I'm a proper Cantabrigian now

I've lived in Cambridge for fourteen years and before that I was a regular visitor to the city for three years. When my foodbank warehouse colleagues learnt that in all that time I'd never been punting on the Cam, we decided to arrange a punting trip. After our shift on Friday the six of us hired a punt and went for a lovely river pootle along The Backs and then out to Grantchester Meadows.

King's College Chapel

It was the hottest day of the year so far and as such the river was very busy and at various points along The Backs it was a bit like water dodgems. It's so pretty, though. I'd never seen Cambridge from this angle and situation before and I had a few "Wow, I'm so lucky to live here" moments.

Mathematical Bridge

When we reached the mill pond we had to use the boat rollers to move the punt up the slipway, across the footpath and into the next stretch of river. Sounds easy but oh my word punts are heavy, and we were grateful when a couple of kindly passers-by stopped and lent us a bit of grunt to complete the task.

This next bit of the river was full of swimmers, paddle boarders, canoeists and kayakers, and everyone was so chirpy and polite. We saw moorhens, a heron, and many ducks. I was really taken with the bright blue and black banded demoiselles we saw flitting about. I'd never seen them before and to start with I thought they were butterflies because of the way they fly. They were so beautiful. (I haven't got a photograph because they were a bit far away for my iPhone to successfully capture them.)

After a little break and some refreshments we headed back. A female mallard took to following our punt and I thought she was going to be alongside us all the way down the river but in the end she got distracted by a young boy on a paddleboard feeding her snacks.

When we got back to the mill pond (shifting the punt down the rollers was way easier than up!) there was a man serenading some gorgeous cows with his guitar.

The river was even busier along The Backs by then and people were feeding the Canada geese as we came to the end of our adventure.

All in all I had an absolutely brilliant afternoon with a bunch of utterly lovely people and I've been happy and smiley about it ever since.

In garden news...

The intense sunshine has finally made my first two sunflowers bloom.

I planted an assortment this year and so far I have one yellow and burgundy one, and one mostly burgundy one.

In bead news...

I made some cosmic-looking blue beads and turned them into a bracelet.

The beads are Double Helix Triton wrapped with fine silver wire which I melted into droplets. They're encased with Effetre pale aquamarine 038.

I've strung the beads with sterling silver beads and the extender chain is finished off with one of two silver star charms that I've had in my beads and findings stash for almost twenty years.

The bracelet is currently available in my webshop.

If you fancy making your own cosmic-looking jewellery I'll be adding some of the blue beads to the shop in the next couple of days.

In crochet news...

I've started making a grey blanket for our lounge; I seem to have fallen into a habit of making us a new blanket every year.

This blanket is one heck of a task as the squares are quite complex. Each one is about eight inches square and takes me approximately two hours to complete. I need forty-two and so far I've made fourteen.

The pattern is the Book Sale Blanket by Julia Hart of Draiguna who is one of my absolute favourite crochet designers, and the yarn is Stylecraft Special DK in Silver 1203 and Grey 1099.

Pure sunshine

The sunflower throw is complete and what a joybringer it is. It makes me smile every time I look at it.

It measures about 100cm x 120cm so it's a good size to use as throw on a sofa or chair back and it's just right for a curled-up-on-the-settee blanket.

I steam blocked the throw to set the stitches which gives it a nice finished look.

The throw is available in my Etsy shop or webshop but for UK customers only.

Pattern: Sunflower Throw by Libbycraftmakes

Yarn: Stylecraft Special DK

Why have one shop when you can have two?

I'm not a huge fan of Etsy. Its fees are too high and I have issues with some of their policies and biases. However, I'm at a point where I'm selling very little and I need to get my work seen. Instagram algorithms don't help with this unless you're willing to become a videographer who spends seventeen hours a day creating Instagram content and I refuse to do that. Also, PayPal seems to be playing silly buggers with my website checkout for some of my customers, and Etsy has many alternative payment options, so I've reluctantly reopened my Etsy shop. However, I'm keeping it to just UK sales at the moment. I'm keeping my website shop open too so right now I'm Laura Twoshops.

