Nayu's Project Progress #43 Coming soon!

 

I have done much more of this Attic24 Cupcake blanket! Will share updated pic soon

I'm sorry for not posting for so long! Life keeps happening, and it's irritating to me, trust me! But I've been busy working on various projects including a babIy blanket. 

Felt 2 towels for £12 was a bargain in this kit

Yesterday two fun new kits arrived. I found some sweet Hello Kitty cross stitch hand towels, and as I need more than one guest towel (I have Winx Club hand towel and thankfully don't have guests often so can easily wash it but I've wanted to have more cute ones) I took the offer which was 40% off. I think you can agree they are adorable! Unfortunately the adorable matching toilet roll holder is unavailable except for a hideously high price but I reckon I can figure out the design from the picture with graph paper so can still have that cuteness in my life as it's so adorable. 

 

Anyway....the other kit I got was what I call embroidery. I know cross stitch is embroidery too, but I mean all the other embroidery stitches. I wanted something nice, and saw this beautiful cushion. I adore African Violet flowers, and the colours really spoke to me. Felt so overwhelmed when I opened the kit as I've never done a large scale project, it looked quite complex and has stitches I've never done (long and short) and another I can't recall. The long and short is simple and effective way to create realistic looking petals, I hate not being uniform so I will copy the long and short from the picture so that I'm still working to something as I can see where they do the long and short stitches (If you do embroidery you'll understand what I'm talking about, if you don't, well, it's hard to explain). The other new stitch is absolutely gorgeous and makes up the white scroll effect. So this is a daunting project and it will take take me absolutely ages to finish but will be totally worth it and is exactly what I've wanted. 

 I will keep you updated on these and other projects very soon! 

Nayu's Project Progress #42 Gorjuss Winter Friend

 

Previous progress

It's been a long week and a bit of me still recovering from the cold that started 2 weekends ago. I haven't fully got rid of it, i cough throughout the day and I can tell the germs haven't left yet. So I am resting lots, mostly gaming but I have done some cross stitch and the polar bear now has an outline! 

 

It's coming along nicely and is going to look so cute when it's finished.

 

The weather is sunnier than it has been for a long time which is a mood lifter. Lately my rose bush has begun to bloom and i love opening my back door as I instantly smell the traditional rose scent which is just lovely and makes me smile. It's the little things which can make quite a difference. 

Over on Nayu's Reading Corner #32 Review Rita Wants a Dragon by Maire Zepf and Mr Ando (Children's, Picture book, 10/10E)

 

Check out my latest book review which is about a frustrated girl and her emotions being a dragon in Rita Wants A Dragon

Nayu's Craft Tme #235 Medical Mayhem

 

Mikuru from Aikatsu! anime

Feeling sleepy today(nothing new)  so not quite in the mood to take pics of my latest craft projects so I will do that in the next post but wanted to do a little catch up. 

The other week I had a routine hospital appointment for my contact lenses. Upon arrival I was a bit a anxious as the waiting area for the covid screening was busy and almost everyone in front of me was given a pager to wait. Thankfully I wasn't. I was instructed to go to the purple waiting area. Usually it's the green area, so I double checked in green and yes they were full so it was purple. Off I went to the pretty coloured chairs in purple. I waited a while, nothing new there. My phone rang, I felt bad I had turned it off but it turned out that was a good thing: the caller was the hospital reception asking where I was as they were searching everyone for me. I had become a missing person!!! 

Madoka from Aikatsu looking horrified

It turns out there were two purple waiting areas in that section of the hospital. How stupid!!! I apologised, and all was fine they were just relieved I was ok as the doctor knows I'm super reliable and don't usually wander off without letting someone know. If i'm directed to a different coloured section I will double check I'm in the correct. 

Mizuki collapsed in Aikatsu 

 

 

The second medical drama was far less pleasant and partly my fault. I'm not naming the provider who I get my medication from, but the short version is due to the app not having an automated system to catch double orders I was without my opiate medication for almost a week. It was extremely unpleasant and I felt awful. I thought the situation was sorted, until the Saturday I got a message and of course it was a bank holiday weekend so I had to wait until the Tuesday to sort it out. I thankfully had a few tablets spare so simply halved them as half was better than nothing, although a quarter of my usual dose made an unpleasant few days. I have been recovering from that drama, medication arrived safely, and life is back to what counts as normal for me. Going to be playing a lot of the new Zelda game, Tears of the Kingdom once it releases tomorrow but plan another post next week with craft updates so be sure to tune in then! 

