Crocheted Bobble Edging Tutorial

Today I am posting a tutorial on how to make a very simple crocheted bobble edging. I mentioned before that I wanted to play around with ideas for edging off Nani's Hexagon blanket and I wanted something that reflects her happy, quirky personality. The hexagon blanket is being made (and here I assure you...I have stuck to the goal of doing two hex's every day until it is finished...yes, yes, I know the year is only 4 days old :) .....) in hectic, bright colours, because that just what Nani is like! So, without further ado...here is the tutorial...

I have crocheted a simple sc base on which to work. Above you can see that I have just turned the work and chained one.

Slip stitch into the FIRST space of the row. (Remember...a Slip Stitch is hook into space, yarn around hook, pull through space AND loop on hook in one movement).

Chain 2.

Now you will start a series of incomplete Double Crochet stitches....what you do is this: Yarn around Hook, insert hook into same space (as you made the slip st), yarn around hook, pull through...you have three loops on your hook...yarn around hook, pull through TWO LOOPS... you will be left with two loops on your hook...

Repeat the same again...yarn around hook, insert hook into same space again, yarn around hook, pull through, you have 4 loops on your hook, yarn around hook, pull through TWO LOOPS only...you now have THREE loops on your hook...

Repeat again...just as before...you should have FOUR LOOPS on your hook now...

Yarn around hook and pull through ALL FOUR LOOPS on your hook...

Chain 1.

Slip Stitch into same space as you have been working...watch the pretty bobble form...
:)
Slip stitch into the next two stitches of your base work...this gives you a little space between the bobbles, making things nice and even :)

Repeat the steps to make a bobble...easy as pie!

If your little bobble isn't nice and fat, use your little finger to "pop" out the stitches forming the bobble (from the back of your work), creating a little hollowed space at the back of the bobble...

Hope you enjoy making this...

Have a lovely afternoon folks!
♥Heidi

Origami Happiness...tomatoes...and crocheted bobbles

It may not come as a surprise to you if you have seen my Pinterest Boards, but I am fascinated by Origami. I have been constantly amazed at the degree of complexity that origami artists can achieve with just a bit of paper and a pair of hands. I am no expert, but decided to delve into the technical aspects of Origami...to that effect , I found a fantastic book by Robert J. Lang called Origami Design Secrets: Mathematical Methods for an Ancient Art. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Robert Lang is just simply an Origami Legend!
I also found some lovely Origami papers online at Loot, which made me a very happy puppy :)

The papers have various themes...one set are all animal prints...croc skin, tiger print etc...another has traditional kimono designs and traditional Japanese prints...very, very nice!
If you are interested in Origami, I can highly recommend two sites:
www.oriland.com
and
www.happyfolding.com

The Origami artists of Oriland are Yuri and Katrin Shumakov. Their site is filled with amazing designs, many of which you can buy with step by step instructions. I have recently bought two of their offerings...
The Oriland Magic Star
Dinosaur Skeletons

Below you can see their Origami Stegosaurus...I just love this! There is even a Neanderthal Man for you to fold :) I am hoping to fold a small Steggi sometime this year...
The eBooks themselves are exceptionally well written, with countless illustrations to guide you...honestly, I really think even a beginner could follow along!

Sara Adams is the star of Happy Folding. Her instructional videos are really superb (and there are loads of them!). Even if Origami isn't your thing, check out these sites...you will be amazed at the designs and the artist' cleverness!

It has been a boilingly hot day here in SA today, and I suspect we are going to have a heck of a thunderstorm later...I have managed to get the worst of the offenders out of my vegetable garden and have even harvested some more stuff, including some Purple Dragon Carrots and really red, lovely and fat tomatoes. I am going to make a pasta sauce to use in my Bolognaise sauce...any good recipes you know of...please let me know :)

The Purple Dragon Carrots are such a novelty...lovely and burgundy on the outside, but bright orange inside...they taste the same to me as regular carrots, just not as sweet at the Little Finger Variety I mentioned before....they look fabulous in a salad!