I'll add new items to both platforms for the foreseeable and I shall just see how it goes for the next few months.

Newly added items include this 'Sweetness' bracelet:

I made some matching earrings for it. I have two pairs of these.

There's also this very groovy 'Retro' tassel necklace.

All of these can be found in my web shop and my Etsy shop.

In crochet news...

In the previous post I mentioned that I was crocheting a shawl as a pattern test for another crocheter. The shawl is all done and is currently blocking.  I'll post a photo of the finished item when the pattern is released, which I think will be towards the end of the month. In the meantime, here's an in-progress shot of the shawl.

The yarn is Scheepjes Stone Washed in the shade Coral. The yarn reminds me of when I stir salad cream into Heinz spaghetti hoops. (Yes, I do actually do that and I've done it since I was a child and yes it sounds vile but no, in actual fact it's a taste sensation.)

I'm currently working on the border of another blanket which is made up of fifty-four of these mosaic crochet squares.

The pattern is the Terrazzo Afghan by Tinna Thórudóttir Thorvaldsdóttir. I bloody love Tinna's work. She's an absolute genius.

I'll post a photo of the blanket when it's done.

See you later!

Non-bead gubbins

Where the heck is time draining away to? I cannot believe how fast the last year and a bit has whooshed by. How can doing nothing, going nowhere and seeing nobody eat time at such an alarming rate? It feels like about three days since my last non-bead post but that one was at the end of March. Crazy.

Anyway, again, not much to report. I had a trip into the city centre for an eye test a couple of weeks ago. I'd not been there since the beginning of March last year when I did the Cambridge half marathon. That event started and finished on Midsummer Common which is home to the Camcattle cows at this time of year so I stopped by to say hello to the beautiful creatures before my eye appointment.

They are Red Poll cows and they are so calm and happy munching away as people go about their business on and by the common. Here's an article about the cows from a couple of years ago.

There follows a random photo of one of my favourite Cambridge post boxes which I walked past on the way to the optician.

We have quite a few Victorian post boxes in the city and I love that they're still in use after all these years. I think I was just excited to be not in the shed and out and about and I was like "Oooh, cows! Post boxes! The Hot Sausage vendor! Greggs!" and had to take some photos to mark the moment.

My eye test was meh. I've had glasses for short sightedness for a couple of years now and I only had to wear them when I needed to; for televison watching, the cinema (remember the cinema?) and basically whenever I wanted to properly see anything further than four feet away. The optician said I've got the same problem that watchmakers have in that with the beadmaking I've spent so many years looking at stuff a few inches from my face, my distance vision has suffered. My right eye is particularly bad and I was quite alarmed when I couldn't read the top row of the eye chart with it. It's got much worse since my last eye test so I have new glasses that I have to wear all the time now, so that's taking a bit of getting used to. My up-close vision is crazy good and the new prescription enables me to wear my glasses without them interfering with detailed work, reading and the like. This means I now have to wear prescription specs for making beads so it was goodbye to my didymium glasses and hello to some polycarbonate purple clip-on and flip-up jobs that make me feel like I have the eyes of Johnny 5.

I'm sure I'll get used to the new flameworking face furniture shortly but in the meantime don't be expecting any kind of complex beads because my eyes are still in the process of reprogramming my brain as to where the flame actually is.

In crochet news...

I finished my Rainbow Sampler Blanket on Saturday! 

I got the blanket all washed and dried the same day and let me tell you it's a flipping delight to cosy under in the evenings.

I enjoyed crocheting every single row of this blanket, even the ones I had to frog and redo whenever I muffed up.

So many stitches...

...so many rows

The blanket is H U G E. It's just under two metres square so it's about the same size as a double duvet.

Thanks to Kirsten of Haak Maar Raak for such a brilliantly-written, clear and highly enjoyable pattern.

So what's next on the crochet front? Well, I'm working my way through a marvellous book called Granny Square Flair by Shelley Husband of Spincushions. I also have Shelley's Siren's Atlas book and I have learnt so much from both of these books - false stitches, standing stitches and other ingenious ways to create seamless-looking crochet. So yep, I'm making every square from Granny Square Flair at the moment and no doubt they'll become yet another blanket. I have fifteen squares done. The latest five are currently wet blocking but here are the first ten I made.

