Thursday 24 August 2006

Life Laundry..

Firstly thanks for more belated birthday wishes - much appreciated. :-) Also it's good to hear that some of you will be going to the NEC on the same day as me, so hopefully we'll get to meet up.

General decluttering is what our household is about right now. The autumnal weather has obviously confused our brains and we’ve tumbled into spring-clean mode! DH is overhauling the extension/office, I’ve been scouring the house and garage for items for the car boot sale, and I even got the girls to sort through their sprawling mounds of toys and groaning dressing-up box.

I did this year’s final (for me) car boot sale last Sunday – no knitting done, but I had a great time chatting to my fab almost-SIL – well she will be my SIL when they finally get around to getting married. I sold a boxful of old knitting magazines, books, and patterns, and my lower-priority stash is going on ebay shortly. The remaining few bags of unsold items will be whisked away to the charity shop tomorrow, and we can get on with renewing and restyling our home.

I bought a fab new duvet set for our soon-to-be-new bedroom, but we still haven’t decided which blinds would be best for our 8ft-wide windows. We're thinking of verticals, but I'm a bit worried about them not cutting out enough light as we want to go for a neutral colour - that way I can easily change the room colours with the duvet covers and accessories. Can anyone share any experiences on vertical blinds in bedrooms or a good supplier?

I don’t fancy crocheting any window dressings, but I am tempted to crochet some boxes similar to the ones
Ikea are selling currently.

One of my other WIPs involving crochet – Phoenix – is taking shape nicely. I’ve sewn in the knitted sleeves using a coordinating mercerised cotton, as the Rowan Summer Tweed was just not up to being pulled so enthusiastically without breaking constantly.

The neckline is edged in shrimp/crab stitch – i.e. reverse double crochet.

The sleeve and side seams are next, then I’ll decide on what kind of crochet edging they should have. I think I’ll repeat the crab stitch around the sleeve hems and then work something deeper on the body.

When it’s finished I’m planning on giving it a good soak in my Tenestar Silk Wash to soften it up, and then hopefully wear it lots! Right.. where did I put that Chibi..?


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Those big windows are loads of fun to cover, aren't they? :) We have 10-ft-wide windows on the front of our house; we put tab-top drapes up on one of them and a special-order diamond cell blind on the other. (Different rooms, so it's not nearly as odd as it sounds!) I really love the diamond cell, and it wasn't as expensive as I'd feared to get such a big one.

MandellaUK said...

Sorry I missed the birthday celebration. Welcome to your forties. 1966 was an excellent vintage!