Ripple Crochet

So, as I mentioned last week, I have a finished crochet blanket, photos and a mini tutorial coming really soon! But since finishing the blanket, it has freed up some crochet time for me. I have recently become hooked (cheap crochet pun I know) on a few crochet blogs, namely Attic 24 and According to Matt. A few of their projects have inspired me, I have added learning to Tunisian crochet to my goals thanks to Matt, and have been dying to give this ripple pattern a try thanks to Lucy.

The ripple pattern has been playing on my mind the most, so I dived in, bought some new wool and have started my project. I am hoping to create a ripple cushion using these five colours, which should cause a splash on our dark grey sofa!

I have only been rippling for the last two nights, but boy am I addicted to those ripples, I read Lucy's post and wondering how she could be so enamoured with the ripples, after all surely a plain pattern is easier to lose yourself in, but since giving it a go.. I get it! Rippling is totally addictive, just seeing those lovely waves appear is wonderfully satisfying.

I am going to try and stay quite random with my colour choices, which is something I am terrible at, so we will have to see how that goes! But for now please gaze in happy contentment at my first few ripples.

If you want to give them a try, you can find Lucy's pattern here. Persevere through that first ripple row into your foundation chain, it drove me insane but it was definitely worth it!

Muchos x

Can I 'No Poo'?

Sounds kind of strange, but to 'no poo' basically means to stop using shampoo and conditioner to wash your hair. I feel I must emphasise that it doesn't mean to stop washing it altogether...

The reasoning goes as follows:

- Commerical shampoos contain chemicals which strip your hair of the oils your scalp produces, leaving it feeling squeaky clean
- Your scalp has a meltdown over the loss of all these natural oils which it has produced for your hair's wellbeing, and so goes into oil production overdrive trying to replace them
- Your hair quickly becomes oily and greasy due to this overproduction from your panic stricken scalp, and so.... you need to shampoo it all over again - vicious cycle complete.

The thinking is that by stopping using these shampoo's your scalp will rebalance itself and gradually will stop the oil production frenzy and return to what a normal scalp should be, producing enough oil to keep your hair healthy and no more.

The benefits people have felt have been impressive, my research around blog land has found people experiencing healthier hair, an end to dandruff, reduced hair loss, no more frizz and even in a slow down in greying hair! Impressive.

Personally, I stumbled upon this idea around three months ago, whilst searching for ways to speed the growing process in my effort to get my short hair shoulder length, the idea intrigued me but as a daily washer I couldn't bring myself to do it. Instead I cut down my shampooing to every other day - and I struggled to do that!

But recently the idea started playing on my mind again, I did more research and I found myself truly convinced. And so last week I decided to take the plunge. I washed my hair with shampoo and conditioner for the last time on Monday 14th April, I wish I had savoured it more.

Ever since I have been using the method of washing my hair with baking soda and apple cider vinegar, as infrequently as possible. There are all kinds of suggested ratios and I am still figuring the best ratio for my hair out, but currently I am going for 1/2 tablespoon of baking soda mixed with a bit of water in my hand and then applied to my hair (directly on the roots) and 200ml of AVC mixed with 100ml of water in a spray bottle (sprayed only on the lengths and ends). So far it has gone as follows:

Day 1 - Last wash with commerical shampoo and conditioner - hair was lovely
Day 2 - Not washed, hair was greasy
Day 3 - Washed with baking soda and vinegar, hair felt clean, but I was rather paranoid!
Day 4 - Not washed, hair was feeling pretty greasy, wore in ponytail and smothered my fringe in talcum powder to soak up the excess oil
Day 5 - Washed with water only - grease ball (didn't leave the house)
Day 6 - Washed with water only - had to leave the house for a meal so ponytailed and talc'd again
Day 7 - Washed with baking soda and vinegar - must have messed up on the baking soda as roots did not feel clean
Day 8 - Washed with BS and AVC, felt better but still not as good as the first wash
Day 9 - Not washed, rather greasy
Day 10 - Washed with water only - to quote a colleague 'it's still wet isn't it?' - it wasn't.
Day 11 - Washed with BS and AVC, much better not greasy in lots of places, must have missed my crown though - that was sticking with the grease
Day 12 - Not washed, greasy but, and I don't know if I'm dreaming, less greasy than usual....

(Not washed means I didn't allow it to even get wet, wet hair can break more easily I heave heard, so I'm trying to avoid wetting it every day)

So far, not so good, but maybe getting better... My hair has always been into it's excessive oil production so I do expect I will have a rather long breaking in period. The aim is to try and keep the BS and AVC washes to twice a week to allow my scalp the breathing space to get to work balancing itself out - hopefully sooner rather than later.

