A Year with Wizards.

Good Evening my dears,
This is just a quick little post to celebrate my two little ratkin loves Gandalf and Dumbledore, today marks the first full year of having them in our lives. They have bought so much happiness to our lives in this past year with their antics and personalities, they are so much fun to be around, so loving and playful and just overall amazing.

Ganny investigates the bag. Bags are pretty much his favourite things in the entire world, they're dark, fun to explore and easy to rip up.

I see a rascal! Dumbles peeks over the duvet hill.

Ganny was hanging out at the top of the bed with us a lot, sitting on shoulders and in the crooks of elbows, cleaning faces and my dreads.

Dumbles on the other hand was interested in playing tug of war with one of my rune amulets.

Can you tell how popular bags are yet? Dumbles enjoys them too, though getting into them with Ganny inside can sometimes be problematic.

Ganny falling asleep. This is the pretty much permanent expression on his face.

A water fiend!

Crochet: Strawberry Cake Cowl

Good Afternoon my dears,
It's been getting steadily more nippy over the past week or so, definitely time to break out the scarves and gloves! After finishing my blanket I wanted to make a quick and easy project that would also make use of 2 yarns I bought months ago, this candy pink eyelash yarn and a lovely brown. I don't know about other people but I love these colours together so I always planned to make something combining them but wasn't sure what. I decided to make a cowl with pink and brown layers, like a cake.

I love the contrast of the extreme fluffiness of the eyelash yarn with the simplicity of the brown yarn. I'm also really happy I could make the eyelash yarn work for me, I remember buying something simillar when I had only been crocheting for a few months and I could not figure out how to work with it for the life of me, I think that's some definite progress!

Wearing it, Steven said it feels like you're being tickled by a mustach all the time. I'm ok with that scenario! 

It took me 3 days to make, on and off so probably about 10 hours in total. 

Lounging in the sun like the big fluffy monster that it is.

Green Haven

Good evening my sweets,

Today has been full of rain and all of the strange emotions that seem to run along with it. I finished the book I was reading this morning listening to the rain, I went outside and marvelled at the rain on the plants, I cried on an island in the middle of the road. I felt peaceful, sad, confused, lost, safe, happy, inspired, drained, grey. Last night I lay in the dark and listened to my rats chattering to one another and confused it with the sound of rain. It's strange how rain can make you feel so still and so turbulent all at once, I can't help but think there is some lesson in that for me.

 Steven bought the Aloe Vera and Cacti in because it's starting to get really cold now and frost is setting in on the mornings. Over the summer hundreds of Foxgloves seeded themselves in the pots and now they're growing alongside, I love how it makes this gigantic green jungle, the way they seem to nestle together and protect eachother, growing alongside one another perfectly. 

 Steven came to me this morning excited about this particular little spot, we were trying to get a photo of the water droplets on the leaves but it was a surprisingly difficult shot to get because of all the different possible bits to focus on. 

 Our Salix is turning golden yellow, the contrast of the yellow and black is beautiful. 

 We threw some of our lantern plant seeds (Physalis alkekengi) on the soil and this is what happened, it's amazing to look at the intricate, weblike vein structures of the casing with the seed glowing inside. 

 Velveteen Foxglove leaves against the smooth aloe vera skin and the spikes and fur of the cacti. 

Elemental

Good Afternoon my sweetlings, 
This morning I finished the Sea Spirit Blanket, I'm really excited to show you the finished product! It's surprisingly huge, bigger than I originally thought. I really like the way it came out, it was definitely a bit of a troublesome thing at points but it was very enjoyable to create and in the end the imperfections grew on me and now I don't think it would be quite the same without them.

There is something really fun about rolling them up like this, I like the effect it creates in the middle as well.

It's very long as you can see.

The hole in it is where I managed to miss a chunk of stitches whilst half asleep, I tried to remedy it but couldn't figure it out so I left it. I like it somehow. 

Close ups, this shows what I like so much about working freeform and not using specific patterns, I like how all the yarns blend into eachother, how there are little differences running throughout it. It adds to the feeling of water for me, if it was absolutely uniform I think it would feel different. 

Mohair versus sock yarn. 

Both of them together for comparison and also because I didn't want the Fire Blanket to feel left out.

I like the way they contrast eachother, even the styles used to make them are different and I think this picture shows that well. The Fire Blanket is much more tightly knit overall than the Water Blanket. 

I love how when you twist it you get a wave like look like this.

Rolled up together.

Opposite sides look different rolled up as well which is interesting to me. 

Again you can see how much tighter this one is, a lot of the time I crocheted with 2 or more yarns held together in this one whereas the other had thinner yarn generally used one at a time. I hope you enjoyed!