Quilts in the Trees

I have been making quilts, one is a sample for a pram shop. I haven't made one in these neutral colours before, and I think I like it more than the pinks and florals. I have a stationery business which I run with a friend and these quilts are part of an extension of that. We normally make handcrafted cards and we are thinking of branching into gifts as well. You can see some of our designs on our web site here. It really needs updating as a lot of the stuff on there is outdated and we have a lot of new stuff, but our web designer wants to charge us just to type our web address into his computer it seems and we aren't sure how to do it ourselves, as he has created no way (that he's told us, anyway) to get into it and change it ourselves. So we're a bit stuck with it. We have our stuff in some shops and I think that may be the way forward for us.

Not much to report on the knitting front. I have tried socks again and again with no success. I may have to find a class or a sock knitter. I have done some crochet for my granny squares blanket, I have 28 now, which sounds impressive, I know, but when they are laid out, it's still disappointingly small. I'll keep plodding on with that. I have done a little knitting on the MD log cabin, but I'm not sure about the colours and it's hard to be enthusiastic about something you don't feel 100% about, don't you think?

I have been making more bags. I decided to modify the pattern of the uptown bag and make a few of my own designs. I'll post some pictures soon. I went to Maggie's Sunflower fabrics shop this morning to get some more fabric.

My back is sore this week, so sitting anywhere for too long is painful. I am irritable and frustrated for not being able to get as much as I want done, but it's on the mend, so I'll hopefully be back up to speed next week and back on my little one person production line!!!!

My daughter starts her summer holidays in a couple of weeks and she has said she will help me put a banner at the top of this blog. Yes I know I'm slow in doing this, but I'm very excited about it!

Youtube help

The really helpful tutorial I found (the lady with the loud radio) is here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rphbKaAMKDE
I am off to try the babette blanket squares today, thanks to help from Jess and Pam. Will keep you posted!

Tada!!!!!!!

Now you know I've been desperately trying to master a granny square over the last few weeks. My house has been littered with small incidents like this...

Well, yesterday my 15 year old daughter recommended that I find a tutorial on youtube. I thought it was called utube, and I have thought of going on it before, as my very weird next door neighbour likes to take videos of my comings and goings and keep them (I blame her extremely dull and boring life). Anyway, I explained to my daughter that I had in fact read crochet for beginners, been shown twice and looked at loads of online picturesand was still managing to make mutant rather than granny squares. She was persistent and in the end I did a search and there was a great video clip of a woman with a loud radio in the background showing me how to make a granny square. You'll never guess what......

THE PENNY HAS FINALLY DROPPED!!!!!!!!!!

Check out my successes......

Proud close up.....

I am truly addicted and have joined a grannyalong! I shall put the button on the right hand bar when I can work out how!
However, there is a down side that I hadn't thought of to crochet......

ps. let me know if you are having the same problems as me and I will let you have the link to the crochet lady's video clip.