Sora from Aikatsu

Over on Nayu's Reading Corner #31 Getting there slowly

Tiffany, Sakura's friend from Cardcaptor Sakura (French ver)

Head over to my other blog to find out where I've been the past few months. I am doing a lot of  craft, will have some posts soon!

Nayu's Project Progress #41 Attic 24 Cupcake Blanket Part 1

 

Happy Friday! Today is Friday, a day of the week I try to take off from gaming and focus on craft. I like a quieter day because in Islam Friday is the holiest day of the week, and I like to relax on it. I usually game every day, but Friday is the one day I choose not to game (unless there is a new release which I've realised there is today (Harvestella, a farming RPG) so I won't be doing as much craft but will still do a little ^u^)

Years and years ago I followed a crocheter called Attic24 - well her name is Lucy and her site is Attic24. At the time I did not really do much crochet, I just liked her style. She had one or two patterns for sale but was mostly a blogger. Fast forward a few years and a family member has recently learnt to crochet due to arthritis making knitting harder. They bought one of Attic 24's blanket kits which includes all the yarn plus the pattern for around £34 which seems a good bargain given how much yarn there is (around 15 balls I think). I had a look at the site and wow there are so many beautiful blankets! I was tempted to go for a granny square based blanket, maybe like the Aria blanket

but because I'm working on a Disney crochet square blanket (more on that in another post), I was feeling adventurous so decided to try a row blanket (with counting and turning rather than lots of little squares joined together. I went for the Cupcake blanket which uses these colours 

And looks like this

Original blanket colour scheme (photo from WW)

The kit arrived within 3 days - you can get them from Wool Warehouse. I chose to have the bag which is handy to keep them all in. (Not all the yarn is currently in the bag)

I rewind my yarn to make sure there are no knots in and I find a ball easier to use, there is no drag when pulling on the yarn which can happen if the yarn is used as initially provided. I was a bit concerned about what I had taken on, but I realised the pattern was on the Attic24 site so I looked at it and it's just treble crochet which is what I use in my granny squares. The first few rows I did a lot of counting to make sure I had the correct number, but now I can't be bothered to count. 

The 15 colours are repeated at least 6 times, and Lucy does list the order the colours should go which is sort of random within the colour repeats. I, however, like order, so I spent over an hour looking at the different colour ways (by moving the yarn balls into the order written) and picked the one I liked the most. I did change where the cream yarn went as I wanted the muted lilac to have a brighter colour by it, and I will just repeat the order 6 or so times. I like how mine is turning out so far! It's a super easy pattern that apart from the start and end of the row I can zone out. I like doing it in the evening before bed while listening to an audiobook. 

I already know which blanket I want to make next after this Cupcake one, I want to do Dune which has a beautiful seashell pattern. That won't be until sometime next year, but it's something to look forward to! The blanket is big enough to cover a single bed, which I have, so that's perfect for me. I will update you on progress in due course, although the quickest way to see any is to follow me on Twitter. 

Dune blanket

Nayu's Craft Time #234 October 2022 Update

 

It's been how long????? (Madoka surprised in the anime Aikatsu!)

Massive apologies as I thought I had posted sooner than April this year. Life is happening, albeit it slowly. I mostly chat on my Twitter feed. I will be back here with craft posts hopefully soon. There's life stuff ongong that I can't talk about which does affect my daily life a lot. I hope one day I can talk about it, and it's why I'm sporadic with blog posts. While technically I am anonymous here I could say what's going on but I feel until the issue is resolved (no clue when that will be) I don't mention it online.

However, I do have some upcoming posts I hope to share soon. I have started a new weekly (if the next issues turn up soon) crochet project, it's a Disney Crochet magazine with weekly magazines providing yarn and pattern for squares in a crochet blanket. I also finished a cross stitch project of an old fashioned looking girl (think sepia tones) and started a cute hamster which reminds me of a guinea pigs.

My girls Tulip and Snow are doing wonderfully. We survived the heatwaves this summer much better than I expected. My flat stays relatively cool, I only used my fan twice to keep the temp down. I did wrap ice blocks in fleece and pop them in the cage but they mostly ignored them. Snow kept having haircuts since she is long-fur, she looked rather funny at times! My two zebra finch males, Tomoya and Hibiki are both doing great too.

I am gaming as much as ever, trying to read more, and relaxing as much as possible.

Unfortunately due to the Queen dying, my intended ketamine infusion on 19th September couldn't happen. My next one is in a few weeks, it is much needed now and dealing with extra pain is not fun but I'm managing.

Hopefully the next update will be really soon! Take care until then.