I have been meaning to blog about this for a while but this last month has been hectic. Trust me when I say it is not normal behaviour to cancel crafting days but I simply couldn’t fit in the Warwickshire Area’s Quilting Day, nor could I fit in the monthly meet of the Quilters of Forest of Arden, and I didn’t fit them in last month either! Looking at the diary things are definitely settling down in the next couple of weeks.

Anyway to get back to where we were, Jane Crowfoot came up to see Kenilworth Knit and Natter again (hurrah!) to show us a few techniques that might be needed on her Crochet Club course. I am afraid that I didn’t take any photographs this time, and I had my camera with me. When I say that I was burning the midnight oil to learn double stitch and treble stitch the previous week and half treble stitch the night before!, you might get some understanding as to why, just keeping up with the group was enough for me to think about. – which is why I completely forgot to take photographs.

We had a lovely time, and a lovely lunch!. Jane took us gently but swiftly through many of the techniques. I like the way Jane teaches, she is very intuitive when someone is struggling and has a very gentle way of sending them off back in the right direction.

Fortunately Jackie bought her completed and ends sewn in sample the next week. Mine is on the left and Jackie’s on the right. You can see how I didn’t manage to keep up but I did master most of the techniques, I am very pleased. And Jackie’s is lovely, – I am sitting next to her when we start this course! We are all eagerly waiting for the course to begin, the snippets we have seen look absolutely stunning.

So that left me burning with desire to make something pretty with my new found crochet skills. And there was one little girl that might (although not for long knowing her mother!) have a dearth of pink hand crafted outfits in her wardrobe.

Think Pink!

Firstly I looked for pink yarn in my extensive yarn stash and was shocked, shocked I tell you to find that I didn’t have one skein of a pretty pale pink in all of my stash. A journey was required to squish gorgeous wool so hubby took me to Shipston on Stour to the most wondrous of yarn and needlecraft shops, if you are ever in that neck of the woods it is worth a detour. And there I found the prettiest of yarns Cashsoft Baby DK by Rowan, which is buttery soft and machine washable. What more could a new mum want. I then found a pattern which would suit my newly learnt skills, i.e. simple. I can’t seem to link it from Ravelry, it is called Babies/Childs cardiganpatt No. 173

And immediately cast on when I arrived home and soon had this..

Actually there was a two day pause when it came to make the flowers. I simply couldn’t follow the instructions and paused whilst my brain had time to assimilate the information that I was indeed stuck. Fortunately whilst chatting to a lady at Ally Pally I happened to mention my problem and she suggested using utube, why I hadn’t thought of that before. So soon I was merrily crocheting away with utube on and a video of crocheting flowers being played backwards and forwards very slowly, until I had remembered it.

And I was able to crochet these pretty pink flowers which are adorable. One quick photo call later and I was able to hand the cardigan over to Mum of the soon to be Pink Princess, who gurgled away quite happily through our patchwork class. I must tell you that she is the prettiest of baby girls that I have ever seen, with lots of lovely dark hair, pretty rose bud lips, gorgeous chubby cheeks, a button nose, tiny pretty ears and huge dark eyes with lovely long eyelashes and the longest fingers I have seen. And along with that, if that wasn’t enough she has the most adorable snorks and snores and sighs to listen to whilst she sleeps. I am completely smitten by her.