But for now, here's a picture of my hair on Day 6.

Yes I went out with hair like this :O but what might disgust you more is that compared to how it felt -  I thought it looked pretty good....

Eugh. Muchos x

The Dining Room Begins

We took advantage of the four day Easter weekend to get started on the dining room - and what a start it has been. So far we have encountered a dead rat under the floorboards (puke) an army of house flies (courtesy of deceased rat) a bit of a leaking shower which actually wasn't a big deal, and also a hissing sound from behind the boarded up old gas fire.. hmmm. So it's gas off until that gets looked at. Cold water showers here I come!

But enough trials and tribulations, how about some progress shots! We started of by making a plan...

So here is our dining room on Friday morning - a perfectly okay room but we wanted to redecorate and it needed a rewire - plus we want some fancy electrics such as ceiling speakers (disco anyone?) and the our favourite - spotlights, plus moving sockets and switches etc. (Note to all, J is an electrician, a legit, qualified, does it for a living type electrician, so please remember that he is not a DIYer and I probably wouldn't recommend you giving this a go - like I might recommend you dabbling with some crochet).

But back to business.. our dining room before....

Before we started we broke out some old bedding to act as dust sheets.. a wise move.

And our dining room right now (Monday night) - it might be surprising that there has been significant progress when actually it looks like a thousand rhinos had a party, then we were robbed and finally a bomb hit.

I do always find we get to this point and then sit a cry in the corner, but it feels better this time, because this time I have seen it happen three times already and I know IT DOES GET BETTER. (eventually).

So actually rather than wailing in my newly finished crochet blanket (spoiler alert) I am quite ants in my pants excited!

Have you taken on any major work lately?

Muchos x

Weekend Updates

A trip out for a tile cutter resulted in us finding a few other things which have helped make our new house a bit more homely.

First up... A few months ago we bought this light from Made and while we really love it, it has received a lot of comparisons to a hairdryer.. And I mean a LOT.

So we switched out the existing chrome lampshade, for this muted sage lampshade. It's a lot softer to look at now and helps pull our grey room with accent greens together.

We also got the green armchair for Made, the owl cushion from B&Q and the mirror is from the Hartford range at Next.

Next up, our bare light bulb in the bedroom got itself a lovely fluffy coat to wear..

I just love how white and soft and fluffy it looks! And lit up it looks even better!

And finally, my favourite (and cheapest) update, is this little pot of colour for our landing windowsill. I think Gerbera's are my favourite flowers, they have officially won the contest. And these are such a vibrant red, in their shiny bright red pot.

They add some much needed colour to our newly painted, and very neutral hallway and landing.

Such deliciousness.

Both the lampshades and the pot plant are from B&Q. We did also get the tile cutter that we originally went for, but more on that soon!

Have you been making any quick updates to your home lately? 

Muchos x

Upcycled Pine Bedroom Furniture

Since the move we've been sinking our funds into the house makeover, so wherever we can save money we will do! We've always hated our pine bedroom furniture, but it was free to start with as a family member was getting rid. We have had it for over a year now, and in the new house we wanted something a bit nicer, we'd been shopping online for weeks for bedroom furniture but we're not very good at being realistic so it was all way out of our price range.

So rather than shell out we considered what we could do to turn the furniture we had into furniture we loved. The first thing that popped into our head was to turn the pine white.

To prepare the wood for painting we sanded the drawers until the shine was lost and the wood felt a little bit rough, just so the paint would stick to the furniture and not chip off if the drawers were knocked. We used white undercoat and gave all the drawers two coats, leaving 24 hours in between as the tin instructed.

On the woodwork in the bedroom we've used Eggshell white, which gives a matt finish with a slight shine... a bit like an eggshell. So we used the same on the sides of the drawers, however gloss is much easier to wipe clean and keep stain free so we glossed the tops.

For this project we used quick dry gloss to speed up that 24 hour drying time, whilst it did dry quickly, the effect was far from impressive, we ended up going over it with gloss twice but there is still no where near the same shine or coverage as with usual gloss. Looking back we wouldn't use it again, the 24 hour wait is worth it when you get the right results!

After painting the outside of the drawers we had started thinking along more adventurous lines. Originally we wanted a white and pale blue bedroom, but after finding this wallpaper, that all changed. So we wanted to still bring some blue into the room, but not too look completely out of place. We used alternate blue and a tan brown paint to paint the drawers fronts.

The paints we used are 'Quintessential Blue' and 'Ancient Artefact' from the Dulux Timeless Classics range, we used tester pots for the paint, which we already had to hand after trying out a few colours around the house. As this was standard emulsion it didn't take well to the undercoat we had already put on the drawers, it took four coats to get a good even coverage and it will probably chip off if you knocked it. However this was purely due to the fact we had undercoated first, we have used the Timeless Classics paint in our front room as well and it gave great coverage and went on really smoothly.