I'm using Rico Creative Cotton DK in the shade Natural. These squares are 150mm and I'm loving all the different patterns and textures. I'm also really enjoying the single colour thing, mainly because the crochet becomes all about the stitches and the pattern instead of colour, but also because there are way fewer ends to weave in!

I started a concurrent crochet project last night (I always like to have two yarn things on the go at once so I can switch between them) and this one is a way to use up some of the massive amount of spare yarn I have left over from the Rainbow Sampler blanket. The pattern I've gone for is the Flowers in the Snow blanket from the Solstrikke blog. Yes, it's another blanket but I adore the challenge of a blanket. There's just something about them. My family had better prepare themselves for blanket gifts because I already have enough of the things here. I'm very much a process crocheter; I like the finished item but I love the process of making of it.

But yes, I started making a bunch of motifs from my leftover Scheepjes Colour Crafter last night. I've put all the yarn in a box and I do a lucky dip of three colours and then make a motif with whichever trio I've picked. This way I'm not overthinking it and I've been pleasantly surprised with a couple of the resulting combinations. They give me bead colour ideas.

Alas, each one of these motifs has six ends to weave in and then there will be two more ends per motif when it comes to the joining part of the process so what I'm lacking in ends weavery on the Granny Square Flair squares I'm more than making up for here.

Right, I think that's way more than enough chatter from me. I need to get my arse down the shed, don my Johnny 5s and make some beads. Have a good day!

A bit of a crochet post

I finished my sister's Aria blanket on Friday. It was a lovely day here on Saturday so I washed the blanket and spread it out on a duvet cover on the patio to dry in the sunshine.

Washing knitted and crocheted items always brings them to life. I didn't block either of my Aria blankets as such, by which I mean I didn't stretch and pin them. Just a wash, a spin and a gentle smoothing out did the trick in this case, and made the slight scrumples and scrunches disappear.

Big thanks to Lucy of Attic24 for such a lovely pattern - so lovely I made it twice.

I started another crochet blanket project on Saturday and this time its a big one. This thing is going to be about the size of a double bed sized duvet. The pattern is the Rainbow Sampler Blanket by Kirsten Ballering of Hakk Maar Raak.

The blanket is made up of stripes featuring various crochet stitches in a host of wonderful colours. I'm making it in the same colours and yarn as Kirsten used for her original blanket. The yarn is Scheepjes Colour Crafter and my word, it is the softest acrylic I have ever encountered. And yes, that is a 6mm hook for working DK yarn. In both knitting and crochet I always have to go up at least one needle or hook size to get the gauge required. My natural yarncraft tension is tight like a tiger!

In bead news, I will be adding a few beads to the shop tomorrow at 16:00 (UK time). I do have a mailing list that you can sign up to if you'd like to receive news of shop updates. The emails are very short and I don't pester you on a daily basis. This mailing list is not my old one (pre 2020) so if you were signed up to my previous mailing list and aren't getting emails from me, that'll be because you need to subscribe to the new one. You can do that here.

Big thanks to everyone commenting on my blog posts, and also to people who subscribe to the blog by email and who send me replies. It's really nice to know that people read my ramblings and it's always great to have a little conversation with you.

Nothing in particular

In bead news, my bundle of Creation is Messy testing glass arrived this week and it's going to keep me busy for quite a while. I made a start with the testing and the first colour I tried was a misty opal pink called Dollhouse. I'll give it, and its milky opal counterpart, a proper write-up in a separate post next week.

In a recent post I mentioned my Akihiro Okama 'Sakura' bead and I said I'd take a photo of it to show you. Here it is:

I bought this bead in about 2006. It's quite big and it's very beautiful. It has a 4mm hole and as you can see I just used a couple of sterling silver round beads and wired it very simply as a pendant and it's strung on a long chain.

In crochet news, I finished my Attic24 Aria blanket a couple of weeks ago. It's such a joyful thing!