As I was sitting in bed last night, listening to a lecture, I played around with some yarn and a crochet hook, and came up with a pretty crocheted Bobble Edging...very easy to crochet and potentially quite versatile. I have been thinking about an edging to use for Nani's Hexagon Blanket (...on that topic, I have been a very good little crocheter, and crocheted several hexagons since New Year ;) ), and think that this bobble edge will be a cute final round...
If time permits, I will do a photo tutorial later this week :)

I have spent the last couple of days slaving in the garden, and I swear, must have staked a thousand tomato plants!!!!!!!!!!! Remember when I said earlier, "Plant less Lettuce"?...well, add to the list if things I learned about vegetable gardening..." Plant LESS TOMATOES!!"...you don't need a hundred different types of tomatoes...no, really!
I made my sister swear that she would forcibly stop me next season, when I say something idiotic like "Oh, just one more seed...after all, maybe it won't germinate"...she has been instructed that violence may freely be used as a last resort!


Speaking of Sisters...it's my one and only dear sister's birthday today...so 'Det...

*-...-•"*-...-•"*-...-•"*-...-•" Happy Birthday!!!!!!!!! *-...-•"*-...-•"*-...-•"*-...-•"
May your Rhubarb grow like Khakibos, your strawberries grow the size of lemons, your husband buy you yarn for no reason, and may the pests in your garden all emigrate next door!
Have a happy, spoiled day!
*PS...your pressies await....

Have a fruitful Tuesday folks...
♥Heidi

Rowan Yarns...and the easy peasy Pie Recipe

Yesterday I made a berry crumble for dessert after Sunday Lunch. I will be the first to tell you that I hate cooking...at least the variety of cooking that has to magically materialize at 6pm when I would rather get a poke in the eye with a stick than waste time (that could be far better served knitting/ crocheting) in front of the stove...yes, such are my culinary leanings...however, when it comes to baking, I am a far happier camper. That being said, my philosophy about cooking and food generally can be summed up as follows: "If it takes more than 10 minutes of my time/hands to make, then it's not worth eating...".
So, over the years of enforced servitude in front of the stove, I have developed super-fast recipes and food shortcuts that allow me to whip something up that is great tasting but brain donor easy!

This fruit pie/crumble is one of those things :)
Pie pastry is essentially a mixture of butter (fat) and flour, a little sugar, salt and a binder like an egg. Now, if you are so inclined you could add all kinds of stuff, like choc chips etc, but for me, the fastest is bestest! Generally you need to use about double the weight of flour to fat (note: weight, not volume!), and I happened to use Self Raising flour, but really, if you have ordinary cake flour, that's fine...just add some baking powder.

I have a round pie dish that is about 30cm in diameter, and needed the following rough quantities to make the pie pastry:

+/- 2 1/2 cups of flour
+/- 200g butter
1/2 - 1/3 of a cup of sugar ( I used brown sugar because it was closest to hand, but you can use castor or white sugar)
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 large egg
Fruit Mix for the filling (I used a frozen berry mix that I bought from a berry supply wholesaler nearby, but really, you could use pretty much any fruit, fresh or canned as well...)



It's easier to work with the butter if it was refrigerated...

I mix the pastry in my Kenwood mixer using the whisking attachment.

1. Place flour, sugar and salt in mixer bowl.
2. Start mixer on medium speed, slowly adding little cut up blocks of cold butter.
3. Add your beating egg slowly...a crumbly pastry dough should start forming...
4. Allow the mixture to form a crumbly fine dough (you can get an idea of the texture above...I literally just took the loose pastry dough out of the mixer and sprinkled it on top of the berry mix...). The dough should be loose and crumbly, but if you squeeze it together, it should hold its shape without being sticky).
5. If you find that the dough is too loose and doesn't have some sticking power, you can add a teaspoon of cold water...just add a tiny bit at a time or you'll get a sloppy dough.
6. When it all looks good, spray your pie dish with some non-stick spray, and scoop some dough mixture into it and flatten with your fingers until the dish is lined with pastry.
7. Pour in your fruit mix.
8. Crumble some more of the dough over the top of the fruit filling...this is not meant to look pretty...just make sure it is sort of evenly spread.
9. Bake in oven at 180 degrees Celsius until the top is brown and golden.
10. Serve with custard or cream...

