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!

T on Tuesday on my crochet blog.

So sorry I haven't been round and commented on anyone from last week, I really appreciated all of your lovely comments - but the week seems to have vanished somewhere!

This was my breakfast, I made a healthy fruit pancake stack and there is my favourite pint mug with fruit tea in it! This is for the benefit of the lovely folks who visit Elizabeth and Bleubeard's place on Tuesdays!

This was a late breakfast, it was so cold this morning that after I let Sooty out just before 7am we decided to go back to our nice warm bed again until 9am!

I evicted this lot from the bed this morning, Sooty always takes a toy up and if he thinks I should go up earlier he often takes two, one and comes back down then takes another. Winnie the Pooh is not a dog toy but came with him just over 11 years ago when we rescued him privately, and although he has had some repairs and is very tattered Sooty still loves him the best!

When I woke up again and checked my mobile I had a text from my son saying his washing machine had broken down could I do his washing (which was downstairs, so he came in while I was in bed and neither of us heard him).

I love this yarn, the colours are gorgeous! It was from PookGB on Etsy and it was calling to me so I dropped everything and made a lacy shawl.

This shawl is the Lizard shawl by Jasmin Räsänen, the pattern is free on Ravelry and it was in Russian with a chart which I hoped to try and figure out one day - then I found out that Jose Crochet had provided an English (US terms) translation, YAY! Here it is being blocked, and when it is dry I hope I can figure out how to wear it - not great with these non conventional shaped things! I also hope it will keep the shape it should and won't need blocking every time it is washed (but suspecting it might).

This is the Jennika mystery craft along, I restarted the first section when the first attempt didn't come out to the right size, everyone else is on section 4! 

It was my Granddaughter's 1st birthday party on Sunday, she is 1 tomorrow, and this was her cake that she looks unimpressed by!

These are the amazing toilets in the Chinese Restaurant called Watersky in Bristol.

The weekend before last we visited Whitehall garden centre at Lacock, and it was like a Christmas grotto gone mad. Here are a few photos taken on the phone:

Trying the hats!

It's CazzyTime!: T on Tuesday and the new unit is here!

It's CazzyTime!: T on Tuesday and the new unit is here!: You can't see it but I had fruit tea with a healthy lunch of melon and cottage cheese with nuts and cinnamon. I'm showing ...

It's CazzyTime!: T on Tuesday, I'm back!

It's CazzyTime!: T on Tuesday, I'm back!:  Well I've not joined in for many months at Elizabeth's and Bleubeard's place for tea on Tuesday, but here I am with my hot...

Hooking catch up post.

This is the bag I made on the Mystery Craft Along Veronica Meets Spring at Melody's Makings. You could also make it into a cushion. I still need to line it.

This is a second one I started, not got any further, very bright colours.

I stopped everything in the middle of the Dancing in the Sea blanket and made a quick jumbo cardigan with super chunky Sirdar Indie yarn. It only took a few evenings and is like wearing a hug!

The following are all photos of the Dancing in the Sea blanket using, Scheepjeswol Marino Soft yarn, in progress.

Joining.

Blocking.....

....new blocking tool!

Ta Da..... blanket finished!

I love the border, simple as it is.

New Necchi sewing machine, 300 stitches including alphabets.

Work in progress on the Peacock Tail crochet along, by Tatsiana at Lille Bjorn crochet.

Bag finished apart from attaching the strap and lining it.

Back of the bag.

Gloria the ghost was a kit with Simply Crochet, and I didn't think she looked quite as she should. I've now seen that there is a correction on the SC correction page!

Simply Crochet Subscribers Crochet Along blanket, the first two squares.

They are slightly different sizes even after blocking!

Such a sad post and so hard to write.

This is one of the most difficult posts to write, some of you may have wondered why it has been so long.
The reason was that my husband lost his 3 year battle with cancer in August, and for a few months before that he had got very weak and ill and all of my time and energy was focused on looking after him.

He was just 59 years old and he died from metastatic melanoma, which began with a mole on the back of his arm. Metastatic just means that it spread, and once they decided that treatment wasn't working and stopped it the spread seemed to speed up.
It has been a very sad time and really horrible to watch him turn to skin and bone as he couldn't eat much, and for him to not be able to do any of the things he wanted to do and used to do.

This was Shaun in November 2015 meeting our new baby granddaughter Lily. Back then we had faith and hope that the treatment would work, or there were more treatments if it didn't. In the end nothing worked.

During the past few months I stopped paper crafting and instead crocheted, crochet being more portable and you can sit down and do it anywhere with just a hook and ball of yarn. It is very therapeutic, however even the crochet stopped in the last few weeks before Shaun passed away in a local hospice called Dorothy House where he spent his last 5 weeks, coming home for just one weekend that didn't go very well.

Two weeks before Shaun died Alfie dog went over the rainbow bridge to wait for him, Alfie was 15 years old which is the oldest any of our Miniature Schnauzers have lived to.

Now Sooty has lost his friend and master, we only have each other apart from family and friends who visit and sometimes stay. So we are learning to live all over again and readjust for our losses.

How do we do that? When I find out I will let you know. I am sleeping a lot more which is probably good, for the past few years I haven't been getting enough sleep. I'm getting up earlier as a result.
We are walking a lot more, again good for us, not so good when I am in pain with sciatica or my back but I am mostly working through the pain and hoping it is doing me good. It certainly was necessary to pound out my anger or grief along the pavements and paths long before we got to Shaun's last day. Cancer is so unfair and doesn't care how old you are.

We had the funeral last week, Sooty came along too and was very good. Everyone said the service was lovely, and the food at the wake too. I had to write a eulogy and the boys helped and it was well received.

It's not quite all over, there is the interment of the ashes to come, and I am still catching up with paperwork.

Sooty is 12 years old now, and beginning to show his age a little.

I can't seem to get enthusiastic about paper crafting yet, but at one stage I had to clear my craft room to get a hospital bed in and other equipment but poor Shaun was not able to come home and use it because there were no carers available during the Summer break. I haven't put everything back yet, I really want to buy one of those Storage4Crafts Petite Salcombe storage unit that I hope will make things more organised and tidy, then I will sort things out to go into it and some things to go to the hospice that cared for Shaun for 5 weeks so they can use it for their crafts. Maybe when I have done that I will be able to start crafting again. I am just waiting for a good discount before I buy one.

I continued to crochet, finished my blanket and then didn't start anything for a few weeks, but I will show you all of that in later posts.