Time for Tea on Tuesday, and exciting news!

 The last project I finished was these fingerless gloves from the Furls Crochet Along. I loved doing them, took three attempts to do the first. It was too tight, then I realised I had made a mistake, then realised I actually madEe two mistakes so I began again. The yarn is King Cole Riot, and the bowl is a Furls bowl. I will probably give these to someone for Christmas.

I also finished the mystery CAL which is called Jennika and was by Melody of Melody's makings. It is meant to be an accessory that you can wear multiple ways, sew it up and wear it cross body (I don't think I will wear it like that and mine seems to be too long to do that, it is the correct length so maybe I should have gone a size down), or sewed together as an infinity scarf, or left as it was for a scarf or on the head and round the neck as a cowl. I decided to add borders and buttons so I can wear it either way, infinity or straight scarf and it is lovely and warm, and the exciting bit is there are patterns to come for a hat and mittens to match!

Bought some yarn from Love Crochet and found this cute ball in the pack!

Selfie, Sooty and me!

The most exciting thing that is happening in my life right now is this little lady called Luna. She is in Cyprus and I am adopting her, and I just heard I can have her on Dec 31st which works out great as the fuss of Christmas will be over and she can settle in quietly. She is living in kennels now, so there could be some house training to do, but Sooty's new little sister is going to be here soon. I wish it was sooner, but it takes time to do all the work to get her to fly. She has been spayed today. She is just 18 or 19 months old and is a Cyprus poodle. I had a home check and now I have more work to do on the fences to stop her escaping if she tries to. So I have several rolls of wire netting and some posts, just need someone to put it up now.

I'm now getting the full story, she was tied up outside by her previous owner so was rescued into kennels, so I doubt she has any house training at all!

This is Sooty's new jumper, I made it to fit him, not from a pattern but loosely based on a previous pattern and another one I saw a photo of. Looks quite Christmassy I think. I made it in Marriners Aran yarn which has some wool content.

This is the shawl I showed you last time, now it is blocked you can see the pattern and points. I love the colours together. Yarn from Pook GB on Etsy.

This is another dog jumper in progress and it is for Luna, hope it fits because I think she is the same size as Sooty, if she is bigger I will donate it to the dogs home and start again!

This isn't the same pancake stack as the last post, I just realised I had the same thing again! It is T on Tuesday at Elizabeth and Bleubeard's place, and I owe comments from the two previous ones - I am so sorry, I just haven't managed to do it and I don't know where the time goes!

I made it to the I Made This blog, with my Easter bunnies, quite exciting too!

Tiny body warmers - and lots of news.

My BIG news is that our new Granddaughter Lily arrived on Monday, a few days late. So we have two lovely grandchildren now. Not yet got there to have a cuddle! 

I was really pleased that I was able to not only correct this tiny body warmer pattern (originally posted in the Lincolnshire group on facebook, but clearly written very roughly and not tested) so it actually fits a 1 to 1.5 lb baby, but I also totally reformatted the pattern so that it looks like a professional one, and someone else in the group who made a body warmer from the original pattern which only fitted a Barbie doll, then tried my revised version and succeeded in making one that fits a baby.

I sent these three off to Grimsby for an order that was going to a a hospital along with much needed buttons, ribbons and thread for the group to use. Some people send their makes in with no buttons and they have to be added before they are sent out. I think that treble (US dc) is too large a stitch for tiny babies, they can get their little fingers caught up in the holes (although this is not as great a problem as it would be if they had sleeves), so I am working on a dc (US sc) version,  and the way I did this was to make one of the above body warmers without edging it, and use it as a template. I took photos of the step by step process for the group so they can follow the pattern and see what they are trying to achieve too.
I could have tried a htr (US hdc)  version and I might still try that to see which is best. The dc version is a little on the firm side, and is coming out smaller, so I need to adjust either the hook or add more stitches.
Then I need to work on larger versions for slightly bigger babies. These body warmers button at the shoulders so that babies who are attached to wires and tubes can be dressed easily, and really with tiny fragile limbs it is better to have this sort of design.
I might end up converting all of the patterns to small stitches, I also thought of trying Tunisian crochet versions, I haven't done Tunisian crochet for many years and I only made a couple of things before, but it can be a lot like knitting in finish so might work well for these garments.

The great news is that I took in the other baby items to the Royal United Hospital in Bath where I had a meeting with Lydia who is a Community Fundraiser on the Forever Friends Hospital appeal team. She told me that I can donate the items directly to the hospital and they will be washed by the hospital before use.
I took the ventilator bonnet, which still had no ribbons or cords, and just as well because anything with ribbon is not accepted for live babies, and after thinking about it I decided that a crocheted chin strap with button would probably work.
She liked the smaller stitches on the new version of the body warmer that I took to show her too.

It actually helped to break up a very tiring and boring day waiting around in the hospital for Shaun's cancer drug to be made and delivered, and then for it to be hooked up and dripped in. We had an early start too so are both really shattered now.

I will pass on the paperwork from the Lincolnshire group to the hospital, because they can maybe fulfil a larger need that I can't possibly do alone.

The other bit of news is that my Aunt loves her twiddle muff still and never stops twiddling! They have to take it away from her to go to bed, she talks to it and plays with it constantly and won't give it up easily!