...easy peasy pie! It sounds far more complicated than it is...the whole thing took about 6 minutes to make...the rest of the time is just baking in the oven :)

I know that there are a gazillion people who will insist that the dough has to be refrigerated for 20 minutes in clingwrap etc etc ...honestly it's too much time and schlepp and it works FINE if you don't! Life is far too short to wait for stuff to get cold!

Try it...let me know how your pie making went :)



My dear and precious husband was in England for a conference at the beginning of December and sweet cherub that he is, went to a yarn shop and bought me some yarn! Now, until recently, the said cherub, still referred to my knitting as "sewing" ...proudly telling people that I am "...really good at sewing..."...so you'll understand that he has no concept about what yarns are and which brands / blends are desirable, never mind color and quantity ...

He has, in the past, heard the word " Rowan" bandied about, so I suspect that when he saw the name on a couple of balls of yarn, he was desperately pleased to have found something recognizable! He brought home a variety of Rowan Yarns that I haven't used before at all. I am the first to tell you that I LOVE Rowan's Milk Cotton, Handknit Cotton and Kidsilk Haze, so I was very curious to see if I liked the following lots...

First Up... Amy Butler's Organic Aran.

I was especially excited as I love all things Amy Butler and the fact that this is an organic yarn, so much the better. I had looked at the wonderful colours on-line, and liked the fact that it is an aran weight, so it would be perfect for big projects like a blanket. It's 50% cotton, 50% wool blend, and you get around 90m in a 50g ball.

Verdict:
Very nice to work with...not as smooth a yarn as the handknit cotton, but not as splitty as the Milk Cotton. I have been using sock weight yarn for such a long time, that I had forgotten how thick aran weight is! It works up very nicely and quickly, and I would buy it again if the opportunity arose...


Kaffe Fasset Kidsilk Haze

This is yarn Nirvana! I mean, Kidsilk Haze people! Is there really anything more you need to say? Add in the fabulous colours in this ball (Note the singular: hubby brought back countless balls of muddy purple All Season's Cotton and *#@!!& only ONE BALL of this yummy stuff!) It is just the most beautiful stuff to knit with and although , like dynamite, it comes in very small balls, there is actually enough to knit a good size project with... DEFINITELY a Keeper!!!!

Rowan All Season's Cotton

Ok...over-sharing time... " Hi, my name is Heidi, and I am a Yarn Snob...it has been 10 years since my last acrylic purchase..."...
Jokes aside...I cannot abide the stuff! I hate that grandma's knitted scratchy jerseys from the stuff in a variety of scary plastic colors , that you were forced to wear to keep the family peace...
Acrylic and me do not play nice! But, I suppose (in defence of the poor grandma's), we have only fairly recently had access to the wonderful new yarns, with the internet and all...so it was with a fair amount of nose-in-the-air that I tried this yarn. It is a blend of 60% cotton and 40% acrylic...again, an aran weight with 90m per 50g.


Ok, I will admit (begrudgingly...)that it is not scratchy. It does however have a supertwisty kind of texture to it, that I am in mortal fear, will pill something crazy when washed over time... I don't think that I will knit anything with this, so I wouldn't know about the pilling...have you used it? Does it pill? The two colours that I have are a burgundyish color and a muddy purple (Arrrggghhhhhh...why would you release a color like that???)...

NOT FOR ME...

Lastly...Colourscape Chunky by Kaffe Fassett. I was quite surprised by this yarn, because anything Kaffe does is generally awesome!
This yarn is beautifully coloured, but like the dreaded Noro Kureyon, seems to be a spun single-ply yarn, with a fuzzy feel. It is 100% lambswool....so I suspect it will felt (there is a huge set of multi-language instructions on the ball band, telling you to hand wash, do not tumble dry etc). It may be ok for felting, but I didn't get palpitations with excitement and anticipation when I thought about what to knit with it...

