Coming along nicely

Well this was to be my 'dark night' project to keep me occupied while hubby is working nights but I can't leave it alone for long.

I'm continuing with my blues and purples as planned. I had thought the white was a little too bright but it's blended in ok and now I think the 'Cadbury' purple may be a bit too dark but I suppose that will change as other shades are added.

I'm finding it easier to work on now, as the piece gets larger it somehow gets easier to handle. Not sure at what size it will become harder to manage.

Just have to include a photo of the orchid i've been nursing along for the past year. It was bought for me for Christmas 2011 and produced lots of lovely flowers but they died off gradually and for the last 15 months or so i've just had leaves. I bought some drip feeders for it in May and it produced a stem at last and now I have 5 beautiful flowers and several more buds. 

Not a very good pic i'm afraid.

I think i've done it!

I taught myself how to crochet a basic granny square earlier in the year and have completed a couple of blankets by just carrying on until the square was large enough for my needs.
Last week though after seeing pics other people had posted on Facebook of blankets I decided to try a straight granny. This is where the rows go back and forth rather than round so meant finding out how to start the foundation row and turn around at the end of it.
Good old Youtube came to the rescue as usual and this is my first attempt. 

I know it's nowhere near perfect but it gave me the practice I needed before moving on.

This is my next try with something like 160 chains to begin my foundation row. It took a lot of concentration and checking back with the tutorials but I finally got there and managed to turn the work and add in new colours.

I've managed to find a few more shades of blue and purple and am going to try to work them randomly until the piece is near enough square or I use it all up, then add a border. I find random quite difficult to do as i'm always looking for a pattern in things, I think children do random far better but as i've got none here it's got to be my choice.

At the moment i've added a couple more pale purples, a blue and white and it's looking a bit brighter than these few rows would suggest.

Rather than sell this when it's finished i've decided to keep it for myself as I rather like the colours. :-)

 This will be an ongoing project for me to pick up and do a row whenever the fancy takes me so i've made a note in my book of the hook size and will add any other notes as I work. I've lost count of how many times i've come to finish a garment and couldn't remember the size i'd worked to be able to do neckbands etc.