To break up the blocks of colour we stuck with white handles, and we're quite happy with the results. It was J's ideas to paint the legs blue, I wasn't sure at first but they have grown on me now (and I don't actually see them very often...)

We're loving our new look drawers, they should last us a few years until a full update is due.. whilst they are pretty for now, they have seen better days.

Have you ever tried upcycling? Or made the mistake of using emulsion over undercoat?

 Muchos x

Craft Catch Up

So I have to be honest.. we have actually been in the new house for about three months now...I think it's safe to say I'm not very good at blogging about our home renovation process... but I have been desperate to start blogging again. So I'm sticking to what I know (though I will share some updates about the house soon, I promise!)

What I know and love is craft, and right not I have a few woolly projects I would like to share with you. Clockwise from the top left we have, crochet hats, a granny square blanket, a crocheted throw and a knitted cardigan. They are all works in progress but I thought I would share them anyway.

First up the crocheted hats, this ideas came about from a basket pattern which I found in the Homemaker magazine.

After I had crocheted the smallest basket, my mum commented that it would make a great hat, and so I searched the web and came across this very similar pattern, I have used a really chunky yarn and a 10mm(!) hook, so these babies will definitely keep your head warm in the winter.

(The hat is actually hat shaped, it was just very difficult to get it to keep its shape for the photo!)

My plan is to test the sizes out on friends and colleagues and get an idea of which size fits which size heads best, from there I can then make hats in any weight wool and size crochet hook as long as I increase to the right size to start with. I have become to crochet recently, since teaching myself using various YouTube videos last year. There will definitely be more hats in the future and I will keep you updated on the best size for a certain head and will share how I amended the pattern to get the right size.

Then we have this little granny square blanket.

I steered away from my usual preference for neutral colours and went with bright with pink and purple, I think when it's finished it would be perfect for a little girls room. I haven't got particularly far with this, mainly due to a design decision which I could not make, which was basically whether to make one big granny square or a medium size granny square surrounded by normal size granny squares like these:

I have gone for one big granny square as I have really likes the look as I have been increasing, and I think a scallop edge would look lovely to finish it off. I'm slowly chipping away at this each night at the minute doing one or two rounds, so I will keep you updated as to my progress. However if you like the style of granny squares, I found the tutorial for this style here, the video is really easy to understand and really clear for a beginner crochet-er (mastering these squares was the first thing I learnt in crochet!)

Up next is the crochet throw, I started making this when our offer on this house got accepted. We knew then that we wanted a grey and white living room. Our inspiration from here and here. So as soon as our offer went through I got to work with this throw ready to keep us snuggly and warm on our new sofa in our new home. But then the sale took an absolute age to go through and I kind of lost enthusiasm, so the poor little throw is still only half complete.

This is another one that I chip away at occasionally when the mood strikes, and it is progressing steadily. again I am thinking of edging this with white, i just haven't decided on a style, I may just go plain and simple, after all I am sure there is such a thing as too much scallop edging! To make this I have done rows of single, double and treble crochet worked as follows:

• Chain 90
• Single crochet full row
• Double crochet full row
• Treble crochet full row
• Double crochet full row

And then repeat from single crochet.

I will end on a single crochet and then do one mahoosive round of white all the way around, not only to finish off but to draw attention away from my wavy sides... whoops.

And finally, it's a little knitted cardigan that is very much in its first few weeks of life. I first saw this pattern in the June 2013 'Let's knit' magazine and have wanted to do it ever since, but this scary little chart terrified me and I didn't have a clue where to start. YouTube couldn't save me this time, I needed some hands on help, so I just put the magazine to one side and focused on other things.

But I never forgot the pattern. So, when I started attending a local Knit and Natter group at Cobwebs in Tottington, I took this pattern with me to draw on other people's knowledge and skill, and we're finally away!

I have made it through the chart and I am knitting my way up the back of the cardigan. I don't expect I will be finished this project any time soon, it's something I save for the weekly Knit and Natter group, so I have help on hand when needed!

I am knitting this in Rico`Essentials Merino Double Knit and 3.25mm needles as directed so it's not growing terribly quickly, but I don't think anything will deter me from this, I have been waiting over nine months to get it started and I am loving every stitch!

The last image gives the most accurate reflection of the true colour of the yarn. 

So there you have it, a little insight into some of my craft projects. All very woolly at the minute, I am currently having a bit of a love affair with yarn I have to admit!

Has anyone else used YouTube to learn a new craft? Or do you prefer learning from friends and family?

And just for fun, some photo bombs from Eric...

Muchos x