Verdict: Lovely colours...Nice for felting (I guess I should try make a felted item with it...), but I wouldn't buy it if I could...

Well...that's the story of the yarn, as they say! I need to go and evict more bolted lettuce from my garden (remember what I said...plant less lettuce!)...

Have a good day folks!
♥Heidi

In 2012 I will try to spend more time...

...Blogging!

...putting my patterns and ideas on paper and uploading to my Ravelry Shop.


...dyeing yarn.

...learning to succession plant and keep my vegetable garden clean and organized.


...finish UFO's.

...at Cintsa.


...finishing Nani's hexagon blanket.


...watercolour painting.

...being kind and patient.
...being thankful.
...being organized.
...being positive and optimistic!

Have you made of list of what you would like to spend more time doing?

.-*"*-..•"HAPPY NEW YEAR FOLKS!"•..-*"*-...

♥Heidi

Welcome to the Jungle...

What a busy day the last of 2011 has been! I woke up this morning to a garden gone absofrikinlutely wild. When we arrived home last night it was raining and dark and I didn't even look at the garden. I got up at 5am to get ready for work, and as I walked to the car, there was enough light to see the armageddon of the flora...it must have rained virtually non stop since we went on holiday because truly, you cannot imagine how out of control the lot was! The grass is long, the vegetables have all bolted and were standing in slimy bases...a heckofamess :(

After doing the first round of the day, I came home to watch the kids, Gerry then going off to see patients. The child minder then didn't arrive, so I couldn't get back to the hospital because there was no one to watch the little cherubs ;) , so essentially the day suddenly turned into an opportunity to start sorting out the mess...
I started yanking out bolted lettuce, basil, cauliflower, rotten peas, mildewed marrows etc... I worked for two hours straight and managed to get through about two and half boxes. As I went, I harvested loads of stuff. Surprisingly, there were remarkably few pests...I encountered one snail, 3-4 tiny slugs, a couple of chafer beeltes hiding in the soil and saw the evidence of a caterpillar's visit in the shredded leaves of the cauliflowers...BUT, a lot of the plants were covered with powdery mildew. This doesn't worry me as much...I'll spray with Margaret Roberts' Organic Fungicide...that will sort it out :) When it started to rain, I took my pots of bounty in and started cleaning...I was most ridiculously pleased with myself because I tried to see what was happening on the potato front...since this is my first season of vegetable growing, I thought it would be a mess, but NO! I have grown grogeous, white, perfect potatoes!!!!! Whoo Hoo!!!!!!

I will tell you this for free...seeing something a silly as a green bean growing, has made me feel like I am the gardener of the year! So easy, yet so self pleasing :) I grew some yellow lemon cucumbers. They are the round yellow balls of prettiness near the carrots (yellow, white, orange and purple). They are really sweet and taste a bit lemony, and grew far better than the regular long green cucumbers. I have been amazed how lonnnggg it takes for a carrot to grow, it's like growing a baby, I swear!

The marrows are ginormous...not yet sure in what and how I am going to put them to use...the yellow marrows are lovely and bright yellow, the squashes little zebra perfect balls and the strawberries fat and red...Tomorrow, I will see what else awaits. The boxes are so overgrown (can you believe? in just 12 days!), that I can't get to the back ones easily, so I haven't gone to see what's happening there yet :)

My poor fence has also seen the worst of the continuous rain...it has rusted badly...another thing my gardener will have to tackle when he comes back from leave..."gardener" , in this case is a very enthusiastic word...James is a great guy, a whizz at painting, carrying, helping... but really...green fingered he is not! He has been with us for long enough that I have worked out that it either grows by itself or it perishes.
I once found him carefully picking my newly sprouted seedlings , one at a time between two pinched fingers, proudly telling me he is ridding the garden of "weeds"...
In South Africa, you would now say "Eish!"....

