use my Spanish, even when the locals spoke to me in English, only reverting when I was completely stuck. It didn't go completely smoothly (there was one dinner where I didn't exactly order food we enjoyed!), but I at least gave it a go. Still plenty of room for improvement though!

4) See some live music - partly done. With the exception of rigging fireworks behind the stage at Marvellous Festival, I didn't manage to organise this. I would love to see a band live, and did get as far as looking up gig lists, but that was it :(

5) Make sushi - still not got any further with this one (although I have eatten sushi on several occassions). Autumn/winter will have to be the time for sushi.

6) Make more pies - achieved! There was the chicken and ham cobbler, and the slightly disasterous but eventually recovered quiche. Almost pies :)

Additions to the list:
7) Get to work crocheting again - achieved! I have been rippling all over the place!

And now I enter autumn having visited more places, eaten more food and tried some more great activities...

Ripple-y progress

A quiet blog is a sign of one of two things: either I'm away on holiday or I'm stupidly busy. Last week it was the busy one. I definitely went back to work with a bang. Hopefully things will calm a bit now...

Within the chaos, I've still been taking time to crochet - it's like having enforced relax time. I find that I don't sleep well if I've been busy working late, so no matter how late it is I have to make sure I do a quiet, calming activity before heading to bed.

Crochet is brilliant at this. I've been doing it everywhere...

In the car...

On a train...

Sat in my living room...

On another train...

Sat in the sunshine...

Ripple-y goodness

Whilst holidaying I put some serious time into my summer colours project: a ripple blanket.

I'm using this pattern from Lucy - it's really straightforward to follow, even for relative newbies like myself. I have only made one proper mistake so far, which is making my initial chain too tight. It's a problem that I'll just have to live with - it's not major - it just means that one edge looks a bit stretched as opposed to all the lovely bendy ripples!

Today in pictures (part one)

Road tripping :)

Choosing colours

I got carried away again.

It all started with a feeling that I had been neglecting my crochet. It's such a relaxing,take-your-mind-off-everything activity that it would be good for me to continue.

I realised that fab as my granny squares were, I didn't have enough wool to make a whole blanket so progress ground to a halt.

Luckily, I got re-inspired by Lucy at Attic 24 and hunted out a yarn shop. One field trip and of 15mins um-ing and ah-ing later, I'd spent more than I'd meant to on a very pretty collection of yarns...

The plan started with summery/hot colours, so I grabbed a yellow, orange and red...

Then I experimented with other colours to add to the mix. The hot pink was a definite...

Then I tried out various other colours, rejecting those that made the combination too dark , too dreary or too red...

They look worse altogether! As individual colours, they almost worked but just dragged the summery colours down a bit.

Following Lucy's advice, I kept playing with the colours until the mix felt right. This did involve me feeling slightly idiotic and self conscious as I basically kept grabbing balls of wool and fiddling with them on the table, occassionally putting one back or swapping it for a different one. It seemed to work though, as I ended up with a lovely combination of colours. Here's my final selection:

An update on ambitions

Almost exactly a month ago, I wrote a summer ambitions list, so I guess it's time to revisit it and see how I'm getting on!

1) To get surfing again - planned (roughly). I know when I'll be in a good surfing location, haven't booked any lessons yet but this one is definitely happening!

2) Do 3 ballet classes in one week - achieved! In fact I did four classes, including two on the same day. I wish I had the time and money to do this all the time - it was so good for me to concetrate on one thing and work my body a bit harder than normal.

3) Spend some quality time working on my Spanish - not really done. I got as far as downloading a couple of free apps onto my phone. Oops...

4) See some live music - partly done. As predicted, I was in the vicinity of live music at Marvellous Festival, but was busy rigging and setting off the fireworks so it doesn't really count. Will need to see if I can fit this in better in the next few weeks...

An entirely unflattering pic of us wiring in the shells at Marvellous

5) Make sushi - not got any further with this one :S but I will!

6) Make more pies - - almost done. Had a (pretty dodgy attempt) at making an apple and pear tart a few weeks ago. Also, I am entertaining next week so will crack out the pie recipe books again :)

New things to add to the list:
7) Get to work crocheting again. I popped out to buy beautiful new wool colours the other day and am ready to get to work!

A brightly coloured tale

Over the last 6 months, I've quietly re-discovered crochet. It's been something easy to pick up on quiet evenings (on the few occasions that they happen!) and I find it very relaxing.

Then, last week I got ill. Nothing more serious than a bout of flu, but bad enough to be stuck at home for days on end with little energy and a woolly brain. As I recovered, I started to pick up the crochet again.

I ordered a special package from ebay...

And coupled it with a great crochet pattern from Lucy at Attic 24: summer granny square pattern...

Image from Attic24

And I got going...

They don't look quite as polished and neat as Lucy's, but I'm pleased. I'm going to make a blanket :)