Friday 31 October 2014

Halloween

During my childhood, Halloween was not something that we celebrated or even participated in and I remember well feeling very envious of the children in American movies and shows who got to dress up in costumes, run around their neighbourhoods getting candy and scaring each other with silly tricks. As an adult though, I have had many a crazy time joining in with the Halloween fun and now look forward to this holiday more and more every year.


With the leaves turning from their lush summer greens to flaming reds and oranges and the evenings drawing in, it feels almost natural to want to celebrate a holiday that requires you to carve pumpkins into grotesque and scary faces, dress up in costumes of all things supernatural and eat way too many brightly coloured sugary treats.


This year was the first time that Little T was really aware of what Halloween is and for some reason over the past few days he has been telling anybody who would listen that he is going to be a hedgehog for Halloween! Unfortunately Trick or Treating doesn't seem to be a very popular tradition where we live at the moment and I really had no time or ideas to come up with a hedgehog outfit at the last minute. I did however want to still celebrate the day in some way that he would love and there's no better way than baking a cake!


The two of us spent a very happy and crazy couple of hours in the kitchen creating this Hedgehog Halloween cake this morning, which turned out to be the perfect dessert after having a dinner of "worms" (spaghetti to the rest of us) while watching some of the bigger kids run around outside in their plastic masks and fake fangs.



Here's wishing you all a Happy Halloween!!!!

Wednesday 1 October 2014

Finally!!!!

Way back in February I excitedly started a new blanket using Lucy's Hexagon tutorial. I had a big bag of my favourite cotton yarn in 24 delicious colours all ready to go and within a few days I had made a very good start on this new adventure of mine. I was loving it and had no doubt in my mind that I would have it done and dusted in no time at all.


Unfortunately this initial enthusiasm started to wane with the passing weeks and warming weather and soon I found myself falling out of love with the hexagons. I started working on it less and less and picked up lots of smaller projects to fill my crochet time, to the point where this blanket went into total hibernation, something that has never happened to me before.


However, since coming back from Canada and with the evenings drawing in and getting cooler, I have found a renewed vigour for getting this blanket finished. I soon started enjoying working on the hexagons again and before I knew it, I was loving this blanket once more, working on it every spare moment I could find.


Last week, I worked the very last of the total 180 hexagons and finally I could start on the edging. I had two colours picked out that I had not used in the main blanket for this very purpose and got to work over the weekend.


As luck would have it, I ran out of yarn just before I got all the way round and had to wait for some more yarn to come in the mail.


Thankfully my wait was short lived and I was able to work the last few stitches yesterday afternoon. Just like that, it was done, finished, complete! I have to admit, I did do a little happy dance while I stood back to admire all of the colourfulness in it's entirety.


Maybe it's not quite as big as I had first envisioned it. Sure it took a lot longer than I ever thought it would. And perhaps my love for it was in question at one point, but there is no two ways about it now, I am one happy bunny that this blanket is done and ready to use for the coming winter.