So what have a learned from my first season growing my own vegetables?
1. Plant less lettuce.
2. Plant less cauliflower.
3. Plant less broccoli.
4. Plant less lettuce.
5. Plant less lettuce....getting the drift here?
6. Companion plant!
7. "Little Finger" carrots taste the best.
8. Squashes have nasty , prickly thorns on every part of their anatomy...wear gloves!
9. Organic does work.
9. Always plant Borage with your strawberries...it WORKS!
10. You do NOT need eighteen different tomato varieties...just because they are pretty and different colours, doesn't mean you cannot live without them...
11. Tomato plants get ginormous! Eighteen different varieties get even ginormouser!
12. SUCCESSION PLANT! The Holy Grail of vegetable gardening... (I haven't even come close to getting this right...)
13. Potatoes and Horseradish are friends...good friends!
14. You cannot tell how big a carrot is from looking at the size of the foliage :(
15. Pick beans often or the plants stops making them .
16. Peas don't like wet feet.
17. Everything grows much bigger than you think...planting hundreds of seeds in a square meter of earth (just in case), does not help...
18. Crushed egg shells prevent snails from eating your strawberries.
19. Plant rhubarb earlier next time, plant brocolli and cauliflower later...
20. When the recommended spacing for squashes and marrows is a metre, there may be a good reason for that...(my marrows are filling half the garden, and laugh at the pathetic box I tried to contain them in)
21. If I can grow stuff, then anyone can!

I must have done something right, because as I was yanking out bolted plants, earthworms the size of small snakes came out of the ground...this is a good thing isn't it? They were as fat as my little finger! I suspect it will take at least a week of hard gardening to get the equilibrium re-established. Oh, that's another thing I learned...your back will so not hold after two hours of bending over...get raised boxes! Hallelujah for raised vegetable beds!

Tomorrow, I am hoping to take the girls to see Sherlock Holmes 2...have any of you see it yet? Is it as awesome as I suspect it's going to be? I am a huge RDJ fan, so I can't wait!

I am now going to have a nice warm bath to ease my poor gardening back, and read some more of a new Kindle book I downloaded...it's called "Killer Instinct: Charlie Fox Book 1" by Zoe Sharp...so far it's excellent! It's a kind of girl Jack Reacher type novel...Charlie Fox is actually a woman, and of course, she is just as cool as 'ol Jack (I am a card-carrying, certified Jack Reacher groupie...). It's getting interesting ...

Have a wonderful (and safe) New Year everyone!
♥Heidi

Farewell dear ocean shores! The pain....

So today we bid farewell to our beloved Cintsa. It is always a bittersweet time, the longing to stay war-ring with the desire to see our other home and our Flashy... Cintsa has become such a special place for us, a refuge and a place of restoration...
We went to the beach in the morning , then packed up and sorted out the house...and wound our way to the airport.
The flight was turbulent to say the least and I came off as nauseous as I was during my pregnancies! I am a terrible flyer...in fact, I hate flying...the problem of course being that I don't relish the thought of sitting in a car for 12 hours driving through the heat of day just to drop dead from boredom and exhaustion at the end of it all...so flying becomes a lesser evil to endure :)
Gerry on the other hand LOVES flying ( :P ), and has no trouble at all with flying nausea. When we flew to Verbier a couple of years ago, I vomited non stop for nearly 24 hours...towards the end I gave up all pretense of wanting to continue my existence on earth, and pleaded silently for the end to now just come, dammit! Such are the vagaries of modern travel....


Yesterday, while I was standing on our bedroom balcony, I saw dolphins in the water, and thought I would snap a few pics...what a sweet surprise to have unexpectedly captured a leaping dolphy, right at the very edge of my shot! They really are very playful creatures! Debbie's son was swimming along with them for a long time one day, and he said that they are naturally very curious, coming up to him constantly to see what this was in the water with them... :)

When we landed at the airport, I took a very poor, blurry photo of Emmanuelle under the lighted reindeer...makes me a little nostalgic for Christmas again...ah well, 2012 is soon underway and before you know it...Christmas will be here again!

Tomorrow, it's back to work bright and early...wish me strength folks...first day back is always tough!

♥Heidi