A-Z Challenge Theme Reveal

Lets try this again as the last post wouldn't show for whatever reason!

Well ... I signed up and I should be participating this year in the A-Z challenge. I absolutely loved it last year but I had a lot more time to be organised. This year I have much less time and I'm not sure what I was thinking!

That said I am really looking forward to posting each day and maybe getting back into more of a routine again. We shall see if that works.

It's theme reveal day today and I have been wracking my brains about what I want to write about. I won't be doing anything like what I did last year. It's just too much work and stress that I don't need right now. So therefore my theme is going to be much more fluid. It will be:

Crafting and Me

A collection of Alphabetical (of course) stories about me and my crafting journey. It will be a lot of random ramblings and stories that make me happy. I don't want to be too set in stone and at the moment I like the idea of sharing some of my crafting stories and adventures with you. It will be a mix of all sorts of crafts and stories. So I hope you come back in April to hear about my rambling journey in craft, it has been a long and interesting one and I hope it goes on for many more long and interesting years.

I will leave you today with a random craft photo from my collection because I can't have a craft post without a photo. This was some random yarn bombing up at Queen Mary Falls. Too pretty to forget.

Happy Stitching,
Caitlin

Two days in a row!

This is a miracle and surprising :D I am actually posting two days in a row! Maybe I will make it through April :D

I wanted to share the latest progress on my blanket. As much as I thought about fixing the edging and making it not go wavy, the more I worked on it the more I wanted it to be wavy.

So I made it all ruffly. This is just the start of the last border now. I have only done a little bit of the corner so far. You can see the awesome ruffles.

But you can see how this is turning out. I love the effect! I am excited to put this edge on. This weekend I'm going away camping and I think there is a high chance of finishing the edge while there. That will be the best thing!

What's your goal for this Easter weekend?

Happy Stitching,
Caitlin

One and a bit layers down

I'm getting so excited at the moment. I am so close to a finished blanket. I keep wanting to share this with you all the time. I finished one total layer of the edging on my crochet blanket so far.

Unfortunately it's not turned out quite like I wanted in that the blanket is going very wavy and I don't know how to fix this. I have a feeling that it's something to do with the way I went from one row to the next on the blanket and the edges weren't sitting straight before I added an edge. I'm going to make it a feature and make the edge deliberately ruffly.

I asked in one of the crochet groups and the suggestion was do two rows of two trebles in each stitch. That seemed to be the consensus for making it extra ruffly. So the last two rows of purple I'll do like that and hopefully it will look awesomely ruffly and that's that.

Question Time

Other than that I do have a question for all you hookers out there. When you do a border do you start each row from a corner?  Do you change where you start each row? Do you chain from one row to the next or start with a treble? 

For this project I'm deliberately starting in the middle of the sides and changing from one side to the next. But I'm also doing a starting stitch so you can't see any chains showing where I've started. I just like the effect better.

Happy Stitching,
Caitlin

Onto the border

It's been a long journey but I finally decided my blanket was long enough to add a border onto it. I am really excited to finally be stitching the border. This has taken me WAY too long! Enough was enough!

I will have to enlist James another day to act as blanket holder to show you the whole blanket. It's actually quite big. When I mean it's not as long as I wanted I don't mean it's not really long anyway! It goes from my feet all the way up to my neck. Not too shabby. The couple of rows of border will add a bit more too. 

I think I'm going to do 4 colours for the border. More purple than anything but this is me :D It wouldn't be me without purple!

I have started the border by going around and doing essentially a granny stripe. I think it ties in nicely with the blanket. Not sure what else I'm going to use but it's a good way to pick up the edge of the blanket and make it look neat. I just read and looked at what Attic 24 has used and worked out my own pattern. 

I do love the colours in this blanket. :D It's so close to a finish! 

But you can kinda see the threads poking out the top there? Yeah I have about 80 million ends to sew in eventually! Oh well!

It's my goal tonight to spend some time working on it. Great goal I think :D

Happy Stitching, 

Caitlin

My new motorbike

Yes you read that right.  I have a motor bike! Money has been getting tighter and tighter and I bought myself a bike to start moving forward.  Now all I need to do is learn to ride it!

It's awesome and green.  I'm naming it tiddylik after the frog from the aboriginal story. It's a kawasaki gpx250 for those that know this sort of stuff.

It's a big change for me particularly if you know me... but also a really exciting one.  One step forward! 

What big changes are happening for you? This has thrown a big learning curve at me but I'm ready for the challenge.

Happy stitching
Caitlin

back to the basics

I have been really quiet here for the last couple of months. I was really good when I was on holiday but then it fell off again once work started up. Basically life has a way of keeping me away from this blog. But I have had time to think about it. I love this blog. It has always been a way for me to share my thoughts and issues. I started this blog years ago to share my crafts but it has always been more than that.

You will always see me more over at instagram at the moment just because it's really quick to post. I love sharing my crafts so if you are over on instagram you can find me on @naughtscrossstitches. Please come follow me if you want to be up to date. 

But what I'm trying to say is I want to make an effort to share more of my day to day crafting here again, I'm really bad about turning on my computer in the evenings as I sit at my computer all day at work. I like to pull away from the screen for a bit. So the writing may now be shorter for a while but I want to keep sharing photos. 

To wrap it up here is my granny stripe this morning. I have only one more colour and I'm onto the border. I am so excited to be almost finished! 

Trying out a resize program away from the computer as well. I found an app on my phone and it makes life a little bit quicker. *fingers crossed*

Happy Stitching, 

Caitlin