I'm pretty sure that no two squares are the same.

When I first posted photos of the blanket in progress on my Instagram stories, my sister fell in love with it so I said I'd make her one too. I started hers about ten days ago and this time I made all the inner circles first...

...and then I added the second colour to each one, stringing them in order on a circular knitting needle as I finished them. I got this tip from one of Amanda Perkins' books. There are a hundred squares in the picture below but I managed to fit the remaining forty-four onto the metre long needle. 

I'm currently on the adding-the-third-colour-to-each-square-and-joining-them-as-I-go stage and I have thirty-six squares left to do.

In other news, I've not been running for a few weeks because the last couple of times I went out I came back all stressed out about people who'd given me grief for not wearing a mask. One woman got pretty flipping shirty about it. I wasn't huffing and puffing and I'm super conscious of keeping my distance from people, but still you can't please all the people all the time and all that. After this I tried running in a mask and I got two miles in and couldn't catch my breath. The mask gets absolutely soaked with wet breath condensation and it is zero fun trying to breathe through that. I decided that running with a mask was a no-go so for a few runs after that I stuck to quieter routes at quieter times but people were still tutting and giving me filthy looks so I thought I'd give the running a break until lockdown restrictions are eased and people will be less freaked out by a ploddy-jogging middle-aged woman.

I don't know when lockdown restrictions are easing and frankly I've lost interest in any kind of dates, numbers and what's what with this stupid bloody virus. Sick of it. I went back to the foodbank on Friday for my first shift since my arms malfunctioned and one of the other volunteers who also runs asked me if I was still running. I told him what I've just told you about the angry woman and his advice was to "Just ignore anyone who shouts at you. Get back out there!" and I think that was the boot up the arse I needed to get my trainers on and go for a jog. I did just that today.

Spring is officially here and my run this morning was so springtime with its sunshine, birds singing and this carpet of cheerful narcissi. I ran my standard route and nobody shouted at me and none of the other runners I saw had masks on either. Good times.

I'm off to complete the census now and then tonight is Line of Duty night and I am mighty excited!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

More dottiness and some new tools

Remember the green and lavender bead from the last post? well, it turned out like this. I really love that mossy, slightly yellow green against the lavender colour. Definite springtime vibes.

I'm still making big hole dotty beads.

I think some of them are a bit too large for bracelet charms but they will work nicely just strung on a chain, and of course jewellery makers can turn them into pendants. One of my favourite pendants is one that I made with an Akihiro Okama big hole tombodama bead. I must photograph it and show you.

But yes, dotty big hole beads. Some of them have so many dots. The one on the left in the photo below has 288 dots in total. That's a lot, right?

Those raised dots are made up of an opaque dot which I flatten with a tool before I add another dot of transparent glass. I've always flattened my dots with the paddle of one of those pairs of tiny tweezer mashers that I've had in my tool arsenal forever. Thing is, even though the mashing paddle area is only about 7mm x 10mm, this is a tad too big when you're working as small as I do and sometimes I can't flatten one dot without the paddle accidentally touching another dot. For as long as I've been lampworking I've always intended to buy a set of stainless steel sculpting tools and this week I finally got round to it.

They look a bit scary and surgical, don't they? Some of them have pretty sharp blade parts which will be very useful for making indentations.

There's a good selection of poker-prodders and some lovely ones that end in a tiny paddle shape about 3mm to 4mm wide which is just what I needed to flatten my dots.

That one that's second from the left in the photo below will also double up as a tiny spoon for eating tiny puddings, so that's handy. 

I bought the set of tools from Amazon for £15.99. Happy with that. The tools are really high quality and they come in a lovely little case.

In crochet news I've completed all 144 squares of my Aria Blanket and I'm now working on the border.

I was feeling quite sad about nearing completion of the blanket as it has been an utter joy to work on but my sister fell in love with it when I posted it on my Instagram stories, so I offered to make her one. I'm really pleased that I get to crochet all that colour and cosiness all over again. Hurrah!

Don't forget the necklace prize draw if you've not entered it already. I'll be drawing a winner tomorrow night so head on over to throw your name into the hat.